Teenage Independence and ORM

Did you know about this?

At this very moment as my fingers clatter across the keyboard, there are not one but TWO separate 16 year old girls sailing solo around the world. Each are attempting to earn the title of the youngest person to sail solo and non-stop around the world.

Jessica Watson was the first to depart her home on the east coast of Australia about four months ago. She has already crossed the Pacific and is most of the way across the Atlantic on her way toward the Cape of Good Hope.

Abby Sunderland left her home in Southern California heading south a few weeks ago. That ended up being a sort of shake-down cruise because she had to pull into Cabo San Lucas for repairs. She has embarked again on her around-the-world cruise a few days ago and just crossed the equator southbound.

There's a fair amount of open-press criticism of these girls' parents for allowing them to take on such a challenge.

I have mixed feelings about it.

I've written before about how much I appreciated my parents fostering my independence and giving me a "long leash" so-to-speak. Most of my friends parents would never let them do half the stuff I did as a teenager - such as solo international travel to Canada (from San Diego - that's a long trip), Japan, Korea, and England, or driving hours to the Oregon coast to go scuba diving for the weekend. The former-proudly-independent-teenager in me thinks it's awesome that Jessica and Abby's parents trusted them to embark on such an ambitious journey.

However, my perspective has changed significantly as a naval officer and as a parent. I'm sure Jessica and Abby are both very responsible and trustworthy, but there's more to it than trust.

As an officer in the Navy, I have had Operational Risk Management (ORM) chiseled in the back of my head and traumatically reinforced in watching two shipmates lose their lives in rough seas. In layman's terms, ORM is all about cost-benefit analysis. Are the benefits of doing something worth the risks, and if so, what things can you do to reduce the likelihood and severity of the risks?

In the case of my solo travels as a teenager, I think my parents exercised good ORM. In each case, I may have been flying alone (as a passenger on a major airline), but I was staying with friends of the family at each destination and knew where and how to seek help if I needed it.

From an ORM standpoint, I don't think letting your teenager (boy or girl) sail solo around the world passes the cost-benefit analysis. In the Navy, we use justifications like "national security" as the benefits for taking such risks. What possible benefit could possibly be worth the risk of death in rough seas or a collision or a medical emergency in a civilian recreational sailing vessel? Each of these girls are sailing thousands of miles from shore and have little to no hope of rescue or assistance. What happens when one of them gets appendicitis and needs emergency surgery? On a nuclear submarine, even though our corpsman is technically qualified to remove an appendix in an emergency, we will fully employ the many thousands of shaft horsepower under the hood to hurl us toward the nearest port for a MEDEVAC (medical evacuation) of a crew-member with symptoms of appendicitis.

Backing up just a bit, I mentioned above that Abby had to pull into Cabo San Lucas for repairs. It turns out, she wasn't the only one. Jessica Watson also required a stop for repairs before she got very far from home. Between reading that article about Jessica and watching some of the interview videos on Abby's website, I have serious doubts about each of these girl's qualifications to embark on such a journey. As a submariner, we go through a lot of qualifications, and they start out with basic system knowledge - understanding the theory behind the how the equipment operates so you can then understand your equipment's limitations and operating precautions. Reading the article about the Jessica's accident and watching the interviews with Abby didn't give me a warm-fuzzy feeling about either of their technical understanding of the capabilities and limitations of their gear.

Aside: One of the first things I learned during sailing lessons in San Diego Bay with aircraft carriers and cruise ships passing by was the "BGT Rule" (Big Gray Thing), a.k.a. the law of gross tonnage. Jessica didn't really violate the BGT Rule because she was in the rack and her radar alarm didn't warn her there was a big-ass many-thousand-ton merchant (63,800 tonnes to be exact) about to turn her into road kill flotsam. Can you imagine if Jessica's collision had happened in America? If it had, there certainly would have been some wacko frivolous lawsuit filed soon thereafter blaming the radar manufacturer for the collision because the proximity alarm didn't go off.

Sorry, I digress. Back on topic now.

As a parent, I will encourage my boys to be responsible and earn the level of trust and independence so that they can go forth on their own. We all have to let our kids go out into the world on their own someday. Even when they have earned that trust though, it is still my responsibility as a parent to provide a safety net and to provide that "forceful backup" we talk about so often in the submarine force. As their ISIC (Immediate Superior in Command), it's my responsibility to evaluate their training, qualifications, equipment, and readiness to embark on adventures that will take them away from home and out of range of my ability to render assistance. Based on what I've seen and read on Jessica and Abby's blogs, if I was their father, then I would not have allowed them go to on this around-the-world cruise solo.

I'm sure if Jessica or Abby's parents and supporters read this, they will say that they did carefully evaluate the risks and implement safety measures to mitigate those risks, like having a "ditch bag" of emergency supplies in case they have to abandon ship. Personally, I think the ditch bag is probably more for easing the parents' fears than an actual, practical life-saving measure (unless she ditches like 100 yards from some tropical island). Going back to ORM - even with things like a ditch bag, there is a RISK of a small craft like these sailboats succumbing to rough seas, or the single crew member getting washed overboard, or colliding with a merchant (or, gulp, dare-I-say - a submarine?), all of which hold the possible outcome of death to that single crewmember. Again, what's the benefit of this endeavor? What's to be gained that makes it worth risking the death of your daughter? That's permanent. You can't turn back the clock to undo death. It's too late - no amount of lawsuits will bring your child back from the dead.

It just doesn't pass the ORM test.

Although I don't agree with the decision to let them go in the first place, now that they are out there on their own, I am praying for Jessica and Abby's safety. I wish Jessica and Abby all the best and sincerely hope they both make it home safe and sound.

Friday Funnies

Real quick up front - people like Kelly who tend to stop reading when they realize this is a Navy-related post really should get to the bottom of this post and watch the video. You're gonna laugh.

