Haiti and Haitians

I know that most of you all have seen the devastation that has recently happened to Haiti. When I watched the news, I am at first incredibly sad that it happened to one of the poorest and hardest luck countries on the earth, and then I have flashbacks to my second big deployment and my 9 or so months in Haiti.  Even then  I could tell that the country had very little going for it:  No roads, no economy, no phones, no police, no government, not a lot to wake up in the morning for.  After those deployments I never complained about taxes, the seemingly in-effectiveness of our government or anything state related.  I just thanked my lucky stars I was born in the US and not Haiti.  

If you have the where-with-all and inclination, I would ask that you go to:

http://www.redcross.org/ 

and donate some money towards their Haitian relief effort.  

Honestly, Haitians don't have much going for them:  They live in a dirt poor country with no natural resources, no trees, no cool jungles or reefs to attract tourists and money, their neighboring countries hate them, their government is in-effective, their local leaders are probably crooks, if one of them somehow rises up and scratches out a living, other folks reach up to drag him down or take advantage of him.  

So when something like the earthquake happens, they need all the help they can get.  Most of the folks I worked with down there thought the world of the US and Americans, it saddens me greatly to see them suffer even more.  Our country is so vast and rich when compared to the rest of the world that if something like the earthquake happened here, other states would pitch in (I want to say "like during Katrina .  . . " but that might not be a good example), our government would dip into the magic deficit coffers and come up with some dough, and folks could just drive on over and help out.  Not in Haiti.  Everything is hard there, so cough up a few bucks and feel good that your donation helped out someone who really needs it.  

Thanks.

Diving in Roatan

Dad, Mark, Wade and I spent the last week of 2009 and first week of 2010 diving in Roatan, Honduras. This was the third holiday time that we spent together and it was pretty good. This was also the second time that I got to use my Olympus camera underwater (my Australia trip was the first time), I was kind of ticked off because the white balance was so hard to set and didn't set everytime I thought it was, but the up close pictures using a flash were pretty good. I posted a pile of the keepers to the Picasa Web page and the link is in the normal spot - - upper right hand corner of the blog page.

The trip to Roatan was pretty un-eventful, outside of the late gate changes and crowds of people travelling over the holidays. The plane was chock full, even the middle rows, somehow Mark and Dad ended up in first class, and they made sure to update Wade and I about the food selection and service they received.

The diving was pretty standard CocoView diving: Dive site in the morning on the reef somewhere, drop off dive on Newman's wall, dive site on the reef somewhere in the afternoon, drop off on CocoView Wall somewhere. We hit all of the normal spots - - Carib Point, Mary's Place, Calvin's Crack, Mr. Bud, etc. and got to head out to the West End on the new boat (see the pictures to the right). The new boat had mixed reviews: It was very fast, so trips to the West End or other areas were very fast, but it was VERY uncomfortable in anything but calm seas and the diving additions (ladders, seats, freshwater tanks, etc.) left a lot to be desired. The old, tried and true diving boats were very comfortable in comparison.

I gotta say, the diving has been getting better and better everytime we go down there - - the Reef Conservancy is working out. Ten years ago if you saw a seahorse or a spotted drum during your week of diving, it was a GREAT week of diving. Nowadays you expect to see several of each during the week. The soft coral has improved a great deal, as has the black coral (If my white balance would have worked, there was some pretty spectacular black coral at Mary's Place, sigh).

Wade and I did about 20 dives over the week, Mark and Dad did a few less because they were working on projects. We saw all of the standard stuff: Great soft coral, tons of eels (at least one a day), 5 sea horses (yellow, pink, brown and orange), a few spotted drums, even a soapfish which dad got very excited over. I also saw some interesting arrow crabs and fireworms for the first time. All in all, it was some good diving. We checked everything off of the standard Roatan fish list, except the Whale Shark: Spotted Drum, Sea Horses, turtles (I have some pretty good video of a big old turtle, I will figure out how to post it here one of these days), eels, sting rays, and a shark.



Hmmm, turns out alls you have to do is push a button . . . White balance is way off, but you get the idea.

