Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Good Advice

Sarah Reisert, my replacement at work for this year, suggested I could volunteer for something in Shannon and fly business class for the rest of the trip. I did not exactly do that, but I went to the WH Smith bookstore and bought a copy of Le Monde to see what the French were saying about the return of Lance Armstrong. By the way, in French Lance is one form of the verb Lancer with 34 dictionary meanings including throw, hit, launch, and race. I am sure French sportswriters have been making puns on Armstrong's name for the last decade.

Anyway, one of the senior sergeants on the flight bought a bicycling magazine from the UK. We started talking about the tour. When the flight reboarded, the bicycle-riding sergeant first class had an open seat next to him in business class, so I got to ride in the front of the plane from Shannon to Kuwait. And as Sarah said, the exit row in a DC-10 had lots of leg room. So I am now three-for-three in the front of the plane to and from Iraq with just one more flight to go. And that flight--the flight home next Janaury--I won't care where I am on the flight!!!

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Tuesday Morning in Shannon


Shannon, Ireland
We are on a two-hour layover for fuel and crew change in Shannon, Ireland. Because we are Americans we swarm in, spend money and eat. On the flight back they loaded us by rank so I am in the back of the plane. I did manage to get an exit row, so I slept for an hour on the first flight and should be able to catch some sleep on the flight to Kuwait. We can't leave the terminal, but the countryside is a lovely green outside the terminal windows. Seven more hours in the air and we will be back to Kuwait. Then back to Iraq for the 4th of July.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Long Walk to the Gate

This very long day of beginning my return to Iraq started really well. I got up at 0500 listening to NPR news on WITF radio. I know I can listen to NPR in Iraq, but it has to be on the internet, which is not quite the same as a clock radio. At 0550 my friend Matt Clark picked me up in his van and we went to Starbucks on Columbia Avenue in Lancaster for one last latte at my favorite coffee place and a New York Times, another habit I can't indulge at Tallil Ali Air Base. Matt and I talked and joked on the 35-mile drive to the airport. Then I checked my bags and walked toward the gate.

that was the worst moment of the whole trip. My family was between 400 and 4000 miles away, Matt was on his way back home and the only person I knew was a young sergeant getting on the same plane I was boarding. He was with his wife and mother. He was sad. They were crying and I almost lost it at that point. But when I got to security, the folks who check the bags smiled at me and wished me a good trip and said to come back soon. They know the soldiers on the morning flights in uniform looking glum are the ones going back to Iraq.

When I got to Atlanta, the USO volunteers were waiting to direct us at the arrival area. A big guy in his 60s shook my hand and said, "From the look on your face, you must be going back." By noon we had boarding passes and eight hours to wait. Most everyone grabbed the free USO food and then split into two groups: one group filled the chairs in front of the big screen TV, the other went out into the walkway around the atrium and started looking for electrical outlets for their computers or started taking naps. One of the good things about these incredibly slow (by commercial standards) boring trips is that the rest and sleeping leave us with less jet lag than high-speed travelers. Of course, it's not a great nap when every 15 minutes you hear about liquid and gel restrictions for passengers on the PA system.

I just finished a six-hour wait and am now going to the gate now to begin the next two-hour wait. I am glad these uniforms don't wrinkle easily.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Hollywood

Jon Rutter wrote a follow up article about me in the "Lancaster" section of today's Lancaster Sunday News. Here's the link.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Today's Race


Nigel at the Brownstown Race

At 0845 this morning, I had rode in the first of two road races I will do this weekend before heading back to Iraq. Today's race, the Brownstown Road Race, was flat and offered no state championship points to participants, so there were not be many participants in the 55+ category--and none of the state/national championship riders that filled the field in last week's race. The race was also close to home so my daughter Lisa and I could ride the 12 miles to and from the race as a warm-up for me and cross training for her. When we arrived, she ran around the five-mile course while I finished warming up.

The eight 55+ riders started with about 30 racers in the 45+ category. With mixed categories, the older guys who stay with the younger group are the top finishers. As we made the sharp left turn toward the finish line on the 2nd of five laps, I felt like I might be able to hang on to the pack for most, if not all of the race, then in the middle of the turn I heard a rider yelling "Flat!!" and bikes started to swerve wide in the corner. I ended up in the dirt off the edge of the road. When racers hear another rider is in trouble, especially if the hear the thud and yells of a crash behind them, they ride as hard as they to drop all those trapped behind the crash. I tried to catch back on, but couldn't.

