Aloha

Well, in case you're wondering, I'm currently sitting in the USO at BWI (Baltimore-Washington International). The flight from Offut fell through when I called to confirm the flight for the next day. I was informed that the past three flights to Andrews didn't accept any passengers, and if they did this time, I would be allowed only thirty pounds and one bag- no carry-on. Umm...I think my suitcase weighs thirty pounds when it's empty. So I went to plan B. Which was to break down in tears because I didn't really have a plan B. I got over it pretty quick and immediately got online to see what else was going to Ramstein. Which led me to BWI, so Mom quick called the travel agent (who got us a better deal than Priceline.com, thank you!). I booked a flight for the next day, and there's a flight leaving for Ramstein this evening, so everything is working out better than I could have expected! When I got to Baltimore last night everything was already shut down, which was surprising considering this is a large airport. I had no idea where to stay the night, but they had a big board full of nearby hotels and a toll free phone to check vacancies, so I did that for a while with no luck. I was taking a break to call the off-duty number at the AMC (Air Mobility Command) terminal to check flight statuses when I spotted somebody with a rifle case and a toughbox on a cart. I quickly hung up the payphone and stalked him to his airport shuttle (I figured he had to be staying somewhere). The guy kept turning around just in time to see me dart behind the nearest pole or trash can. Finally he stopped his cart and demanded to know why I was following him. Okay, that didn't really happen, but I did ask him where he was staying and if they had a shuttle, so he let me tag along to the HILTON (all along I was thinking I can't afford this, but I also can't afford to not shower before an overseas flight).

They didn't have any vacancies at the Hilton, but there were several hotels in the neighborhood (You know, like Sheraton, Marriott, other places I can't afford...where's the Super 8 in Baltimore??). I walked across the parking lot to aloft (no capital A!) and was greeted by a cheerful Aloha! I booked the room and yes, it is the most expensive hotel room I've ever paid for to-date. For any City People reading this, pardon my country-girl wonder at fancy, big-city hotels... because yes, I took pictures, and yes, I'm even going to post them on my blog.

Fancy lobby at aloft

More fancy lobby/bar area

Fancy room with cow hair on the wall...

She asked me if a King-size bed was okay, and I said sure. Now, why would you ask that and then give me two beds?? Not that it matters....

Fancy room with flat-screen tv on the wall. And a cordless phone. I can't decide if I'm really that impressed, or they tricked me with bright colors and cow hair on the wall.

Fancy bathroom with....I don't know...bowl sink? big clear shower doors? Eh. I think I'm just upset because I can't see the tv while I put on my makeup. Oh, and the big curtain is the closet, with the coffeepot next to it, and the safe/microwave underneath.

After I put my suitcase in my room, I wandered back downstairs to find some dinner because all I had for lunch was two packets of peanuts (FYI, Delta: 2 packages of dry-roasted peanuts does not make up for the fact that you're giving us dry-roasted peanuts. Where's the pretzels?). I asked the front desk where to go find some food and she said there was a restaurant at the Hilton next door. I wandered over and ordered a beer and some cheese sticks because that's all I could afford on the menu (seafood lasagna for thirty dollars, anyone?). I sat and waited...and waited...and finally my waitress came and said, "They didn't bring you your drink yet?". Well, yeah, they did, I drank it really fast and put the bottle in my purse. Duh. So I waited some more and then a little more, and then I looked around and when my waitress wasn't looking I ran out the front door.

So there I was back at aloft (no capital A), and I decided to ask for the delivery menus. The front desk lady, Tina (with a smiley face :), told me the bartender had them. The bartender, Raymond, is a TV star. I should've gotten my picture with him. He's on Guiding Light, All My Children, and Nike commercials! So anyway, I was staring at Raymond and trying to read the pizza menu osmotically when the guy next to me asked if he could order something at the same time. I said, sure, why not! Then another guy sat on my other side and announced he was STARVING. I told him we were about to make a delivery order and he jumped on board. Right about then Raymond must have started to get uncomfortable with my ogling and suggested (much too strongly if you ask me) that we could take the shuttle to Ruby Tuesdays. So me and my two new friends called the shuttle and went to Ruby Tuesdays. Raymond said he couldn't come. I think he just wouldn't.

