Back in Beaufort

An update on the russian chick first.... I think she got the hint and stopped writing me. If she was for real I'd feel bad but odds are she wasn't. My third and final, at least for this year, tennis lessons started this week. There are some people that haven't ever taken the class but they haven't really split the class up into new and old. So it's been a little annoying doing the stuff the first timers have to do / listen to. But at least there is younger women to look at this time :) I also have the family reunion this weekend. So I have to drive up to my home town which is 4.5 hours one way. And a dumb ass uncle forgot to schedule the park on Saturday so we have to do it on Sunday so I have to drive back on Monday and work that same day.

Beaufort:

I was not very impressed with the new Marines we got. It was a combination of people from defunct squadrons and new Marines. Some of them even spent time in the gulf during the war and got a nice 14K gold medal given to every soldier / Marine in country at the time. All they did was sit in Bahrain (Sp?) and fix jets there. Oh well.... anyway there were more than our fair share of annoying Marines with them. To top it off because we were starting to get a little low on people someone decided to combine the two Avionics shops. So I got to know more people this way. We also got our first WM's (Women Marines) in this time frame. I got along with the black girl in Electric Shop but the other two I didn't really get to know.

We went back into the routine of deploying alot but this time to less exotic places like Bogue Field. We were in "Field Duty" for several of these deployments. This meant they could pay us less and we lived in sub standard housing. For bogue field they had these Huts with screens on the top half of the walls. They had a field runway with an arrestor hook. This allowed the pilots to practice landing on a short runway. The only positive about this deployment was that my brother and sister were both in the area, North Carolina. So I called my sister and had her pick me up on the weekend. They had this dive of a bar across the street from the field with 25 cent draft beer which was also helpful. They also had a mini exchange to buy little things.

We also got a dick of a OIC in this timeframe. He had a policy of everyone of his Marines must do a first class PFT. Now I never had nor ever did get a first class PFT. I usually got a high 2nd Class one. So he once made me run another PFT with the overweight guys about a week after the official one. Here it is at 1pm in about 95 degrees heat in South Carolina and he wants me to run in that crap. Well I put maximum effort into the pull ups and sit ups but a little over half way through the 3 mile run I was running real slow (due to lack of motivation) the ambulance guy asked me if I was alright (I lied and said no). So I caught the ambulance the rest of the way. I then talked my way out of "Failing" the PFT because I just took the thing and only did this to please my OIC. Needless to say I disliked this prick... he also made his day crew at bogue field to a bunch of exercises he recommended. Luckily I got night crew and Sgt Bohorques didn't want to do them anymore than I did.

Sgt Bohorques (Sp?) was a easy to like guy. He came to us from the Blue Angels and was very knowledgable. He also like computer games the same as I. So we got along. I observed that if he didn't like a person that he wasn't afraid to show that either... as my friend Fay noticed. I'm pretty sure he joined us just before the first west pac. He was a dark haired guy, skinny with a mostache. He had scar tissue up both thighs from some child hood accident. He loved to joke around and play pranks on people. Definitaly not your typical Sgt.

I also managed to volunteer to go to Top Gun twice. I think once before West Pac and once after. I usually got what ever I volunteered for. I can guess that this was because I was knowledgable and also a CDI. It was one of the better deployments. We only had two aircraft to look after so we just did nothing all day. When we got bored we would help other shops get their work done. The second Top Gun we had an incident though. Two guys in Avionics were helping Ordanance drop a center line fuel tank. Since support equipment wasn't available we typically used a method were four guys would interlock arms under the fuel tank and another guy would turn the bolt to release the tank. The tank was drained first because it carried 2800 lbs of fuel in it. Empty it only weighed about 200. Well on this particular tank the guy turned the bolt and the tank came crashing down on top of the two avionics guys arms, breaking them. It turns out the fuel valve had failed and the tank was already half full by the time they got around to dropping it. I was close enough to observe it and saw it roll on one guys arms. The other guy just got hurt but no broken bones. The back end was high up enough not to impact those guys.

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I forgot to mention two guys that stand out. Their names were MacLemore and LeBlanc. These two guys were the definition of shit bird Marines. They came to us with an attitude, like they were still living in civilian life. They did everything reluctantly and were lippy to just about everyone. LeBlanc was a carbon copy, in attitude, as Vanilla Ice. He was a wigger through and through and was teased by the rednecks in the shop. They were both cool when you didn't have to work with them but the problem is thats all they cared about. Needless to say both were kicked out of the Marines shortly after West Pac.

Well that's enough for tonight...

Back to Iwakuni

When we arrived back to Iwakuni I got word that my brother was in town. His squadron of was in town. I only managed to see him once or twice while we shared a 3 month overlap together there. We worked different shifts and he stayed on the other side of the base. But it was still cool to see a family member after all that time isolated overseas. My parents did give us each a calling card to call home with. That's all I ever used it for was to call them. My mom recently held that against me when we were fighting. They gave it to me and I only used it to call them. Does this mean I should feel guilty for using it? I guess I should let it go... but it just bugs me.

