Getting Ready for a Guard Weekend

This weekend I will be taking more pictures.  Many soldiers will be getting awards from the Iraq tour.  The official change of command ceremony for the battalion will also be tomorrow.

In addition we will have a post-deployment health assessment.  We will be asked a bunch of questions about our health as well as how much we drink and whether we are angry, depressed or have nightmares.  That's all pretty standard.

The interesting thing is the logistics.  Up until a few weeks ago, we could fill out an assessment form on line.  Then the on-line version was closed to National Guard.  There is also an 888 number, but that is the plan B.  The plan A is that we all load up on buses tomorrow and ride over to the VA Medical Center in Lebanon to fill-out the form with counselors on site.  The full time soldiers say that they cut off on line access because the state planned for us to complete the assessment in person.  They authorized work on Saturday and Sunday to get this done.  If we don't show up, the state will be angry because they budgeted for staffing and if we don't use the program they will have wasted money.

So in the tail-wagging-the-dog world of the Army, we will all load up on buses and stand in long lines so someone in state government will not be seen as wasting money.  We are state civil servants.  Most of us are too low in rank to come to the notice of the state bureaucracy, but the top leaders of the PA National Guard are very much part of the state government.

From the time I re-joined, I have heard many of our leaders say "appearance is reality" a truism that, like stereotypes, is true most of the time at the shallowest level.  We do many things just for appearances and many of them involve riding buses.

Different Work Environment

I have written before that my civilian job is WAY different than my military.  One was is by gender.  I work on the fifth floor.  I am one of three men who work on this floor with 11 women.  And the two guys are out of town more than I am.  So I am often the only guy on the floor.

Many of the meetings I go to I am the only guy.  Or I am one of two guys among six or seven women.  Many of the women are in their 20s or early 30s so, as in Iraq, I am older than their mothers.

You could ask, "What's wrong with that Gussman?  Wouldn't you rather be in a room full of pretty women than with a bunch of guys?"

Sure, except I have to make sure exactly where I am before I make a joke.  Jokes among the men I hang around with primarily soldiers and bike racers, are put down jokes.  Some are coarser than others, but they they are part of marking territory, saying who is better than whom.  When I made a joke in the motor pool, it was at the expense of someone else.  And it was better if there were a half dozen others around to laugh at the object of the joke.

At work, we make jokes with no put downs, or a self put down.

In Iraq, if my roommate Nickey Smith had his friends in the room and I walked in he would say, "That's my Roomie.  'Cause of him, I live in a f#&king library.  Can you believe he don't listen to music.  Nothin'!!!!!!!"

Nickey would then make a joke about how fast I was going to bounce in and out of the room.  Usually I was changing to ride or workout.  While I was changing I would make a joke about how much Nickey was going to miss my white ass when we went home.

I don't make jokes like that at work now.

The Army Job I was Supposed to do is Open

It's strange to think about it, but the job I enlisted to do way back in 2007 is open at Fort Indiantown Gap.  Every week I get a list of open Army jobs in Pennsylvania.  For the last eight weeks, the list has included a job with the exciting title "Survey Team Member."  This is job is for a sergeant who is in charge of keeping  WMD detection equipment calibrated and ready for use.  He (the job is not open to women, potential for closer combat) also uses the equipment in the field--which could be a football field, baseball field or other place where a WMD might be used.

But even if I wanted the job, I am too old.  The same arcane rules which keep me from passing my Iraq educational benefits too my kids also prevent me from taking a full-time Army Guard or Reserve job.  I need to have five years left on my current enlistment to be eligible.  But I can't have five years on my contract because that would take me past age 60.  I could actually serve five years, but each of the years after age sixty requires a different waiver that cannot be granted except on a one-year basis.

So I can't take the job and I can't give one of my kids the education benefit, because the five-year rule applies in both cases.

In the Army, paperwork always trumps reality.

Talk Radio Defenders are Polite

Today the "In My Opinion" editorial in the Lancaster Sunday News was a response to my editorial of May 30.
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/257742
And the first four letters to the editor were also responses to my editorial.  Only the last and shortest letter was positive.  But everyone was polite.
http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/257737

Strawberry Fields Forever

On Saturday I went strawberry picking north of Lancaster at Shenk's Berry Farm.  For Nigel and Jacari this meant both the accomplishment of picking a few pounds of strawberries and the added bonus of eating all you want as you go along the rows.  The boys went first up parallel rows.  My wife and I followed behind the boys to pick the hundreds of strawberries they miss.

