Reality Day

Today I talked to two close friends today and had one of those reality checks only real friends will give you.  The first conversation was about racing, the second about writing. 

On the subject of riding, I am way behind in bicycle racing fitness.  I know it sounds cool that I rode 5000 miles in Iraq and a total of 7000 miles last year, but nearly all of it was what racers call "junk miles."  I rode to and from work on base.  I rode ten-mile laps around the base, but never pushed myself in the way that riding with other racers pushes me.

Anyway, I told my friend about having the PA Senior Games as my goal for the year and the National Senior Games as my goal for next year.  He thought that was a good plan.  Between the reduced amount of training I do compared to before deployment and the "year off" riding in Iraq, he was sure there was not much chance I would be competitive in licensed races anytime soon, maybe not for years if at all.  Comebacks are not easy at 57.

A few hours later I talked to a good friend who is an excellent writer.  I said. "Maybe I am wasting my time riding 10 or more hours a week to get back in shape when I have the opportunity to write a book."  He asked me what I could get from a book.  Clearly not money.  Every author I know personally writes for money to supplement their incomes.  Then he talked about audience.  He reminded me that the people who most admire what I did want me to stop talking whenever politics comes up.  And the people who agree with my politics think I am certifiable for going.  He's right of course. If I had a Big Idea, maybe, but for right now I just have a title and a lot of stories. 

Even More Pictures from the Welcome Home

Maj. Joel Allmandinger, battalion commander, Mechanicsburg Mens Club, event sponsor.

SPC Aaron Trimmer with his daughter

                                         SPC and Mrs Matias

Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the ceremony

Some members of the Family Readiness Group

More Pictures from the Welcome Home

I have enough pictures from the Welcome Home Party that I will post them a half-dozen at a time for the next several posts.

 SFC Melanie McCracken and SPC Andrea Magee

Capt Nate Smith as emcee

1LT Marquardt with his wife--who is taking a picture of me taking a picture.

Chief Witmer organized the party beginning back in Iraq--with Donna Brown and the FRG

Task Force Diablo Company Commanders

Mechanicsburg Men's Club sponsored the party

Back to Training--On the Road

Tonight I rode the city training race in Philadelphia, three laps of the east and west drives along the Schuykill River.  I got dropped from the main pack on the 2nd mile.  We were riding 30-33mph on a flat road and I was wheezing in seconds.  I ended up riding with five other dropouts in a pace line.  We were taking turns at the front for a while then two of us started taking long pulls at the front.  We were riding 24-26 mph so I have a long way to to go to get competitive again. 

Tomorrow I am going to run.  The Tough Mudder race is less than two weeks away and I need to put some miles in before the race starts.  I have been in the gym three or four days a week, not quite as much as Iraq, but its all I've got for the Mudder race.

Two other members of Task Force Diablo are doing the Mudder, so if I end up doing terrible or dropping out, I can still write about them.  They are Major Joel Allmandinger, our new commander, and 1st Lt. Carolina Kelley, our new intelligence officer.

Celebrity in MY House--Janelle Stelson

WGAL TV, Channel 8, in Lancaster PA is interviewing soldiers who recently returned from deployment in Iraq.  Today Janelle Stelson went to Philadelphia with me on the train and interviewed me about life in Iraq and about coming home.  At the end of the day, she and the cameraman, Dan Maddox, were back talking to my wife and my son Nigel.  The story is supposed to air in May. 

Janelle Stelson co-anchors "News 8 at 5:30" and "News 8 at 11" each weeknight.

The recipient of several Associated Press awards for reporting, Janelle joined WGAL-TV in 1997. Her 17 years of broadcasting experience include covering stories both nationally and internationally.

Janelle's first job was writing speeches at the Embassy of Egypt in Washington, D.C.Her journalism career began at WHTM-TV in Harrisburg, as a general assignment reporter and weather anchor. In 1989 she moved to Miami to work for WPLG-TV, where she covered hurricanes, Haitian riots and one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history. Janelle returned to the Susquehanna Valley to anchor the 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. newscasts for WHP-TV in Harrisburg.

She also worked with WITF public radio, hosted a statewide public television broadcast with the governor of Pennsylvania and anchored "Computer Chronicles" on PBS.Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Janelle grew up in the Seattle area of Washington state.She graduated from the University of Puget Sound with a bachelor of arts degree in politics and government. She also studied international politics and advanced German language at the Austro-American Institute in Vienna, Austria.