I did manage to get stuck on mess duty while there. Every lower ranking Marine had to spend time on it. It wasn't that bad though. {I hope I'm not repeating myself here :P } We had to wake up early and we had more freedom than the time at bootcamp. So it gave us a break from fixing jets for about a month.

I considered myself one of the best electricians we had by this point. I could debrief a pilot and fix just about anything that came my way. There were occasions where the problem took several days to find and fix. That often meant that night crew would work extra long hours to meet up with day crew the next morning. After a few of these we went to a mid-crew. That meant coming in at around 10pm and working until 7am. There was often little work to do during that time period. I was put on mid crew a few times over my years there. I got my Collateral Duty Inspector (CDI) after about my first year in the shop. This was only given to competant Marines and usually only to CPLs and above. But since the guarenteed CPLs screwed up the promotion process and I knew about everything I could know I was given one. This CDI meant that you would sign off work as complete and all tools accounted for. Only QA could sign off safety items, like flight controls.

So anyway on mid crew there were two CDIs usually so if we weren't busy one could go home early. The awesome thing about mids during our Japan trip was chow. They had a Japanese cook that took pride in his omelette making skills. For example if he was spreading out the egg and a hole occured he would make a little patch just so it was perfect. This was by far the best meal of the day.

Being in Avionics meant that there were about 75% chance you would have a slow day. But when we were busy it would stay like that for a while. I loved the challenge of finding a problem and fixing it. Often this meant that the tech pubs would leave you hanging on what the problem was and you still had to figure it out. Tech pubs were supposed to cover every scenario and tell you how to fix a problem. When we weren't fixing jets we had 14 day inspections {Plane wash} and other regular inspection to keep us busy. If we had nothing to do we would often reduce down to a skeleton crew and prevent boredom to the best of our abilities. Sometimes we would get hacky sack games going, play cards what ever kept our minds off the clock.

The return trip to the states meant that we left our aircraft in Japan and we all flew a chartered 747 back with a layover in Alaska. Alot of people took leave when we returned but only 25% were allowed to take leave at any given time. When we returned that meant we had a new barracks to live in... the squadron that left gave up their barracks to the one returning. The same also applied to their hanger and aircraft. So this usually meant our nicely maintained aircraft would be swapped for at least a couple of "hanger queens". This meant they had serious problems and would be seeing a flight for a while. We often would use them for parts until the parts that kept them from flying came in.

I guess I forgot to mention one thing. As many probably know that the Operation Desert Storm occured just prior to us leaving for that West Pac. Only two squadrons were chose to go to the gulf from each coast. So we had the pleasure of launching all the aircraft that stopped over from the west coast as well as the ones station at our base. This was due to the fact that the personel supporting them had already been flown out to meet the aircraft over there. This also meant that our west pac got delayed by three months and one squadron stayed 9 months and another stayed just 3 months. Then it was our turn. If the war had lasted long enough we would probably have rotated over there.

When we returned we had a few replacement Marines waiting for us. They're squadron was dismantled under Clintons force reductions. We also had alot of senior Marines get early outs. Everyone that was staying knew this was going to hurt us in the long run. The most obvious consequences was the fact that from this moment on, with 2 less squadrons in Beaufort we would be deploying alot more. Often 9 months out of the year we would be on the road.

Enough for now....

Okinawa

Okinawa:

We arrived at Kadena AFB in Okinawa which is a tropical island south of Japan. The island is rather hilly and has a great beach which the US military owns... Torii Beach. We had a squadron BBQ there once plus I went once just to check it out. The Kadena e-club was 1000 times better than the crap we put up with in Japan. But I still managed to go out into town a few times just to check it out. We had to get shuttled to work in a school bus every day because the Hanger was across the other side of the base. The barracks, which can be seen in the pic I will attach was pretty run down. For every four rooms there was a common room for the TV, which had our one english channel. The person on duty also had a vcr player which broadcast to every single room. So sometimes we were forced to watch crap I would never consider normally.... like faces of death :P

The air force was a little to agressive on their security there. They had these red lines painted on the runway / taxiways. If you ever crossed them they would come out of nowhere and pin you down and put a rifle to the back of your head. This was pretty dumb, sometimes you had like 6 feet from point a to b but because a stupid line was painted there you had to walk an extra 25 feet to walk around it.

We also had our first near accident here. A pilot went into full afterburners to take off and about a third of the way down the runway a piece inside one of the engines shot through the top of the aircraft leaving a big hole. Luckily he was able to bring it to a stop before reaching the end of the runway.

Speaking of pilots.... most of them tolerated your presence but weren't very warm. They had to keep their distance so you would respect their rank. But there were a few that were friendly to me. One guys name was Maj. Boodry. I once saw him out at a bar in Korea and he sat down with a few of us and shot the shit for an hour or so. They were forced to patrol the town to make sure us enlisted behaved.

We also ran our PFT here. I hated PFTs, I usually started preparing for them about a month before the fact. In this case I started prepping as soon as I got word that we would be having one while on the island. Luckily they had a nice 1/4 mile track across the street from the barracks. Unfortunately there is no flat cross country tracks so our 3 mile run had a little bit of a hill to climb. Running was my least favorite activity, but I trained the most for it so I knew I could pass. I prepared by starting out at a mile and working my way up to 3 miles over the course of the preparing. I would run every other day to give my body a rest between. It worked out good there in Okinawa despite the terrain as I posted one of my best run times 23:35 which is real good for me. But as my luck would have it the pull up bars were slick and I slipped off after about 7 pull ups keeping me in the 2nd Class range. If I would have gotten my average I would have made 1st class for the first time.