Oh, wait, here is another one of a smaller turtle, munching on some green stuff (it would be green if the white balance was good, honest):



One of the great additions to the house was cable TV - - we got to watch all of the bowl games we could watch, including the Huskers domination of the hapless Arizona Wildcats. Great game if you were a Husker fan, I am glad the defensive starters wanted to stay in to preserve the shut out at the end of the game, great way for them to go out and show the rest of the team how things should be done at Nebraska. For the second year in a row, I am looking forward to the next season.

We also had to play the family card game, I really don't like the game that much, but managed to win one of the games and almost won a second game. I don't know why folks think it is so hard . . .

Upon my return, I found out that I would be moving to Washington DC and taking a job at the Pentagon on the Joint Staff. I wasn't surprised, I had been told it was going to happen, but I was waiting for confirmation on the job. This meant I had to leave Aberdeen and my job here, kind of sad, because the folks here are super nice and good to work with.

Couple of notes:

Fantasy Football update: Wade won the family tournament. He beat me by about 236 points, and 5 spots, he was 9th and I was 14th. I chalk this up to being deployed during the critical draft and pre-season time frame, I will do much better next year. Couple of interesting points: I have 3 top 5 finishes, he has only 2, and I have won the whole shebang once. He has finished with a higher annual average, but, so have the Houston Texans when compared to the Oakland Raiders, and of course the Texans have never won the Super Bowl.

The Weekend Before Crhistmas in Baltimore

OK, a few mundane weekend things . . . .

I hung out in Baltimore this past weekend, pretty nice weekend with TONS OF SNOW. 20 inches or so.

Friday night we went down to Fells Point and had supper at Brick Oven Pizza (BOP), good pizza, best pizza I have had in Baltimore to date. I think that of the three big named places for pizza in Baltimore I would have to rank them Brick Oven Pizza, Iggies and Matthews. Matthews is the crowd favorite, but I don't know why. BOP had a great crust and a good selection of toppings. Iggies had good toppings, but I was not a fan of their crust - - it was very thin. Matthews, the one that has the most press, was kind of disappointing, weird crust, plain toppings, just not that spectacular. None of them could beat the original Valentinoes, though.

After pizza, we went to a local Christmas attraction: 34th Street. Folks on the block went close to the Griswold level to decorate their houses. There were some pretty standard decorations (Pictures in the normal picture place) to some very Baltimore-unique stuff. Old Bay seasoning, crabs, National Bohemian beer cans (Natty Bo?) and some other kitschy stuff were predominant throughout the street. The highlight was an open house where a guy had some of his metal art work out. I am not a fan of eclectic art, so I was mostly in the "Hmmmm, Nice?" mode. You be the judge, and let me know what you think. Sparkplugs, really? Um, ok, if you say it is art, it is art.

I probably should have left that night, everyone was talking about how much snow was going to fall in B'more that night, I didn't believe it. Of course, we got about a foot of snow that night, and another 8 inches that day. Way too much for this Carolina loving man. I took a couple of pictures of my car under the snow, very tragic. We did some driving around on Saturday (had to find coffee, no electricity in the house or in the local 7-11, tragedy), but, quit after we realized that there were way too many crazy folks, and way too much snow. Luckily, the power went out too, so it was just a great weekend. We played a little bit of Scrabble and just hung out, basically, not that much else we could do. The power came back on about 6 pm. We ended up the night by watching the latest Harry Potter movie. Not sure what the folks were thinking when they made that movie, but it was very confusing to me. I had even read the book, and had problems following the movie, and I thought some of the actors were just going through the motions.

I came back Sunday morning, and hung out on the bay, so, good weekend.

Why is Myron undressing in the snow?

So, why IS Myron getting naked? Who is Myron . . . . .

We had the third hike with complete strangers brought together by the internet, it was pretty good, but VERY cold. Friday, the temp was just below 32 degrees, but there was a 30 mph wind hawking through the valley as we were hiking. It warmed up to a balmy 33 degrees on Saturday, and the wind disappeared. All in all, a good hike. We went from just north of the Pennsylvania border south to Washington Monument State Park. Some of the terrain was challenging, there were some good ups, and fierce downs, it was definitely AT hiking, there were a lot of rocks, some very pretty streams, good views of the valley and snow. Andrew (from my first MD section hike) and his climbing buddy Myron (pictured above) joined me for the hike.

