Another One Bites the Dust

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Yawn

This will be me tonight. I have a 24 hour shift coming up. All I get to do is sit in a little office and enjoy the company of another sgt, and an officer for 24 hours straight with no sleep. Oh joy!

Short and Sweet

I don't have much to say. I had a pretty busy week, lot's of maintenance going on. We are leave for the field on Saturday until the 5th of October. I am going to my first F.A.R.P.(Forward Arming Refueling Point) It's where the helicopters land to get loaded up with ammo and missiles. The pilots are going to be shooting rockets and the 30mm gun while we're there and then hellfire missiles the last three days. I am looking forward to learning a lot but not being in the field. That part isn't so much fun.

And like last week this week is going to be just as if not more busy because we have to pack everything up for the field as well as finish up any work on the aircraft we are doing and do the daily inspections on the aircraft. Also we just got two do privates in the shop so it looks like I am going to be doing some training with them to try and get them up to speed on the basic stuff they need to know.

All this work gives me an excuse to not be as up to speed on my postings this week right?

The Beginning of Another Week

Isn't it tough going back to work on a Tuesday after a long three day weekend, especially after a very strenuous and difficult week of not working? I know it is for me.

On Saturday we had to take a bus back from our field sanitation class. We knew it was going to be a long trip because of the Korean holiday of Chusok. Every one in Seoul was going south to visit family so the roads were really congested. This trip should have taken about 4 hours, instead it took about 7 hours with one stop in the middle. This is what the roads looked like. As mentioned in a previous post the driving in Korea is terrible too. At one point our bus driver almost killed a man who missed his exit on the highway so he decided to dart across 4 lanes of traffic to make it. All of the drivers seem to like hitting their brakes at random times when there is no one around too. Very annoying.

This was taken on a previous bus ride. Not quite sure what they are there for. These were the only two towers I saw. There wasn't any wires running from them either. I thought the shape of them was cool though.

This was at the same spot where I saw the Korean mime and fro. It was like some big festival or something.

 

 

I can't remember where I took this but I thought it was funny and a good Korenglish picture.

Shutterfly

  I am finally back at wonderful Camp Eagle after a long long long bus ride back. But that is another post. I was going to post some pictures and other stuff but since I am getting ready for bed I am just going to do this quick post. I recently bought a external hard drive and it had a advertisement for Shutterfly.com on it. You may already know about this site but I think it's cool. You can upload your pictures to the site for safe keeping  and the first day you sign up you qualify to get 50 free 4x6 prints and a 11x14 poster. Also periodically they send you emails with free stuff. I just got a 20 page photo book which would have normally cost $30. All I had to pay was shipping. Not to bad if you ask me.

The Nameless Post

It's been one of those few days.  I have been at Camp Casey since Sunday afternoon. Let me begin by saying that I hate driving in Korea. I would rather have to drive through 5 feet in snow in a raging blizzard then drive in Korea again. It wouldn't have been so bad I guess if I knew where I was going, didn't have to make a 3 1/2 hour trip in 2 hours, and not had 7 passengers. Let's just say I drove for about an hour then pulled into a rest stop for a change of drivers. 

I am going to wait until I get back to Eagle and a good internet connection to post more about the battalion flyaway (It was awesome people, I got a lot to tell about it) and my week here at Casey. For know I am just posting some random pictures I have been meaning to put up.

These were at a mini golf course I went to.

 

 

 

 

 

A Korean with a horse mask on. Don't ask me what he was doing.

 

 

 

 

 

Have you ever seen a Korean with a fro? You have now.

 

 

 

That still doesn't make me feel any safer.

 

 

 

 

This is Pfc. Morrow re-enacting the black knight scene from Monty Python and the quest for the holy grail.

 

 

 

 

Pfc. Sandridge losing his fight to the kung fu panda.

 

 

 

If you are wondering that is water around the mimes head. We do encounter some strange things here in Korea. 

Show of Force

We launched a total of 19 out of our 24 aircraft today. They did it twice today. once at 1400 and a second time around 1700. They are going to do it again tomorrow. It was a very cool thing to see, extremely intimidating if your the enemy.

Yeah, Agile Mobile, and Hostile!

It's the Weekend Already?

Wow, that three day week went by fast. I can't believe it's the weekend already. I haven't even finished all my posts about last weekend yet. Just a heads up, all next week I am going to Camp Casey for a field sanitation class. I am taking my laptop with me but I don't know if I am going to have internet access. Plus Casey is one of the better bases with lots to do so I could be busy next week. Which means plenty more to post about.

