Welcome Home Party

This afternoon was my Welcome Home party. In addition to my family, friends from work showed up--driving all the way from New Jersey in the case of Shelley Geehr and her family. Sarah Reisert made the long drive from Philadelphia. Jan Felice, Jim Pomeroy, Keith McIlhenney, and Scott and Barb Haverstick were here representing the bicycling side of my life. Several members of the math department at Franklin and Marshall College (including Arny and Tracy Feldman who provided the snacks) were here along with bicyclist and college president John Fry. Bruce and Carol Mawhinney and the whole LeDuc family along with the Whites, Eric and Lina Bierker, and Leslie Bustard from Wheatland Presbyterian Church. All my daughters came home from college so the house was very full.

At 6pm my wife disappeared upstairs to listen to Prairie Home Companion. I took the kids to Starbucks and then to the train station to put Iolanthe on the train back to Bryn Mawr. Reviving an old tradition Lauren, Lisa, Nigel and I went to the Park City Mall on Saturday night. We had done that for years leaving the house to Annalisa. Lisa and I went shopping for shoes for me while Lauren and Nigel went looking for a shirt for Lauren. Lisa said it was different with me shopping, since when we did this several years ago, the kids went shopping while I sat near the entrance to Sears and did homework for Greek or Physics or French or whatever class I happened to be taking that semester.

I am starting to feel more like I am really home.

First Ride Back in Lancaster

Today I slept late (almost 9 am) just because I could. Then I pumped up the tires on my "A" race bike (Trek Madone) and started doing errands--all of which cost varying amounts of money because Uncle Sam is no longer providing everything for my life and well being. First I re-registered my car and insured it. $71 for registration, $1003 for insurance. Then I jump started my very dead car and drove it to Firestone. It needed brakes and a new ignition switch and some other stuff that came to $800.

After that I took a break from spending money and did the Friday training ride with Scott Haverstick and Jan Felice. Jan shot the photo of Scott and I on the ride. We did the usual 29-mile winter loop. At the end I could barely talk. Scott and Jan were not even breathing hard. It was great to be back. They even let me win the coasting race. Actually Scott lost 20 pounds during this year which will make him even faster up hills, but at least I will be able to beat him on the downhills.

Back to spending money. I ordered a new computer at MacHeads $1,270 with tax, plus $300 to rehab the old one. I need new dress shoes, $150. I am going to get a flat screen TV tonight or tomorrow for $500.

For the next next two hours I will be taking Nigel to his basketball game, so I will not be spending money for that period of time. The satellite TV gets installed Monday.

I better go back to work soon. I am going to need the money!!

Beyond the Fort Dix Gate

I am writing this post in mid-afternoon in Philadelphia train station. I just got off the train from Trenton and am on the way to Lancaster. During the 90-minute wait between trains I am sitting in Cosi using free wireless internet that actually works--for several minutes on end. After 30 minutes I had to reboot my computer for internet access. I think my computer has difficulty believing the internet can work for that long.

After the internet, I got on the train to Lancaster and came home. My wife met me at the station and took me on a tour of our renovated house. It really looks different.

We picked up Nigel at school. I helped him with his homework. After he takes a bath we will be going to out to dinner.

It is GREAT to be home!!!!

A Last Long Day

I was up b efore 7 this morning to finish copying files and putting together the last Task Froce Diablo Newsletter. I finished it at 9 tonight and got it approved by the commander and PAO and proofed by the commander's assistant. It was like being in Iraq again. Especially the length of the day. I got most of the photos copied. That's what I will be doing tomorrow, in addition to packing and cleaning my room.
It's getting very close to civilian life now. Att 11 am tomorrow my friend Meredith Gould will pick me up and take me to the Trenton train station. She will be keeping my New Jersey bike for me also. Amtrak doesn't want bikes on the train.
More tomorrow.

"There's a Good Reason Why You are In This Line for 4 Hours"

Today I went through another stage of out-processing. The particular task involved calculating the leave due me. This can be tricky for the soldiers who are full-time in the Guard or Reserve, but not so much for people me. I and almost everyone else used exactly 15 days of leave for the trip home and we get a total of 32.5 days for the time we served. So I continue on active duty for 17 days with benefits and they pay me for the half day. The process would have taken ten minutes, but my leave form was blurry, so it took 30.

