MAKE ME FAMOUS

This post is a shameless plea for nominations for my blog in the military blog awards--The Milbloggies.  Nominations begin tonight and continue through April 3.  The blogs with the most nominations will be open for votes.  So if I am nominated, I will be posting again asking for votes.

To nominate my blog you have to register here.  The registration is just six lines and the nice people at milblogging.com promise you will not get SPAM from them.  Once you register, put my last name, Gussman, in the search bar on the upper left side of the page.  One search result will come up.  Click on the title of my blog, then when you get to the page, click the big green NOMINATE button.

If i get enough nominations, I am a finalist for a Milbloggie!!!

Nominations close Saturday.  Thanks in advance.

Real Life After Travel and Deployment

On Monday night I got back from San Antonio after midnight.  I started to unpack, did a load of laundry, took out the trash and watched TV before the buzz in my ears stopped and I could go to sleep around 230 am.  For eight days I stayed in hotels, ate in restaurants, went to banquets, rode a rental bike when I wasn't working and generally was either working or exercising from morning till late at night. 

I have not seen "The Hurt Locker" but I am told the hero of the film goes back to Iraq after being bored and bewildered by life back home.  It is different to ride in the back of a commuter plane next to someone nervous about a routine flight on a sunny day after riding behind the door gunner in a Black Hawk in a sand storm so thick that the helicopter we were flying with was all but invisible.

Business travel has some of the unreality of deployment, although different.  Business travelers escape the routine of daily life with long days, too much food and housekeeping done by hotel maids.  Soldiers don't have maids, but work long hours and are reasonably well fed.  My business travel is over for a while except day trips to DC and NYC and staying over in Philadelphia during events.  I think my transition to normal life is a little smoother because of the travel.  

Fox News Looking Like (At) Boobs

Stare at The Sun: breast bombs

A news source (Fox News) famed for its reliability, reprinting news from another news source (The Sun) famed for its reliability, applies this headline:

Terrorists Could Use Explosives in Breast Implants to Crash Planes, Experts Warn

The Sun accompanies its report with the image reproduced here.
Thus does vital knowledge get spread to the general public.
 ===

In the interest of full disclosure you can go direct to the source of this report at Improbable.com

I wonder if the Fox News commentator, in a patriotic fervor, said, "I can't wait to get my hands on these terrorists!"

Who Got Drafted for the Iraq War?

Several of the soldiers I served with could be considered draftees. At least, they were serving very much against their will and were surprised to receive a FEDEX package telling them to report for pre-deployment training within two weeks.  Most of the soldiers I knew who got called back adapted well after the initial shock.  One did not.

One of the Battle Captains in our aviation unit was Jay Hoffman.  He received a FEDEX telling him to report for duty in two weeks for deployment in Iraq.  His home is in London where he works for an oil exploration firm.  Jay was a Black Hawk pilot and had left the service several years ago, but did not resign his commission, so he got the FEDEX and went to Iraq with us.  A couple of days ago,
he wrote me from the Congo to ask me how things were going.  Jay applied for the MBA program at the London School of Economics while we were in Iraq and was accepted for the fall 2010 class so he will be changing his career again.  He also is completing all the courses he needs to be a reserve major so he can be in a reserve unit instead of getting a FEDEX with no warning next time.

Chief Warrant Officer Suzy Danielson left the military in 1994 after serving as a Black Hawk pilot during the Gulf War and in Somalia.  She did not resign her warrant commission, and did not really give the Army a second thought from 1994 until 2008 when she got a FEDEX package telling her to report for duty.  She had not flown a Black Hawk since 1994, but worked as a flight instructor for fixed wing aircraft since she left the Army.  She had to brush up on the Black Hawk, but flight was very much second nature.  When I met her she was flying the chase bird on MEDEVAC mission--the Black Hawk with door guns that follows the MEDEVAC bird.

One of the stranger recalled soldiers was an extremely unhappy female sergeant major who was activated out of retirement to go to Iraq.  She had retired several years before and never expected to be at Tallil Ali Air Base, but the condition on the military retirement is "return to duty" when requested or forfeit all pay and benefits for the rest of your life.  The sergeant major did not want to lose her retirement so there she was running the chapel coffee shop called "God's Grounds."  She was assigned to a support battalion, but was unhappy enough that they sent her to the chapel.  I heard her explain her circumstances several times--losing no vehemence no matter how many times she repeated her story.