I also continued my training on the use of stick shift vehicles here. The only thing that saved me here was a very friendly clutch as some of the traffic lights forced you to stop at a steep incline which can be very tricky when switching from brake and clutch and gas at the same time.

After about 5 weeks we headed back to Iwakuni.

Thats enough for today....

Iwakuni Part II

My sister IM'd me last night. It was a brief conversation but she started by saying I was brave to be responsible for her daughter Alex, for the weekend of the concert. Without going into alot of details for public consumption....

I told her that I take each individual on my own analysis. Just because she can't get along with her it's not going to change my views on her. But of course she doesn't listen to me and is set in her ways. She expects her daughters to act like her but doesn't take into account they are individuals and if they don't think like you there isn't always a "fix" for them. I think that is what it boils down to in the end. I'm no psycologist but that's my assessment.

Iwakuni:

Hopefully I don't mix my two trips to Iwakuni. I'm trying to mentally seperate the two trips but it's hard after all these years. I do know that I spent time on mess duty on both trips. But this time, aside from the early rise, it wasn't as bad as boot camp. It put a crimp into going out due to the early start but that's about it.

During our time in Iwakuni we would have mini-deployments to other countries. Our first trip was to Osan, Korea. I immediatly fell in love with the place. I went out to the bars every single night. The women were nice to me and I actually hooked up with an older lady there. She was in her mid 30's and I was 21. I asked her to dance one night at a bar. She was to old to be a drinky girl but she still worked for a bar. Anyway we hit it off, she taught me to dance that night and I've loved dancing ever since then. She did have a slutty, ugly, sidekick and the two of them hung out together to protect each other. I found myself trying to follow her conversations with her friend as they spoke in korean. I think I spooked her because she asked me once if I knew Korean. I think you can get the jist of a conversation without knowing the details if you watch people. One of the nights we hung out her friend hooked up with an air force guy. Well the girl I was with didn't want to leave her friend alone with him. So I agreed to accompany them up to the hotel room he paid for. So there we are the four of us in one bed. Well this didn't stop the guy from getting what he paid for right next to us :P Apparently he couldn't concentrate and finished the deed in the bathroom with the girl. I found it ammusing that the guy who paid for the room was forced to do this. I never had sex with her during our brief time together, on the first trip to Korea. I left korea never expecting to see her again.

The city right outside of the base was filled with about 6 streets lined with merchants and bars. The merchants had good deals on everything from leather jackets, to pirated software, to other clothing. My girl there ended up buying me a jacket that was hand stitched with some graphics. I also bought me some software while I was there. You even got a nice copy of the manual to go with it. The bars mostly had a stage for the girls working there to take turns and dance solo in a bathing suit. A dance floor for the public was also available. When they weren't dancing they would circulate the bar and try to get you to buy them a juicy. So they are labeled "Juicy Girls". The beer of choice over there was "OB Beer" and the liquor of choice was Soju. Both of these were cheep and cost about 2500 Won. As opposed to the juicy girls drinks which cost you 15000 Won. Needless to say it's hard to get tired of this stuff, especially when the girls check you out whenever you walk in the place. I'm not exactly used to that.

When Korea was done we briefly went back to Iwakuni for a break but we knew where we would be heading next. We would be heading to Kadena AFB, Okinawa.

To be continued.... {I have to get back to work}

Iwakuni

Well it's official, I'm 99% sure the Russian chick is a scam. She finally asked for money in the manner of all of the Russian scam websites said she would. I haven't let her on to this as of yet. I just told her in a few emails that it wasn't a good time to come over but she doesn't read my emails anyway.

I've started to scan in my pictures of my days in the USMC so hopefully as relevant ones get scanned I'll include one in the blog as I just did for the Millington one.

Beaufort:

My first overseas trip was upon me in early 1991. They call this a WestPac and a squadron is sent over there to stay for 6 months. I volunteers for chase crew and this meant that a small group would follow the aircraft on their voyage over to Japan. We tagged along to maintain the aircraft if anything critical arose and to launch the aircraft before we left. Unfortunately this meant we would be flying via C-130. Our first leg was from Beaufort to the Los Angeles area and took about 8 hours. There was a USMC base there at the time. We spent the night there on base and left in the morning. I found that chase crew meant very little daylight hours for us. Our next leg of the journey would be to Hawaii and it was the shortest trip it took about 6 hours to get there. These trips were basically filled with a combination of playing cards and finding a comfy place to sleep. It was amazing that we could sleep the majority of the trip and still be tired enough to sleep that night. Again Hawaii was met at dusk so I didn't get to see much of the island. I did manage to look up my friend from A & C school while I was there. The chick I left to MEPS with from Traverse City wasn't around so I didn't get to see her this trip. Our next leg was to Wake Island and took about 8 hours to get to. I loved this little island but again we had very little daylight after we arrived. But I did manage to see a few of the old Japanese bunkers still left scattered about the island. The evening we spent at the one and only bar on the island where they mixed their drinks real strong. The final leg of the trip would be to our semi-permanent home at Iwakuni, Japan and this trip was the longest at about 9 hours.