I rode the next two laps with another 55+ rider who was dropped. We passed the guy I thought would win 55+. He crashed--just scrapes and bruises--and was on the side of the road. Two more of the 55+ riders dropped out and I was 4th!!! My best result in my trip home because in today's race, there is no age-group. I will be racing with 20 and 30-year-olds on a hilly course. It should be a very short race for me.

As Lisa and I started the ride home, Lisa said that I definitely had the loudest cheering section. She and my wife and son Nigel cheered every lap as they did last week and were the only people cheering for 55+ category racers. "It's worse than when we were little," Lisa said. "Back then one or two other riders had a cheering section, now it's just you." There were other people watching the race. On the oppostie side of the road from my family, several large Amish families were gathered at the fence near the start-finish. The girls in dresses and boys in pants and with suspenders, all in bare feet, watched the race intently and, as my wife said after the race, stole more than a few glances at my African-American son Nigel standing between his blond-haired, blue-eyed mother and sister.

Saying Goodbye

Because of the schedules my family is on and because my friends are spread across a fairly large area, I have been saying goodbye since Thursday and will be saying it till I go. Thursday I went to Philadelphia and said goodbye to my friends in the city of brotherly love. With most of them, we will be in touch by phone and on email, so it was not too sad. Friday was the last time I will ride the daily training ride till next year. I really miss riding the very green hills and valleys in Lancaster County. Today my daughters were off on a nine-day trip to Europe, part of celebrating Lisa's graduation from high school. That was a lot tougher. I have seen the girls every day, especially Lisa. Lauren has a full-time job as Sports of All Sorts Camp as a counselor, but Lisa is mostly training for Cross Country in the fall. We rode together on 11 of the last 14 days. I will miss them very much until next February. Tomorrow morning my wife and son leave for Ithaca after we go to the early service at Church, so I will be saying goodbye to them and to my friends at Church tomorrow morning. Tomorrow afternoon I am racing then riding with some of my friends, so I will be saying goodbye for a lot of tomorrow.
At 6am Monday I will be on the way to the airport and starting the long trip back to Iraq. The temp here only reached the high 70s. It's supposed to be 118 when I return to Kuwait on Tuesday--at least I won't freeze!

Friday, June 26, 2009

There was an Old Woman. . .


. . .who does NOT live in the shoe, but she and her husband own the shoe house in York County PA. My wife and I took the tour today and it began with the owner, a woman in her mid 40s saying, "Sometimes I feel like and old woman but I do not live in this shoe." The Haines Shoe House is a real livable home built 60 years ago by an eccentric millionaire who made his fortune selling shoes. The house has five levels and Mr. Haines used it as a guest house for his mansion several miles down the road. At the time it was built it was a mile off the old Lincoln Highway on a lonely ridge with a beautiful view. Today US Route 30 is less than 50 yards away. I have passed the Shoe House hundreds of times, but until today never went inside. The strange structure has a master bedroom in the toe, a kitchen in the heel, kids room and maids quarters in the upper part of the boot and a basement down in the sole.

Speaking of my wife, which I did not do on Wedensday's post, she spoke on Wednesday at Westminster Presbyterian Church, a one hour talk on God, Math and Infinity for about 150 people. The talk condensed the seven-week series she did at Wheatland Presbyterian Church during the last two months. She is an engaging speaker and had the audience laughing when they seemed to be getting lost in the details of countable infinities. She got a lot of questions after the talk about her family and how they feel about her faith since they don't believe. Her final comment was about her middle sister who she said, "Now attends Church sometimes and sings in the choir when she likes the pastor. . .but not in THAT way!" So she ended with a big laugh.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

One More Trip to Philadelphia

Today I took the train to Philadelphia after riding with Lisa in the morning. It was a lot of fun making jokes with my co-workers and talking about the kinds of things we will b doing when I get back. I also had a chance to talk with David Black, a teacher of both computer technology and chemistry who is in Philadelphia at Chemical Heritage Foundation for the summer as a visiting scholar. David teaches in rural Utah. He had to teach both chemistry and technology to students in a small school with little lab equipment, but the school had vans so he took the kids to sites where they could see chemistry in action. The students took video cameras and made podcasts about their visits to a glassblowing shop, a cement plant, and a berylium mine. You can learn more and see the videos at his Web site. Part of his time at CHF will be devoted to applying for grants to continue and expand his project for other school districts in neighboring states and eventually across the country. David and I will be keeping in touch over the next seven months while I am back in the Sandbox.

