Home Sweet Home

Assalamu alaikum (which means "Peace be unto you" in Urdu) and welcome back to my rousing adventures. Well I am slowly getting setled in. As I mentioned in my last post I managed to get here without my baggage, but I managed to get that squared away in a couple days. The only thing left was the couple boxes I shipped with some clothes. After talking to the Personal Property guys they said I could wait a few weeks for them to get a customs waiver or I could go down to the airport and talk to the customs guys in person and get it in that day. As you might expect I chose the latter. The only problem was I would have to drive to the airport.

I mentioned a bit in my last post about the strange situation that is driving in Islamabad. I haven't done too much driving myself; I have been a passanger more times than not, but I have seen a few strange things. I was going back to the airport here to fill out some paperwork so I could get the few boxes I shipped out here and there was a bit of a back up due to a traffic light being out. We were in the righ turn lane (which crosses traffic since they drive on the left side of the road here) and amid the trucks and cars was a flat bed cart being pulled by a donkey. Another morning we were going down one of the roads in town and there was a couple guys leading a camel. I've also seen horses and cows on the road. And just today I was again going to the airport, this time to fly myself, and I saw, and I'm not kidding, a guy walking a small bear. Not a shaggy dog, but a bear. I don't know where he got it but there it was. But as odd as the menagery on the road can be it is nothing compared to the people driving. The guy I releaved here said he got a call from the States from a friend who said he was feeling very low and considering suicide so he called a suicide prevention hotline. The call got out-sourced to Pakistan. When the guy told the operator he felt suicidal they got really excited and asked if he could drive a truck. It's kind of like a strage game of "Frogger". Pedestrians refuse to walk on the sidewalk (which they do actually have in places) and instead insit on walking in the streets, or worse, crossing the street right as you are coming. They will step into the road right in front of you without considering looking first. It's amazing to me that there aren't more people run over then there are. Traffic lanes here are strickly advisory in nature. Drivers often don't bother to even pick a lane and instead use them all. And if there is enough room for a car to fit it becomes a lane. We joke you have to be able to use all four lanes of a two lane road to drive. The Pakistanis are also very big proponents of car pooling You will regularly see 6-8 people in a car or a family of five on a motorcycle (dad driving, a kid on the handle bars in front, a kid behind dad, mom behind that kid sitting side-saddle and holding the baby). On the same trip as the bear sighting I saw a bus filled to over-flowing (literally). There were about 25 school kids riding on top of the bus. Personally I always wanted to ride home from school like that but they kept telling me to keep my arms and legs inside the bus. It would actually be quite impressive if they weren't trying desperately to either run you over or get run over themselves. On second thought it is less like Frogger and more like Burnout.

As I mentioned before, I got in country on the 1st and it took me about sumer and the weather was actually very nice. One thing about being a Gulf State two days to get my internal clock ajusted, so you can imagine that the last thing I really wanted to do was to take another trip. Regretably they didn't ask me and instead scheduled talks between Naval Central Command and the Pakistan Navy on the 9th in the Kindom of Bahrain. It was actually a nice trip (aside from the 6 am flight there and the 12 am flight back). Bahrain is a very small country on the Arabian Gulf and can get very hot in the summer. Fortunately it was not is that they have a good deal of oil and are by and large a very rich country. As a result they have some great building project and some wonderful architecture. Unfortunately, I suck and failed to bring my camera (I should have it sew to my sleave like a pair of mittens). I did get a disposable camera and take some pictures, but have not been able to get them developed. Hopefully I will have them for the next post.

Well that is all for the moment. Sorry there isn't more, but what can I say, there isn't much going on. Perhaps things will get more interesting (in a good way) soon. Until then, be good, and if you can't be good, be good at it.

Happy New Year!!!

Greetings from the “Land Of The Pure” which is what Pakistan means, in case you didn’t know. It’s been an interesting week or so since my last post. As you may recall, I was supposed to fly out the day after Christmas. I was all packed up and ready to go. I put my car in the storage facility and rolled to the airport. My dad drops me off, I walking to the terminal, up to the desk and tell the nice person behind the counter I am going to Islamabad with Chicago as my first stop. He comes bake to me saying probably not. For those of you who weren’t looking at the weather report for Chicago, they had a nasty ice storm on the 25th and were still crawling out from under that and were further going to be beset with fog in the evening. So I called my military travel folks and they told me that with the delays through Chicago there was no way I was going to make any of my connecting flights and the next available flight was on Tuesday the 30th. The good news thus was I got to spend a few more days in America with the folks. The bad news was I had to get a hold of the folks in Pakistan and explain why I was not going to make it. It wasn’t too big a deal since no matter how cool I am I still can’t control the weather and they understood this. The only big deal actually was that when I forwarded my new itinerary I misspelled “delayed” and the program I was using didn’t have a spell check function. The folks here found it great fun in ribbing me for this when I got here; but I am jumping ahead.