For those of you who have been around the fleet a while, you've probably read the Summary of Mishaps that comes out on Fridays. The Summary of Mishaps has been written for years in a tongue-in-cheek manner of sharing some lessons learned the hard way by guys doing stupid stuff both on the job and off on liberty. In case you've never read the Summary of Mishaps before, here's a quick sample of what you would find:

B. The second Not-O.K. Corral starred a machinery repairman first class who was on leave and decided to go shooting at a local Air Force base. “While driving to the base,” the report said, noting that he was “licensed to carry a concealed weapon,” he removed his .45 caliber pistol from the glove compartment. His goal was to “make sure it was not loaded,” an action that reveals in crystal-clear detail the mind-boggling limitations of the aforementioned “license.”

With the pistol’s magazine removed, he pulled back the slide to make sure there were no rounds in the chamber. He released the slide and pulled the trigger. Presto! There were no longer any rounds in the chamber, because the cartridge from the one that was there was now passing through his left thigh.

This spectacular display of weapons-handling knowledge was most impressive to his mother, who was along for the ride and who got to apply pressure to the wound and call 9-1-1. A trip to the nearest E.R. took the place of the planned visit to the shooting range. He was treated and released.

Must we trudge through the basic rules of gun handling for the umpteenth time? The old “Never point a firearm at anything you don’t want to shoot” and the “Always treat every firearm as if it was loaded,” et cetera? So be it. Making sure a weapon is unloaded doesn’t mean “jacking the slide back while waiting for a light to change in traffic,” the report added.

There’s nothing quite like calling a body shop and asking for an estimate on repairing bullet holes, and then calling the detailing place to find out how much they charge to remove blood stains.

Note: I now have a new entry at the top of my list of things that I’d prefer other drivers not do, just ahead of “text messaging.”

Want another example? Read "Why Roto-Rooter Isn't Called Hydro-Blaster or Compresso-Exploder." Men reading this story will cringe and wince as if they had experienced it themselves.

ANYWAY, although the official name of this weekly message is still the Summary of Mishaps, they have adopted another name, "The Friday Funnies."

Through the course of my career, on each boat I've been on, I have enjoyed reading the Summary of Mishaps on Friday. Each time I have gone off to shore duty though, I have gone places where I no longer got the regular Navy message traffic.

In the course of looking for something else today, I was on the Naval Safety Center website, and I discovered NOT ONLY can I read the Summary of Mishaps there on their website, BUT ALSO they have Friday funnies podcasts and vodcasts you can download (they're at the bottom of the home page).

Just to see if they were worth downloading, I listened to one and watched one.

Dude.

Watch this. (Especially if you have small children.)

Oh, WARNING - don't have anything to drink while you're watching this. It'll come spewing out your nose and all over your computer screen.

Then again, maybe not...

Star Trek review for Parents:

First, WRT Star Trek - I received a few questions from friends here, on email, and on Facebook asking me would or did I take my kids?

Answers: No and No.

The movie is rated PG-13 for intense action and brief sexual content. The sexual content is a very short scene of a man and a woman in bed, still wearing underwear but kissing and breathing heavily, but they get interrupted. You could easily cover your child's eyes for this brief scene.

The action is really intense though. In particular, there's a scene where Kirk is getting chased across the surface of some sort of snowy ice planet by an enormous and terrifying monster that keeps trying to eat him. I'm sure I'm NOT spoiling the movie for you by telling you Kirk does NOT get eaten (what would be the point of the movie if he died half way through, right?), but I won't spoil for you the surprise of how he gets away. While that scene was playing out, I said to myself, "Self, this would scare the holy crap out of ES and YB. Cross this one off the list for them to see."

For a more detailed list of the content you might not consider safe for your children, please see the IMDB parent's guide. (Don't worry, they cover up spoiler info with red "spoiler" signs you have to click on if you REALLY want to read it all.)

Air Show

I was trying to make a plan of attack for going to the air show at Andrews AFB on Saturday. In order to prevent the boys from being absolutely miserable, I was planning what I was going to pack in the cooler for snacks and drinks to keep them cool and hydrated. I thought we would bring our Camelbaks with some coloring books and games to play during periods in between air demonstrations.

Then I read the security portion of the website.

No coolers allowed.

No backpacks allowed.

No camelbaks allowed.

No food allowed.

No drinks allowed.

Basically, all the things I would have needed to make the trip enjoyable for the boys aren't allowed.

To sum it up, my choices would be:

a) Sitting on the hot tarmac watching the airshow in the heat and sun from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (of course the Thunderbirds are the LAST on the agenda for 4 p.m.) with bored, hot, cranky, whining, miserable, dehydrated kids.

b) Taking out a home equity loan to shell out the cash for however much they're charging for bottles of water and refreshments, pumping our body full of preservatives and monosodium glutamate in disgusting food huts and later suffering from indigestion because we couldn't bring our own healthy snacks that we know are safe to eat.

I don't think so.

I did get a good laugh from one of the responses I got from a friend on Facebook: "Only terrorists would bring refreshments to an airshow."

We might go on the Loudoun County Farm Tour instead.

He's too smart for me

Man, I can't wait to go through the teenage years with ES. (Just a little bit of sarcasm there.)

He turns 8 years old this month.

He's already started to call me out when he knows I'm wrong. I suppose I brought this upon myself though. I have a tendency to be very sarcastic and say things just to get a rise out of him, so he has learned over time to question the things I say and determine if what I said was true or if I was teasing him again.

I suggested we go out for Mexican food tonight in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Not because I have any reason to celebrate Cinco de Mayo mind you, only because I love Mexican food and will use any excuse I can to go eat Mexican food. ES responded that we shouldn't go out for Mexican because all the Mexican restaurants would be busy because it's Cinco de Mayo.

Did I mention he's almost 8?

Yep, you're right. You got me there, son.

So we went to Bluz Brothers Barbecue for dinner instead and they had an awesome lineup of tunes playing from Sirius satellite radio. As we got ready to leave dinner, they started playing R.E.M. "Stand." I was singing along as usual when we left the restaurant. We got to the part about, "Now face North," and I hopped and spun and landed facing one direction. After I landed, I said to myself, "Self, that's not really north you're facing, but oh well." We continued walking toward the car, and I got to the "Now face West," part and I hopped and landed - this time actually facing west.

ES immediately threw a flag on the play.

"Daddy." He said it dead-pan, matter-of-factly. "If you're facing west now, then you weren't facing north back there the first time you hopped."

