The Griffon

Yes, the picture you're looking at is of a rollercoaster. But that vertical structure you see in the middle isn't a support beam, its actually the track!! This is the Griffon at Busch Gardens in Virginia, and its an awesome ride. So if you get the chance, take a visit there and take a ride. Also, if you're military, you can get in free once a year. Its a pretty sweet deal, and its nice to see companies saying thank you to my brothers and sisters out there serving us all. This was what i did to keep myself busy this weekend, my last weekend here. And this thursday i'm off to Boston to visit my friends up there and hopefully catch a Red Sox game. Until then, enjoy yourselves and stay out of trouble :-)

Update

So, I got called out by a friend earlier for not putting up a message in the past almost two weeks (yeah, you know who you are). So I thought I would make her happy and let her and everyone else know what is going on with me these days. Right now I'm over in Yorktown Virginia (as you should know from my last post) and I've been here for a while. My cat is stuck at home missing me like crazy I'm sure...and probably tearing my house to pieces. And yes, my buddy Brooks is taking a look-see on her every now and then to make sure she's still fat and happy :-) As for me, I do miss home a bit, or I should more accurately say I miss my house a bit. Home, in my opinion, is where your family is, and right now, I'm the only one in the house (other then my fuzzball) and my family and most of my close friends live back in Illinois. What a lonely existance, I know. But, I'm adapting and overcoming. These past few weeks here in Yorktown, while not so much fun because of a sickness that any recent student would know as "Death by PowerPoint", has been a real blast because of the opportunity to be near a bunch of cool people again. I'm not saying the people I live near in Oregon aren't cool...I'm just saying I don't know them and I haven't been able to make friends with them. But the people in my class have been a blast. We've gone out a bunch. Including all you can eat wings at Hooters, Kareoke at a place called the Cactus, watching the Blues Brothers while drinking beer in the common room, or the most famous, watching the Bears beat the Colts in Monday Night Football (I know, preseason) drinking beer and having 5 of us end up leaving the room with no hair on our heads that night :-) It feels kinda funny too...not that I've ever really had a lot of hair, but hey, gotta try something new every now and then!! (maybe I'll throw a pic up of my bald head if I remember when I get back home to OR). Other than that, things have been pretty normal. I flew up to my former Commanding Officer's wedding up in Connecticut last weekend. He works at the Academy now and so he got married on base. First time I've been back there since graduation. It seemed the same, and for any academy grads, yes I still got that pit in my stomach as I got close to campus. The ceremony was nice and the reception afterwards was a lot of fun in the O-club. Gotta love open bar. So all-in-all the weekend was good. And as a random pleasant surprise, on the way up to CT, I ended up making a new friend on my flight! Who could ask for a better weekend :-) So that is where I sit now. Its Wednesday night, and I only have about 6 more class days left till I'm off to Boston to visit Amy and Mike (gotta make sure he is a good guy and takes care of her!) We're actually hoping to catch a Red Sox game when I'm up there...that would be so cool because I haven't been to ball game in forever, and I've never been to Fenway. What fun! So thats about it for me. Like I said, nothing too exciting. Oh yeah, I almost forgot....going back to the point that I was saying about being lonely and not knowing anybody in my town. When I get back from my wonderful trip to VA, I'm signing my papers and joining the volunteer fire department for the town of Warrenton, OR. I figure that it would be a great way to meet a lot of the people in town, do a service to the community, and learn something new :-) So, thats it for now....I think. Well, I can't think of anything else at the moment, and I'm tired so I 'm heading off to bed. Hope all is well for everyone who takes the time to read this post!! Don't forget to smile :-)

A weekend off

Well, after my short stop in chicago with my parents, I made it to virginia and headed to class. Although I never enjoy death by powerpoint, I do have to admit I've learned quite a bit in my first week. Hopefully I will continue to be a sponge and make the entire month of training worthwhile. That being said, it was definately time to get away for the weekend!! So I headed up North to DC to spend a few days with my good friends Eric and Samantha. They are my saviors for this trip (and suprisingly enough, they invited me to visit again!) As for the weekend, it was a blast. I do have to admit that I did spend a lot of my time enjoying Eric's extensive Star Wars Lego collection. And now he doesn't need to build his death star anymore :-) We did get out though, saturday night we met up with Justin and Lauren, and Kelly and Doug for dinner in Chinatown. (a place called Matchbox, a little pricey, but excellent food). And then this morning before hitting the road, we went out and hit some golf balls around at a fun minigolf place. It was actually ranked in the top 5 in the Nation in some magazine. Sadly enough, Sam beat both Eric and I. Oh well, I guess that means that we need to get back out to the range and practicing :-)

My niece!!