Janelle flew to New York City with National Guard troops a few days after the Sept. 11 attacks, for a story on delivering supplies to the World Trade Center recovery site. She also recently interviewed First Lady Laura Bush and hosted an event with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.Janelle's strong commitment to the community includes speaking to numerous groups and serving on the board of directors for the Humane League of Lancaster County. The annual reader poll for Senior News of Lancaster County and Dauphin County named Janelle "Best News Anchor."

Change of Command, Battalion and Brigade

This afternoon, both the 28th Combat Aviation Brigade and 2-104th GSAB (Task Force Diablo in Iraq) got new commanders.  The links are to previous posts with stories about the incoming and outgoing Task Force Diablo Commanders.

Brigade Change of command formation in main hangar at Fort Indiantown Gap.

 MAJ Joel Allmandinger takes battalion flag from LTC David Wood, 28th CAB commander.

MAJ Allmandinger in front of battalion formation.

LTC David Wood takes command of 28th Combat Aviation Brigade.
 

LTC Wood with Brigade flag.

LTC Scott Perry with his wife Christy after the change of command.

Welcome Home Party

Tonight we had our official welcome home party at the PA Farm Show, the same place we had our going away party 15 months before.  This time we wore civilian clothes even though we were getting paid.  this weekend was the first weekend back to drilling since we got back from Iraq.  Tomorrow we will report in the morning in ACUs and really be back to Army weekends.
Tonight was a lot of fun seeing people I had not seen since January.  Here's some of the photos:

1LT Joel Candelario asked his fiance to marry him during dinner--it was a surprise that Andrea Magee almost gave away ten minutes before Joel popped the question, but it was a big surprise.

The other over-50 soldiers from Echo Company.  SGT Bruce Reiner is on the right with his wife.  SFCs Glen Valencia, and Larry Christman.

Several sergeants in Delta Company made flowered shirts the uniform of the night.

Nigel and Jacari found a new friend with a game console.

Joseph Weese and Tood Tarbox of Echo Company.

Kauffman and Thompson--serious about dinner.

Video in Two Weeks

Today I made a video explaining the difference between MREs and C-rations.  I happened to have one box of 30-year-old C-rations in a closet.  As it turns out it was a beans and franks meal with canned fruitcake for dessert. 
YUM!
I did not open any cans.  The video is for an article on the chemistry of field for Chemical and Engineering News magazine.  I will post the link when it is published on line.  It should be May 3.

Back to Playing Army

On Saturday I will be back to weekend drills for the first time since 2008.  On Saturday we have a welcome home party at the Farm Show Arena.  On Sunday it's business as usual with an 0800 formation.  For me I have to catch up on some required online training.  I could do it at home, except I loaned my PC to another sergeant in Iraq and he still has it.  Macs don't run Explorer so I can't do Army on-line training on my computer.

It is finally official (I think) that I am in Headquarters Company.  I will be bringing my Army camera to the Farm Show Saturday night and taking pictures of soldiers who back to whatever all of us consider to be normal life.

I'll post the some of the shots on Sunday or as soon as I can.

Celebrities in the House--Saving Abel

On the first night of the milblogging conference, the evening ended with free concert by the group Saving Abel.

The groups performed free of charge for the conference and just returned from a series of concerts in Iraq.  Photos are here.

According to this story and an item I just saw on USAToday.com the band just performed on a warship in the Pacific.  This story is from Artist Direct:

Saving Abel re-teamed with the USO and boarded the USS Carl Vinson as part of a USO concert at sea that rocked the waves on April 11. The band performed for sailors returning from a three-month deployment at sea. It appears that Saving Abel have strong stomachs, since they played atop six-foot waves and 13 miles-per-hour winds entertaining more than 2,000 sailors. Footage from the USO show will be broadcast online in late Spring/early Summer.

The performance lasted 90-minutes and the band cops to being avid military supporters. And really, does anyone but far-out-in-left-field-liberals-whack-jobswho-don't-trust-humans admit that they don't support our forces? I'm not a conservative by any means, but really? Does anyone lay claim to being anti-the troops? Nevertheless, the band traveled to Kuwait and Iraq in late February, and participated in an eight-day USO tour. The band visited four bases and touched the lives of more than 4,800 troops. Footage from the group's concert at Camp Arifjan was later streamed online with help from Ustream. The show was viewed by more than 9,600 fans.