We started off by shuttling cars around, so we had a car at either end of the section. This almost caused a Strategic Hiking Error (SHE) on my part: We left the parking lot on the north end, hiked about a mile when I realized that I had left the keys to my truck in Andrew's car. Luckily, I recovered and went back to the car and got the keys. That would have been really bad. After the key recovery, we hiked about 7.5 miles into MD and stayed at the Raven Rock Shelter, older shelter, but big enough for me to hang my hammock inside the shelter. Now, this would normally be poor hiker etiquette, but I waited until about 7:30 PM to hang the hammock, so there was really no chance that another hiker would come through, especially with the temperature dropping down. Who, in their right mind would be hiking on that weekend? Even in the shelter, it was kind of a cold night, I had another SHE: I left the end baffles on my hammock quilt open, so it wasn't as effective as I really needed it to be. I realized this about midnight, got up and made the correction, snug as a bug in a rug after that.

Saturday we started off about 7:45 and hiked pretty steadily throughout the day. The highlight of the day was Myron crossing our second stream of the day . . . .

Myron's Demise:

Stream crossing on the AT can be kind of iffy, especially on Saturday, cold weather + water + rocks = some icy rocks. On this stream crossing, Andrew went first, found a pretty good path, pointed out a very icy rock for the next guy to avoid and waited on dry ground. Myron made it to the second rock, but hesitated on rock #3, there was a bit of ice and he probably should have gone on to rock number 4. He hesitated slightly, which is BAD when crossing streams - - -you lose your momentum. Then, he went into a climber's pose, tried to get a third point of contact on the rocks, then went in. If it wouldn't have been 32 degrees or so, it would have been kind of funny to watch, and after it was all over, we all did get a chuckle, but, Myron took a spill off or rock #3. For the record, Andrew laughed first, I had two thoughts: 1. Damn, I bet that is cold. 2. "I wish I had a camera . . . . " (a quote from the Peony Park accountant-hag, Smokey). I couldn't get my camera out quick enough, so I went across to stream to see if I could help out. Myron quickly changed into dry clothes and we kept on hiking.

Myron's final resting place, just in front of the tree.

The rest of the hike was pretty tame as far as the AT goes, some ups, some downs, and some very urban hiking areas, good hike. We ended up at the Washington Monument, which as per AT tradition was at the top of a hill. Myron was a good sport about it, and admitted he would probably hike again, but would really rather wait til it warmed up a little bit. I agree with him, I think our next hike will be Marchish.

The Magic of the Internet

I am very new to the Maryland area, some things are kind of interesting to me. One of them is the magic of the internet. So far, I have found a running group, a local hiking group and a group of folks that are interested in enabling my Appalachian Trail hiking habit. All of these folks, prior to me meeting them were perfect strangers, but we did some initial introductions on the internet, and then took off on some runs and hikes. So far, no axe wielding maniacs on any hikes.

In addition to the hike on the Appalachian Trail (Harper's Ferry to South Mountain State Park in Maryland - - home of the original monument to George Washington), I hiked with a group of folks in Gunpowder Falls State Park, just outside of Baltimore. Pretty good hike, I put some pictures in the normal area to the right, about 3 hours of walking, talking, looking, picture taking, generally enjoying nature. This was the day after the first snow storm here, so there is a lot of brilliant white stuff on the ground, but it was not too cold or anything. By the time we got done it was kind of melting, but it was a good day for a hike.

What has been going on?

Not much. I am settling in to a work rhythm, but that may be disrupted by the Army. I am currently at Aberdeen Proving Grounds, but may be moving down to DC in a few weeks, once the Army lets me know.

I have gotten back into a couple of things that I was into before the Iraqi adventure: Running and hiking. I talked a little bit about running the Army Ten Miler in my last post, cool race, I haven't planned on my next one, though.

