Our Adventures Together: Jane Wayne Day

About 3 weeks after we arrived on the island the Wing hosted a Jane Wayne Day. I'd never been to one of these before and wasn't sure what to expect, but this day was so much fun! We met in the hangar with our gear, were issued our MREs [meals, ready-to-eat] (which none of us ate, hello 1250 calories!), and were shuffled into 4 squads and assigned a drill instructor. Once we were yelled at to get into formation, we sort of straightened up and started participating : ) Our first station was at the Night Imaging and Threat Evaluation Lab.

This is where our husbands go to be trained on flying at night. Our instructor talked to us about the history of night-vision goggles, how they worked and gave us each a pair to try on. We walked into another room where we were able to see a mock-up of the island and after turning off the lights, used the goggles to see what our husbands might see while flying around the island at night.

In our next station we maneuvered huge humvees in sharp turns around cones that made up an obstacle course. The above picture is proof that I did this : ) We were in a sort of competition based on whoever knocked down the fewest cones. I did not win.

After the humvee obstacle course we jogged to our next station singing cadences led by our drill instructor. Am I so corny to admit that I felt very motivated at this point?! That's really a rhetorical question, no answers needed, thanks. Right: My friend Maggie at the humvee obstacle course.

"Momma and Poppa sittin on the bed, (repeat)

Momma laid over and this is what she said, (repeat)

I appreciate you and all the things you do, (repeat)

No better life than a Marine Corps Wife!" (repeat)

Above: My friend Megan in the humvee.

So, when we caught our breaths we started dishing out our best self-defense moves at the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program, otherwise known as MCMAP. This was one of my favorite stations because it was really funny and I got to lift ammo cans over my head, which is always a good time. After this station we went to the indoor Simulated Marksmanship Trainer. It was sort of like a really expensive video game where we used M-2 .50 caliber machine guns, the M-16A2 service rifle and the AT-4 rocket launcher to shoot the bad guys. Ohhhh yeah.

Afterwards we headed to our last station of the day: the flight simulators. I tried my hand at the CH-46 simulator for obvious reasons, but there were also opportunities to try out the CH-53 and KC-130 simulators. At the end of the day we met again in the hangar for a group picture. In the picture below are some of the spouses of 262 and 265 (the Phrog squadrons) with our drill instructor.