In addition to hanging out with my friends, I spent most of an hour wandering through one of my favorite bookstores, The Philly Book Trader at 7 North 2nd Street. For $30 I got an adapation of The Count of Monte Cristo in simple French. Aristotle's Rhetoric in French. The Rising Tide by Jeff Shaara, Solzhenitsyn's Harvard Address and his book First Circle, and a paperback copy of CS Lewis' Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. My duffel bag is almost full.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Books for Iraq

My leave is rapidly coming to an end and my bookshelf is trying to jump into my duffel bag along with bike stuff I am bringing back to the land of dirt and gravel. Among the books going is an old copy of the The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan. I was up late one night and read the first act of "Pirates of Penzance." It's like reading Shakespeare (as opposed to seeing the performance of the play)--I don't have to strain my ears to catch the jokes delivered at auctioneer speed in a British accent. I can read at my own pace and not miss the jokes. "Hamlet" is also going back with me.

Ivan Amato's delightful book Stuff is going in my backpack for the long flight along with a volume of Orwell's essays. Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and CS Lewis' The Allegory of Love are in the duffel bag along with copy of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. I am bringing Darwin in part because my wife just read me a few pages from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie--the first great American self-help book in the 20th century and clearly an influence on every one of the tens of thousands of self-help volumes that followed.

Anyway, hearing Carnegie reminded me of CS Lewis' maxim that we should only read the commentators on a book after we have read the book itself. I recently read essays criticizing Carnegie, but had not read the book. After hearing just a few pages, he seems brimming with good sense and based much of the book on a long study of the life of Abraham Lincoln. So I will read his book before I listen to anymore criticism. Imagine if AM talk radio hosts had to actually deal with the reality of politics before they spoke on an issue. The silence would be deafening.

Back to Darwin. I have no quarrel with Origin since nearly every working scientist acknowledges his great insights, and blaming Darwin for misuse of his theory is as stupid as blaming Einstein for moral relativism. But I never read Darwin's great book, so I plan to amend that. I am also bringing The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose more as a reference book than something to read.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Day After the Race


The training ride in a double pace line


Jan took this on the shorter route home. It's still hard to believe how green Lancaster is compared to Iraq.

Unlike running, there is no day off for recovery with bicycling. The day after a race everybody rides. The ride on Monday is somewhat easier than the mid-week rides which is the only reason I thought I could keep up for at least part of the way on the 35-mile daily training ride. I stayed with the pack until the base of the big climb in the middle. Jan Felice was kind enough to ride up the hill that is a little shorter than the main route, but still a climb more than a mile long. We rode to the descent on Turkey Hill which was aborted by tree-cutting that closed one side of the road--no coasting race today. I hope to do that once more on Friday.

Jan and I took a shorter route home. After riding with Lisa before the ride, I still rode a total of 40 miles. I'll ride 15 miles with Lisa this evening then go to the Wednesday night training race (known here as "Worlds") before riding over to Westminster Presbyterian Church to hear my wife talk about faith, math and infinity.

I am going to enter both races this weekend in Lancaster County. I might as well be tired when I go back to Iraq.

In other bike news, I mailed the GT Peace 9R bike to myself yesterday. Hopefully it will be in Iraq soon after I get back.


The peleton riding up a short, steep hill on the way to the descent at Turkey Hill

Photos by Jan "I've Got a Camera in my Race Jersey" Felice

Monday, June 22, 2009

Improbable Post

This morning I am past the halfway point of my two-week leave--152 hours to go. Returning to Iraq means I will be sleeping alone for the next 7 months. But then I remembered Video #103 in the Improbable TV collection. I won't be sleeping alone. Every bed has tiny bugs to keep me company on those long Iraqi nights--yours too!

