I fly in Ospreys and helicopters around here about as much as I drove in my car back home, so the experience no longer provides many surprises or much excitement. This time, however, I got to sit in the very last seat of the Osprey. I was only around four feet from the edge of the open door and a very long drop. Ospreys take off vertically, but they bank way up and you are pulled out of your seat as it makes sharp maneuvers. The back of the plane tends to get a more thrilling ride. I recalled those simulation rides at Universal Studios, but this was real – with real gravity that would have landed me on really hard rocks real far below if I really fell out. My spidey sense was tingling.
I usually do not pay too much attention to my seatbelt. This time I checked it twice.
Taking pictures out the back of these things is not easy. My camera automatically focuses on the objects or people in the foreground and makes the outside an indistinct bright blank, but I got a couple of decent pictures by using the landscape mode.
This is an unrelated picture, but for animal lovers I thought I would show a working dog. He smells for bombs. The dog is the shorter one. Notice his USMC scarf.