Business Class Upgrade!!!!

Yesterday we left on the long flight to Kuwait. As with so many other parts of this journey, it was a long day of cleaning barracks and getting ready before we finally lined up to board the buses for the airport. When we boarded the buses I got one of the best surprises I have had in years.

We had known for several days that when we flew it would be on a commercial 747. This immense plane can seat more than 400 people with 80 or so business class seats, and sometimes a dozen first class seats. We heard the seating would be by rank, which meant I would be in the main cabin with 3-4-3 ten across seating. But as we lined up to go, our commander called five of us to the front of the line. He was going to give the top scorers on the PT test business class seats.

One of them was me. I took it. Three others turned the seats down, wanting to sit with their friends. I thought about sitting in back for about a millisecond, but I decided at 55 years old I will take whatever ribbing I get for sitting up front. The other guy who took the seat is older also. We sat together and decided our old selves would enjoy the ride up front.

Rattlesnake Rodeo

Yesterday, our last full day here in Oklahoma, we went to the town of Apache to be guests at the opening day of the annual Rattlesnake Rodeo--a carnival with rides and junk food like any other carnival, but the central attraction is the rattlesnakes.

First we go into a building with a ten by twenty foot by four foot high wooden enclosure. Inside the enclosure are two retired men in boots and coveralls carrying hooks. Also in the enclosure are 50 or so rattlesnakes piled and slithering against the walls and occasionally striking at the men when poked. The more talkative of the men tells us about the snakes, their venom, their rattles with a show-and-tell format that involves holding the angry animals behind their heads and showing them around to the spectators.

At the end of the presentation, the silent handler puts a half-dozen snakes in a box and sends them to the building next door--the snake butcher shop. So we all troop next door and watch as the handlers at that show select a snake, show its markings, then cut off its head with an ax.

The guy with the microphone headset then shows us how the head keeps biting while a woman in an apron hangs the rest of the snake above a sink. While he explains she guts and skins the snake and gets the $15 per pound meat ready to sell.

If I can hook up to one of the cameras in a few days, and if we get internet access, I'll try to post some pictures. In the meantime, you can watch a video on the blog site of one of the other soldiers in my unit.

Army Easter Bunny

Last month we got cases of Pop Tarts from somewhere. I heard it was test marketing. So last Monday, I could send my wife home with Triple Chocolate Pop Tarts and MREs left over from field training for Nigel. He was very happy with his high-calorie pile of treasures.

Saying Goodbye to Other Units

On Good Friday we were released to go on our four-day pass at 1400 hours. The other five companies that make up our battalion slept late in anticipation of a long day of travel.

Echo company was up and out in front of the barracks at 0520. During the 10 weeks we were training for deployment Echo did more soldier-skills training than any other company in the battalion. This is partly because we are the company most likely to do security and go outside the wire on the ground and partly because our commander wants us all to be up to Army standards on physical training and soldier skills.

We were the only company that got up before 5am for PT three days each week and the only one that had remedial PT three more days each week. We were the only company on the rappel tower, the confidence course and some of the other training I have written about over the last five weeks. In fact, complaints from the other companies led to us holding formation for morning PT 1000 feet behind the building instead of out front. They were complaining about the noise we made as a exercised.

But on Good Friday we formed up out front and yelled "Echo" at the top of our 100 voices as we formed up. The leader for the warmup calisthenics is a former singer in a Metal band. He growled out the cadence as we stretched and exercise.

Usually we run out toward the ranges. On this morning we ran behind the barracks, looped around the motor pool then ended with a complete half-mile circle around the barracks area. We sang cadence the entire time we were near the barracks.

Because of us, no one had to miss breakfast.

Then and Now: Barracks Rats

BARRACKS RATS IN NATIVE ENVIRONMENT


I am going to miss Fort Sill, Oklahoma. For those who are thinking, "You lived there 2-1/2 months, of course. . ." you should know that I am quite alone in my affection for our current duty station. In fact, at a meeting last night, several soldiers were delighted to hear about the kinds of video entertainment that is free at our next duty station. But eventually, they won't like the next duty station or the one after that.