In the rows next to us were two young women.  My wife talked to them for a while about canning, then they returned to their main topic of discussion.  They were talking about the upcoming marriage of one of them.  The soon-to-be bride was telling her friend how much her fiance would have to change when they were married.  He spends too much time with his friends, etc.

One of the things I did as a father of three girls was to convince them that the silliest fantasy American girls have is that they can change a boy or a man.  My daughters seem convinced that they have to find a guy they like as is, and enjoy the relationship, or move on.  One of the more painful passages to read in CS Lewis's The Four Loves concerns a wife whose life program is to change her husband to suit her, and what sort of man he becomes.

Of course, many woman also end up in bad relationships because they use their maternal instinct to pick a guy.  Relationships in which a smart, competent woman has a grown, male dependent begin with a woman who says "No one understands him but me."  The truth is, everyone understands the creep except her.

When I was in Iraq, there were guys who were happy to be baking in the desert sun rather than listen to their wives "bitch about everything."  I know very well that I am not perfect and I do not know any perfect men. But a wife who's complaints can make Iraq look good has her reward.

Riding with Mike Zban & Cat Hollenbach

Today I had an off-site meeting and got to ride the with the Thursday Daily ride.  Three of the five of us were former employees of Godfrey Advertising. I worked there from 1985 to 1998.  Mike Zban and Cat Hollenbach both worked at Godfrey from the early 90s until a few years after I left.  Both run advertising agencies of their own in Lancaster now.

When Cat and her husband Matt came to Lancaster they were accomplished mountain bike racers.  They had been thinking about riding on the road.  Both of them got road bikes.  We started riding together at lunch and on Saturdays.  The office was in Centerville in the early 90s.  We had a route back and forth across the ridge between Centerville and Columbia we called the "Thousand-Foot Lunch Ride."  It was about 1000 feet of climbing for an 18-mile ride.

Matt and Cat both became great road racers.  In 1997, Cat was on the winning women's amateur team at the 24 hours of Canaan, West Virginia.  That was Team Alloy Nipples.  Later in the year, Cat was the winner in the Altoona Stage Race, the biggest amateur road event of the year in the 90s.  Matt was on the top amateur team at Canaan in 1997 and on one of the top teams in the men's Cat 3 Road Race.  My family went to the Altoona race and handed water bottles to Matt's team and Cat's team.  Today Matt is still racing, Cat is still a strong rider, but is not racing.

During today's ride, Mike Zban reminded me of a ride when, in his words, "You dragged me and one of my friends all over the hills of southern Lancaster County."  I rode with Mike when he started riding.  He got strong fast and is now a top Cat 3 racer on one of the best teams in central PA.  Mike was kind enough to ride in front of the pace line during most of the ride from Turkey Hill to Columbia and to hold the speed of the ride down when we climbed up to Highville.

It was a lot of fun to get back to riding with more friends.

Military Future

It's June and the Army Old Age clock is ticking faster for me.  Without a waiver from the commanding general of the PA NAtional Guard, I will be a civilian exactly three years from yesterday.  My discharge date is May 31, 2013.  I will not be retired on that day.  I am reliving my father's Army Career in many ways.  He lost his pension when the age-in-grade law caused him to be mustered out with 19 years service.  The Army retirement requires 20 years to get any benefits.

I will have 17 years in 2013.  I would have to stay until I was 63 to get a retirement, at least as far as I understand the rules, and that would require three consecutive waivers.

Not likely.

But I knew that when I needed a waiver from a general officer to get in three years ago.

In the short term, I also have to decide what to do for the remaining three years.  A public affairs officer in the Stryker brigade would like me to work in his office--he does not have a staff writer--but does not have an E5 slot.  I am not at all interested in an E4 slot.  The vast majority of people I deal with on a regular basis know there is some difference between a sergeant and a general, but both are in charge of soldiers, so it's not all that different.

For older people, Beetle Bailey cartoons may be part of their picture of Army ranks.  The general and the sergeant both order Beetle around.  How much different could they be?

So I want to stay a sergeant.

I have thought about trying to join an armor unit.  It would be kind of cool to begin and end my odd Army career in a tank.