First, finagle your way into another military-sponsored trip to a base in Hawaii. Second, take an 8-month-old. Third, pray said 8-month-old refrains from screaming during the 19 hours spent on airplanes. Simple! We left on Sunday, a few hours before the Atlanta Snowpocalypse 2011 (leaving my mother in charge of […]
Among the pages of captioned color photographs from my 2003 deployment is one that sticks out. There’s a woman in uniform, not unlike every other picture I have of persons in Iraq. But then there’s this guy. He has no BDU t-shirt or DCU pants; he’s in a white cotton […]
Only the elite, high speed, squared away freedom fighters get to choose locations like Honolulu and Seattle for their Reserves/Guard active duty days. And since I finagled my way into just such an arrangement, someone in Washington must think me an elite, high speed, squared away freedom fighter. I can’t […]
Wednesday afternoon, I rode in a Cessna Skyhawk from Honolulu, over Molokai, and onto Maui. After we landed, I learned my new friend had never landed at Maui before, because his instructor told him it was the most difficult runway in the U.S. to land a private plane, since the […]
I never actually expected to have a trip to Hawaii count as “annual training” when I saw the email mentioning an opportunity to do just that about 6 months ago. But here I am. In Hawaii. Getting paid. I arrived Friday afternoon after 10 hours next to a 25-year-old PhD […]