They are barracks rats, a special sort of rodent who sits in his or her room and complains about Fort Wherever mostly because thy don't leave the room. I know I am a special case because I brought and borrowed bikes and rode almost 1,300 miles since our arrival. But other soldiers have walked, taken buses and seen many sights and enjoyed the mostly warm (and windy) weather since we arrived.

I am not sure, but the barracks rats may be worse now than before. In the 70s, there was only dayroom television and radios for entertainment, plus the completely outmoded books and conversation. With video games and personal computers, there are many more options for the sedentary soldier.

Post-Pass Blues

The barracks are as morose now as they were giddy on Friday. Last Friday everyone was getting ready to go home, have some of home come here, or at the very least, spend four days in quiet. Now we are cleaning, packing, and starting arguments over small things. We will be gone soon and home is very far away and everyone is acting like it.

I Watched a Zombie Movie--You Can Too

Some of you know my wife, Annalisa Crannell, is a professor at Franklin & Marshall College and the Don (Faculty Advisor) of Bonchek residential house. As part of her duties of bringing academic life into the residential halls, she hosts math and art seminars, the Evolution Table, and helps to organize the annual Humans Versus Zombies event at F&M each year. Humans vs. Zombies is a tag game on a grand scale in which Human players try to avoid being tagged by Zombies and becoming the living dead themselves. My wife is one of the profs who is actually in the game and could become a Zombie because many of the students who start as Humans will want to tag their House Don when they become Zombies. Here is a video by some of Annalisa's students on how NOT to become a Zombie.
It's almost 4 minutes long. I watched the whole thing!

Mrs. Hollywood in the Sunday News

Annalisa was the subject of an article in the Sunday News on Easter about a Sunday School class she will be teaching next Sunday through May 31. The Sunday News links expire quickly, so here's the text:


It all adds up to the 'God of Mathematics'
First female adult Sunday school teacher at Wheatland Presbyterian explores infinity ... and beyond


By Helen Colwell Adams, Staff Writer
How is Christian faith like mathematics?

The possibilities, as Dr. Annalisa Crannell sketches them, are nearly infinite.

Infinity itself, for instance.

"Mathematicians and Christians look at very similar kinds of things," Crannell, a professor of mathematics at Franklin & Marshall College, said. "We ask very similar kinds of questions. What does infinity mean? How do you resolve a paradox — how can God be three in one?"

Crannell will be opening that world of possibilities for an innovative Sunday school series at her church, Wheatland Presbyterian, April 19 through May 31. The series, "The God of Mathematics," is innovative for another reason.

Crannell will be the first woman to teach an adult Sunday school class at the Lancaster Township church, part of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America denomination.

"Having Annalisa and her husband, Neil Gussman … and their family here at Wheatland is a great blessing to us, and we are excited that she can use her considerable gifts in this way," Wheatland's pastor, Bruce Mawhinney, said. "She is an amazing believer and follower of Jesus Christ who not only talks the talk but walks the walk."

"I have a lot of support," Crannell said. "I have the feeling there are a lot of people who were trying to figure out how to make this happen and still be true to their values."
The logic of faith
Part of Crannell's understanding of God comes from metaphors of mathematics. John 1:1, for instance, says, "In the beginning was the Word."

"For math, everything flows logically from axioms," Crannell explained. Logic comes from the Greek logos, the "Word" of John 1:1.

"Because I know math and because I like axioms, I have a good picture in my head of how God can speak the world into existence."

Mathematicians believe in the extranatural, as Christians do.

"I believe in 2. There is no 2 in the world," Crannell said. Numbers aren't tangible or material; they are concepts.

"... In that way, math is not of this world. It helps me to understand something that's bigger than a material universe."