If you decide to look around the Improbable.com site you will find the strangest scientific papers on the Web--they have a magazine called The Annals of Improbable Research in case you, like me, still enjoy reading words on paper. One of the reasons I am returning to Iraq is to help make the world safe for people who study the use of Coke as a contraceptive:

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Father's Day

Father's Day has been my favorite holiday (or whatever it is) for more than a decade now. It's early in the summer so school is out but summer camps haven't started yet. I spend most of the day with my kids. This Father's Day I was with my family from the time I woke up until just a few minutes ago when they all went to bed.

Just before 8am, my daughter Lisa and I rode to the Greenfield Criterium, a race that has been one of the Pennsylvania State Bicycling Championship races for more than a decade and has always been held on Father's Day. From 2001 - 2004 Lisa raced at Greenfield in individual races and with me on the tandem. Today we both used the ride to the race as a 7-mile warm up: me for the bike race, she for a five-mile run that is part of her summer training for cross country in the fall.

I warmed up with my teammate Kevin then we lined up at 9am for the 55+ State Championship race. The field was small, just over 20 riders, but included several masters state and national champions. Worse than that for me, each one-mile lap of the 20-lap race ends with a 1/4-mile 5% climb. On the positive side, my wife and kids were on the side of the road near the start-finish line cheering every lap. They only cheered for me for five laps. I was hanging in for most of five laps, but at the end of the fourth lap they rang the bell for a premium prize or "preem" as they are called. For the first four laps there were a few half-hearted attacks that got sucked right back into the pack so I could hang on. After that bell rang, one of the stronger riders took off on the long, shallow downhill. By the flat stretch at the bottom of the hill we were strung out in a line going 32mph. I was 8th at the beginning of the lap and last as we turned up the hill to the start-finish line. By the time they crossed the start-finish line I was gasping, wishing I had skipped breakfast, and watching the rest of the riders disappear.

But I only expected to last three laps, so I felt pretty good. We cheered for my teammate and for Scott Haverstick for a few more laps then Lisa and I rode home to change for a day trip to NYC. It was fun to be in a pack again and riding fast, even if it was not for very long. I am going to need a lot of hill training when I get back from Iraq.

Just after 11 am we were on the road to NYC. We drive to Newark, park the car and take the train to Penn Station when we go to NYC. When we first got to NYC my kids walked south on Broadway from 32nd to get some lunch and I went up to 6th and 47th to the NY Post office. I visited a friend there for a few minutes, but like every major daily they do maximum work with minimum staff, so after we chatted for a while I went across the street to Pret a Manger (Ready to Eat) for a sandwich and a drink since the kids had already finished eating.

While I was eating, a tall man in his early 60s strode in. He was dressed casually in expensive clothes. He had a theatrical air enhanced by his well-dyed, well-coiffed red hair (NO ONE his age has red hair). He was waving a $20 bill over his head and saying "I need change." He passed three other people in line and shoved the bill toward a young woman behind the counter who took it then continued to wait on the customer in front of her. Mr. Drama paced left, turned and looked at me (I was in uniform) and said "Gussman, what MOS are you?" in a very Broadway voice. I kept eating. He said, "I was a 95B20 in Quan Tri in 1967. I used to drive lifers like you crazy." Then he grabbed his money and strode out.

This dramatic draftee was in when soldiers wore their rank on their sleeve or collar. He had no idea what rank I was and assumed I had served for the last three decades or more. You just don't get guys like him in the Army without a draft.