The band will release its sophomore album Miss America on June 8, 2010. The platter is named after their first USO tour, the album title was inspired by the service and sacrifice of America’s troops and their families. So these guys truly are avid supporters of the men and women fighting for our freedom, so not only do we salute said freedom fighters, we salute Saving Abel for their efforts.

Celebrity in the House--Baldilocks

At a military blogging conference you meet people that defy stereotypes.  After all, they are people who write who also volunteered to go to war.  The top of my list in the defy-the-stereotype category is Baldilocks.

Check her story out:

Obama vs. Baldilocks

A blogger's African dad came here on the same airlift as Obama's dad. All similarities end there

By Max Taves Thursday, Aug 21 2008

Los Angeles blogger Juliette Ochieng has a lot in common with the man who might be the next president, Barack Obama. A lot.
Both were born to Kenyan fathers of the same tribe (the Luo) from the same province (Nyanza), and both of their fathers came as boys to America aboard the same airplane. Growing up, neither Ochieng nor Obama knew their fathers, who both abandoned their American mothers and left their American-born children behind. Both of their fathers returned to Africa in the early 1960s and became friends, bonding at Kenyan bars over their favorite drink — Scotch. Both Ochieng’s and Obama’s mothers contracted ovarian cancer. (Hers survived it; his did not). Both Ochieng and Obama were born in the U.S. in August 1961 — only weeks apart.
But for someone with parallel beginnings, Juliette Akinyi Ochieng is quite different: Evangelical Christian. Working class. Military veteran. Pro-life. Conservative Republican.
Ochieng went to Los Angeles City College, not Harvard. Although she was born in Chicago — Obama’s political birthplace — she lives in South-Central Los Angeles, where she grew up. And since 2003, she has written a blog, luoamerican.com/baldilocks, better known as Baldilocks, a reference to her fashionably close-shaven head. Her soft speech belies her harsh yet thoughtful commentaries on black politics and national security from a conservative perspective.
Last month, she penned an essay for her site and for Republican-oriented pajamasmedia.com, bemoaning blacks’ loyalty to the Democrats. Last week, as Russian tanks rolled through Georgia, Ochieng, who worked for years as an Air Force Intelligence cryptologist-linguist specializing in Russian and German, mused about that conflict.
“She was very shaped by her experiences in the military,” says fellow blogger Patrick Frey, the deputy district attorney who founded Patterico.com. “She has very strong opinions, and she’s a very religious person. She’s very warm and hospitable.”

Read the whole story here.

She is sweet and funny in person.  Her views warm the hearts of Conservatives everywhere.

Thunder Run on My Blog

For those who have not checked out Thunder Run--follow the links below to the daily news from Iraq, Afghanistan and military bloggers.

In today's http://www.thunderrun.us/2010/04/from-front-04122010.html ">From the Front: (Click on link to read stories highlighted below) This post is courtesy of http://www.thunderrun.us/"> The Thunder Run

http://www.thunderrun.us/">The Thunder Run's From the Front is a daily series that highlights news and personal dispatched from the front and the home front.

Celebrity (Author) in the House--Dr. Charles W. Hoge

On Saturday while I was waiting for one of the sessions to start I met Dr. Charles Hoge.  He wrote the book Once a Warrior--Always a Warrior.  I reviewed the book on March 14 and found it more useful than I would have thought for me.  I would have thought it only applied to soldiers in direct combat, but there are things everyone in Iraq goes through that Dr. Hoge gives good advice on. 
(I can hear some of my friends saying "Going to Iraq for a year can be stressful--this is news to you?!)
Anyway, Dr. Hoge saw my name on my backpack and introduced himself.  We talked for several minutes about the book, Iraq, and reading and then I had to run off to move my car which was parked in a 2-hour meter zone. 
On the way down to the meeting, I talked to a friend who served was in Iraq last year and is having trouble getting back to the old routine.  He has two kids (age 9 and 11) and is having trouble with managing work, family, and all the details.  He wants to go back to fixing Chinooks 14 hours a day.  If he would read the book I would buy it for him, but reading would just stress him out more.  He seems ready to ask for help.  That's good news.

Celebrity in the House--WW2 Combat Cameraman

One really riveting presentation was a 20-minute film from the battle of Tarawa atoll in World War 2.  The narrator was 91-year-old Norman Hatch, a Staff Sergeant and combat movie photographer who went ashore during this very bloody battle.   He was the person of the week on ABC news and has made many other appearances on TV and radio recently.  Hatch talked about how he got some of the shots and the advantages of filming in the Pacific compared with the war in Europe.

