Back in black

Vacation.
Such is not needed for one that leads a life like mine.
Tranquility? Not compared to warping to an empty spot in space and taking in the scenery.
Adrenaline and adventure? Hardly.. Going down a slope has nothing on taking on another pilot head to head out in space.. I was tricked by that damn poster!

And the darn place was expensive too! The crazy Jita marketplace has nothing on these guys on overpriced goods!!
Ah well, I´ll make a note of bombarding them from space if I ever get into a battleship.

It was good to get home.. Yar had started going off more often and so I was relieved that the first thing I heard when I entered my home system again was that there were some folk in belt one looking for a fight!
A hastily made-up fleet later and we blew them out of the sky!! Damn it felt good.

Little did I know that I was up for a few "first-time" experiences!

I lost my first ship the very same day.
My trusty destroyer-class Thrasher, who had netter me 18 kills!
I had found a punisher inside a caldari warfare thing-a-ma-jiggy.. I had been into one before, where a frig were doing something, surrounded by battleships.. then warped off when I came and they targeted me.
So in my ignorance I thought they were passive while he was there somehow..
I landed from warp a bit away from him, and speeded towards my intended prey.. so far so good, locked him and lay the hurt on.
Then the 5-6ish battleships in the area locked me.
And jammed me.
And killed me.
Embarrasing.

I got out of there with one less destroyer-ship.. but lots of experience gained.
Was my first time I got to practice my "insta-warp-pod-to-planet" trick I had been taught.
Also, I now know how these warfare installations work, and wont make that mistake again.
Sad that I did not die in a fair fight, but now I was more initiated into the life of a pirate.

The next day I got another "first" with complementary valuable lesson.
Feeling vengeful I made two mistakes.. I jumped in a too expensive ship for my wallet.. and I charged the first prey I could find without much thought.
I could blame Yar but I wanted it as much as him..

I went out in my Thorax you see.. a pretty deadly cruiser, and I guess it made me feel abit too sure of myself..
So when I find a lone incursus at a planet, with two other neutrals in local I charge it almost blindly.
Sure my scanners told me that a tristan and a blackbird was in system aswell.. and that the tristan was probably in the same corp as the incursus.. but I was sure that I could take them both on if that was the case.
Well I warped, the incursus was a bit off, so I flew towards him.. and he towards me!
That should have warned me off, but I was reckless and bloodthirsty, so I engaged anyway.
Thirty seconds later the tristan comes.. and the blackbird!
I thought that since they were all in positive security standing, and engaging me meant commiting a crime, since the only one that had the right to shoot back was the incursus.. so they would not be so quick to join the fight..
..but they were.
I was warpscrammed.. and....JAMMED!

Auugh the horror, and it was strawberry-flavored too!!

But from what I had read, the jam was not permanent, so I did not try to disengage, as I hoped to have a chance to re-aquire lock on my target in a few seconds...
But as my shields were blasted away from the three ships, and my armor started to look like swiss cheese (old earth food-product with lots of holes) I tried to run but too little too late.
Once again I warp off in my pod, adrenaline still coursing with a ship gone but knowledge/experience gained.

I had my mind set on brooding in station for the rest of the evening, my kill ratio gone down from 30kills no losses to a 15:1 ratio.. I needed to get back in control.

But then my third "first" presented itself.
On the internal piratecomms I had semi-listened to two pilots trying to find a caracal in our home system.. one of them was skilled with scanning down hidden ships, but had not his gear.. and was trying to teach the other.. it is a hard thing to explain, but I had studied it hard, both reading guides and watching instructional videos.

So I popped out of station in my puny Imicus.. a ship made for scanning and little else.
And even tho lacking in equipment and experience, I found the caracal quickly.
Wow, this was easy.. maybe I´ll make a career out of this!
Anyhow, I let the two corp-mates know that I had found the prey and we warped there to engage.
Sadly, he had been clearing out a hidden acceleration-gate and was just finished when we came charging in, too far off from him to engage in time, and he fled.
Had we been there sooner while he was fighting we might have gotten a drop on him, but no matter.. I was very satisfied with myself quickly and successfully scanning down my first ship!

To sum it up.. The vacation was expensive and not so fun.
My homecoming was even more expensive(12mil isk down the drain) -but a thousand times more fun, exciting and educational.

So the gist of it is, stay at home and do what you love.