Yep. He caught me alright. (I bet if I had asked him to figure out which way really was North there in the parking lot, then he would have figured it out pretty quick).

Then there are the questions he asks...

It's great when he asks these questions when we're out on a hike or driving somewhere together and have time to talk about it. More often than not though, he asks me these questions right at bedtime. Every night, I tuck him into bed, we say his bedtime prayers together, I kiss him and say, "Goodnight," and then it begins...

"Daddy?"

"Yes, son?"

"You know how Russia used to be part of the Soviet Union with a communist government? What type of government did they have before they became communist?"

or

"Why are some countries poor? Why can't the poor countries just print more money?"

or

"Why is President Obama going to move all our troops from Iraq to Afghanistan?"

or

"Why do we have copyright laws?"

or

"What type of government did India have before they became a British colony?"

or

Update 5/15/09: "What does force majeure mean?"

Did I mention he turns 8 this month?

I need to bring my laptop with me to tuck ES in to bed at night because I'm running out of answers to his questions. I should just prop my laptop on his night table with wikipedia and the CIA World Factbook queued-up ready to answer the question of the evening.

I can't help but wonder how much longer it will be before he thinks he's smarter than me - or actually IS smarter than me (gulp!).

What then?

How times have changed...

I feel old.

My wife and I were just sitting here remembering what it was like for us as kids and thinking how different it is for our kids.

This all came up because of a story ES read at school. Apparently Abraham Lincoln realized he overcharged someone 6 cents, so he chased the person down the street to repay them their 6 cents. ES just couldn't believe that he would do that for 6 measly cents. My wife explained to him the concept of inflation and the fact that 6 cents was worth a lot more back then.

That got me to thinking...

When I was in first and second grade, we used to go to the Thrifty drug store down the hill from our house to get ice cream. It was 15 cents for a single scoop, or 30 cents for a double. Nowadays, we go to Maggie Moo's and pay like $3 bucks per ice cream. I don't remember the exact price, but it seems to me we normally pay about $12 for the four of us there. Granted, at Maggie Moo's they take candy and other stuff and mix it in to the ice cream by hand, but still. If we just went down the road to the Hershey ice cream place, I'm certain it costs at least somewhere in the $1.50 to $2 price range for an ice cream cone.

When I was in third and fourth grade, we used to ride our bikes and play ALL over our neighborhood. I could have been anywhere in a 4 or 5 block radius from my house, and there were no cell phones or radios for our parents to find us.

ES likes to go over to his friend K's house to play. We have a very nice network of paved walking paths all over Ashburn. I just clicked my way around Google Earth and saw that it would be an easy 0.57 mile walk for ES to just walk on the paths over to K's house instead of my wife driving him to drop him off and then driving over to pick him up again.

I've always been grateful to my parents for their trust in me and the independence it fostered.

I went on my first unaccompanied plane trip when I was 9 years old. Granted, my mom said goodbye to me as I got on the plane in California, and my Grandpa said hello to me as I walked off the plane in Colorado, but still...

That was the same age that I became a latch-key kid. Yep, I walked unescorted 0.9 miles from my elementary school to my house (the horror!), and then let myself in the house and went to play with my friends in the neighborhood.

Since I value the independence my parents fostered in me, I've always thought that I would try to do the same for my kids.

...and yet I find I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of ES going half a mile to his friends' house.

Is it just a sign of the times?

Are there just too many weirdos out there to make it worth the risk?

Or am I just not as trusting as my parents were?

Boundaries

Okay, so maybe I need to let my family agree to some boundaries on what I do and don't write about in my blog.

First, a week or so ago, my wife asked ES if he wanted to tell me about what happened at school. He vigorously shook his head and said "NO!" My wife asked him why not. His answer?

"Because I don't want Daddy to write about it on his blog."

Doh.

Ouch.

I told him I wouldn't write about things on my blog if he didn't want me to.

I like to think that I use SOME discretion in what I post in my blog.

Fast forward to last Saturday night we went to a party at our friends W&L's house. It was a social gathering for any military officers in Loudoun County ("LoCoMOs" - Loudoun County Military Officers).

After everyone had arrived and was settled in and enjoying the food and the drinks and the conversation, I pulled my camera out to take a few pictures of the party. My wife saw me pull the camera out, and she shouted,

"WATCH OUT, HE'S GOT A BLOG!!!"

She said it so seriously as if she were in combat and announcing, "Incoming!" or "Grenade!" or "Watch out, he's got a bomb!"

If I didn't know any better, I'd think these were warning signs that my family doesn't like my blog.

Deja Vu

Holy cow batman. It was almost exactly one year ago that I wrote this post declaring that school vacations should be outlawed.

Select All.

Copy.

Paste.

Change date to 01/05/09.

Click on "Publish Post."

Grumpy weekend

It's been one of those weekends where nothing is so drastically wrong that I should be upset, but enough little things have pissed me off that it's just been a grumpy weekend in general. I keep wondering if there was a full moon out this weekend, but the lunar calendar says it's a waxing cresent moon right now.

Saturday, I was excited to get OUT of the house to do something. There was a model railroad and toy show going on at the Dulles Expo Center. Unfortunately, the boys have new toy syndrome and don't want to hear about anything that doesn't involve legos, video games, or both, much less getting dressed in REAL clothes instead of wearing their jammies all day.

I eventually convinced ES to go with me to the model railroad and toy show. Overall, I thought it was pretty cool and certainly worth the price of admission. I went there expecting to pay $7 for tickets for both me and ES, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out kids under 11 years old were free.

Passing steam engine at the Dulles Expo Center.

There were about six or seven regional model railroad clubs that had put up large displays of running model railroads. Each one of these displays was about the size of the main display at the Brunswick Model Railroad Museum, so there was a LOT to see.

One of several active displays at the Dulles Expo Center.

Most of those active displays were in the back of the expo center though, and the floor area was filled with aisle upon aisle of vendors selling model trains and toys.

ES pushes the button to catch the mail on the mail car.
(It's the third train that comes by in the video.)

We got to see a lot of unique displays like a cattle car that loaded little cows onto it and a mail car that picked up the bag of mail off the hook as the train drove by. Plus, there seemed to be a pretty popular military theme with some sort of Army train on each of the displays carrying tanks and artillery.