Hatch shot the only footage in the war in which American soldiers and the enemy are in the same frame.  He spoke in a very matter of fact way through most of the presentation, but got noticeably more animated in talking about this particular shot.  He should have.  He was between two Marines firing from behind a couple of splintered logs.  The Japanese soldiers were maybe 20 feet away, bayonets fixed, charging Hatch's position.  Which brought up one of the great advantages of shooting in the Pacific.  He said in Europe you had to use a long lens because the battles were typically fought at longer ranges.  Of course, it is an advantage to be close enough to see the Japanese soldiers clamber out of a bunker to charge your position, but there are disadvantages to being inside grenade range of an attack by a determined enemy!

Hatch got two standing ovations from the packed room. 

Celebrities in the House--Gina Elise

Gina Elise operates and is the Star of Pin-Ups for Vets, a non-profit support group for hospitalized veterans.  She visits hospitals and sells posters and calendars.

For more information, Gina has a web site and a Facebook page. 

We talked a little bit about visiting Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio.  I had a chance to visit in 2008 and was briefly there in 2010.  Gina visited in 2009.  She happily agreed to getting her picture taken with me--as long as I held the calendar for product placement!!

Celebrities in the House--Garry Trudeau

Today, just after lunch, I met Garry Trudeau, the creator of Doonesbury.  We got to talk for a minute and I told him I had his Creationist/Tuberculosis cartoon from December 18, 2005, was on my office door during the time I had an office in Iraq and on my wall at work for two years before deployment.  Trudeau also has a cartoon series on Chickenhawks that I have saved on my hard drive.  Too long to post here but, the Dec. 18 cartoon will fit.
Trudeau did not choose tuberculosis at random.  He is the great-grandson of Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau, who created the world-famous Adirondack Cottage Sanitorium for the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis at Saranac Lake, New York State. Edward was succeeded by his son Francis and grandson Francis Jr. The latter founded the Trudeau Institute at Saranac Lake, with which his son Garry retains a connection.

Milblogging Conference Opening Reception

Tonight I met several military bloggers I follow and have heard about and follow:
David Marron of Thunder Run
Commander Salamander
Greyhawk and Mrs. Greyhawk
Troy Bouhammer
Major Chuck Zeigenfuss
Mary Ripley who is putting Navy History on line at the US Naval Institute

Friendship and the Army

Tonight I was at an awards dinner at work.  I sat with three investment managers who sponsored a table at the event.  We talked about Iraq and the good and bad of serving in the Army.  When I mentioned friendship, they knew right away at least one reason why men join and stay in the military. 

Most modern men, unless they have a dangerous hobby or join the Army, have no friends.  At least no friends in any sense that does not beggar the definition of friendship.  One of the men said right away, "In my business I have to know my clients well to advise them."  He said he meets many of his clients when they are middle-aged and have enough wealth to need management advice.  "I ask how many friends they have made in the last year then tell them not to bother answering.  I know already.  The number is zero."

Because soldiers share hardship they get to know each other in a way that mechanics, cooks and office managers will never know each other.  Cops and firefighters have friends.  Soldiers have friends. 

None of these men had served in the military, but they understood why soldiers volunteer for multiple deployments.  Usually the conversations at awards dinners are light and funny.  People who see each other only occasionally or who never met sit together for a couple of hours.  They exchange stories and jokes--the jokes improve with each glass of wine. 

Tonight's conversation was the most intense dinner conversation I can remember in a very long time.  It reminded me yet again how much fun it can be to meet and talk with curious, bright people who can ask thoughtful questions.

Voting Over--4th Place

Thanks to everyone who voted for me.  I had nearly 100 votes and am very happy to finish fourth--happy just to be in the final five.  I will be at the Milblogging conference on Friday evening and Saturday.  I will be blogging from the conference.  It should be interesting.

Voting Underway--I am Fourth of Five. . .

. . .Which I am very happy about.  The other Army finalists are two majors and two E-8s, a master sergeant and a first sergeant.  While I am definitely the oldest member of the group, the other bloggers are much my senior in rank and (current) military experience (Although I was a sergeant before they were housebroken.)  If you have not voted and would like to, go to www.milblogging.com and register.  If you have any trouble, email JP at milblogging@gmail.com and he will get you registered.  Voting ends in 40 hours!!!

In other news I was just interviewed for a Florida-based show called Growing Bolder.  I talked with the very enthusiastic hosts about the Army, breaking my neck, adoption and racing.