Once we got to Ruby's my friends and I started chatting over California Quesadillas (my first time eating avocado in a food, ever- and I liked it!) and started to get to know each other. Chris is a father of two college students who works in the automotive paint industry in Detroit. His wife is a nurse in oncology, they both were born and raised in England, and only moved to America nine years ago. Dan is a transporter of frozen biological research, like from hospitals to the CDC, etc. He lives 3 blocks from the beach in L.A. We chatted and ate and had a great time, and Chris (whose flight had gotten cancelled) bought all of our dinners and would not take no for an answer! He said his night would have been crap without our good company. Only he said it in a very deep accent and there may have also been a reference to Rugby in there. Isn't that nice?

Anyway, we got to talking about our hotel. aloft. Do you call it The Aloft? As in, I'm staying at The Hilton, or The Aloft? That sounds stupid. Or you can say I'm staying at Aloft. We decided that didn't sound much better. We thought they should have just named it Loft. Then you can say I'm staying at The Loft. Doesn't that have a nice ring to it? Although I guess the front desk would have to say "The-loha" when you come in, instead of "A-loha." Hmmm...

Speaking of the front desk, when we came in from Ruby Tuesdays, there was a tall, ditzy looking blonde standing by Raymond. We heard her ask, "Ummm....is the front desk, like, on break or something?" Raymond told her they would be right back. She said, "Well, I have a huge problem. I need to move rooms. There was a cockroach on my face."

Wow. That is a big problem.

We laughed at her expense for a very long time. Not in front of her of course. We think it was probably just her hair tickling her nose. We were chatting with Tina the Front Desk Lady about it, and she told us plenty of other stories about how people would call down and ask if it cost money to use the TV remote. Umm..yeah. Two dollars for every button you push.

Last week she had someone call down and say the microwave wasn't working. Tina was quite confused because there are no microwaves in the rooms. Turns out, he was using the safe to warm up his tea. In his defense, the safe is built into the wall right beneath the coffee maker, and it does have large buttons... People.

So anyway, that's where I'm at up to now. I have several hours of waiting ahead of me, but the USO here is very nice. They have a luggage room so you can leave your bag here all day while you wander around. There's also a sleeping room, a tv room, and free internet, so I should be good to go. Plus I got to spend last night in a fancy hotel, where it doesn't even cost anything to use the remote control. :-)

Next time you hear from me, I should be back in Germany!

Dog Days of Summer

I tell ya, it's pretty rough to be a dog around here.

You have to drive around all afternoon with your head out the window....

Then you're forced to putter around the pond in a paddle boat....

Sometimes you get left behind...

But at least there's always someone to haul you on board.

Maybe life isn't so bad after all....

I suppose a dog could do worse.

Little Red Buttons (Written by Ted)

My mom's been saying for years that I would get us blown up by pushing buttons. Today I thought I'd proven her right.

So there I was inside the cab of a humvee. We had just gotten this one from another FOB, and it had some equipment on it we'd never used before. Mostly counter-IED stuff, electronic doo-dads. Most of them had been disabled or removed before we got it. But there was this curious looking control box sitting up front.

My supply sergeant was picking at it, and asked me for my multi-tool. The control box had two red buttons on it, both of which were tied down with wire. There was a green light on the box that was lit up, says "AFES ON". I have no idea what AFES is, but thats okay. We were thinking that whatever AFES was, it might drain the batteries. Thought it might be a counter IED device of some kind. "CREW" is the acronym for these devices. CREW devices on? That has to be draining the batteries. I didn't bother to read any further.

So, i cut the wire off the buttons. I flipped the red button up, and hit the switch underneath.