But when mathematicians change the axioms, "you change the universe," she explained. "… You change the kinds of things that happen in the world.

"When God spoke the universe into being, the way he spoke it formed us."

She'll be unfolding those ideas in the Sunday school series, which is open to the public. Topics include "Math and Metaphor," "Sizes of infinity," "Mobius strips and the Triune God" and "Symmetry, pattern and repetition."

Too much information? Crannell doesn't think so. "I'm used to dialogue with people who are math-averse," she said. "… How much math do you need to know? If you like puzzles, if you like doing things like Sudoku, then that's enough math."
The logic of submitting
It might seem counterintuitive for a respected female academic to belong to a church that holds, among other doctrines, that only men may serve as teaching and ruling elders or deacons.

For Crannell, it's a matter of biblical mutual submission.

"There are ways in which it's very countercultural to be a Christian at all," she said. "It's a faith that does ask you to submit … to something bigger than yourself all the time."

At Wheatland, an eclectic congregation "that really loves Christ," she said, "we're all submitting ourselves in various ways."

Plus, Crannell noted, "The church is the most segregated institution in the United States. One of the obligations we have as Christians is to try to fight that by placing ourselves with people" who think differently.

"It is very hard to do it. We need to look at people who have differences of opinion not as enemies we should shun but as people we should engage."

Crannell said the church has been enthusiastic about her series, planned after the governing Session voted to allow women to lead adult classes that do not involve teaching the Bible.

"Ordinarily our adult classes are taught by an ordained officer of the church — pastor, elders and deacons — but having a member like Annalisa teach this class is not really a new step for us at Wheatland," Mawhinney said.

"We have been planning on her doing this and trying to find a good place in our schedule for some time now. We try to use our members in areas of their expertise in our Sunday school ministry."

Crannell's membership at Wheatland is part of her faith journey.

"I came to faith very late in life, nine years ago," she said. She began attending church with Gussman, a convert to Christianity, to understand him better and found herself drawn to faith partly by math connections.

"Even atheists will talk of mathematics as something beautiful," she said. "It's something pure and holy."

For her, it's another way Christian faith is like mathematics.

"The God of Mathematics" will be offered at Wheatland, 1125 Columbia Ave., from 9:30-10:30 a.m. April 19 through May 31. For information, phone the church, 392-5909, or e-mail info@wheatlandpca.org.

More Mount Scott

On Friday I finally rode up Mount Scott which I reported four days ago. The view above is what I saw every morning as I walked to formation for 2-1/2 months. I could see it, but being restricted to Post, I could not ride it. So on Saturday while my wife took a nap, I went up Mount Scott again. On Saturday the winds were better and the temp was above 70 instead of the low 50s on Friday, so I went up in 27:10, almost three minutes faster than Friday. On Saturday and Sunday Annalisa and I ran on the flat roads near our hotel in Lawton. Today she agreed to do a "Ride and Tie" Relay with me. So we drove to Mount Scott, I got out of the car at the base of the mountain and ran up. She drove to the top, parked and ran down with the keys in her hand. Eighteen minutes later she handed off the keys as we ran past each other. I got to the top in 32 minutes, 5 seconds.

I love running uphill but I would have been a cripple if I ran down. Annalisa shows no ill effects from running down--even three miles down. She does not keep track of run times, so I don't know how fast she went, but it was a lot faster than I went because she had walked 1/4 mile back up the hill by the time I drove the car back down to pick her up.

Annalisa arrived at midnight Friday and goes home early tomorrow morning. My roommates would be worried we would be bored to death, because we have not watched TV or a movie or listened to the radio in the car since her arrival. She also finished reading Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope" to me as we drove in the car. I will be surrounded by noise tomorrow, but I have had more than 72 hours of peace and quiet. Ahhhh!!!

Then and Now: Kids and the Army

ERIC, RYAN and NIGEL underneath a C-130 on display at Fort Indiantown Gap.