When arriving at Iwakuni the rest of the squadron was already there waiting for the aircraft. So we, the trail crew got the day off to settle in. I moved into the barracks where I roomed with Birkmire. Birkmire was from Erie, PA and was a skinny dark haired guy who worked in Airframes. We became friends in Beaufort and we did go to Daytona Beach together once during a spring break. I also explored base a little that day. They had a shuttle bus from our end of the base to the main part of the base where the base exchange was. There was a little e-club right across the street from the barracks. They had the best cheeseburger there which was open after the bars closed. There was also a golf course, which i didn't use, and a movie theatre on our side of the base. The theatre showed only movies that were already out on video in the states. As far as TV goes there was only one channel for us English speaking people the rest were japanese channels. We worked out of a big old hanger that put our stateside hangers to shame. I pretty much got stuck on day crew for the duration of this WestPac. There was also another e-club over on the other side of base but it was to far to walk to and the busses stopped running at about 10pm. So you could get dropped off and walk back, which I did on a couple of occasions. But most of the time I either hung out at our quaint little e-club or ventured out in town.

Another person I hung out with that first WestPac was Rico. He was a mexican guy who was short as must have been real overweight before he joined the corps. He still had all his extra skin :P He was a mild mannered guy and drank at my pace. I, as a beginner drinker, stuck to wine coolers and candy drinks. The bartender at the quaint e-club took pride in his job and designed a new drink everytime we showed up. He would give it to us cheap to test his concoction.

The bars out in town were the place to be though. For one thing very little women showed up in the e-clubs, especially our quaint one. The drinks were dirt cheap on base and about $5 a drink out in town. But the clubs in town were packed with Marines and locals. It was $20 to get in the door and your first three drinks were included. Now this was quite a walk to get to these clubs. I seemed to do alot of walking on deployments. They had "Binjo Ditches" lining the sides of the streets. These were open sewage areas where water runoff from the streets would go. But they also doubled as public toilets for the locals and Marines.

That's enough for today, I'll continue this Iwakuni trip on the next installment.

Beaufort Part II

Well I sent an email to the Russian woman explaining I would like to slow things down and could she delay her visit till next year. She didn't respond to my statements yet. I had another one sided email from her this morning that reflected the fact that she didn't / couldn't read my email. I was surfing the web yesterday investigating all the possible scams that Russian Woman pull so I'm even more cautious now.

I also get to do a different job here at work. This means I actually get to do some work here, for a change. This might impact how much I write here since tennis usually follows work and I might forget to do an entry here and there.

Beaufort....

A month or so later we had another two Marines show up for duty in the Electric shop and by this time one of the Sgts had left for good. The first's name was Lcpl Ankrom from W. Virginia. He didn't have an accent and was a stocky Blonde guy who looked like a stereotypical jock type. The other guys name was Lcpl Garland who was another stocky dark haired guy who was married when he arrived. He also looked like another hard-ass jock type. I didn't really get along with these two because of their jock mentality. I was quickly becoming the senior guy as the old guys started leaving. Sproal also left during this time period leaving me the senior Lcpl in the shop. We also had a sister shop "Comm/Nav" that was under the Avionics umbrella. At first I didn't interact with these guys much but eventually became friends with a few of them.

In my first year we only had a few deployments, I believe the first one all of the new guys went on was in the 4th quarter of 1990. Alot of these deployments start to blur together so bear with me. I do remember one deployment we had to Oceana, VA that I had to room with a couple of Comm/Nav guys who I remain friends with to this day. John G. Fay III was one of these guys. When I first met him he was very Anal and a neat freek. I came into the room after a hard days work and he was in there Ironing everything that he had in his duffle bag. This included some of his magazines that arrived recently in the mail. Everything was neatly stacked in his wall locker. I remember getting ready for bed jumping in bed with the light still on. I covered my head with the blanket to help darken the room so I can sleep. I thought maybe he would get the hint and discontinue his ironing. He worked on night crew there and got out early so he was in no hurry to go to bed. As the minutes went on the anger grew, I started to lose it when he started stacking clothes on top of me instead of his neatly made bed. Since he was this buff guy and I'm non-confrontational I decided my first move should be to kick the clothes off me. After a few times he got the hint.

Also in this timeframe we had a deployment to Yuma, AZ. This was in mid 1991 and they stuck us in a run down barracks that had four people to a room. One of these four was Priest, my roommate back in Beaufort. Priest was a 6' Black man that was built like an offensive lineman in football. He always had trouble keeping his weight in check. He would wear rubber suits while biking and all that stuff just to take his weight off. The first thing we did when we arrived there was to go rent a refrigerator. I don't know how I got suckered into it but I ended up being one of the two guys carrying it back to the room. Priest proceeded to buy a bunch of alcohol to include some rum and mixers. The three guys i was rooming with spent the late afternoon talking and getting liquored up and left me all on my own, as I didn't drink. Well this was the infamous time / place where I started my quest to be a better drinker :) I mixed me a rum and mixer drink and polished it off. I then proceeded to go out to the E-Club. They let anyone drink there because we were so close to the Mexican border and they would rather us drink on base than in Mexico. Of course I got razzed as my roomates so me order a few drinks, as one gets pride in breaking in the "Innocent". Needless to say I got mildly drunk that night. One of the nights while we were there Priest was extremely drunk and decided he couldn't make it to the bathroom. First he headed for my wall locker and stubbed his toe, after realizing it wasn't a good spot he proceeded to the trash can to take a piss.