So please tell me... What's NOT to like about all that for a little boy???

I expected to be dealing with a lot of, "puh-leeeeeeeeease Daddy won't you buy me this and buy me that and I REALLY WANT THIS ONE!"

Nope.

ES didn't ask for a single thing. He complained most of the time we were in the expo center that he was bored and wanted to go home (interpretation: I'm obsessed with my Christmas Lego winfall and want to go bathe in my Legos). Thbbbbbt! :-P

After we got back from the model railroad show, ES was in a mood and a half and trying to convince us to lock him in his bedroom until he turned 21.

It started out with YB making some annoying noise that ES didn't like (shocking, I know). ES decided the proper thing to do was to pinch YB's lips shut. Much crying and wailing followed, first by YB due to his hurt lips, then by ES over the injustice of being put in time-out for something he said was "all YB's fault."

I tried explaining to ES that he was in time-out for HIS actions and that if he didn't pinch his brother's lips shut, then he wouldn't be in time out. If he didn't like the noise that his brother was making, then he should have LEFT the room, not physically harmed his brother.

He didn't buy it. In the angry temper tantrum that followed, he declared that it was all my wife's fault for ever giving birth to YB in the first place. My wife extended his logic a few steps further and told him, "Well, then it's all God's fault." ES's eyes got really big and he said, "Huh???" She told him if him being in time out was her fault for having YB, then it was God's fault because God gave us BOTH ES and YB to us as our children to care for and God gave ES and YB US as their Mommy and Daddy. That made him stop and think for a minute and he eventually calmed down.

Since Grammy, GG, and Papa were leaving Sunday morning, they offered to watch the boys Saturday night so my wife and I could go out for a dinner without kids. For a while there, I thought we weren't gonna be going anywhere because I wasn't going to inflict ES and his attitude on Grammy. He eventually calmed down to a point where we felt okay leaving, but I was in a pretty bad mood by that point and worried it wouldn't be a very enjoyable dinner.

On the contrary, my wife and I had a really very nice dinner together at American Flatbread. We did a half-and-half flatbread (pizza) of the two specials on the menu. One was a brie and cranberry concoction and the other was sausage, apples, and carmelized onions. Both were fantastically delicious, and neither of us had to cut up anybody else's food or tell anyone else at the table to wipe their face, chew with their mouth closed, not to talk with their mouth full, not to interupt, to sit down in their seat facing forward, and to not bang their utensils on the table. That being said, it was a downright AWESOME dinner with just me and my wonderful wife.

Sunday morning the boys enjoyed one last game of garbage with Grammy before we packed up her car and she and GG and Papa headed north.

We all went to church kind of grumpy and spent a lazy afternoon at home playing video games and/or legos.

I was pretty excited to have a family movie night tonight. We were going to watch Horton Hears a Who that the boys got for Christmas. Then ES was whining and being a pain insisting that he had already seen Horton Hears a Who. My wife, YB, and I all insisted NONE of us had seen it, and we all wanted to see it, so we outvoted ES.

I put the movie in the DVD player, and a message came up on the screen informing me that I have to upgrade the firmware on our Blu-ray DVD player in order to watch the movie. WHAT?!?!?!

It didn't look like that was going to be a quick or easy task to get done and get the boys to bed on time, so we went with ES's choise of movie - Elf. Elf is a funny movie, don't get me wrong, but I'd seen it before, and I hadn't seen Horton Hears a Who.

So that's about it for our weekend. Kind of anticlimatic.

I'm going back to work tomorrow, but the boys are still off of school. Please pray for my wife that the boys' attitudes improve and they don't drive her mad tomorrow while I'm at work. Oh, while you're at it, would you also pray that the boys will sleep peacefully through the night and NOT wake my wife (or me) up? That would be splendid, thanks!

Breaking Tradition

We went to YB's pre-school Christmas show last night. His class made these adorable sweatshirts...

Those are YB's three upside-down handprints.

Keeping up with family tradition, YB refused to wear his sweatshirt like the rest of his class for the show.

Cue Sesame Street song, "One of these kids is not like the others..."

However, I'm very happy to report that YB BROKE with family tradition there and he ACTUALLY SANG ALONG WITH HIS CLASS during the performance!!!

The video didn't turn out very good, but I post it here for two reasons. First, grandparents. Second, as much as it annoyed me that he wouldn't wear his cool sweatshirt, it sure made it easy to spot him in the crowd...

I think he had fun.

Leftovers

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is the leftovers for lunch the rest of the weekend. Besides the sweet potato casserole, another one of my favorite Thanksgiving dishes is my wife's cranberry sauce. Today for lunch, I had a turkey sandwich with chipotle jack cheese and some cranberry sauce. Man, talk about FUSION!

Flashback: We used to always give our Chop (Chop = Navy slang for Supply Officer) flak for doing things like serving chocolate ice cream with apple pie. He tried to proclaim it as "fusion."

Anyway, back to the present, this wasn't the Chop's kind of fusion (no offense Chop :-) ). No, this was really and truly culinary fusion. The sweetness of the cranberry sauce with the spice of the chipotle jack cheese was just AWESOME!!!

Moving on...

I really wanted to get out of the house at least ONCE this weekend to do something fun with the boys. As I watch them grow older, I fear they will lose interest in me. Indeed, I was trying to convince the boys to go on an afternoon geocaching hike with me when the phone rang. It was a friend from ES's second grade class who lives not far away, and he invited ES to come over and play. ES opted to play with his friend instead of go hiking with me, and that kind of made me sad.

My 4 year old took pity on me and obliged me. We dropped ES off at his friend's house to play, then YB and I headed over to the Beaver Creek Reservoir.

YB all suited up for the hike.

This is the first time I've been hiking out there since we moved back to Ashburn. During our previous tour here, we always saw some form of wildlife during our hikes around the reservoir - a fox, a beaver, box turtles, deer, geese, ducks. Today we didn't see any wildlife except for some distant ducks on the reservoir, but we saw lots of evidence of wildlife all around us.