I have to work tomorrow and I leave on Sunday. I wasn't looking forward to working tomorrow because on the weekends if we have to work we just go in in support if the flights in case something happens and we need to fix the problem so the aircraft can take off. Most of the time we go in for maybe an hour then leave again. However tomorrow is going to be cool.

On Wednesday the ROK air force did a "show of force" with their helicopters(which are mostly old Hueys). This means they had all of their operational helicopters flying in one big formation. They still only amounted to about 12 aircraft. Well, not wanting to be outdone by the some weak little army like the ROK, we are going to show them who is the best army in the world with a real show of force. We are going to be launching every flyable aircraft in our fleet at one time tomorrow. We have a fleet of 24 aircraft of which only about 6 are grounded. YEAH! Get Some! Just imagine this but bigger and better.

I am quite excited about this. Very awesome picture opportunity.

I also have some pictures of the sunsets here lately. I don't think I have ever seen sunsets like these back home. It is awesome to see God's creation like this.

   

I am going to try to post pictures of the mass takeoff before I leave on Sunday, but if I don't I hope everyone has a great week.

The Weekend Part Deux

I am not scared of spiders although I will give credit to the spiders living in South Korea. Some of them are big enough and build webs big enough that the could catch birds. And I am not joking. Spiders are everywhere here.

This means you have to watch where you are walking with great caution. So begins the story. I was walking up to the px on Saturday casually minding my own business. I took the back way to the px which leads underneath a small tree with several low hanging branches. I am always careful in this spot because I have seen several spiders here before. However this time I was in a rush to get some aloe to put on my sunburn and then catch a bus which means I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been.

Needless to say I walked headfirst right into a spiders web. Delicious. I preceded to frantically wipe the web of of me and do a thorough pat down of my head making sure I didn't have any visitors there. Nothing. Good. So I continue on my journey thinking what a nice day it, wait, why does it feel like there is something crawling down my arm. Aaaagggghh! There's a vicious blood sucking creature on me! After several long seconds of panic I decided the best course of action would be to simply flick the fowl beast of of me.

The flicking plan worked to get the little infidel of me but he managed to shoot a web from my arm to control his fall. Oh, It was on then. I began doing a dance of death trying to stomp the beast however he was doing the dance of survival just as well. Luckily no one was around to see me embarrassing myself. I stepped on him once and I thought I heard him say "ouch" but I could be mistaken.

After several minutes of this waltz my nemesis must have grew tired because I was successful in ending the little vermin's life. I then threw my hands up and proclaimed "I have killed the beast" much like Tom Hanks did in Castaway after he created fire. I was quite overjoyed.

So ended the epic battle. Later that night I managed to get this evidence of the size of spiders here.  

This guy was relaxing outside a window in the hall way. He was about the size of a small tarantula.

I can not wait until I get back home and the biggest spiders I have worry about are daddy long legs. Suddenly they don't seem to bad.

A Relaxing Weekend

Well I am back after a nice weekend. Back into the hectic life I sometimes lead over here. I didn't think I was going to have a lot to post about because it doesn't really seem like I did a whole lot. However when I looked at the pictures I took this weekend there was more then I thought. So I suppose I will do a couple posts instead of one long one.

My weekend started out at Caribbean Bay water park. The picture above is of the entrance in. They have it all done up so it almost seems like your in the Caribbean.

This is a giant skull (obviously) that filled with 2.5 tons of water and then dumped it out over everyone.

 

 

At one point I had to fend off an attack from this swashbuckling pirate. I felt like I was fighting Captain Jack Sparrow with awesome music playing in the background.

This is most of the park. I couldn't fit it all in one view. It seemed small but it was actually relatively large.

The rest of the entrance with pirate ship gates.

 

 

 

 

The pirate captain and a member of his trusty crew.

The gathering area right outside the front gates. There was men walking around the whole park all day dragging hoses to keep the ground wet.

 

 

The lighthouse right by the front gates.

Some flowers out front. I don't know what they are although they look familiar. I'm sure my dad knows though.

I wasn't really looking forward to going on this trip because I am not one big on amusement parks and there wasn't any of my friends that were going. I ended up not having such a bad time, I mean it was a day off of work right. I did come back looking like a tomato though. Yes, I did put on sun block, but I guess the sun in Korea can power through it.

That's all I got for know. Stay tuned for my story of getting caught in a giant spiders web and having to duel to the death to get out. Yes it was an interesting weekend.