By this time my brother had been assigned to his own squadron. He was assigned to the ancient A-6 jet. I did manage to see him while I was in Oceana for his training and again at Cherry Point where he was permanently assigned.

That's enough info for today... I have some work to get done ;)

Welcome to Beaufort

I tutored my niece, Alex, and got her to post on my forum. She also started her own blog last night. I will link it when I have the address handy. Tennis is progressing fine. Like I stated before it's me and two older women. So I get a work out as they take turns hitting against me :P

Beaufort -- Part 1:

After C School I took some leave, it just happened to fall on the christmas time of year. So this puts us at Christmas 1989. I believe I didn't have to show up to my new duty station till mid January. By this time my brother was enjoying his time in boot camp (sucker). :) He shipped off a week or so before his 18th birthday in October. My parents didn't / couldn't make that same trip to San Diego twice so he got the short end of the stick there. My sister was living in Petoskey at the time, her husband was a recruiter in that city. He was a recruiter before I went in as I mentioned his infamous call to my drill instructors earlier. By this time she had two kids, Danielle and Alex.

I believe my entry to Beaufort was through Savannah, Georgia's airport. I took a cab to the base some 35 miles away. I didn't own a car at the time so this was my only option. I checked in at various spots and finally made my way to the barracks I would end up in. I was assigned to a room with a Hispanic guy who wasn't in town at the time. He was off on his wedding / honeymoon and I never really spent any time with him. So in a sense I was lucky to not have a roommate for the first time in the corps. The next morning I had to rush to the cafeteria (chow hall) and get back to the barracks in the hopes of catching a ride to work. I had no idea where it was... etc. I arrived at the Electric Shop that morning. I noticed that I was the only "newbie" on board. The nearest guy to my age was Darren Sproal (Sp?) another Lcpl. But he was a terminal Lcpl, meaning he was arriving at the end of his contract and would remain a Lcpl. I guess I'll explain why. The USMC had this dumb idea to guarentee individuals Cpl to people. Well congress regulates how many Cpls, Sgt etc that can be in the corps. This meant that everyone that didn't have this guarantee was screwed because of the backlog it created. This would affect my promotions as well, but not to the extreme it did for Darren.

Darren was a blond guy from California. He reminded me of the surfer type. He kept his hair as long as he could get away with. He took care of me those first few months. I even went out a few times to the clubs in Savannah with him. He had a nice truck, the bed had a cab over it and was carpetted.

I wouldn't get to know most of these guys very well as most of them were ending their time in the corp. The exception was Cpl Foss. Foss was another blonde guy with blue eyes and looked like a cookie cutter Aryan guy. He was a product of a Marine Family and took me under his wing during the first few months. After I knew what I was doing we didn't speak much.

I'm not sure how detailed I want to get here so I'll just hit the highlights I guess. ;)

My first few months would be spent tagging along and learning various maintenance procedures. I also had to "troubleshoot" the launches that went out. This meant standing with headphones on and if the pilot had a problem you had to plug into the jet and talk to him and solve the problem... if you could. He would either ignore the problem or shut down and switch aircraft if it couldn't be solved in a timely manner.

I learned that we would have our first deployment in April of that year (1990). This deployment would be to Eglin AFB, in sunny Panama City Beach, Florida. The Air Force would be paying for our accomidations at a hotel on the beach there. At the hotel we had two people to a room but we each had our own king sized beds. The hotel had it's own bar and swimming pool. I didn't drink but that didn't stop Foss from trying to get me to. I was under aged at the time so I refused. I did spend alot of time at the pool though. The one time I did go out there I did so with Ssgt Huckabee.

Huckabee was a slightly strange guy. He was a dark haired guy, kind of skinny and wore a mustache. He was a good staff NCO and tried to get me to take a more active leadership role as the years went on.

I believe someone, possibly Huckabee, had a rental car there and took a few of us to a bar in downtown Panama City Beach. Nothing to exciting to tell just was my first unexiting venture off the beaten track... if you will.

When the deployment was over we had another new Marine waiting for us. Rob Reynolds was his name. He was a tall skinny guy with dark hair. I had to rub it in about the great deployment he just missed. This also was the time I got to work on my first "gripe" from start to finish. It was the changing of the F/A-18 strain guages. I even started to tutor Reynolds in working on the jet. {I'm a quick learner :) }

That's enough for part I.... see you next installment.

