Writing this column was one of the hardest things I've done during my time at Duke-both because I will miss my dear friends at The Chronicle so much, and because if you talk to them they'll tell you that photographers like me are functionally illiterate and generally not very bright. I also had to axe several versions of this piece, including a 1000-word draft about why I am cooler than Chronicle Editor David Graham, and why his girlfriend should date me instead. Despite this setback, I stand by the assertion that I am awesome, and David is not.
My two years at Duke (I'm one of those incredibly sweet transfer students that you've always wanted to meet) have spawned some of my favorite stories. Although Duke sports have recently been criticized on the pages of The Chronicle, I've enjoyed my time as a Duke fan. Maybe my standards are simply lower than those of my colleagues. Maybe I'm just relieved to be at a school whose only national championship team isn't club hockey. In these last two years, I've sat on the floor of three Duke-UNC basketball games without ever entering a K-ville tent (suck it, Crazies). I stormed the field at Wallace Wade after Duke Football topped Northwestern on the road this year. And in last year's NCAA Lacrosse semifinal I saw Duke beat Cornell with a play that included a face-off, two passes and a shot in 14 seconds. Despite not seeing our basketball team make it to the Final Four, I've seen some great sports moments at Duke. Oh, and Jon-sorry for putting 212 pictures of you making faces in the yearbook. I hope you thought that was funny.
Not all of my memories from Duke have been sports-related. In perhaps the least brilliant decision of my tenure here, I chose Duke's LifeFlight program as the subject of my final project for Ken Rogerson's journalism class. Upon arriving at their offices in the hospital, I made small talk with one of the pilots, who was a former member of the Coast Guard:
Me: "So, what did you do in the Coast Guard?"
Pilot: "A lot of search and rescue stuff. Rescue swimmer deployment. Have you seen 'The Guardian?' There's a lot of Hollywood stuff, but the S&R is pretty accurate."
Me: "Yeah, I used to be a lifeguard too."
I made three flights with Duke's airborne ambulance that day. The first was a simple refueling flight. The second involved flying to the Virginia border in order to airlift an infant who had been thrown from a minivan in an accident, which I initially thought would be the most exciting moment of the day.
On the third flight, one of our engines failed. I gotta say, this is up there in the all-time oh-shit moments of my life. I nearly drowned when I was in middle school, and on Sept. 1, 2005, I was standing in the remnants of a Motel 8 in Biloxi, Miss. while a guy held a knife to my throat. Still, being Lord-knows-how-many-feet above the ground in a helicopter with only one functioning engine-while trying to complete a homework assignment-tops both of those.
The pilot quickly comforted me by declaring an emergency over the radio and making a hasty U-turn toward RDU. By listening to the chatter between the pilot and the tower, I learned that a National Guard helicopter was following us, so our wreckage could be located quickly. Awesome. As we approached RDU, the pilot assured me that everything was going to be fine. I considered asking him why, in that case, fire trucks were screaming out onto the runway below us, but that thought was interrupted by his asking me to flip off a switch as we hit the ground, "just in case that No. 2 engine kicks up again." He followed this by something muttered under his breath that I didn't really understand, though I did pick out the word "explode."
Thankfully, we landed without incident a few seconds later. I rode an ambulance back to Duke and then promptly decided that I had conducted enough research.
Anyway, if you've read this far you're probably wondering what the point of this column is, or you recognize me from when I was trying to hit on you at Satisfaction a few weeks ago. What I'm trying to say is:
Do you want to come back to my place?
Pete Kiehart is a Trinity senior. He is director of photography for Towerview.
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