Riding in San Antonio

While temperatures dropped to near freezing in the northeastern US, I rode 65 miles in San Antonio today at a high temperature of 82 degrees.  My official work began late in the day with a dinner and ceremony lasting till late evening.  The dinner was a meeting of a group of petrochemical executives who have worked in the industry for 25 years or more.

I have ridden in San Antonio before, but did not realize that all of the several major highways that go through and around San Antonio have frontage roads.  Some pasts of these roads are as crowded as the frontage road on Route 30 in Lancaster, but others are empty, one-way, two-lane strips of asphalt or concrete that are excellent places to ride.

My route was due north out of the city to the outer ring route North Loop 1604.  I rode west then followed I-10 east back into the city.  I ate lunch at a local coffee shop on the ring route about 35 miles into the ride.  It seemed like the kind of place that would serve sandwiches with sprouts and have about 10 veggie sandwiches.  I ordered chicken salad and expected light fare.  I got about a half pound of chicken salad in a sandwich that could have been sold in a New York deli.  Instead of sprouts and leaf lettuce, I got iceberg lettuce, tomatoes and bacon.  I also ordered a side of cole slaw.  It also had bacon in it.  I knew I was in Texas.

A couple of miles before I stopped, I rode by a large very rectangular Church.  It actually looked more like a security firm, almost no windows, set back more than a 1/4 mile from the road.  Then I saw it was the church of Pastor John Hagee, the pastor John McCain had to disown during the 2008 Presidential campaign.  

At the end of the ride I went to the gym at Fort Sam Houston.  Military bases have much better gyms than hotels--at least better than Holiday Inns.

Saved a Little Too Much Money

There are several Holiday Inns within the downtown area of San Antonio.  I usually stay at Holiday Inns which are cheaper than the conference hotels at the meetings I go to.  On this trip the conference hotel is the new Grand Hyatt right next to the San Antonio River Walk.  I stayed just a half mile away for less than half the price.  But sometimes a short distance can make a huge difference.  From the Grand Hyatt to the Holiday Inn Express, you walk under a highway, past a few bars and a Ruth's Chris Steak House, then across the railroad tracks and into a warehouse area.  The hotel is just three blocks away.  But across the street from the very sad looking Magott's Grocery Store.

 

Actually, Magott's Grocery, was established by Theodore Maggot in 1881.

And the whole area around Magott's including my hotel, definitely looked like industrial decay.  Very different from the River Walk and the surrounding restaurants.

I walked over and bought a Vitamin Water.  The guys who work there were very friendly but that is one difficult name to put on top of a score advertising Fresh Meat.

Last Day in San Francisco

Today I flew out of San Francisco in the late afternoon.  I had an 4pm flight to LAX followed by a 715pm flight to San Antonio, arriving at 1159pm--actually 1205am, but very close.

In the morning I rode up to the top of the Marin Headlands just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.  This picture is the view from the top looking back at the city.  Although the climb is less than two miles from the north side of the bridge to the top, it was enough for me.  Three climbs up Mt. Tamalpais in the four previous days left my legs like rubber.

Yesterday I rode through one of the temperature shifts that happen between San Francisco and the top of Mt. Tam in Marin.  three years ago I left a fog-shrouded city of San Francisco on a morning ride.  The Golden Gate was also fog covered.  And the for persisted all the way to the 2000-foot line on Mt. Tam, then it was brilliant sun all the way to the top of East Peak.  I could see back to SF, but the only thing I could see was the cloud of fog that blanketed the entire city except for the peaks of the Golden Gate tower support piers and the antennas on top of Mt. Bruno inside the city. 

Yesterday it was clear and cool all the way from the city through Marin up almost 2300 feet then a cloud covered the very top of the mountain.  I rode the last half mile to the crest in increasingly thick fog.  At the top I could not see a thing.  the wisps of fog were so thick they seemed like they would hurt if they hit me.  I went back down into the cloud, but a half-mile later , below and away from the cloud, the sun was shining again.