My niece is so adorable! She's already sporting the ball cap and mean look. (but maybe thats because she woke up at 0500 to come have breakfast with me during my lay over on my way to virginia) its so nice to be able to see the family again even if it is only for an hour.

HH-60J Jayhawk

For those of you who don't know, this is the aircraft I fly. We call her the "Big Iron" because she is quite powerful and just a joy to fly. On one mission a crew actually fit over 20 survivors in the cabin!! We have three of them up here in Astoria and we are usually pretty busy. During the summer every one goes and plays in the Pacific, and what most people don't know (other than the locals, of course) is that there are very dangerous rip currents in this area. So if you are ever up near here, please be careful in the water, I don't want to have to save you! And if you ever want to know more about the aircraft, or what we do in the Coast Guard, don't hesitate to ask :-)

Traveling

For those of you who didn't hear, I recently took a little trip to Italy to visit a friend of mine whom I originally met when I was in Flight School. He was an exchange student from Italy over in the US learning to fly planes. Sadly he couldn't become a pilot himself for medical reasons, but he is still an awesome guy! Anyway, I went over there for two weeks to finally see what Europe is all about. Honestly, its awesome. And naturally, that word really doesn't cover it. Riding on airplanes got old after a while (20 hrs of travelling in either direction) especially when my little in-seat entertainment system didn't work on my flight home. Oh well. But other than that (and almost missing my return trip...and having Paolo *#&$-up my memory card) my time in Italy was unbelievable. There is so much history over there that you just don't see in the US. I mean we have our old things like the Declaration of Independence, but we have nothing like the Coloseum. Needless to say I can not wait for a return trip to that side of the world. Honestly, I'm actually hoping to do an exchange with the Royal Navy so I can go live in Great Britain for a few years. (That would really put me close to all those amazing places that I still have to visit!!) As for the pic, starting on the left is Antonio, my friend and host (of which he did an outstanding job putting up with me for two weeks). Then comes Barbara (Antonio's girl) who was always entertaining and tried to keep us boys out of trouble. Then, of course, a very sunburned and silly-grinning me (I do have to say I felt like the tallest person in Italy for most of my trip). And last, is Paolo. A fellow aviator and yet another Italian that I met in Florida who took all three of us in for a weekend so we could go climb mountains and hang out at the beach!

Dreams...

Wow...three posts into it and I'm already going to go philosophical, but hey, its what I'm feeling right now. I was laying in bed trying to fall asleep, and I picked up a daily meditation book called "Jesus 2000" by Mark Link, S.J. (have to make sure I give credit where credit is due). Now, I'm not very good at keeping up with it, so I'm a week or two behind, but I started reading a few of the daily thoughts. They all make you think of different things, but then I came across one that just made me think and ponder and want to share. It reads:

Jesus said "The Kingdom of heaven is like this. A man takes a mustard seed and sows it in his field. It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows up, it...becomes a tree, so that birds come and make their nests in its branches." Mathew 13:31-32 In 1990, Secretary of State James Baker convened the Arab-Israeli peace talks in Madrid, saying, "The road to peace is very long and it is very difficult. We have to crawl before we can walk and we have to walk before we run, and today I think we all began to crawl." What Baker said about the road to peace can be said about so many things in life: success, holiness, happiness. The road to them is long and difficult. And the first step is always a "crawl." But if we begin and persevere, this mustard-seed beginning will someday grow into a great tree. At what stage am I on the road to my dream: crawling, walking, or running? The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. Eleanor Roosevelt.

On the path of life, it seems so easy to get lost with everyday things and to forget about our dreams, our aspirations, our desires. We get so focused on what we are doing today, that we lost sight of where we want to go. We get too afraid of such a long journey that we never even begin the trip. It seems all too often we convince ourselves of failure, and therefore force ourselves to fail before even beginning by never taking the chance. This thought reminds me of "The Man in the Arena" by Theodore Roosevelt (and more recently of a quote about "getting in the car" in the new Transformers movie). But like the familiar idiom, you can't win the lottery if you never play, one will never succeed if one never tries. But on a more personal level it makes me think about my friends and acquaintances that I talk to that seem to do the same things. Even I have kept myself from doing things because I was afraid because the outcome was unknown. So I guess I want to challenge everyone who reads this to look inside yourself, figure out where your dreams lie, and maybe even just figure out what your dreams are. Take that knowledge and start crawling. Crawling towards that dream of yours and make sure you don't stop until you get there. Doesn't matter if your 15 or 50 (or older like my parents...love you!) we all need to have dreams, have a direction, and be willing to begin our travels in that direction. We will probably get sidetracked, and I know we'll learn a lot, but don't forget your dreams. Good Luck.

From the phone!!

Well, to add to the fun, i added my phone to my account. So now i can post Blogs when I can't get on a computer. One problem: they will be short!