The flight, when I finally did get going, was not too bad considering I was flying half way around the world. My new itinerary allowed me to by-pass Chicago and head straight to Dullas International Airport in DC where I proceeded to have a 6 hour layover. Then there was the 13 hour flight to Dubai which is in the United Arab Emirates. I was all the way in the back which for anyone who has flown across an ocean knows is where they put all the families with small children. It actually was not too bad. I had a window seat with no one in the seat next to me, and the kids didn’t scream too much (and I got to see Wall-E three times and read most of “Odd Hours” by Dean Koontz). I was supposed to have a couple hours before flying on to Islamabad, but the plane was 40 minutes late in landing. Also, you don’t get off the plane directly into the terminal in Dubai; they bus you what seemed like a mile to the terminal. This of course took just this side of forever. Next you have to go through security again to get to the ticket counter to get your boarding pass (assuming you can find the ticket counter). The end result was that when I got to the ticket counter there only 40 minutes until the flight was supposed to take off and apparently they close boarding before that time. The guy behind the counter was very helpful in talking with his counterparts to basically hold the plane so I could get on it (he even escorted me to the gate to make sure I got there), but there was no way that my luggage was going to make it. One of the benefits of working at the embassy is that they send an “Expediter” to the airport to help you by-pass the lines at customs and get out more quickly. When I got off the plane and found the nice man holding a list with my name on it I told him that my luggage didn’t make it on to the flight and his response was, “That’s not good” which of course filled me with confidence. Ultimately I arrived in Islamabad three days later on the 1st (the other nice thing about the flight was celebrating the New Year on a plane over the Arabian Gulf) at 2 in the morning with only my coat and carry-on bag in which I had some shirts, but no underwear or socks (a tactical blunder I do not plan on repeating). It only took me two days for the rest of my bags to make it.

I am starting to get settled in. The house I’m in is nice, but there are issues with the hot water and the cable isn’t working. Also, Pakistan is having a serious shortfall in power production resulting in routine power outages. Fortunately we have a generator that kicks on automatically when the power fails. The city itself is interesting for lack of a better word. If you’ve been in a third world country before you would recognize the trash alongside the roads, the buildings that should be torn down except there are still people living there and the general brown tone that permeates everything. It’s kind of strange to see a four lane divided highway with both modern cars and donkey driven carts. It is a city living both in the 18th and 20th century (I wouldn’t say the 21st century).

Regrettably I have not been able to get out and see much of the city. All I have seen has been during the rides to work and the trip back to the airport to get my luggage and unfortunately due to force protection issues I don’t know if/when I will be able to go see anything resembling a sight. Some of you have told me you wanted me to take pictures of the house and car I am using to see the great digs I have here, but again due to force protection issues the powers that be do not want me to do this (and I kind of have to listen to them although I can tell you it is a Toyota Camry). Obviously my first concern is being safe and I do not want to jeopardize my or my roommate’s security by posting something the bad guys can use. Hopefully things will calm down here enough to be able to do at least structured excursions. I will be sure to pass along anything I get to do.

That pretty much brings you up to speed with me. I am still trying to get my internal clock reset to this new time zone (as you can see from the cool clock to the right the States are 10 – 13 hours behind Pakistan). As always, I look forward o any comments you may like to post or if you prefer you can shoot me an e-mail; it remains the same as when I was in the States. Until next time be sure to be good, and if you can’t be good, be good at it.

Happy Holidays

Greetings to all. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, a Joyous Quanza and a Happening Festivous. As I write this post I am preparing for the family Christmas and trying to get the last bit of admin done for my flight to Pakistan on the 26th (I hope the weather gets better in Chicago before I role back through there enroute).