One of my best memories of serving in Germany during the late 1970s was training on the countryside and meeting little kids. The kids, usually boys between 7 and 10 years old, but some girls also, would ride their bikes up from the villages where they lived to see our tanks. It always seemed to be up. We looked for high ground so we could set up observation posts. Our tanks would be below the crest of the hill and we would send an observer up to watch the approaches.

Soon after we had our tanks positioned on the hill, sometimes just minutes after, we would see two or three kids laboring up dirt paths pushing or riding their bikes toward our position. I could only imagine what it would have been like if a platoon (five) tanks parked on a hill near my house when I was a kid.

We were in the field the day after we arrived so the first time we had kids come up to our tank was just three days after our unit got to Germany in 1976. My tank happened to be lowest on the hill so the tallest boy walked up and waved. The three smaller boys with him followed close behind. My driver and I offered the kids C-ration chocolate bars. These round candy bars were made by Wilbur Chocolate in Lititz. It was years after I got out before I would eat their chocolate because those bars were so bad. They had to last at least three years which must have been a challenge, but they tasted like wax.

The German kids thought they were wonderful. "Soldaten chocolad!" they said to each other. We pulled them up on the fender of the tank and let the kids get inside and talk to each other on our helmet intercom. I let the big kid is the Commander's Override and traverse the turret. They spoke English well enough to ask if we wanted them to go to the store and buy food. I gave the oldest one (I think he was 9) a 10 Mark bill and they sped down the hill to the store.

As they left, the crew of the next tank over found out from my driver that I had given the kids money and they started laughing. "Nice going Gussman. You'll never see those kids again." I wasn't worried. The guys on the other crews got out their C-rations and started complaining about the getting stuck with canned ham and eggs or the grease that congealed on the Spam. Between bites they would yell, "Better eat your C's. Those kids are gone.

Almost an our later the kids returned. They had fresh bread, cheese, sausage, even butter, and two pfennigs change. We thanked them for doing such a good job shopping and gave them two boxes of C-rations and a handful of chocolate bars. They were thrilled. They happily sat on the fenders eating chocolate. They were saving the C-rations and it was almost dinner time.

I put our camp stove on the back deck of the tank so the other crew could see us while I cooked the sausage. My crew and I ate fresh German food sitting on the fender and the turret facing uphill to be sure the other crews could watch.

We held that position for two days. When the kids came back the next day, the other crew members ran down to see if the group of boys would like some more chocolate or to sit in their tanks. For the rest of the time we were in German on the countryside, the little kids on bikes gave us fresh food in return the green cans we were always ready to get rid of.

Last summer my sister brought her grandsons down to Pennsylvania. They spent a day with my son and I looking at tanks and trucks and artillery on Fort Indiantown Gap. I could not actually let them turn a tank turret or talk on an intercom since I am not in tanks anymore, but it was fun to show two little boys all that Army equipment. My son Nigel had been on these vehicles before, so he got to show Ryan and Eric where to put there hands when they climb up on a tank and be their Big Brother for a day.

Perceptions of Risk

I am in the middle of writing an article about perceptions of risk in medicine. Looking at how people perceive risk in medicine reminded me of my step father. My Dad died in 1982 and my Mom remarried 7 years later to a nice guy named Peter Sherlock who is a World War II veteran and a career Air Force sergeant. They were married until my Mom died in 2003. I have kept in touch with Peter since my Mom's passing. We talk every month or so.

Until August of 2007, every call with Peter would begin with him asking, "Are you still riding that damn bicycle?" Peter has a daughter my age who is an avid rider and who broke a hip in a bicycling accident several years ago. Peter thought bicycles were dangerous before her accident, but understandably became more strident after her accident. When I crashed in May 2007, Peter was beside himself when he found out I planned to ride again as soon as I got out of the neck brace.

