Journal

I thought you might like to hear about my trip. When I left home, we flew to Baltimore and were supposed to get an airplane from there but the reservations were wrong. They were going to send me to the wrong country!

We had to hang out in Baltimore for a few days waiting for an airplane so i went downtown to look around. I found an old sailing ship called the USS constitution and they let me come aboard for a tour. it was originally used to defend Baltimore in the war of 1812 and the civil war. While we were there, they loaded a cannon and shot if for us. After that I went to the smithsonian museum for a day.

We left Baltimore and flew to Atlanta for a ride out. The Airplane wasn't ready so I had to spend the day in Atlanta. We had bar-b-que for dinner and listened to a jazz band. We finally left Baltimore in the middle of the night and flew to Germany. They had good beer.

I've been a little busy learning the new equipment and working on some computer problems. We never did figure out the computer problems - oh well.

Things are a lot better here than I thought they would be. I do live in a tent but the food isn't in an envelope. They have a very good kitchen here that keeps us well fed. In fact, there's probably too much good food. Most days I can't choose what to eat...

The time thing is kind of funny, my body says it's time for bed somewhere around 8AM. We have lots of books over here. Everybody just tosses them in a pile when they finish one and they get passed around the camp. We also have lots of movies. They show something every 4 hours. I saw one called the Last Castle. It had a great catapult in it (OK it was a trebuchet but what ever). Somebody in the sca had a hand in writing that movie.

We can't leave the camp so I pretty much plan to read books and pick the sand out of my toes. Speaking of toes...I have to tell you something odd. When I first got here, I sat down on the bed and took off my boots. Yucky smell - you know the one from nasty feet. So, I took a shower. went back the the tent and sat down the bed a couple of hours later and took off my boots - yucky smell - take a shower. This went on for a while until i realized it was the blanket they gave me. The blanket has had a shower and things are much better now.

I'm on my way to drivers education class. No really I am! They drive different here and I have to pass a driving test before I can borrow a car. Funny huh?

I finally got away from the base yesterday and spent some time downtown. We went to a giant flea market called a souk and spent about 2 hours looking at interesting junk. I now know what frankincense and muir look like! There were vendors peddling fresh nutmeg, ginger, and 100 other spices. I actually ran across an old RCA Victrola but didn't buy it because I couldn't figure out how to get it home in one piece.

After we left there, we went to a local restraunt and ate stuff that I've never seen before. I still don't know what it was but it tastes good. They brought us 5 huge platters of food to share among four folks. We thought we were finished when the main course showed up. I'll bet the SCA would love this place...they didn't use silverware.

We rolled out of the restraunt several hours later and got pulled into a Persian rug shop. The rugs were really nice and I thought a couple would look great in our living room. I asked the guy how much the rugs cost. He was very considerate and made me a special deal - for me only $3000 for a throw rug. Nearly lost that big dinner when he said that! Needless to say, the Persian rug is still at the store and we will have to live with a Wal-Mart rug for a while longer.

About the only other interesting thing was the Mexican restraunt with an Indian band that played Elvis Presley songs. Now that is an odd combo. The band was actually pretty good when you got past the accented English but the food was not quite Mexican. Probably a good thing I was still full from the other place.

Well it's been a very long day here and something in the room smells pretty bad. It's probably me so I'll close this letter and head for the showers.

I finally got a day off and boy was it nice! I spent most of the day reading a book by Clive Cussler. It's called Flood Tide and is pretty good. Late this evening I went to a small shopping thing they had on base but it was pretty lousy. They just had rugs and stuff like that so I didn't buy anything.

It's October Fest here so a German band is going to start playing in about a half hour. A few days ago, I saw a movie called Big Fat Liar.

I was going through some old boxes and found a great treasure....a whole package of American toilet paper. It was Charmin too!!

We're making some real progress on our projects here. I ordered a little gizmo that feeds video into the computer and allows you to capture it on CD ROM. We hooked it up to an old ultrasound machine and now we can save the pictures and print them out.

We're also working on another project to convert an old fluoroscopy machine to computed radiography. We finally got the machine running but it's so old you can't buy parts for it. I had a lot of friends clean out their closets and mail me old parts. We needed to buy some foam backing and felt for the film holders so I went shopping last night. Found everything I needed except spray on glue. Perhaps if I ask really nice Kay can send me two cans of the stuff. It's what we used to matt photographs and can be found at hobby lobby.

I was kicking back enjoying my coffee this morning when the air conditioner fell out of the window again. I decided that air conditioners must be like a broad sword - they just need a little duct tape. A few rolls later, the air conditioner was back in the window but the silly vent pipe fell off. I used a few more rolls of tape on that too. Just hope it doesn't need to be serviced for a while :-)

I know it was winter because I turned on the shower and you could tell the difference between the hot and cold taps...how odd. The sky was overcast and the temperatures plunged into the 90's. I thought about digging up a coat but decided to tough it out.

Things have been pretty slow the last few days. I've read three Clancy books over the weekend. Other than that, not much happening here.

Things have slowed down here so we went looking for something to entertain us yesterday. "Somebody" decided we should dress up like the local janitors and paint the bathrooms. Of course, things got out of hand and somebody else called the po-lice on us.

Bail was set at two beers payable in Germany at a future date. Of course we were sent to correctional custody for the rest of the day:

Anyway, we've made it our personal mission to drive every piece of equipment in the inventory. So far we've managed a 30 ton fork lift, a passenger bus, the ambulance, and a Hum Vee. I'm still working on the fire truck, the little thingy that pulls airplanes, and the c-130 cargo plane. I still have time so maybe we'll get there.

The weather is changing at last. Temperatures are dropping below 90 in the daytime and we actually had a few drops of rain last night. Didn't last very long but we had fun playing in it anyway. Best go for now since I actually have some work to do.

We were planning a dinner for 100 and of course I was right in the middle of it. Things went very well and I'll send pictures as soon as I can get them off the network drives.

It was what we call a combat dining in. It more like a frat party than anything else. One of the traditions is a grog bowl. Any guests that are "rude" are called out in front of the head table and sent to the grog. My mission as the first sergeant, was to make sure the grog was nasty. I took great pleasure in mixing it with a blender. Oh yes, we had anchovies, green olives, pineapple, garlic, mustard, little hot dog thingies, and orange Tang. Ok there might have been just a few cases of alcohol involved but don't tell the boss.

The First Sergeant is always the first to be punished at the grog. Fortunately for me, somebody had stashed a little bit of the good stuff under the table...wonder who that might have been??

We had a senior diplomat as our guest speaker who seemed to have a pretty good sense of humor. He didn't even scrunch up his nose when the water balloons starting flying towards the Colonel. All in all, it wasn't a bad night.

It's probably after midnight where you are but I've already finished stuffing my face for the day. The cook rounded up about a 100 felines and slow cooked them for us. Them was good eats!

Not much happening here other than that. I've spent most of the day watching two mechanics try to figure out how to change a tire on an airplane. They finally went to lunch but maybe they'll come out and play later.