So where was I. Dismissing the last post which was just a place holder to let you all know I hadn't fallen asleep and to make sure my rabid fans didn't chastise me again for taking too long between posts, the last place I was was hanging out in DC. I want to send a shout out to ET, as well as my friends Nicole S. and Becca M., two wonderful and beautiful ladies, for making my last night in DC so much fun. Regrettably I had to leave for Winchester and thus missed out on what I hope was a spirited Friday night.

I arrived in Winchester for my class for anti-terrorism and personal security on the 12th because the class started on Saturday. Fortunately there weren't any college football games that weekend so I didn't have to miss anything. The class started off with some general information about terrorist organizations and how they operate. The afternoon was pretty cool though because we worked on looking out for vehicle surveillance when we are driving around. What they did was drive us all in three vans from our hotel to the hospital in town a couple times with a few cars trailing us. Our job was to try to identify the cars that were tailing us and identify where, if they were bad guys, would they try to set up an attack. It was kind of amazing the number of cars that either look alike and thus could be following you or could be "suspicious" driving around. We had a lot of "ghosts", people that were not a threat, but we did find the three cars that where playing. It also gave me a nice driving tour of Winchester.

The second day was devoted to shooting, and we were fortunate in that, though it was somewhat cold, there was no rain because the training was going to happen either way. It was fun getting to shoot the 9mm again. I've always liked to shoot ever since I was on the pistol team for my ROTC unit in college. We got to do some basic target practice, some tactical shooting and some different shooting courses. I was ok; not the best, but by no means the worst. I was rather surprised the number of folks that would have had a problem shooting the side of a building, particularly since they were almost exclusively Army. I don't know why, but I figured they shot more than that. I also got to do a familiarisation shoot with an assault shotgun, an AR-15 and a Romanian knock-off of an AK-47. It was lost of fun putting rounds down range. The testosterone was really kicking in by the end of the day.

We did a couple more days focusing on international and domestic terrorism; who they were, what they wanted, why they did it, what their differences were. Then we got the real meat of the class, the driving. They took us out to a race track there in Winchester called Summit Point Raceway. There they gave us some instruction in the class about accident avoidance and vehicle performance, but then they took us out to the track. We got to spend the day doing threshold breaking (trying to use maximum breaking without locking up the breaks), skid avoidance, cornering, and taking the proper line both when you can use the whole road and when you have to stay in one lane like in traffic. Basically they had us drive around the track as fast as we could (I got it up to 97 mph on the long straight away). The second day focused on tactical driving; what would you do if somebody attacked you while you were driving. We got to drive around at high speed in reverse, learned J-turns (that's where you drive backwards, throw the steering over, slap it into drive and speed away the other direction), how to ram through a car barricade, and PIT maneuvers (where you hit the other car in the rear side and make them spin out - this is one you see on COPS a lot). In the end we drove around while they did simulated attacks. My two scenarios were them trying to come up along side and shoot me and trying to block me in at an intersection. The "bad guys" got a couple paintballs shots off, but I think I would have made it. One thing about this course is it tended to make me a bit paranoid. I kept seeing people following me. Though as they say, "Just because your paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

Now when I heard I was going to Winchester I figured home of Winchester Firearms (now U.S. Repeating Arms Company. Inc) but they are actually out of New Haven, Ct. What Winchester, Va is actually know for (by those who know I guess) is apples. White House Foods (which among other things makes applesauce) is based out of there. So guess what the symbol of the city is; you guessed it, an apple. And just like Dothan, Al they have their festival (the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival, which I unfortunately missed) and have erected large fiberglass apples around the city. I actually cheated some this time and downloaded a map so I could find them. I was annoyed to find that most of them were not where they were supposed to be. I don't know if they were moved or destroyed, but presented for you now are the apples I could find of the apple parade.

The other big thing going on in the family is my brother John and his wife Katie gave birth (well I guess she was the only one physically doing it) to a bouncing baby boy (by the way the hospitals don't like it when you actually try to bounce them) Ryan, whom my brother has dubbed his Royal Highness, the Midget King. Don't try to understand it, he is on a roll. I am just happy that these extra few classes kept me in country a few more weeks so I could see the munchkin before I left.

So I'm back home spending time with the folks for the last few days before I get on a plane. I managed to knock out my Christmas shopping quickly this year (we decided to just draw names which dramatically cut down of the shopping list) so I took an afternoon to visit the Oklahoma Museum of Natural History located on the campus of OU. It's something I had been wanted to do for a while (ever since it finally opened up a few years after I graduated). When I was at OU the museum was out of a really small building across from the dorms. Most people didn't even know it existed, and it certainly was not large enough for all the items it had sitting in some warehouse somewhere. Below are a couple of items I thought were neat.