Then I met my kids at 23rd and we went to Chinatown to shop at the street vendors. Lisa's senior project was a study of street vendors. She took me to a shop that had a basement storage area where a street vendor had taken her to show her the best stock she had. We walked back to the north on Broadway. Nigel and I got coffee and watched people go by while Lauren and Lisa shopped. We then took the Subway to Penn Station and cuaght a train to New Jersey. I have been trying to eat food I can't get in Iraq. Almost every day I buy bread from a bakery. Today it was NY Challah from Zaros. We at Chinese food in New Jersey (Chinese food at the DFAC is not very good.) then drove the 150 miles back to Lancaster singing along with a playlist of songs from Lauren's iPod:

Boom Boom Boom -- the outhere brothers
Spice up your life -- spice girls
Because you loved me -- Celene Dion (Very funny when sung by a 9-yr-old boy)
Back at one -- brian mcknight
Could you be loved -- bob marley
Baby baby -- Amy Grant
I know you want me (calle ocho) -- pitbull
Number one -- john legend (featuring Kanye west)
She hates me -- puddle of mud
The lion sleeps tonight -- lion king soundtrack
Let it rock -- kevin rudolph and lil wayne
Paper planes -- M.I.A.
Wake me up before you go go -- Wham!
Beautiful Girls (remix) -- sean kingston
Hello, I love you -- the doors
Get off of my cloud -- the rollingstones
Boom Boom Pow -- Black Eyed peas
Single ladies -- Beyonce
Welcome to the world -- kevin rudolph
Let's call it off -- drake
Get silly -- V.I.C.
Girl talk songs
New Soul -- yael nai m
1234 -- feist
Hot Revolver -- lil wayne and kevin rudolph

Father's Day doesn't get any better than this.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Rainy Day in America

Today I washed clothes, ran errands and also did nothing for an hour or so. It was raining. I did not want to ride the bike because I wanted it to be clean for the race tomorrow. I walked in the rain a little just to enjoy the feeling of rain. I heard it rains in the Fall in Iraq and the whole country turns into grimy mud. I am quite sure that is true and rain in Iraq is as miserable as sun in Iraq can be. But here every kind of weather is wonderful.

The kids and I ate pizza for dinner because even with the tons of food we get, you can't get real USA pizza in the DFAC.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Drive Toward the Sun

For the almost 200 people attending the memorial service for Carol Jo Crannell today, the directions to get from the service to the reception afterward included the line "drive toward the sun." The service was held in the auditorium of the Physics department at Catholic University in Washington DC. The service afterward was at the home Carol had lived in with her family for more than three decades in Silver Spring, Maryland. Silver Spring is northwest of Catholic U. so the directions took us through a short maze of DC streets before we turned north. It was 6pm when the service ended so driving west meant driving toward the sun (actually, as Carol would known well, the sun was not exactly west, but 15 degrees south of west at 6pm since it is Daylight Savings Time).

The service was a celebration of a life well lived by family, friends, teachers who worked with Carol on a NASA outreach program to schools, and colleagues from NASA Goddard. After the funeral for an infant child I attended earlier this week, it was good to be at a service for woman who lived her life well and fully. It is no small irony for me that the grief I have experienced during my first weeks of deployment is in America, not in Iraq.

Here's the short bio on the program for the service:

Carol Jo Argus grew up in Columbus, Ohio, the oldest of four children.  The nuns at her Catholic schools successfully encouraged her parents to support her academic endeavors.  She earned her B.A. from Miami University and a PhD from Stanford University, both in physics.  While a graduate student, she married Hall Crannell and had the first of her three daughters.

After graduate school, the family moved to Maryland where her house was always open to friends and filled with an abundance of pets. Carol worked for Goddard Space Flight Center as a solar astrophysicist, studying solar gamma rays and playing an instrumental role in the success of SUNBEAMS, a NASA teacher internship program.  She loved going to the balloon launches and seeing her payloads rise safely into the air.  

Carol was active in Girl Scouting her entire life, leading large camping trips and teaching other leaders outdoors skills.  She was a strong advocate of her local civic association, a clerk of course in her daughters’ summer swim league, and a regular blood donor.  Once her daughters grew up, she began square dancing with Hall, and the two of them managed to get at least one of her granddaughters hooked.

Carol is fondly remembered by her husband, her three siblings (Pam, Scott, and Connie), by her three daughters (Annalisa, Francesca, and Tasha), by her eight grandchildren (Rebecca, Lauren, Argus, Iolanthe, Lisa, Nigel, Anika, and Janelle), and by her many friends and colleagues.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Tour de Tallil Ali Air Base, Iraq

Rich Ruoff, bicycle race promoter extraordinaire has agreed to serve as promoter for the Tour de Tallil Ali Air Base, Iraq, on Saturday, September 5 at 0500. He already has the race up on his web site and will be putting the event on www.bikereg.com the place where bicycle racers around the country find and register for races. Rich wants to actually be on site for the race which is not going to happen, but it is fun to see a race in Iraq on his calendar of events.