Evidence of Beaver

Evidence of Deer

LOTS more Evidence of Deer

As much as I would have preferred for ES to have come with us on the hike, this was a great opportunity for me to have some one-on-one time with YB and talk about these things that tell us the wildlife live here. This is stuff that ES knows and remembers from our hikes here before, but YB was too young then to understand or remember it. I think it was a pretty good educational walk for YB today.

Panorama shot looking east to the reservoir.

I love these cedar forests in Virginia.

I thought these were pretty. I don't know what they are, but I know at least one of you who will tell me what it is.

Going for the geocache, I tried to take us on a direct approach. That didn't work out so well. We encountered a couple of obstacles along the way - in the form of small streams flowing into the reservoir. They were iced over, and YB got a kick out of tapping on the ice with our hiking sticks. That made the hike in a bit longer than anticipated because I had to hike upstream aways until it got narrow enough to step over.

Obstacle.

Even so, we really enjoyed the walk together. There was a period of time where we were trudging through some wet marshy grass, so I picked YB up and put him on my shoulders for a bit.

Self-Portrait with the Reservoir in the Background

At one point, YB declared, "Daddy, soon I will be big and you won't have to carry me on your shoulders anymore." He said it in a very cheerful tone of voice, and his implied meaning was he was excited that he wouldn't be a burden and could do it himself. At the same time, my heart kinda sank. I already felt sad that his older brother would rather go to a friend's house than come with us, and now here was my youngest son proclaiming he wasn't going to need me anymore either. :-(

YB with the Geocache
(and the little plastic dinosaur he took from it)

When I told my wife about this conversation, she asked, "So do you want another one?" No, no, I'm not saying that. Our two boys are a handful as it is. I just wish the two that we have weren't growing up so quickly.

How the heck did he get to be so tall???

On a positive note, after we found the geocache, it was a pretty quick walk out, bypassing all the obstacles we went around on our way in. YB was very impressed by how quickly I got us back to the car after it took us so long hiking in. He declared, "Daddy, you're AMAZING!"

That was a good ego boost and a good way to end the hike. Plus, our hike received YB's "favorite part of the day" proclamation just before we said his bedtime prayers.

Giving Thanks

I'm thankful for...

- My wonderful wife
- My two awesome boys
- A very loving and supportive extended family
- Good shipmates and friends and the difficult challenges we've overcome together
- Being an American
- A good church
- A great house
- Food to feed my family and clothes to keep us warm
- A secure job and a good paycheck in this troubled economy
- Good schools for both of my boys

We were blessed today to be invited to Thanksgiving dinner at the house of some friends from church. It was an awesome dinner with all the fixings. My favorite dish was the sweet potato praline casserole.

After dinner, we all went for a walk around the neighborhood to help the food settle and make room for dessert.

Ode to an After Dinner Walk.

Mmmm, full belly - tryptophan flowing in my veins,

Ahh, the crisp fresh air - biting my cheeks, can't feel my nose,

White picket fences and seasonal decorations - orange and yellow gords,

Bare trees - dark silent sentinels silhouetted against the sky,

Brown leaves under our feet - crunch, crunch, crunch,

Geese flying in a vee-formation high overhead - distant honking,

Quiet conversation and laughter amongst friends,

And my seven year old plays Nintendo...

While I wish I could have convinced him to enjoy the walk with us without the distraction of electronic entertainment, I figured I had three choices.

a) Refuse to let him bring the Nintendo, he refuses to go on the walk and stays at the house.

Result:
+ Content son.
- Son doesn't get exercise.
+ I enjoy peaceful walk with friends.
- Son doesn't enjoy or learn to appreciate the beauty of the season.

b) Refuse to let him bring the Nintendo, he refuses to go on the walk, and I drag him kicking and screaming on the walk against his will.

Result:
- Unhappy son.
+ Son gets exercise.
- My ears hurt from listening to his crying and whining.
- Son still doesn't enjoy or learn to appreciate the beauty of the season.

c) Allow him to bring Nintendo, he goes on walk.

Result:
+ Content son.
+ Son gets exercise.
+ I enjoy peaceful walk with friends.
- Son still doesn't enjoy or learn to appreciate the beauty of the season.

I figured 3 out of 4 ain't bad.

Ahhhh, Nintendo by the fire.

Kids say the darnedest things

ES to LW: "Mommy, if I'm not allowed to pick my nose, then how come can Daddy pick his?"

Uhhhh...

I had an itch.

More Ninjas

Man, if you thought the Tobasco Ninjas were scary...

The past two mornings in a row, I've been assaulted by the Underwear Bandits.


Before you get too grossed out, YES, it's at least CLEAN underwear.

I look forward to seeing this up on the big screen when Uncle Jon makes the slide show for YB's wedding someday.

Unintended Consequences Part III

One of my favorite parts about being a Dad is the conversations I have with ES about American history and U.S. Government. Back during our Wiliwilinui Ridge hike, ES told me he wants to be President someday. He asked me,

"Daddy, if I'm president, can I outlaw smoking?"

This sent us our conversation off on a tangent about federal versus state government and ways how the federal government can get the states to make laws. For an example, we discussed how the federal government wouldn't share its money for highway improvements unless the states made their drinking age 21. The states all wanted that money for their highways, so they made their drinking age 21. I told ES that he could do something similar. For instance, he could tell the states he has a bunch of money to share for improving schools and libraries, but he wouldn't share the money unless the state wrote a law that banned smoking. He liked that idea.

Anyway, one of the unintended consequences of these discussions with ES came to light recently when we had some friends over for dinner. ES wanted to be a hermit and lock himself in his room. I told him that was rude and he wasn't allowed to lock himself in his room. He felt he was being oppressed, so he drafted up his own Declaration of Independence and presented it to me that night just before dinner.

(Aside: I meant to take a picture of it to post on my blog, but I got distracted through the course of dinner and forgot, and now I don't know where it is.)

Yeah, so, my son is declaring his independence at the great age of 7 years old.

Is this foreshadowing some more egregious form of civil disobedience in the years to come? I just can't WAIT to see what he's like as a teenager!

Oh, and I almost forgot: That night will go down in history as the first time I've heard my wife quote Monty Python. After I told her about ES's declaration of independence, she said:

'elp! 'elp! I'm bein' oppressed!

