So Long, Oklahoma

Well, I might be a bit premature, but our time at Ft Sill is rapidly coming to an end. Most of us are on leave until Sunday. I left with some compadres about 1:30 AM on Tuesday and got home around noon. Not much sleep on the trip, but I'll still take the certainty and lack of hassle of a rental car over rolling the dice on an airline these days.

Iowa looks great - and the family looks even better. Even ol' Ranger is back on all four wheels and jumping around after his ACL surgery.

We had a good old fashioned Army sendoff on Monday, complete with all the traditional speechifyin' and the obligatory standing in the direct sun in an open field for at least an hour.... soldiers dropping like flies - not me, though - too tough....

I think there were around 1700 of us from the Task Force at Sill. There are roughly 1000 more folks already in theater that are part of our Combat Aviation Brigade. I'll be home until Sunday morning, and we should be leaving for Kuwait very shortly after we get back. I'd be surprised if we saw another weekend in Oklahoma. We sent several folks on the advance party last month and they are pretty impressed with the 120 degree temps in Kuwait right now. We'll spend a week or two there before we go up to Balad Air Base. They're actually calling it Joint Base Balad now instead of Anaconda. Something to do with the Air Force taking over - who knows?

Here are three old codgers still spry enough to make the trip:

CW5 John West - 59. I've known Johnny for most of my career. He used to fly Huey gunships back when we were in the Cav and he's now a CH-47 Chinook driver and the battalion aviation safety officer. He definitely didn't think having all of us in the hot sun was a good safety decision, but we had our camelbacks for water and there were medics about. The medics got plenty of IV practice...

CW4 Dave somebody or other - 56. I've known this bozo all my life - currently the 834th Aviation Battalion Support Ops Aviation Maintenance Officer

CW2 Gary Freel - 49?, 50?. Who knows for sure. Gary just graduated from the Warrant Officer Candidate Course at Ft Rucker - (see earlier blog) - and has been along on all three of our deployments now since 9/11. He was enlisted for his first 28 years in the Guard. Gary and John are traditional Guard guys - not full time - John's a retired police lieutenant from Marshalltown and Gary works for the city of Ames

Several Minneapolis businesses donated tons of great steak, beer and all the fixings for a really nice send off party at the Ft Sill Rec area. They brought a couple of bands and probably 50-60 volunteers who cooked, ran the bar, cleaned up - you name it, they took care of it. They also brought 3500 steaks, 4000lbs of spuds and a truckload of beer for us and any family and friends who could be there. I'll try and get a good list of the contributers so you folks vay up dere in da Nord country can patronize them. Stop by and give them a big thank you.

Now for the BIG NEWS! Lois took her first test ride on the HD Sportster 1200 Low yesterday. We should pick it up tomorrow or Friday. She's very excited and she looks great on it.

Well, more later - Thanks for all your support. Keep those emails coming.

Dave