But I waited 4 hours to get to the station where this ten-minute calculation was performed. I was sitting in the finance office waiting for several sergeants and civilians to discuss my faded leave form. I said to one of the finance clerks that I had not waited for anything in line for four hours during the 23 years I was a civilian. She started to explain why we were waiting--only four finance clerks, 170people in line, etc. I said it was not the reason that mattered, but as a civilian if someone wanted me to wait four hours, the reward would have to be phenomenal. She spent 20 years in the Army then went to work for the federal government. For her, waiting in line makes sense. She lives by the government system.

And for her, the reasons did make sense. But if a civilian company would not be in business very long if it made customers wait in line four hours to do a predictable 10-minute bit of paperwork. And onloy a government organization would even try to do something so simple on paper. A money-making business would automate the calculation.

After that four-hour wait was over, I was in two more lines. One for 90 minutes, one for 2.5 hours. The last one I was only in line 90 minutes of the 2.5 hours. I left and ate dinner and came back. Soldiers hold each other's place in line.

We are All Back in America

We are all here in New Jersey now. No more flights we can't talk about, we are in America. So whatever is left do we will do it here in America and then go home to Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, Montana and wherever else people call home. The last plane arrived tonight at McGuire Air Force Base at 9pm. I was at the bottom of the ramp and got pictures of about 100 of the 170+ soldiers on the flight. It was much easier to shoot tonight for a variety of reasons.

1. Just about everyone on the plane was in our unit and from Pennsylvania so the VIPs shaking hands at the bottom of the ramp were all from PA. Last time there were VIPs from both PA and NJ. They formed parallel lines and the soldiers walked down the middle, so I could not shoot without someone's back to me.

2. I had only the flash on the camera which was not enough to shoot on the ramp--I know this now. I did not know it the first night.

3. A professional photographer from PA Headquarters shot video and reset my camera for higher light sensitivity. He also told me how he would be moving so I could use some of his light.

4. On the day of the arrival of the first flight, there was a colonel traveling with the VIPs who is also an amateur photographer. He was telling me how to shoot. He was also telling me that my job was to shoot the VIPs even though my assignment was to shoot the returning soldiers. At one point he pulled me by the shoulders to where he thought I should be. He proves the Army proverb I just made up that a high-ranking jerk is much worse than an ordinary jerk. In a couple of weeks when I am fully a civilian again, I will have more to say about what happens when a bully has rank. Thankfully, this guy did not show up with today's group.

Living in America

So what's it like to come back to America after being gone for most of a year? Part of it remains to be seen. I have not left the Fort Dix/McGuire Air Force Base complex yet, so I still have more to see and get used to. I suppose it is better to return slowly.

My first funny shock was the Taco Bell commercials, recommending the new Drive-Thru diet. Taco Bell has very funny commercials. What could be more American than the idea of a diet that you can do just sitting on your butt in your car!! And what could be more sneeringly American than to put the idea on TV for an audience that is drowning in flippancy.

This evening I saw a commercial for a healthy lifestyle diet plan. I don't remember which one it was, but all around the day room where the TV was playing mostly unwatched were men in their late 20s to mid 30s surrounded by pizza boxes and other delivery food containers. They were playing a video war game on line with each other. It was a beautiful day today, almost 50 degrees. These plus-size guys had been playing for hours, eating pizza.

I have been to the PX a half-dozen times already. It's fun just to walk around and look at all the stuff you can buy here in America. I can get any kind of shampoo I want.

I haven't yet had to ride in traffic, drive a car, commute or any of the dangerous stuff I have been spared for the last year. I ordered a new internet serive for our house that had me on the phone for almost an hour. I have to make two more calls for that one.

And sadly, I am no longer immune from the news. I read about Pat Robertson saying that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgement on the Haitian people and read Rush Limbaugh's predictably callous comments about the plight of the Haitians. Thousands dead and suffering is, for him, nothing more than a chance to take a shot at Liberals for being willing to help. Sometimes I hate the idea that all of us who served went over there in part to defend free speech for people like Robertson and Limbaugh, but in America they have as much right to speak as anyone else. But whether they have a right or not, they are no less pathetic cowards for doing so.