I will be riding in one of Rich's road races on June 28, the day before I go back to Iraq. It is a very hilly race on country roads near Lancaster so my big goal will be to avoid being lapped by the winner. I have been riding at Tallil, but riding on flat roads does not get me in shape for hills.

Yesterday I rode a mile or so in the rain, another very strange experience for someone who has been living in Oklahoma, Kuwait and Iraq. I saw a couple of storms in Oklahoma, but they were over in hours. The rain here in Lancaster was off and on for two days. It is SO green here.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The Unit Circle


Today I went on a long shopping trip with my youngest daughter. She is off to college in the fall and has one course left to choose, the other three are freshman requirements at the University of Richmond. She either will take general chemistry or calculus. The mention of calculus lead her to say how the unit circle drove her nuts in her high school calculus course. "Why did we have to memorize all of those fractions of pi and the square root of two?" she said. It turns out her teacher did not explain why the unit circle is so useful. It's not that a circle with a radius of one ever occurs in real life, the point is that every other circle can be converted into the unit circle then all the calculations relating to it are divisible by one. And the sines and cosines relating to the position of any point on the circle read directly--they don't need to be factored. The unit circle above is the way she learned it: static, with key points to memorize.

But the unit circle is better understood live. When it moves, it makes sense immediately, as you can see here.

OK, enough geek stuff. The point of this post is just that talking about abstract ideas makes me happy, so these two weeks in America really are a rest from the concrete reality of carrying a weapon, walking on rocks and riding in sand. It's raining now in Lancaster. I am going outside to enjoy it.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Catching Up with a Lot of Friends

If you think driving and talking on a cell phone is an indication that the end of the world is at hand, stop reading here.

I drive and talk on the phone. I have been doing this awful thing since 1993 when I had a five-watt cell phone powered by a lead-acid battery that was as big as a lunch box. When I talk on the the phone on a highway, I drive slower and keep right. When I am not talking, I drive faster.

Anyway, I drove to the Wake for my friend's baby girl and talked to friends nearly all the way there and back--3 1/2 hours each way. I thought it would be good to be distracted rather than think too hard about how terrible it is to lose a child. The gathering at the funeral home was sad for everyone. I realized I had never been to a funeral for an infant. Little Candace looked more like a doll than a person, peaceful and perfect. Her father is a generally positive guy and was his usual affable self, putting others at ease and giving a kind reassuring word to the sad people around him. He knows the sadness will hit him tomorrow at the actual funeral, but today he is holding up well.

On the way back I called more friends and made plans for visits before I go back to Iraq. I still can't begin to think how difficult it is to deal with losing a child. I also remembered the last Echo Company family funeral I attended. The father of one of our soldiers died suddenly last summer. The funeral happened to be on our drill weekend. There were 70 soldiers at that drill. More than 50 attended the funeral service. I know if they were not 6000 miles away everyone in Echo would have been at the service and helping the family to recover from their loss.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Good Times, Bad Times

Today I had a wonderful day catching up with my co-workers and meeting my new boss (when I return).

I also got some bad news from Iraq. Another soldier from our unit went home a few days before I did. His daughter was just born and he got to be there. But the happy occasion turned to mourning when his new daughter died suddenly. It happened Saturday while I was traveling. The wake is tomorrow afternoon in Altoona PA about 3 hours away, so I should be able to attend. It's good that he could be home for his family, but so sad that his leave from Iraq would be marked with tragedy.

Home

At 5pm yesterday, my daughters picked me up at Harrisburg International Airport, just 57 hours after I showed up at the passenger terminal at Tallil Air Base. Since we gained 7 hours, the trip actually took 64 clock hours. But my leave did not start until one minute after midnight today, so I have only used 18 of the 360 hours (15 days) of leave.