LeMoore, CA

Wow.... I'm worn out after tennis yesterday. Only 2 of us for instruction. This meant non-stop ball hitting on a very warm day. {Sweat, sweat, boil, boil}

So this chick that has been writing me from Russia for less than a month wants to come visit me over here. I agreed to it only because she hasn't asked me for anything in return. I'm very suspicious as I stated before. How could someone already love me in that short of time period?
Anyway....

C School:

I flew into Fresno, CA directly from Tennessee with no break in between. They provided a bus to shuttle us to LeMoore which was about 15 minutes away. The best way to describe this town is that it's desolate, dry and foggy. The cities sit in the San Fernando Valley so it gets at least 2 days a week with very thick fog. I've never seen such thick fog... we're talking no visibility at about 10 feet in front of you. They put me in a tower barracks. Each floor had a common room with a TV and another common "head" (showers, toilets). So I get there and they assign us rooms. I noticed that one of the guys I went to A school was also there but I didn't get to room with him. Instead I got this lanky black guy that was an extreme neat freak. He had his room nice and organized and it looked like he was without a roomate for some time. He had a 36" Zenith TV and a speaker system taking up one whole wall. The entire 3 months I was there I didn't dare use his stuff or even watch a single tv show on it. In fact other than the first day when I invaded we never saw each other.

The classes there were a little more exciting. First of all I got assigned the F/A-18 aircraft and this school was the training for that specific aircraft. Classes basically went through each Technical Publication and explained the various systems which we would work on. After each system we would get an example on the real aircraft. The class took place in a hanger, well a room in the hanger. So we just had to walk out the back door and there was the hanger full of aircraft. I enjoyed the classes there and the 3 months went by real quick.

To pass time when not in class I often played pool for free in the rec center. Thank god they didn't push the PT thing there. If you haven't noticed yet I don't like to be pushed to do it. During one of these visits to the pool hall I managed to feel my first and only earthquake. This was the big San Fransisco quake in the Fall of 1989. We still had barracks inspections there but my roommate took care of all that stuff and I just enjoyed life :) I ended up hanging out with a guy in my class during some of the off time. Because I didn't drink or have a car my options were limited. So we decided to take up BINGO to pass some of the time and hopefully win some money. First we tried the BINGO on base and once we went off base. I'm sure it must have looked strange, I think there was 3 of us. So 3 marines show up in a BINGO hall with mainly old women around. The only time I went out was with these two guys and we just went downtown Fresno. We were walking around there and I just remember the three of us getting whistled at as we walked down the side of the road followed by a female voice. All I could think at the time was "Please pull over". :)

The only other eventful thing that happened to me there was a medical thing. One day while walking to class I started seeing a bunch of white dots in my vision. I reported this to the doc after class. He wasn't sure what it was but he thought it was my vision. So the next day I was shuttled to Oakland Naval Hospital for an all day vision evaluation. In the end they decided, after all the vision tests passed, that it was a migraine. But at least I got to see a little bit of Oakland.

After 3 fun filled months I recieved my permanent duty station orders. I read them and wondered where the hell this place was I've never heard of it. It read VMFA-251 in MCAS Beaufort, SC. My friend from A-school got his orders to Hawaii, so much for my idea of guarenteed coast. I had second thoughts about fighting for that back in boot camp.

To be continued in MCAS Beaufort....

Millington, TN

I was depressed when I showed up for my tennis lessons yesterday. All I got to look at was two older women as fellow classmates. On top of that with only 3 of us we can't even get a doubles game going.

A School:

After bootcamp I went back to Traverse City for a few days of leave. The only memory of this was that I wanted to go to the mall to see if I could see any other high school friends there. But since it was March I only managed to see one girl that I recognized. My mom says she was worried because I went there in combat boots and civilian clothes and my shaved head. She thought I looked like a skin head.

I arrived in Millington, TN for my A-School training. There was two parts to this training. Basic electronics was the first course and this was followed by classes on the ancient A-4. Millington was a Navy base and us Marines were a minority there. We had to get into formation and march to school every day with our briefcases, which held our books for class. My first roommates there were a little strange, at least one of them. I think he was from Texas and didn't believe in wearing underwear under his jeans :P I think this was a temporary room because I don't remember rooming with him more than a week. There were 3 people to a room there and we had a weekly inspection of the barracks. This inspection was taken to the extreme. We used a wax on the floor which would be melted and spread using a buffer. This was a delicate polish so no one could step on it once it was polished. So we got a sparkly floor for the day of inspection but had to disappear until inspection was over. We also got a common building which housed a TV and some sofas. They also had a mascot, bulldog, that lived there.

The basic electronics course was taught by a jovial civilian. He loved teaching and made learning fun there. I definitaly tried more than I did in high school. I ended up getting an 89% final grade for this portion. Not much memories of this school other than our teacher.

The second part of the school took the knowledge we gained in the basic course and fine tuned it so we could apply it on an aircraft. In this case the venerable A-4. We kept the same classmates for this entire 2nd part. I found the "squids" a little annoying and only really saw them in class. But us Marines became friends for the time we were there. I only saw one of these guys after Millington. I found this portion of the school to be interesting, despite the boring Navy instructors putting us to sleep. They had interesting labs that had real instruments incorporated.