A Saurophangax skeleton. Supposedly these guys were bigger and badder than T-Rex. They are also the State Fossil of Oklahoma. I didn't even know we had one of those.

Proof of the proclamation; just in case you didn't believe me.

A Triceratops (I think). It's in the record books as being the largest complete skull in the world.

A mammoth. Note the festive Santa hat.

Some other dinosaur. Again note the festive Santa Hat. Just kind of gets you in the holiday spirit right?

That is about all for now. The next time we talk I will be on the other side of the world. I hope each of you had a great year, are enjoying the Holidays with the ones you love and have nothing but the best in the new year to come. Please keep in touch. I always enjoy the comments and e-mails you all send. Until next time; if you can't be good, be good at it.

The Black Hole

Greetings all from the lovely town of Winchester, Va. As you may have noticed this is not the location I mentioned in my last post. Yes, it all got chanced again. So I am here and the class is cool so far. However, my computer still has an issue with the screen and so I can't use my own computer. I am writing this on the public computer in the lobby of the hotel. This post is just to let you know where I am and while it might seem like it I have not been sucked into a black hole. I will put out a more in depth post next Sunday when I get to my folks place. Have a great week and be good, or at least good at it.

From The Birth Place Of America

Greetings and salutations once again, and thank you for joining me for another rousing edition of my journey. If you will all open your hymnals, we will begin with the ever popular "The Only Constant Is Change". Yes, the military has done it again. As I mentioned in my last post I was to finish my training in DC and go to Winchester, Va for a combat driving course. Well as you might expect the plan has changed. The powers that be have determined that the class in Winchester is no longer the one I need and instead I have to go to Melbourne, Fl. The biggest problem is that no one in Pakistan really seems to get that I am on PCS (Permanent Change of Station) orders and I can't just go rolling where ever I want. When the folks in Pakistan made the change they didn't bother to tell the folks at the Bureau of Personnel to get my orders modified. So ever since the Monday after Thanksgiving I have been trying to get that ORDMOD and as of the time of this writing (Monday Morning) I still haven't gotten it. It's all aout who pays for it. My detailer who writes my orders is working hard on it but these things take time which is why I was so annoyed that they made this change with two weeks lead time. Even better than all that I am supposed to have my flak jacket and helmet for this class which they were supposed to issue me when I was in Tampa. However, they screwed up and didn't give it to me thinking I would get it when I get in country. They have worked out that I can borrow the gear from the guys giving the training, but it was a big mess. So as it stands, I have orders to a class they don't want me to go to and I have a quota at a course that I do not have orders to attend and do not have all the right gear for. Lots of fun, eh?

OK, OK, OK. Take deep breaths. In with the good, out with the bad. I'm feeling much better now.

Let's change gears to a happier topic shall we? I have been to Washington DC three times in my life. All of them have been this year; the first for July 4th and the two times during these orders. During the July trip, my friend Crystal S. and I went on a sight seeing trip to the National Mall that tested our friendship and destroyed one of her shoes. We started by taking the metro to Arlington National Cemetery were we walked around and I got to see the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We then proceeded to walk to the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, the World War II Memorial, the Washington Monument, to the Capital Building and finally to Union Station before taking the metro back to my buddy ET's place where we were staying. The next day we hit the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. One might think we did a pretty good job in just a couple days of seeing the sights. But for those who do not know this barely scratches the surface of the monuments, memorials and museums that this town holds.

In an effort to further my adventures I took a trip to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. They had several neat exhibits: one about the presidency, Americans at war, a 200 year old house discussing the different people who lived there, the Gettysburg Address and a few others. But the best has to be the original Star Spangled Banner. The following are presented for your enjoyment.

A Roman George Washington.

C-3PO Human/Cyborg relations. Unfortunately his counterpart R2-D2 was not there.

Dorothy's Ruby Slippers

Kermit the frog here (insert goofy voice here).

The original Star Spangled Banner.

I also took a walk around the area through Freedom Square which is laid out with the street plans that Pierre L'Efant made for the city. There is a really neat view down Pennsylvania Ave to the capital.

