10:52 AM -- Calm before the storm. --

On to Air Force stuff though, it's been pretty cool getting settled here on base. There is constant traffic in the air when the weather is good, so it's always up there to motivate me. I moved into officer quarters on Friday, and they are a lot nicer than I expected. I have my own bathroom and kitchen and a big bed and huge TV (had to drive to san Antonio to buy the latter...Couldn't bring myself to buy a TV from Walmart.) Today was our first day together as a class as we got our Pubs this morning (publications). We got about a 4 foot stack of books that we will be responsible for during our time here at Laughlin. Kind of daunting. Also checked out the "links" today, that's our simulators and procedure trainers. It was my first up close look at the t-37 cockpit and it didn't look too scary.

I'll have more to write tomorrow as it's our first day of actual classes. It will still probably be more inproccesing stuff so I don't know when we will get into actual academics. More then.

 
8:28 PM

Friday we went to a country-western bar. Never seen a single cowboy hat before so it was quite a culture shock. The thing I thought was weirdest was nobody dances in one place, they all go in a counter-clockwise circle. I don't know how that was decided or who makes those kinds of decisions but it was all new to me.

Next day we spent the whole day out on the lake here on one of my new pal's speedboat. Tried my hand at wakeboarding, and was horrible. Never even stood up. So that was nice. Then after that we headed to Mexico where we spent all night at the bar from the movie desperado. It's the one where Quentin Tarantino is telling the joke to Cheech. Yeah the actual bar! That was pretty cool. The best was they had guys going around taking drink orders and getting them from the bar for you so we didn't have to muscle our way up to the bar like every other place.

Spent all day today out on the lake again, jumping off some cliffs and basically just cooking myself.

So I think I've done pretty well so far for only being here 2 days! Going to start my actual inprocessing tomorrow and hopefully get a place to live. Getting real tired of these hotels!

 
11:16 PM -- Don't mess with Texas --

 
11:28 PM

 
11:06 PM -- bling bling! --

In website news, you have probably noticed I have a spiffy new url. I solved my space problem and also snagged the url for a pretty decent price. I'll now be able to throw as many pictures as I want up on the web for you guys...will start tonight. The archives are also a little different now, as you go to a separate index page to get to them. Sorry for the nasty look, I don't know how to change it.

So next step is a drive to San Antonio tomorrow where I am booked in a Holiday Inn for a few nights before I make the final push over to Del Rio. Till then. (4 aces!!! Damn...)

 
1:10 PM -- re-org --

 
1:03 PM -- Clean bill o' health --

Got done with brooks this week on Wednesday. Guess I fooled the doctors since they found nothing wrong with me! They did a heart ultrasound (pretty cool got to see what my heart looks like, even the inside of it), a bunch of eye tests (color vision, red lens, etc) and finally some measurements (sitting/standing height). Was kind of stressful waiting for the results since the techs couldn't tell us if we were passing or failing. Had everyone in my group pass the physical, although a couple of guys from my OTS class went the day before and had to stick around after I left since they found some abnormalities, hopefully they got the waivers they needed.

Was also cool to meet a couple of guys who will be in my class at Laughlin. They gave me the goods on what to expect during inprocessing, and it will be good to know a couple faces on day one. One of em is a professional motorcycle racer (street) and says he could get me a good deal on a used bike! (sorry mom!) They seemed like some nice guys though so it should be a fun couple of years in Texas.

So I'm sitting in Vero Beach right now, came down here to see the old friends. I have to pick up some of my gear at my grandmothers house, so it gave me an excuse to come down. Going to leave tomorrow or the next day for the 3 day drive to Del Rio, just want to wait for this hurricane/tropical storm to get out of the gulf.

Thanks for all the emails and support, up to 6000+ hits now, not too shabby!