When we got back to Lancaster from Harrisburg last night, we picked up my son Nigel then went out to dinner at Isaac's Restaurant & Deli, my favorite place to eat in Lancaster since they opened in 1983. All of the sandwiches are named after birds. My favorite sandwich is a Bird of Paradise:
An all-time favorite from our original menu! A combination of mushrooms, green olives, fresh lettuce and tomatoes, melted Swiss and Muenster cheeses on rye with mayo. 7.39
My kids each have a favorite sandwich so we ate at Isaac's then went to the Starbucks on Columbia Avenue. I got a free latte for coming back from Iraq. I'll get another one next year. We all talked and laughed till 10pm when I turned into a jet-lagged zombie and went to bed.

This morning, Nigel and I went to Dosie Dough a coffee shop and bakery near Franklin and Marshall College where my wife is a professor. We rode bikes. I had a croissant and a latte. We all walked to Church together. After Church I went to the Bike Line of Lancaster where my new bike was waiting for a test drive. The GT Peace 9 R is army green and will be stylin' in Iraq.

I rode 20 miles by myself then a dozen more with Lisa who wants to do a bunch of bicycle cross training while I am home. We'll be going to a New Orleans brass concert in the park tonight.
Tomorrow is Philadelphia.

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Always, Always Volunteer

The last bit of advice my Dad gave me when I enlisted in 1972 was "Volunteer. Don't listen to those [other soldiers--expletives deleted]." So I did. In basic training when no one else's hand went up, I volunteered to be one of the Latrine Queens--the name given to those who clean the bathrooms. Jersey, one of the smart guys, also raised his hand for this job and smiled when he saw me volunteer also. I got hassled right away. My roommate, 'Bama, said "What in the Hell did you do that for Guss? Have you lost your damn mind since breakfast?" I shrugged. I did not feel smart at the time. Three days later I felt absolutely brilliant. Everyone except the latrine queens and the buffer crew went for a 10-mile, 4am road march in a 50-degree Texas February rain. Jersey and I had to stay back and clean the latrines for an inspection by some higher command.

When the soggy marchers got back they had to stay outside until the inspection was over. Jersey and I and the buffer team smiled and waved at the rest of the platoon. 'Bama later conceded that Yankees weren't so damned dumb after all.

So I have continued to volunteer. Yesterday when we got ready to load the buses to go to the airport in Kuwait, they asked for seven sergeants to be (I am not making this up) Pushers and Counters. The Counters count the soldiers getting on the bus and eventually on the plane. The Pushers keep them moving to get the buses and planes loaded and unloaded. I was a counter, so I counted to 160 three different times as everyone walked past me. I stood out in the sun longer than everyone else, but we were already out for a long time. When we got to the airport, I was stationed at the bottom of the ramp to count the soldiers as they boarded our DC-10 to America. But before I started my final count, the ground crew told the pushers, counters and the officer and NCO in charge of the plane to drop their bags on seats--at the front of the plane! It turns out the pushers and counters got the business class seats. In this old plane, the business class seats are not as good as new planes, but they WAY better than regular seats.

When I volunteered, a couple of sergeants standing behind said under their breaths almost together, "Ain't no f-in way. . ." Seemed like a good trade to me. I slept for almost half of the 15 hours we were in the air.

Just a note on nicknames. When I went through basic the first time the forty recruits in our platoon were from almost as many states, hence the state nicknames. 'Bama, my bunkmate in basic introduced himself as "Leonard Norwood from Sawyerville, Alabama, population 53. I had me a job down the road at an A&P store, but it closed down so here I am. Sawyerville is just down the state highway from Talledega, the biggest racetrack in the world. Did you know. . ." He went on like that for the rest of the basic. By the time I went home on leave after basic training, I had lost my Boston accent forever and spoke with a drawl. 'Bama, Jersey and I went to tech school at Lowry AF Base in Denver and remained buddies. A month later my Dad, my sister Jean and Jean's best friend Mary drove my car--a 1969 Torino Cobra--all the way to Denver. If I remember correctly Jersey wanted to be my brother-in-law as soon as he met Jean and 'Bama was hopelessly in love with Mary.
The last time I spoke to 'Bama he was on disability leave from the railroad and wanted me to come down and see a race at Talledega with him. He is married with grown kids, so he did not wait for Mary to come back to Denver.

Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on t...