As many cool things there are to see in DC, there even more in this region. ET and I took a trip this weekend to see the Navy/Army Game in Philadelphia, Pa. Aside from it being very cold it was a great game; particularly since Navy shut out Army 34-0. The game is definitely one, if not the, best rivalries in college athletics. As you all know I think OU/tEXAS is probably the best rivalry when it comes to basic dislike for the other team/school/fans/state, and there are many others like OSU/Michigan, USC/Cal; but Army/Navy truly lives up to the name "America's Game". The history, pageantry, pomp and festivities are spectacular. There aren't a whole lot of games that the President of the United States goes to every year but he comes to this one.

Lincoln Financial Stadium. The Corps of Cadets are on the left and the Brigade of Midshipmen are on the right.

ET and I tailgating at the game. I told you it was cold.

Before we came back to DC, we did some sight seeing in Philly, visiting the Liberty Bell and Liberty Hall. It's absolutely amazing the amount of history there is in such a small area.

Philadelphia city hall at night.

Liberty Hall. Sight of the Continental Congresses, and the writing of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Liberty Hall closer up.

The Liberty Bell.

Well that is all for the moment. Hopefully I will be getting my orders squared away by tomorrow, one way or the other. I hope all of you are enjoying yourselves and are getting over the Thanksgiving glut. As always I look forward to any comments you might want to leave on the blog or send to me via e-mail. Keep in touch and if you can't be good, be good at it.

Happy Turkey Day

My public has spoken I have listened. Having been properly chastised about not putting up a post in a couple weeks I shall endeavor to correct this problem. As I write this I am slowly coming out from the tryptophan and Grandma's Chex mix induced comma. It was great to get to go home for Thanksgiving this year. It is always nice to see the family, but considering the adventure ahead this was really nice. I have a charmed career in that I have yet to miss Thanksgiving or Christmas at home (a streak which will be broken next year).

When we last left our hero he was just finishing up the initial C-12 training in picturesque Dothan, Al. Now to fully understand my next steps you must understand that the plane I was flying was kind of old and pretty much bare bones. It had the requisite parts: two engines and two wings and all that, but the gauges were the classic gauges you will find in pretty much any plane. It also had all the normal navigation aides (NAVAID) that are found in airplanes these days. The way pilots navigate when flying in the clouds and/or at high altitude when you can't see the ground is by radio signals from ground based stations. The NAVAID sends a signal and the box in the plane decodes it to tell us where we are in relation to that station. Since we know via charts where the stations are we can fly from place to place. This is all basic aviation that pilots learn in flight school.

So while the planes I was flying in Dothan were pretty basic, the ones I will fly in Pakistan have been updated with new toys. Specifically, the powers that be have installed a Flight Management System (FMS) and Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS) in the Pakistani birds. FMS is a NAVAID management system that can take inputs from all the available NAVAIDs as well as from GPS to help navigate. It has a gigantic database that you can create a flight plan from and, in conjunction with the autopilot that the plane has, can pretty much fly from just after take off to just before landing (if they purchased a better autopilot it could fly the whole thing). The EFIS takes a lot of the gauges illustrated above and replaces them with a little TV screen. The big difference is that airspeed and altitude are displayed differently in this system than in the other gauges and it takes some time to get used to where to look to get the information you are looking for. Also, you can manipulate the display to bring up different things like weather radar. As you might expect they kind of want those of us who are going to use these systems to know how they work.

To that end I rolled out to Tucson, Az to take a three day class on the FMS system. Tucson was nice in that the weather was in the 70's all three days (summer may be hotter the hell, but winter isn't too bad). I took a bit of a driving tour of the city the weekend I got there. I saw the mountain with the "A" on it, the Persidio and the University of Arizona. But my favorite thing in Tucson was the casino. I had some good luck until the last day where I managed to give back all the money that they had given me over the first couple days, but since I was playing with their money I figured it was ok. The only problem I had was I had difficulty finding restaurants. As you all know I am big on eating. There just wasn't a whole bunch around the airport which is where I was staying.

Having been educated on the capabilities of the FMS, I flew back to Washington DC to receive training on the EFIS system. It was as I was getting ready for one of my flights here that we all figured out that I had not received the required physiology training and should not have been doing any of the flying I had done over the last month. This was rather annoying since I asked the question back in Dothan and they told me I was good to go.