But he hasn't said a word about bicycling since August of 2007. Peter perceives bicycling as very risky. But when I told him I re-enlisted, he was almost gleeful. He thought that was great. He said, "You won't regret it. Best job in the world." When I told him I was going to Iraq, it did not change his opinion at all. "You'll be fine," he said.

Obviously, lots of people perceive risk differently than Peter, but it is fun to call him and hear him be as "Rah! Rah!" as an 86-year-old can get on serving in the military. And he never asks at all whether I am "riding that damn bicycle."

Saying Goodbye to Fort Sill--The Bike

After I wrote the silence post I thought about how much I will miss riding on Fort Sill. According to my obsessive exercise spreadsheet I have ridden more than 1100 miles (1154, but who's counting) since we landed in Oklahoma. I can look at that as 82 hours of training, which it is, but more importantly as about 70 hours of solitude. I guess I have ridden 150 miles with the Chaplain and the other racer in our unit, but I am almost always riding alone. That means many hours of solitude and quiet. Without the bike, my life here would have been very different.

So with my final ride just days away, I have some bike updates. My usual loop is a 28-mile circuit around the artillery and machine gun ranges. Until Wednesday, I could not cover that distance in less than 1 hour and 43 minutes. But on Wednesday, we had calm air all day. So after the Rappel Tower, I road my usual loop as fast as I could almost giddy with the lack of wind. I covered the distance 11 minutes faster than ever before.

Today I tried to ride from Fort Sill to the Oklahoma City airport to meet my wife. She arrives at 1045pm tonight. We could not leave until 2pm and the airport is 90 miles away. If the wind had been west or south, I might have made it. But OKC is northeast of Fort Sill and the wind was out of the North Northeast at 15mph with gusts. By 315pm I had covered only 16 miles so I turned around and road west to Mount Scott.

Mount Scott is not exactly the Alps, but it is the highest mountain around here. It is also just off post so I could see it every morning since we got here, but not ride it. Today I went up the 3-mile, 9% climb that goes up 1400 feet to an amazing view of the entire area. The road wraps the entire circumference of the mountain as it climbs and ends right on top. It took 30 minutes to go up and five back down.

I passed a herd of longhorn cattle on one side of the road at the base of the mountain and a herd of buffalo on the other side. This is definitely a beautiful place in a dry, wild sort of way.

Silence is not an Option

At the end of every training session we have an After Action Review--as with everything else this is only referred to as an AAR. Usually we collectively are asked to give three examples of what was Outstanding, three things that should be Sustained, and three that should be Improved. Just as with civilian life, these sessions are supposed to be open to all comments.

But I got shouted down for my "Improve" comment.

After we finished six hours of rappel tower training we had an AAR. It was somewhat difficult to hear the leader because speakers on the tower had been blaring and continued to blare metal music. My Improve was shut the music off. If I had said change the music to country, hip-hop, or something else I would have divided the crowd. But suggesting that the sound be shut off was like suggesting we all dress in orange or blue or that we all become Vegans. Silence is simply not an option in this world. Even the people who don't like metal music wanted some kind of music. Our chow hall has big screen TVs on both walls, one on ESPN, one on Fox News during every meal. My roommates like Gangsta Rap and Horror movies. Other rooms are primarily Country or Metal with a preference for comedies or war movies, but there is no silent room.

This weekend when my wife is here we will not be watching TV, leaving the radio on all the time, or eating in restaurants that have big-screen TVs on the wall. While most everyone flies home, I will be staying in Lawton and enjoying four days of quiet.

When the rest of my unit returns to America, they will be looking for some form of entertainment they have been missing. I will want to be back in my very quiet home and back at my job in a very quiet museum with people who can do their work without 24/7 music. AAAHHHHH!

Once in a while people ask me if there is anything I miss, anything people could send me. If you figure out a way to put quiet in a postal package, please send it.