Funny thing was, she didn't even realize she had done it. It's become ingrained in her psyche. She's been assimilated by the borg nerd!

Oof.

Parenthood Gripe of the Day:

There's nothing like a swift, sudden "hi-YAH!" punch from your rambunctious 4-year old at a perfect right-angle directly between your legs into your crotch to send shockwaves of pain through your body and really wake you up in the morning. Maybe this is just his subtle way of telling us he doesn't want any younger siblings.

Reminds me of a recent video on the Fail Blog.

Moving Gripe of the Day:

Hooray, I can print again!

Before the movers came to pack up our stuff in Hawaii, I specifically packed up my laser printer in the original box it came in with the pieces of styrofoam specially designed to hold the printer in place inside the box. I also specifically packed the print-server in the box with the printer so that I wouldn't have to hunt for it on the Virginia side of our move.

A month later, I saw the printer box come off the moving truck here in Virginia, and I felt a sense of satisfaction and reassurance that I had the ability to print again.

Um... not so much.

I opened the printer box to find that the packers had removed the specially designed styrofoam and wrapped the printer up in packing paper.

And there was no print server in the box.

This meant I had NO printing capability. Besides the convenience the print server provides by allowing us to print from any of our computers on the LAN, it also serves a very important function. My laser printer is an old but very reliable Epson Action Laser 1500 with the old style printer cable.

My wife and I both use laptops now.

Newer model laptops don't have the old standard printer cable plug. They just assume nowadays everyone has USB. ...or a print server.

So now my unpacking quest has been to find the print server. WHO KNOWS what THAT box will be labeled. Any guesses? Like my previous quest to find the iron, the printer and print server were in the closet under the stairs with the iron. You'd think maybe it would have been in the same box with the iron, but no...

Thank goodness our Unaccompanied Baggage (UB) shipment arrived on Thursday.

Aside for anyone not knowing what an UB shipment is: When you move overseas with the military, you get three shipments. Your Household Goods (HHG) shipment is the bulk of your stuff that you are taking with you to your next duty station. Your Non-Temporary Storage (NTS) shipment is stuff you don't think you'll have room for overseas and you're either sending to or receiving back from storage. Then, you get an Unaccompanied Baggage (UB) shipment that's limited to like one or two thousand pounds.

Some people call the UB shipment the "express" shipment because it's a limited weight and supposedly travels via AIR instead of SHIP, so THEORETICALLY it should get there faster than your HHG shipment. So far in our two overseas shipments, neither UB shipment has earned the title of "express." End Aside.

We packed out our HHG shipment near the beginning of August so that it would get across the ocean and meet us in Virginia pretty close to our arrival date. We got the Aloha Furniture and loan locker stuff for the kitchen, and we kept a small amount of stuff at the house to send in the UB shipment just before we left Hawaii - stuff like the bicycle I was riding to work, one of our satellite dish receivers, the X-Box, etc.

Now getting back to the printer story...

We had sent my printer and the print server ahead in the HHG shipment, and kept my wife's printer (okay, so I just think of it as "my wife's" printer because we bought it to replace her old printer that she had before we were married) to send in the UB shipment.

Since our UB shipment arrived this week, we at least have my wife's printer that's a newer HP with a USB cable.

The search continues for the print server though. I just had to share my frustration with the packing company who apparently didn't like my printer packing job.

Again, keeping things in perspective, if this is the worst of the stories that come out of this move, then it'll be a pretty good move. Overall, this move has still been MUCH better than some of our moves inside CONUS.

Travel Log: We Made It!

As you can see from the comment on yesterday's post, my wife was up way before the butt crack of dawn and excited to get on the road today for the last leg of our trip. She was VERY nice and let me sleep in until 7:30 though. (Thank you, Sweetie!)

First thing we saw on the news when we walked into the hotel lobby for breakfast was school closures and delays.

Huh???

Did it snow???

Nope. Fog. Most of Ohio was fogged in with ZERO visibility, and all the schools were on like a 2 hour delay.

By the time we got on the road, it had cleared up enough to drive normally, but the sky was overcast. That was odd. I mean, besides the fact that I haven't seen an overcast sky since... Well over 15 months ago (unless you count the vog). Today was the first day in our trip that I haven't worn my sunglasses from the moment we stepped out of the hotel. I didn't have to put them on until about 10:30 as we drove across PA.

My favorite season is autumn. I love the leaves changing color and swirling around behind your car. I love the crisp chill in the air warning you that winter is coming.

Up until today, we've seen no signs of autumn. It's been bright, sunny, and warm all the way across country. We've worn shorts and t-shirts every day and every night.

Then we crossed the state line into PA today and it's like mother nature flipped a switch and declared "let it be autumn!" The trees were all sorts of shades of red, yellow, and orange. We stopped at a service area on the PA Turnpike to get some lunch and our teeth all started to chatter as we got out of the car in our t-shirts and shorts. Everyone else around the rest stop was wearing jeans and sweatshirts.

Our Rest Stop PT Program took a turn for the worse today. One second we were all laughing and giggling while doing our typical family race around the rest stop. The next second, YB was a crying splattered mess, crumpled in a heap on the concrete sidewalk.

I guess Crocs aren't so good for running, eh?

He was bleeding from his right knee and his left elbow, had scrapes on his other elbow and knee, and he has quite a big red lump on his forehead. He was crying for a while, but thankfully (a) our good friend Becky told him that M&M's make boo-boos feel better, and (b) we happened to have some M&M's in the car.

Too bad the M&M's don't make the snot come out of the shoulder of Daddy's shirt where said little boy was crying on it, but I guess that just comes with the territory, right?

Pet Peeve: Construction areas with really low speed limits but no actual construction work going on. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about saving lives and obeying the speed limit in the construction zones when those guys are out there. It just really annoys me when we have to drive slow for no actual reason.

I was really impressed in Indiana yesterday. They actually have a cool thing where the construction speed limit signs say "when blinking" and have a light that they turn on when they're actually working. Since it was Sunday, we still flew through at normal speed because nobody was actually working and the lights weren't blinking.