I have done two more section hikes on the Appalachian Trail, bringing my section total to just under 625 miles, which sounds good, but there are 2178 miles on the trail. My first section hike was from Elk's Grove, VA (just south of MT Rodgers) to Damascus, VA, about 24 miles or so. The section was mostly downhill, but had some serious ups as well. (Pictures posted on the right, if the link works) I was hiking with Charles and Deaton W., one of the scoutmasters I worked with in NC and his son. We met in Damascus Friday night, had some pizza for supper and then headed up to Elks Garden to camp overnight. When we got there, a local scout troop was camping there (all very young scouts, maybe 12 years old), we teased Deaton that he was that small at one time. Now he is a strapping 6'4 or 5", once he fills out he could be trouble on the trail. It was his idea to go hiking, which was pretty cool to hear coming from a 16 year old. Saturday was great weather, shorts and short sleeve shirt all around, like all hikes on the AT it started off going up hill until we hit the top of White Top Mountain and Buzzards Rock. We ran into the Scout troop up there, once again, Deaton denied ever being that small. We had some pretty good downs after that, and the day finished with a solid 4 miles of ups, which made it kind of unpleasant, but a fine welcome back to the AT.

Once we got to Saunders Mountain Shelter we ran into some thru and long-term section hikers, Spoonful (hiking from Harpers Ferry to Springer), Calamity (finishing off her through hike from Maine to Springer). They were hiking together in a sort, they would end up at the same place every night, she would start about an hour earlier than him and finish off a couple of hours after him. The third hiker, Mark, was getting off the trail in Damascus. Calamity was 64 years old, retired from up in NY and just decided to hike. Spoonful was much younger, probably 30 ish, and was taking a life-break - - - sometimes when life starts to move to fast for you, and you aren't really that happy with what you are doing you take a life-break and escape. He chose to escape on the AT. We had supper with the group, talked a bit about the trail then everyone went their own way to go to bed. I was hanging in my hammock, snug as a bug in a rug. Charles and Deaton were tenting it and the other three folks shared the shelter.

Family note: Faye, not sure if you remember this or not, but the other half of the "Best Ever Gift from Faye" was a beeswax chapstick along with the Northface gloves, I found that in the bottom of one of my backpack pockets and used it happily.

The second day of the hike was down into Damascus, mostly downhill, depending on how fast you go, it is normally worse going downhill on your body. Going up a hill makes you feel bad for a moment, but you get over it once you get to the top of the hill, downhill makes your thighs hurt all day long. I didn't really feel it until the drive home the next day, but I did feel it. If anyone ever goes to Damascus, there is a cool little coffee shop there, me and Charles partook of some coffee there. All in all a good hike and a fierce welcome back from the AT. Charles and I plotted to get our third amigo and his son (Bill and John O.) out in JAN 2010, I think we will be successful.

My second hike was not as difficult, I ran into a guy in my running club that expressed an interest in hiking and camping, so we planned a shorter hike here in MD. I wanted to keep it short just in case he wasn't really into the trail, it wouldn't be too far to have to listen to him complain about the trail. There is about 40 miles of the AT in MD, we decided to hike about half of it. We started off at the MD Washington Monument (the first monument to George Washington, and one that he actually visited) and hiked south towards Harper's Ferry, WVA. The hike was through some of the area that the Second Battle of Antietam took place (a rare, pre-Grant Union victory), so there were Civil War markers to look at throughout the hike. I will post some pictures in the normal picture posting area.

The terrain up here was pretty easy, we started off with a 4 mile stint up from the monument to Rocky Run Shelter. I have to say, that was the nicest shelter I have seen on the trail so far, but we camped behind it. We joined an unknown hiker that was taking an extended life-break: He did a north to south thru hike (Springer MTN, GA to Katadhin MTN, Maine) and then decided to turn around and do it the other way, kind of a Forrest Gump sort of thing: Just kept hiking and then I stopped. The second day was a very fast 13 or so miles, the terrain is very mild here in MD, which was appreciated after the previous week. We are not sure what time we started, but we finished off about 1100. I was supposed to bring the watch, but left it in the apartment, so we just winged it SAT morning.

I think the next hike will be in JAN with Charles, Bill, Deaton and John; after that, I will knock out the other section in MD. Once I am done with MD, I will probably work to finish off VA over the spring and summer and knock out that last section in NC (Franklin, NC to Fontana Dam).

Whew, what a month

Well, I am officially back from Iraq, I accomplished one of my re-deployment goals - - run the Army Ten Miler, more on that later. Before that:

We redeployed from Iraq, and out-processed FT Riley. I can honestly say that I hope to never go there again now that we are done. All of the events were well run, there were a lot of people to out-process, so it took a little while, which was expected. Along the way though, we were once again treated pretty un-professionally by the unit responsible for organizing the event. I can understand a little confusion, but confusion plus goofy ideas, well that is just plain silly. To be fair, some of our TT brethren did some just plain stupid stuff, for which that individual should have been called out, but the unit that was organizing the outprocessing defaulted to the ancient army principle of mass punishment. Sigh. Oh well, done with that chapter of my life.