I also managed to buy me a brand new Amiga computer while here. I paid in cash, nearly $1000. I had no bills at this point in my life. I didn't even own a car there. This lead to me never leaving the base until the week of graduation. They had some cool stuff on base to keep us entertained. We even had horses for trail rides there.... they weren't well behaved horses though and I think I only attempted this twice. I also got together with other Marines around the barracks to play some board games during our off time. I do remember one of my roomates was a heartbreak story. He was an older guy, mid 30's. He was from Washington state and had a wife and 3 kids there. He used to be in the Army and only joined the Marine Corps in hopes that he would get a west coast job. But by the time I met him he already knew his orders were for Hawaii. He was very depressed because there was no way his family could move there. To top it off he also got a hernia there.

Millington Marines tried to force us to do PT every day. We were supposed to muster and do our exercises every morning. I became very adept at disappearing during the daily banging on the doors to get everyone out to PT. I can say that I didn't even participate once the whole time I was there. The only time I did was in preparation for our PFT (Physical Fitness Test) where I did this on my own. I'm not a big fan of running in formation :) There all either to fast or slow.

For graduation our class wanted to get together, minus the females, and go to a strip club. At this point in my life I didn't drink and certainly never have been to a strip club. In preperation of going to this get together I was trained in driving a manual shifter car, a VW bug. This was just in case that the guy driving us was to drunk to give us a return trip. So I left the comfy confines of the base for the first time and headed to Memphis. We arrived at the strip club were they had a bring your own liquor policy and they provided the mixes. Well as the deligated "Innocent" that needed converting the guys bought me a table dance from a girl there. There she proceeded to put her bush inches from my face while dancing and a minute into the dance said "you look like my little brother". I thought this was rather strange coming from someone in her position. I wasn't through yet. The guys thought it would be funny if they said it was my birthday. So they got me on center stage and had all the girls take turns dancing on me. When the announcer asked how old I was turning I couldn't lie. I said I was 18, which I was. He just saide "Shhhhh" and the dancing continued. After they closed the guy didn't need me to drive us back... I would have been lost anyway. The night was finalized when one of the guys puked down the passenger door of his bug.

I managed to get my orders too during this final week. I was going off to the Fresno, California area for my next school.... to be continued.

Slow Weekend

Well I made it through another weekend. The good part is that I didn't spend much time playing computer games, which is what I normally do.

I talked with my niece, Alex, about what she would want for her birthday. She's my favorite niece because we like to hang out together whenever I'm in town. The other two nieces have other interests. I asked her if she wanted to go to a Hillary Duff concert in August and managed to get permission. So she will get dropped off with her friend Ella for that night to go to the concert. In preparation for this visit I decided this weekend was as good as any to start cleaning up the place. I spent Saturday cleaning and re-organizing the ground floor and Sunday doing the same on the second floor.

I briefly mentioned this in the first blog, that I was a Marine. I thought I'd add a little each blog entry describing my experience.

Boot Camp:

My high school days could best be described as an invisible entity. I had a few friends, didn't do any extra activities and I did the bare minimum for school work. I had no push from my parents to do anything so I didn't. My only physical activities were biking, everywhere, occasional backyard baseball/softball and backyard football. Other than that I played on the computer and played war games with my brother.

Once I signed up for the Marine Corps I had about a year before I actually went to boot camp. This meant weekly meetings where we would do running, pull ups and sit-ups to help prepare us for bootcamp.

I departed for bootcamp in January 1989 aboard a greyhound bus headed to downtown Detroit from Traverse City. I had two other people that I knew go on the trip with me. I forget the guys name but I went to high school with the girl. When we arrived we commenced the physical exams and other entry related paperwork. When the day was through the guy I went down with suggested we hang out with the girl. The end result was about 3 hours sleep before we flew out to bootcamp. The first thing that I thought of when I stepped off the aircraft in San Diego was "wow it's warm here". I left the 3 feet of snow in Detroit for a balmy 70's in San Diego. We waited in the airport for everyone to arrive and got on board a shuttle bus that ran back and forth from the airport to the boot camp facilities.

The first thing we did once we arrived at bootcamp was to line up on the yellow footprints and hear a few rules and regulations being announced to us. From here we stripped down to our underwear and went through an assembly line to get our gear. After a few hours of this we got together in the temporary barracks. Our first assignment was to stamp all our gear with our last name first two initials. This wasn't an easy task as the recieiving drill instructor would announce the instructions and give us 10 seconds to complete it. So there I was fumbling with the rubber stamp trying to get my name on it correctly. After the hour or so that the gear labeling took it was time to "shit, shower and shave". This activity was preceded with the usual instructions. After the instuctions I boldely went to the drill instructor and asked him if I still had to shave because I didn't have anything to shave. His reply was to go through the motions anyway. The other shocker of course was the fact that this was my first public shower, something that I would eventually get used to. There were racks (beds) for every recruit but we only got shown how to make them. There would be no sleep for us that night. I also got informed that night that my MOS (job) that I was guarenteed wouldn't be possible because my mom wasn't a citizen of the US. So I picked my first alternate (Aircraft Technician).