You see the military requires all pilots to receive physiology training so we understand the factors that are affecting us as we fly. Those that fly above 10,000 feet have to do extra training in a pressure chamber because of the effects of low oxygen levels at such high altitudes which can cause hypoxia among other things. As a helicopter pilot this has never been an issue because we are not allowed to fly that high, but the C-12 regularly flies around 25,000 feet and can go as high as 31,000 feet. So my flight on Tuesday got canceled and we had to get on the phone and go shopping for someone who could fit me into a physiology class ASAP. Fortunately, there was a class the next day that they could fit me in so I am now back in an up status and ready to get back into the aircraft.

Well that pretty much brings everyone up to date. As it is I am sitting in the living room of my friend ET in Washington DC watching football (Boomer Sooner). I hope everyone has had a great Thanksgiving with the people they love. If you are one of my friends who are out at the pointy end of the spear defending our nation remember you are not forgotten and the ones that you you are thinking of you. Until next time, be good or be good at it.

Peanuts...Get your Peanuts Here

Welcome to another installment of my rousing exploits. I took the weekend doing some exploring of the fine city of Dothan. Dothan calls itself the Circle City because it is encased by state highways in a circular fashion. It also bills itself as the Mural City. This is one of the things I went out to search for. It is pretty neat how several of the buildings downtown have murals painted on their sides. I present the following for your consideration.

These four are actually one mural depicting the history of industry in Dothan (I think).

The Steamboat Era 1824-1925

(Who knew steamboats were around that long?)

The Peanut Festival

A tribute to Fort Rucker.

And to the strength of the Southern Woman.

One of the Tuskegee Airmen.

Not sure what this one is about.

Another thing I was on the hunt for was the elusive fiberglass peanut. It is something that a lot of cities are doing as a civic bonding item as well as a fund raising event often for charities. The city picks an icon that is intended to represent its image and then they are scattered about the city often painted or otherwise decorated by those that pay for the privilege. Athens, Ga has bulldogs, Pensacola, Fl has pelicans and Dothan has Peanuts. According to the city's website there are 40 of them out there, but I could only find the following ones. If I find any more I will send them along.

This weekend was also the closing weekend of the National Peanut Festival. A little slice of Americana that you just can't get in a big city. Basically it is the county fair with some inputs from the surrounding area. I missed most of the events, not being a big fan of livestock judging and having to spend time actually doing the training I am here for. But I did make it out to the parade on Saturday morning. It was exactly what I expected having marched in several parades in my life; one of the advantages (or curses depending on how you look at it) of being in the marching band throughout my life. I really liked doing parades, but of course the best part of being in the band is the free tickets to the football game (by the way, Sooner's laying the smack down).

After the parade I rolled out to the Festival itself. I wasn't a bad little fair. It would have been cooler if I was 15 and not 35. There were several rides, some of which actually looked kind of cool, plus all the games of the midway. I was rather disappointed with the food though. They had the basics like corn dogs, pizza and turkey legs, and lord knows they had loads of peanuts (roasted, boiled, buttered, brittle, you name it), but there was a severe lacking of quality fried foods. Things like deep fried Snickers, deep fried Twinkies, or something I was hoping they would have, deep fried bacon. You laugh, but it is out there and I want to try it. I don't care if I get a heart attack half way through, it sounds great. I've actually mentioned to some of you my gastronomical theory; there is no food that can not be made better by adding either chocolate or bacon. If you add the quality of frying it you can only make it that much better.

But the marquee attraction for the day was the demolition derby. If you are looking for Americana there is nothing like it. Let's face it, watching cars crash is what we like to see. Why else would NASCAR be the most popular sport in the US? We are hoping that during the 600 miles of guys turning left that one or two of them will wrap themselves around something. If we could afford to do it I think there would be a lot more accidents on the highway. The only thing keeping us from turning rush hour into Death Race 2000 is the obvious physical repercussions and those pesky laws against vehicular manslaughter. So when we get a chance to let loose in a "controlled" environment you can't help but love it. I'm still working on downloading my camera which is why there is no audio, but it was a fun heat. I really wish the audio was there though because there was a 6 year old boy and 4 year old girl sitting near me and they were screaming their heads off with excitement. I tell you we are born with it.

So as I approach the end of my time here I leave with the knowledge that Dothan does have its small charms. This is not to even remotely to imply that I want to move here permanently, but it does show that there are neat things to be found in any place; you just have to go find it. A concept I hope to apply throughout my journeys. And with that I bid you adieu. As always I look forward to any comments or e-mails you might have about this or anyother topic. Stay safe and be good. If you can't be good, be good at it.