After leaving FT Riley in my rear view mirror, I went up to KC to see my little sister and her crew. I went for a good run there on the high school track (sweet track, btw), my last bit of hard intervals. After the run, me and Julie went out for pizza (naturally, my new favorite food). And watched Sydney's volleyball team play. Lot of giggling going on out there, but it did look like they were having some fun, so I think the giggling is excused.

After KC, I went up to the homeland and hung out at Melissa's house. That Friday night I watched probably the best high school football game I have seen, Millard South Patriots (Christian S. plays for the Patriots, so we had to go) took on the team from Elkhorn. Early on, it looked like South in a runaway, but Elkhorn came storming back, and took the lead. Millard South came back and tied it up, with a little bit of time to go. Elkhorn was driving for the winning score, when they lined up for a field goal. Number 4, the MVP for that game, from Millard South came through the line, blocked the field goal, picked up the ball and stormed to his end zone for the game winning TD. WILD is an understatment. I haven't got an update on Millard South, but they looked pretty tuff after that game. Christian S. had a pretty fair game, he is an offensive/defensive lineman, and still a junior. Pretty good year for Christian - - - he also earned his Eagle Scout badge which is pretty cool, and quite the accomplishment. I knocked out my last long run on the Twin Creek Trail there in Bellevue, and had a nice visit with the rest of the family.

After that, I headed east on I-80 (for those of you driving from Omaha to Aberdeen, take 70, no tolls) to Aberdeen. I spent a few days finding a new house for me, Sam and Cheney, and found a nice one.

http://mrislistings.mris.com/Matrix/Public/Portal.aspx?ID=33207520175

3441 Tewkesbury was the choice, I am hoping the elephant stays in the room. I will need to figure out a fence for Sam and Cheney, but that will be pretty easy. I also checked out my new digs at Aberdeen Proving Grounds - - first impression: VERY SMALL. I found a gym there and asked "where are the other gyms?" (NOTE: there are 20 gyms on FT Bragg, so plenty of selection). The guy working there said "this is the only one . . . . ", bad sign. I also did some running around on the post, there aren't any rolling hills (like the sisters) on APG, so I will have to find some places to run off post that have hills. I didn't check out where I will be working, but I can do that later on.

This past weekend I went down to DC for the Army Ten Miler, my favorite race. I stayed at JFord's Foggy Bottom mansion, but he wasn't there so we couldn't exchange running stories and such. His roommate, Derek B. was there, so I hung out with him some. Unfortunately, Derek is a michigan fan, so I had to listen to some michigan propoganda and a few complaints. For those of you that don't follow football, Nebraska won the 1997 National Championship, some folks in michigan believe that they should share the championship, but there really is no evidence of that outside of the ann arbor, michigan. Defeating michigan in the 2005 Alamo Bowl was the high mark of the bill callahan regime in Nebraska, so there is further evidence of Husker domination. While there I went with the michigan fans to watch the michigan vs. michigan state game, good game, unfortunately the wolverines lost in OT (sorry SFC T).

On to the Army Ten Miler - - a pretty good run on a beautiful, fall day in DC. I was hoping to hit somewhere in the high 60s for the run, but was not too sure about my condition and I had a couple of nagging injuries (sucks getting old). Once the race started I kept a pretty good pace and just enjoyed the run. Pleasantly, I hit right at 68:06, which, although not a record for me, was a pretty good day considering I spent the last year trying to train up for it in Iraq. For those runners in Iraq and Afghanistan, I am sorry you missed it, but I was thinking of you while I was running. I really like this race, it is kind of a homecoming for military folks and I am always pleasantly suprised by who I meet up there. Sure enough, while I was getting on the subway to go to the race, there was Bill R. one of my former team leaders and a company commander while I was a battalion XO in 1/3d SFG. We caught up with each other then got lost in the crowd. I also saw Joe C., a fellow USASOC salt mine worker, he is now developing optics and lasers for the Army, so I will probably run into him again. Pretty good day all in all.