“I am a mechanic. I was in the military and went all over the world as an aircraft mechanic, then came back to Flora. I got tired of traveling and wanted to sleep in my own bed. I have been to Afghanistan, Kurdistan, and several countries in South America but it was usually in and out and we didn’t get to see the country. The nice places we would have wanted to stay, we landed there in the middle of the night and only stayed for a few hours. My job was usually safe but we went into Iraq and Afghanistan to recover airplanes and they would drop us off with the tools and parts we needed and leave us there. A plane was shot or had a malfunction and couldn’t take off and we had to fix it and get it flying again. We had to change an engine in one plane with night vision glasses on. I was on the crane and everything was two-dimensional. We were wearing armored suits and had security guards. We had guns but they told us not to fire back if fired on so we dropped our guns and left them there. The problems were anything from 10-minute to 2-day fixes. There were 40 planes in our squadron and we knew the problems each one had and it was usually the same ones. I grew up fixing things and can fix about anything. I was tearing lawn mowers apart when I was 10 and cars apart when I was 12. I bought a motorcycle last summer because I got tired of paying so much for gas. It is freedom until a bug hits you between the glasses and helmet. That hurts.