Today though, we went through miles upon miles upon miles of construction zones in PA with ridiculously low speed limits and ZERO work going on. It drives me nuts.

Overall, the drive went very smoothly today, and we finally arrived and laid eyes upon our new house about 4:30.

Home Sweet Home

We had to wait a few minutes for the realtor to arrive with our keys, so we walked around to check out the back yard.

...and met a couple of our new neighbors.

After we got inside, the boys explored every square inch of the house from top to bottom in about 30 seconds. I don't even think my wife and I were done receiving the keys, garage door openers, and introductory remarks from the realtor in the foyer by the time the boys had seen the entire house.

Naturally, after two weeks of being cooped up in the car, the boys ran around the house like maniacs. Our realtor seemed worried they were going to break something. (a) The house is empty, what're they gonna break? (b) It's not like we're looking at a potential house to buy that we don't own yet. We OWN IT. It's OURS. If they break it, we'll fix it.

YB found himself a perch.
(Note the SpongeBob bandaid on the right knee)

Overall first impressions: LOVE the house! It's a lot bigger in person than it was in the pictures. VERY happy overall with everything we saw in the house today.

It was funny though. Our realtor was REALLY nervous. She was WAY more nervous about our first impressions of the house than we were. I mean, what would we do if we DIDN'T like it?!?! We bought it, so it's ours whether we like it or not, right?

Then again, if you can sue McD's for the coffee being hot, I suppose...

Tonight we met our long-time close friends Corey and Vince for dinner, then went to Target to stock up on some basic stuff like toilet paper, paper towels, hand soap, etc. The movers are coming to deliver our household goods (HHG) tomorrow! Hooray! We have to be there by 8 a.m. to wait for the movers though, and of course, they won't show up until like noon I bet. We'll see.

Statistics for Today:

16 Number of States we drove through in the past 16 days (OR, CA, NV, AZ, UT, (AZ again), NM, CO, KS, MO, IL, IN, OH, WV, PA, MD, VA)

4,830 Number of miles driven on our trip across country

4,831 Number of dead bugs on the front of our car. Maybe we should donate (loan) our car to some school science fair experiment and let some kid try to identify how many bugs are splattered on our car and which states they came from.

Time for a car wash.

Travel Log: Illinois, Indiana, Ohio

Getting caught up on my blog of our trip across country...

View of the bright morning sun through the splattered bugs on our windshield.

We left St. Louis this morning. The boys had previously not expressed any desire to go see the arch. We drove by and took some pictures, but continued on eastbound because my wife and I had already seen it from the inside during our drive across country in 1999.

Driving east on I-70 with the Arch in the background.

Then it was strangely quiet in the back seat for a while.

I looked back to see ES hiding under his blanket. I asked him what was wrong.

No response.

So I left him alone. Then he took the blanket off his head and sat there sulking. So I asked him what was wrong again.

He grumbled that he wanted to go up in the arch.

He was so mad about not going up in the arch, that he lashed out with one of those angry tantrum statements, "You never do anything for me! We never do anything that I wanna do!"

At that instant, my wife earned sainthood, and I earned a couple of very nasty bite marks in my tongue. My instinct was to lash out with anger against anger and start listing the things that we've done for him and call him and ungrateful little snot.

Luckily for all of us, my awesome wife was much quicker on the draw. While my blood was coming to a boil and steam was about to spew forth from my ears, my wife spoke in the sweetest, nicest, most gentle voice possible, apologized to my son for not taking him up in the arch and used some expert parenting skills to divert his attention to other things like his Nintendo DS.

Lunch in the Middle of Nowhere, Illinois

We stopped for lunch at a DQ off the freeway in Casey, Illinois. Walking into the DQ in Casey was similar to walking into the Crazy R back in Goodland, Kansas. The place was PACKED with locals, and there were two and three way conversations going on back and forth between tables about deer hunting, chopping wood, combine harvesters, and local sports. When we walked in the door, it got a little quiet and they all sorta stared at us for a few seconds before carrying on their conversations.

My poor wife was sitting with her back to some people talking about deer hunting and got to listen to them describe the shooting, following the blood trail, and other gorey details she didn't care to hear while she tried to eat her lunch.

The rest of the drive across Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio was pretty uneventful. We stopped for dinner at Panera in Columbus, Ohio, and spotted an unusual dinner guest there.

Who me?

This guy was looking for handouts from people sitting on the patio, and when nobody would give him any, he went and helped himself to the trash can next to the front door of the restaurant.

Tangent: He made me think of RJ from Over the Hedge. Man that's a funny movie! If you haven't seen it, I HIGHLY recommend it! End of Tangent

Tomorrow is THE BIG DAY. It's our LAST long day of driving across country and we finally get to see the house that we've been the proud owners of for one month now. I'm actually surprised my wife fell asleep - she's SO excited she's beside herself! I expect she's going to be up at the butt-crack of dawn and kicking our butts out of bed to get on the road as soon as possible in the morning, so I need to go to bed.

Okay, time to hit the rack. G'night all.

Travel Log: Missouri

Saturday morning, we started off with a treat the boys have been begging for since we got back on the mainland. I don't know why they don't make fresh donuts anywhere in Hawaii.


Next, we headed over to Whiteman AFB where my aunt arranged for us to go on a tour of a B-2 Spirit bomber. They also had a T-38 and an A-10 Thunderbolt out for us to check out. We were allowed to bring cameras, but we weren't allowed take pictures in certain places.

ES in front of the Spirit of America.

It was a really awesome, informative tour. I learned A LOT. Unfortunately, the boys were hot and whiney and bored - I thought they would have eaten this up.

Things I learned during the tour:

- Each of the B-2's are named after a state (Spirit of Alaska, Spirit of Washington, Spirit of Missouri, etc), with the exception of two: Spirit of America and Spirit of Kitty Hawk.

This was the view looking across the tarmac at the Spirit of Kitty Hawk peeking out of her hanger. Notice how each hanger had a painting to the left of the door with the name of the bomber and a silouette of its namesake state.

- They can only afford to fly the B-2 for proficiency about twice per month, so the pilots fly the T-38s six to eight times per month to maintain their flying skills.