Rappel Tower

Today we spent most of the day at Fort Sill's Treadwell Rappel Tower. For most soldiers it was not their first time to slide down a rappel rope, some even had air assault experience rappeling from a helicopter. I was one of about ten rookies who had never rappelled before. It was fun, but because the tower is set up for basic trainees, they use a figure-8 loop on the harness that makes the ride down very slow. I did get to swing out and drop about ten feet at the end, but nothing too fast.

DOWN THE ROPE
In addition to the rappel ropes, the tower had four rope obstacles. Each of these was harder for me than the tower. We first climbed up a three-rope bridge, which wasn't too bad. Then we went down a single rope head first and face down (see photo) which hurt my chest a lot. Then we went back up a two-rope bridge, which is harder than three. Then up to the top of the tower and down a 40-foot cargo net. Several soldiers went again, some again and again, when everyone had a chance to go once. Between the harness (I thought it could make me a soprano) and an aching shoulder from the cargo net, I only went once.

THE RAPPEL HARNESS

THIS GUY GOT IT RIGHT

Anthrax Shot, New Address, PT Top Scorers

We'll be leaving soon, just how soon no one is really sure, but we got another anthrax shot and a new mailing address today:
SGT Neil Gussman
Task Force Diablo
Echo Company 2/104 GSAB
Joint Base Balad
APO.AE.09391
I'll let you know when it is valid.

In other PT news, there are 17 soldiers in our company who scored 270 or higher on the PT test. The age range of the PT high scorers is 22 to 55. Several of the 17 scored more than 300 on the test. Technically, 300 is the max score, but if you score the max for your age in all three categories then you can score on an extended scale. The highest scorer was our commander at 349. One of the women who is a squad leader in the fueling platoon was 2nd at 342.

Remedial PT Success

We ran a PT Test this morning for 12 soldiers who failed the test last week and one who just recovered from an injury. The injured soldier passed, but he was in great shape before he hurt his shoulder. More importantly, 6 of the 12 re-tests passed and three of the people who did not pass missed by seconds or in one case a single pushup. When we get to Iraq, the Remedial PT program will continue for the soldiers who still need to pass the test, at least for those of us who remain on the Air Base. It's great for the soldiers who have been doing PT six days per week pretty much since we got here. It's not easy to go from being a civilian with no fitness requirements to active duty soldier, but most of the soldiers in our unit have passed the test and many who just passed before are now doing much better. I paced one soldier who made his time by 13 seconds. That was a good feeling.

I have a friend who is an engineer who said he hated wearing respirators when he worked in industry. I never did PT in an Army Protective Mask so late this afternoon I did the 2-mile run in the Pro-Mask. I was five minutes slower than without the mask, but I still would have passed. It was a good breathing exercise to do it, because I had to keep my breathing even or I would start gasping and had to calm down.


ON TRACK


AFTER THE RUN. I'M SMILING.

Dayroom Interpretations of History

On the first floor of our barracks there are three dayrooms--one in each stairwell. The fourth stairwell has the Anthrax Chapel instead of a dayroom. Each of the dayrooms is different, but dominated by a large-screen TV several feet across. Sports and movies are the programs of choice. This afternoon Braveheart was on the big screen in one of the dayrooms. This movie is a favorite of mine and many other soldiers. In fact, as I walked into the dayroom, one of the older soldiers declared Braveheart "the best movie ever made." The scene playing as I walked in was the one in which an evil English Lord claims his right of Prima Nocte with a just-married Scottish bride--he takes the young woman to his bed the first night of their wedding instead of her husband. It is a poignant scene and everyone is quiet both on screen and in the dayroom when the young woman is taken away. Then suddenly the same sergeant who declared Braveheart the best movie ever said, "It's this kinda shit is the reason we're in Iraq." I had not ever heard this interpretation of the war in Iraq.
NOTE: In this quote shit is a pronoun replacing "strange nasty customs."

Shit as a Pronoun

Shit has many uses in Army language, but is way more specific than Fuck--which is used for everything. In Iraq, I washed a load of clothes and dumped the unfolded load of laundry on my bunk. Someone asked if I was going to chow. I said, "I have get my shit off the bed first."

