Vivid Moments Coming Home

This morning I went out before sun up in Philadelphia riding my bike through the city and over the Ben Franklin Bridge to Camden and back.  Part of the riding was down the recently repaved Market Street.  This six-lane east-west boulevard is glass smooth where it used to be cracked and crumbling.  I flew down the middle of the street--no traffic, fast enough to make green light after green light.

As I rode up the BFB toward Camden, the sun sent shafts of light over the eastern horizon into what would soon be an robin's egg blue sky.  Just the occasional cloud bent the orange light.  When I turned back toward Philadelphia, the orange glow lit blue coated 50+ story towers that form the center of the Philadelphia sky line.

Moments like these will be remind me of Iraq for the rest of my life.  Certainly not because Iraq looks anything like this, but the contrast is so vivid.  When I served in Germany in the 1970s, Germany became like a second home.  From the North Sea to the Alps, Germany lacks nothing in natural beauty and the settled beauty of civilization.  Iraq is a dry, dusty, drab and dreadful.

Travel really does make home more beautiful--and the uglier the place I travel, the more beautiful home becomes.

Symposium in NYC on Service and Sacrifice Today, hosted by Pat Tillman Foundation

Today I had the chance to make a trip to NYC on 9-11 to hear a symposium on Service and Sacrifice.  I wanted to go partly because the moderator was Jim Dao, one of my bike-racer buddies and the National Military Correspondent for the New York Times.  I also wanted to hear Marie Tillman, widow of Pat Tillman who is helping veterans in many ways through the Pat Tillman Foundation.  Also on the panel was a New York firefighter Tim Brown who was at the World Trade Center on 9-11 2001 and two pilots, a Marine fixed-wing pilot and an Army Blackhawk pilot.

Marie Tillman talked about being a widow and how she has been helping military widows through the foundation because of the experience she went through.

Glad I got a chance to attend and hear people who are trying to do good speak on the anniversary of 9-11-2001.

Short Drill Weekend--Passed PT Test

Only one full day of drill this weekend.  I was (mostly) on Sunday so I could attend the farewell ceremony for the Medical Detachment later this month.  The first event of the weekend was the PT Test--what could be better than that?  I scored a 316 because I was over the maximum on both pushups and situps.  My official score is 300, but it is great to score "Superscale."  If I use my raw scores and apply them to the 27-31 year age group (the highest standards are for this group, both 17-21 and 22-26 are slightly easier) I would have scored 259.

When I was in my teens and 20s my first time around in the Army, I smoked.  I think my highest score was around 265.  I never got 270 and usually scored just over 200.  Always passed but not by much.

I know eventually getting old will catch up with me and I will walk slowly and yell at Liberals on CNN, but for now I am feeling good!

Not Going to Afghanistan!

This morning I found out I am not going to Afganistan in a very Army way.  I was driving back from a meeting in NYC.  I stopped for coffee and checked my email on my iPhone.  In the list of message were two emails canceling my reservation for two training courses I need to go on the deployment.

I knew it meant I was not going.  But I called a friend who is a full-time training NCO.  He said Yes, in fact he got a call to reassign the training school since I would not be needing it.

Paperwork is reality in the Army.  I read that message three hours ago.  No one has officially told me I am not going, but I am very sure I will be in Lancaster when the last plane is wheels up.

Second Deadline isYesterday

The original deadline for my waiver was yesterday, September 4.  So I expected to know one way or another by COB (Close of Business).  I didn't.

I just keep waiting because people way above my pay grade created the deadline, so they can also amend or renegotiate the deadline.

Waiting for War is Hell.

Another Day Older

It's 630pm and still no answer one way or the other.  My wife believes "Yes" is an answer, but "No" is not.  So I will have to wait till Tuesday for paperwork to resume.

Still Waiting

The deadline is tomorrow and Fort Indiantown Gap is closed today.  It looks like I will be waving good bye in November--to the soldiers who are deploying.

If I Only Have 50 Days. . .

. . .I should use them wisely.  Today I wrote an article that's due Friday and did some other work, then rode to my son Jacari's cross country meet in Hershey.  It was a beautiful day.  Hershey is about 30 miles away so I got in a 60-mile ride and got to watch Jacari improve his 2-mile time by more than a minute in his second meet.

Last week he ran the two-mile course in 14:11, finishing fourth out of 40 runners.  Today his time was 13:07.  He finished 26th out of 193 runners.  He has had essentially no training so he could improve again next week.

Tomorrow I will go to work and write a couple of urgent news releases and work on remarks for an event in two weeks.  I have a couple of important meetings also.  But the real event tomorrow just might be a phone call from the command sergeant major of our unit.  He thinks the decision whether I am deploying will be made by close of business Thursday.

If that's true, I have a one-month school beginning in mid-October and will be leaving for pre-deployment training just after Thanksgiving.  And I will have a lot of work to finish before I go.

Tick Tock.

Waiver Goes Forward

At noon yesterday I was telling a friend who has been to Afghanistan that there was no way I will be going.  All right, a 1% chance.  We made plans to ride together next week.

At 3pm I got a call from our administrative NCO saying that my waiver got endorsed by the Division Commander and is on the way to the Adjutant General's office.

Last night I went for a walk with my wife and told her about it.  All summer I had been thinking there was very little chance I would get the waiver to serve in Afghanistan over age 60.  My thinking was "Why would they sign it?"  Someone who never met me at the Pentagon would look at the paperwork and think--'a 60-year-old sergeant? WTF?'  Denied.

But if the paperwork goes forward with two generals endorsing it, then the next guy up the line is not saying Yes to me but is saying No to the generals.  That is different.

I was so sure I wasn't going.  Now the admin NCO said it's at least 50-50 I am going.  Later last night, my wife was asking whether I could cut off cable TV and keep the cable internet.  She thinks I am going, but she always did.  A month ago she said she thought I would be going despite all the evidence on the negative side.

Life remains exciting!

There's Always Room for Yellow

When the news broke Friday morning that Lance Armstrong was giving up his fight against doping allegations, I took off my Livestrong bracelet and tossed it in the yellow trash can in our downstairs bathroom.  I wore the yellow band since it first went on sale more than a decade ago--except in Iraq.  In Iraq we could only wear POW/MIA bracelets.  All the rest of the colored wrist bands for causes had to come off until we left Camp Adder.

I wore that bracelet because I used to travel overseas a lot and ride with racers in other countries--particularly in France where I got to ride in the Alps, the Pyrenees, and in the daily training rides at L'Hippodrome in Paris.  Wearing a Livestrong bracelet said I was proud of the accomplishments of America's greatest cyclist.

So when his titles were stripped from him, I tossed the bracelet.  I wore it as long as there was some doubt that he would be caught cheating.  Which also makes me guilty of having a double standard on cheaters.  After 20 years of watching every stage of the Tour de France, I quit watching after Stage 17 in 2006.  That was the stage in which Floyd Landis cheated so flagrantly that the commentators were talking about it during the stage.  I have tried to watch the Tour de France since, but I knew I was just watching dueling drugs.

After I left for work, my wife took my Livestrong bracelet out of the trash.  She had two reasons:
 1.  I like yellow.  shallow reason.

 2. It seems hypocritical to ditch him for the act of getting caught cheating, when we stood by him while he was getting away with cheating.  

Good points, but when Lance was riding, I still thought there was a chance he was simply training harder than everyone else.  I was wrong.  And my wife is right that I have known he was cheating for several years and kept it on.  Be that as it may, I will not put it on again.