T-38

Spirit Chaser (on the cockpit of the T-38)

CAPT B explains the T-38 controls to ES.

- The USAF does the same sort of dual investigation process that the Navy does following an accident (one for legal and punishment purposes and a "safety" investigation to really get down to why it happened and preventing it from ever happening again).

- As with any major accident in the submarine force, there was a major case of switch-theory involved in the B-2 crash in Guam (several things had to go wrong in series to lead up to the accident, and it's just mind boggling that they all lined up the way they did to result in the crash).

The Colonel (Wing Commander) explains how a B-2 flies and what caused the B-2 crash in Guam.

- There are no bunks or cots on the plane. The crew trains in long endurance techniques, and they have flight surgeons that plan out for them when they should take 20 minute power naps and when they should eat and what they should eat.

Self Portrait with YB on my shoulders in front of the A-10

Me and my boys by the A-10
(Picture taken by Aunt Ruth)

We also got to see two A-10's taxi in from the runway with the canopies open. The pilots waved to us and we waved back.

The tour was absolutely awesome and I learned a lot. That was a once in a lifetime opportunity. (Thank you Aunt Ruth!)

After the tour, we grabbed some lunch and then tried to find a geocache in Knob Noster State Park. We got to within about 450 feet of the cache, but the GPS was pointing across a lake, and we didn't see any easy way around it. Had to post a DNF (Did Not Find) for that one. Too bad. It was still a really pretty park.

Hmmm... to bushwhack or not to bushwhack?

We gassed up the car while we were on base. I've been getting between 23 and 25 mpg as we've been crossing the long flat stretches of highway out here.

We also found a $50 Sirius receiver in the BX, so we picked it up. It's been SO nice listening to Sirius Channel 22 First Wave and Channel 66 Spirit.

Kansas versus Missouri

Driving across Missouri was interesting. Like Kansas, it was very flat with lots of farmland. There was one big difference that stood out in my mind though. In Kansas, it seemed like there were pro-l1fe and ant1-abort1on billboards in between every exit. In Missouri, every freeway exit had your standard blue signs -

Lodging Next Exit...

Gas Next Exit...

Food Next Exit...

Adu1t Bookstore / Adu1t Video Next Exit...

I'm serious! In between every exit was at least one billboard advertising the p0rn shop at the next exit, and as you got to the exit you would see big signs that just said "ADU LT" to tell you where the p0 rn shop was. What the heck?!?! I'm assuming there had to be some difference in state laws between Kansas and Missouri, because the difference was remarkable and very noticable. Is there really enough demand for p0 rn in Missouri to have a shop at EVERY freeway exit????

(Aside: There are some intentional typos above, changing a few characters here and there so I don't get a lot of weirdos coming to my blog through Google searches for p0 rn).

Missouri Rest Rooms

The other thing that really threw me for a loop in Missouri was the restrooms at the rest stops. They had automatic hand washing stations. It was a hole in the wall you just stuck your hands in. The motion sensor detected your hands were in the hole.

It squirted some liquid soap on my hands.

It turned the water on and sprayed my hands.

It stopped the water and started blowing air on my hands.

Now, here I have to pause for a second and explain that I don't like the air hand dryers. If given a choice between the paper towels or the air dryers in a restroom, I'll always take the paper towels. It's faster. The air dryers NEVER get my hands completely dry unless I stand there for like two cycles of the dryer.

Okay, resume story...

I stood there with my hands getting blown dry in the automatic hand washing station. Suddenly, the air stopped blowing, and much to my dismay, there's NO time delay after the dryer stops to allow you to pull your hands out. The dryer stopped. The motion sensor detected that my hands were still in the hole and immediately squirted soap on my hands again. Geesh! Now I gotta stand there through ANOTHER cycle of the water and then the air drying, and I got my hands even LESS dry than usual because I pulled them out early for fear of getting squirted with soap a third time.

20 Questions

One of ES's new favorite games to play in the car is Twenty Questions. We never really count the questions or stop at twenty though, so what do you call it then? "Ask-questions- until- you- give- up- because- your- 7- year- old- has- stumped- you"? He's been reading all these non-fiction DK Reader Level 3, 4, and 5 books about all sorts of things around the planet like this one. Yesterday, he really threw me a loop and stumped me with "Argentina."

St. Louis

We kinda got the feeling St. Louis didn't want us last night. The GPS told us to take I-64 east, but I-64 east was totally blocked off for construction. We got off the highway and started wandering around the city streets trying to figure out an alternate route, and the GPS just kept telling us, "Make a U-Turn... Make a U-Turn... Make a U-Turn..." and kept trying to reroute us back onto I-64 eastbound.

We finally figured out a work around and went down to I-44 and drove into St. Louis. Now the GPS told us to get off on Jefferson Street, which made sense since that's the street our hotel was on. We got off the highway and tried to turn up Jefferson Street to drive the whole two blocks to our hotel, and this is what we found...

Of course, that's a bridge going over a bunch of railroad tracks in the picture, so we had to follow a detour route several blocks down to another bridge over the railroad tracks then up a few blocks then over a few blocks and then back toward the hotel again. Of course, we got back on Jefferson and had to defy the signs telling us the street was closed and there was no outlet because our hotel was ON that street, immediately adjacent to that bridge they're working on. Aye caramba!

We finally made it to the hotel and then went over to Union Station where there are a bunch of restaurants. ES saw the Hard Rock Cafe and got excited, so we let him have his choice for dinner.

YB thought it was really cool there was a stained glass Elvis next to our table. We tried to get him to do his Elvis dance that Uncle Jon taught him, but he wouldn't perform for us.

Statistics for Saturday:

50,000 Number of pounds of ordnance the B-2 can carry.

172 Number of feet in the B-2 Spirit's wingspan.

44 Number of hours duration of the longest combat mission flown by a B-2 bomber (from Missouri to Afghanistan and back).

4 Number of feet long I would estimate the black snake was I encountered while searching for a geocache at the edge of the wilderness at a rest stop in Missouri. It was equally as startled by me as I was of it, and it slithered away faster than a lightning bolt. It was a good thing LW and the boys didn't come with me for this geocache because they would have absolutely wigged out running back to the car screaming bloody murder.