Bad idea.

What happened next is a bit of a blur. Turns out AFES is some kind of system that puts out a fire in the vehicle. And this case, CREW means it puts out a fire in the crew compartment. Explosively.

As soon as I hit the switch, I thought the freaking humvee exploded. It damn near knocked me down, and my ear was ringing like nothing I've ever experienced. First thing I did was feel if my right eye was still there. Because for a second I thought it wasn't. For a good 30 seconds, I was pretty much in shock. After I went and washed the dust and powder off my face, I came back to check things out.

Meanwhile, SGT Cooper (the supply guy) is in a state of total panic. Our maintenance guy assumed that it was a battery in the humvee that exploded. He came running out of his offfice yelling "LITHIUM!", thinking it was a lithium battery. This sends SGT Cooper into an even deeper panic. He goes running for one of our trailblazers, and tears out of the motorpool to the clinic.

He told them a battery exploded on him, and they made him take a shower. If he'd waitied another 5 minutes, he would have realized that it wasn't that serious.

But for a second, I was pretty sure that pushing the little red button had caused my own death. Or at least blindness.

Just thought I'd share.

Photo Entry

Look at this. You probably thought I would never post another entry. I had some very unhappy readers, come to find out. So....maybe I'll give it another shot. Spread the word, as I'm sure lots of people gave up checking the site!

As everyone knows by now, I'm back in Iowa (though not for much longer). I thought I would make this a photo journal, so to speak, of what I've been up to. A lot of you have seen these on Facebook already..... you'll just have to wait for the next entry to see new stuff. At the rate I've been going, that'll be....September 20th.

My trip started at Ramstein Airforce Base. I decided since I had the time, I would take a military hop home and save some money. It turns out every flight leaving for the states got pushed back or canceled. For quite some time. The USO was filled with the same people every day, starting at 2:45 a.m. and leaving at 11 p.m. You just never know when a flight might come in that has seats available, so nobody really leaves the terminal until they have to! Our lucky break finally came, and there was a flight leaving to Maryland. All the active duty soldiers got on that one, so instead of waiting in line to see if I would get a seat, I hopped over to the next line, which was a flight leaving for Dover, Delaware. I got right in, and it turned out we left before all those people who wanted to go to Maryland. The only catch was that we had to stop in England for the night. Aw, shucks! An hour later we were in Mildenhall, U.K. The weather was gorgeous and nobody minded the one-night layover. The next morning I climbed up into a cargo plane for the ride across the ocean. I sat next to my forgetful friend, who was an 86 year old retired flight surgeon. He had lots of stories to share, including The Plan of Salvation that he intricately drew on the back of my box lunch. That took up about 2 hours of the flight, and after about 75 minutes I finally realized we weren't discussing Greek mythology, but Mormonism. Oops.

We got to Dover in the afternoon, and I wasn't really sure what I was going to do next. I had priced tickets from the Philadelphia airport (an hour away) and thought I could get something to DSM for about $200 bucks, so I was going to try and make my way that direction. My new friend Bjarne saved the day when he saw me standing in the customs line with a puzzled look on my face. It turns out he had a cargo van there at Dover that he was driving back to Minnesota, and offered to drop me off in Coralville, Iowa. So I hopped in the back along with another couple that we dropped off in Ohio. I was treated to a seafood dinner somewhere along the way (Maryland?), and slept for most of the rest of the way to Iowa. It was a very nice gesture on Barney's part, and we still keep in touch through Facebook.

Barney and his Van

The next part of the story is just in pictures. Enjoy!

Sam & Tex

My fat boy, Grover

Matt, Kara, Me, Liz, & Ross at Liz's Graduation Party

Sam

Summer

Liz & Fred at a show on Memorial Day

After the Storm

Sweet Cori

Here's one from Ted:

Red Air

Okay. That oughta do it for now! Maybe I'll write a story or two later. One step at a time! ;)