Greetings, I am Skunk - Founder and Fleet Admiral of SCUL. I started the gang in 1996 and have been flying ever since. I'm looking forward to Aplhamission 2021, when I will have flown with SCUL more than half my life. As you can imagine a lot has changed about SCUL in 23 years, and as I have grown - so has the gang. In that sense SCUL helps me define who I wish to become. It re-invents me, and encourages me to grow, and I will forever be grateful for the people who to work and play with me, past and present. I have seen some truly amazing things, none of which I'd ever experience without SCUL.
While I'm certain there are many of you out there who have experienced a fleet flyby, I have only seen SCUL from a bystander's viewpoint on three occasions. I hadn't given it much thought until I experienced it for myself. The space surrounding SCUL transformed into a thirty-second party that seemed to have leaked into the street, leaving a wake of smiles, laughter, dancing, and boisterous conversation. The cheering and music and wild bell-ringing subsided, and space-time resumed her course and it's as if nothing ever happened.
When flying with SCUL the atmosphere of the city is different. We encounter transport traffic, pulsars, black holes, meteorites, radiation, nebulae and even space weevil - and for the first 20 solar orbits or so, there's chaffing. We maneuver through the tightest turns and spaces that out largest ships will fit through, even if landing and spacewalking is needed. We sometimes fly hundred light year missions that can take fourteen hours to complete. There are hundreds of pleasant social micro-interactions I have. A lot can happen in a few seconds, if you are bustin' tha funk!
What amazes me most of all is the way this completely volunteer organization works so hard and so well together. While SCUL's job structure is completely first-come-first serve, many veteran pilots have become excellent specialists. When a job needs doing, it gets done well. Our fort and our ships attest to it.
There's a moment during almost every SCUL mission I've been on where I find myself in a situation I couldn't have possibly predicted. In other words, SCUL space travel is intense. We are the flame for all the funky, freaky moths out there just itching for the invite to bust the funk with us.
What's a life without the weird?
Additional Log
Please visit my robot orphanage known as
Skunkadelia.