The next morning we were introduced to the chow hall and were introduced to our real drill instructors. They had two junior drill instructors, the mean ones, and our senior drill instructor, the nice one. They do this intentionally so you can feel like you feel like you have someone to go to. There was 3 phases to boot camp the first phase was mainly physical conditioning and drill. My physical conditioning was pretty rough. I developed shin splints in both shins by about the half way point of 1st phase. It got so bad that after a run I had to prop myself up from the guy in front of me just to stand. The funny thing about that injury is that it doesn't hurt while running but when you stopped, very severe pain.

One painful experience was after my brother-in-law at the time called my drill instructors. He was a recruiter for the Marines at the time. This took me out of annonymous and they started to screw with me. Saying that I wasn't pulling my weight and asked me if I wanted to go to another platoon. After intense grilling I caved and said "sure I know another guy that's here" so they said "pack your shit" and gave me 2 minutes to stuff everything into my duffle bag and run over to the other barracks. They were out at drill at the time so I didn't get to see the guy and was sorry that I dragged him into it.

Second phase we were bussed to Camp Pendleton for infantry training. By now I was on light duty for the majority of the time. This meant that I didn't have to go on "humps" like the others. I started to feel the resentment from the other recruits that I wasn't doing equal training. I didn't want to be excluded but the pain wouldn't go away. The biggest excercise that I did during that phase was a 3 mile run in "boots & utes". This pretty much sidelined me after attempting that.

Third phase started back in San Diego and half the platoon was given mess duty and other half some other detail. I had the pleasure of mess duty, that meant waking up at 0430 and marching over to the permanent personel chow hall. The only memorable moment of this was the day that I got a coke for one of my meals. Before bootcamp I was a coke addict. I could drink about a six pack a day. So that was the best tasting drink I've ever had after a few months of no sugar :)

After chow hall duty I was told to report to my series commander, an officer. He asked me if I felt that I should be dropped back due to lack of training. I sensed a trick question so I agreed then he asked me how far. Well I didn't know, whole thing? 2nd phase what. So the end result was that I was sent to the physical conditioning platoon (fat body platoon) for a weekend. They all looked at me like I didn't belong. There I was with my dress uniform, not given out til third phase. During my stay there I did a PFT, which they did once a week. It just so happens that my old platoon was doing theirs the same day. After the weekend I got hooked up with my new platoon which just finished their 2nd phase.

My entry into this new platoon wasn't unenventful. First of all I left a platoon who didn't win any events into a platoon which won everything. Secondly the new platoon didn't speak with a "sir sandwich". This meant starting and ending your sentence with a sir. After a few warning of not to say it the excercise punishments began. It was second nature to say it by this point and was a tough habit to break. Third phase was mainly clean up activities like polishing your drill and swim qualifications. The one thing I couldn't participate in was the obstical course because of my light duty. I went to boot camp not knowing how to swim so that week of training was interesting and I ended up learning how. I learned the backstroke and had to tread water for 5 minutes to prove I could start the qualifications.

My parents planned out a road trip to San Diego to see my graduation and now that I didn't graduate on time they missed it. But my new drill instructors felt sorry for me and I got a couple of hours that sunday to see my parents.

Our drill instructors also gave us the priviledge to watch the super bowl on tv that year. Probably because that's what they wanted to do that day more than giving us the pleasure of it. Another relaxing activity which we enjoyed was going to church. To say that one grows spiritually during bootcamp is an understatement. Just about everyone went to church. For one thing it was time away from your drill instructors into a peaceful setting. It was a struggle not to sleep in the nice dark church though.

The final week of boot camp we got our orders... I got my orders to go to the Memphis, TN area for basic aviation electrician training.

My job sucks

Welcome to my first blog entry. I have a forum so why not a blog. I thought I'd start out summarizing recent career path.

I recently graduated college after enjoying 6 years in the Marine Corps. I got my first job at an IT company. Things were great at first doing some challenging work and learning stuff. But after a few years the work started drying out and I was forced to do work that I didn't really enjoy. So one day I decided to look for work. After a few weeks I get a job offer as a contractor with an agreement that I probably would get hired direct after about 6 months. So during the negotiating of my contract I agreed to a higher pay rate for no vacation time. Well here I am almost 10 months into this job and no signs of getting hired direct. To top it off I'm basically getting paid to attend useless meetings and surf the internet all day. This may sound like fun but not for the time period we're talking about here. I would rather be busy any day.

On another non-related topic.... I have my picture on a singles site and recently got a letter from some Russian chick. Now she looks pretty and writes pretty good English. But we have been exchanging emails for about 2-3 weeks now. She says she can't understand most of my letters but is now stating that she loves me. Is it me or is this a little strange. Am I to assume after her 1 sided letters, assuming she didn't really read my letters, that she could get attached enough to love me after 2-3 weeks?

I have also recently decided to begin tennis lessons. I tried in vane for two years now to join a softball league. But it seems you need to know people to get on a team. I tried the free agent thing but to no avail. Anyway I enjoy watching tennis and decided it might be a nice place to meet people, to include females. I just moved to this city in 2000 so I don't have a large friend network like I do in my hometown, well it's not large but bigger than it is here. So I'm half way through my second week of lessons and I'm loving it. My out of shape body is handling it rather well considering.

Well enough rambling for now...