In the Army, shit is can be a substitute for every other noun--up to a certain size.
If something can fit on a bunk, like laundry or field gear, you can say, "That's my shit." But when referring to his Humvee, the driver says, "That bitch is mine."  When I first got to Iraq, the parking lot where we were pitching a maintenance tent had to be cleaned.  The sergeant in charge said, "We have to police this bitch up."

Shit also has other uses. Shit can actually refer to feces as when someone leaves a room to "take a shit." That is an interesting linguistic twist in itself. What the speaker will be doing in fact (one hopes) is leaving the shit behind, but since effort is involved, taking is the verb--the same usage as taking a picture. Another twist is in the use of the s-word as an exclamation. "Shit!" is generally negative, but "No Shit!" is positive. If I tell Private Snuffy he has guard duty he will exclaim, "Shit!" to express his dismay. If later on I tell him the Private Duffy has duty in his place, Snuffy will say, "No Shit!" and be happy.

But the main use is as a pronoun. Looking at someone else's food, I might say, "I don't like that shit." If my tools were in disarray I would say, "I need to get my shit together." If someone else were advising me to put my tools in order they might use the same phrase or the odder form, "Get your shit straight!" You can't think literally in most uses of shit.

By now you must have had "enough of this shit" so I will "stop this shit" right now. Except to add that the most common modifier of the word of the day is Bull, often said as if it had three syllables.

All-Night Duty

Today I was supposed to be one of the safeties for the next obstacle course. Next Wednesday, we are going on through a Confidence Course with a Rappel Tower. We will rope climbs and other obstacles including rappelling from a 40-foot tower. But I had all-night duty tonight and had to finish the Echo Company newsletter, so I skipped the Rappel Tower training and will just be one of the climbers next week.

Beginning at 8 pm tonight, I sat in the battalion offices with another soldier and waited for something to happen. Nothing did. The soldier I had duty with joined the Army in 1992 so he is an old soldier compared to most soldiers, if not compared to me. We ordered a pizza and talked for hours. Both of us can remember life in a barracks before cell phones and personal computers when people actually talked to each other.

After midnight, I called a friend who was my roommate in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1978. We were in a joint Army - Air Force barracks. He got out of the Air Force in 1978 and instead of going home to Arizona, he became a novice in a Lutheran Monastery in Darmstadt, Germany, and he has been a brother there ever since. After his novitiate, my roommate Cliff Almes became Bruder Timotheus. We have kept in touch ever since. He is the only American in his small brotherhood, so he is the network administrator and has always been the "fix-it" guy. One of the reputations Americans have is the ability to fix and operate machines. We talked for about an hour. Bruder Timotheus only comes to America every few years and I have only been back to Germany a few times since 1978. But we keep in touch by phone and email. I hope to be able to visit Cliff sometime after this deployment.


Land of Kanaan, Darmstadt, Germany

Back to the Confidence Course

Today we returned to the Confidence Course. I was one of the safeties for the course--which is something like being a condom: Everybody around me is breathing hard and having a good time, but I am just there to prevent accidents.

The Confidence course is an imposing array of high, tough obstacles. Groups of soldiers move from obstacle to obstacle, some require teams, some are individual efforts. Throughout the day, soldiers surprised each other--good and bad--with what they could complete with easy and what they found tough or impossible. A soldier who was scrambling up and down all kinds of obstacles had to be pushed off the the platform on the Flight to Freedom (ride down a Zip line) and another soldier who climbed to the top of the vertical ladder while several other soldiers could not make it.

All morning I unhooked soldiers zooming down the Zip line. In the afternoon, I went over some of the obstacles. After stressing my shoulder at the PT Test, I did not do anything crazy, just these:

I am the one on the right, crawling over the top.

I don't think this one is me, but this is one obstacle I went down, until I dropped into the net.



And this one. Easier to get up than down.