Climbing Corona Del Mar's Green Burrito 1993

I used to climb back in the day when I was skinny, this one day, I wasn't really planning on going to the beach but somehow ended up there without the right shoes and saw some folk trying one of my favorite routes. It's not about how strong you are nor the gear that you have, it's about the skill or talent that you have inside.

Marvel Phoenix Time Lapse Tattoo Finish

I've been a fan of Marvel's Jean Grey as Phoenix since I was a little kid and used to have dreams of bursting into flame and flying away.  Those went away after catching myself on fire for real a couple of times but the thoughts still linger.  My wife surprised me last year with an appointment with Meghan Ortez of 92 Proof Tattoo in Lemoore to check out my idea for a Phoenix and we decided on a plan of attack.  After finishing up my first 7 and a half hour session I thought, that would look pretty cool on time lapse and below is the finished product of what I came up with.  20 hours total, 12 of those hours condensed in the video below to Aerosmith's "Livin' on the Edge" which I think fits. Thanks Meghan for the great work and the bride for starting it off and running the camera.

And this is how it turned out

California Marines We're Unforgettable

This was my old squadron HMM-764, I'm glad someone took over the picture and video taking after I left, good job guys!

Phoenix Tattoo

My third tattoo in time lapse, this was my second sitting and I made a video of it.  The artist is Meghan Ortez, shop 92 Proof Tattoo in Lemoore CA and the amazing camera girl is my bride.

Book Review of Robert McCammon's: The Five

First off, Robert McCammon is my favorite author bar none and I consider Boy's Life one of the best works laid out in the English language.  But that and the review below are both personal opinions, I wrote the below for Audible.com

"This story flows like a river"

With every word of this book, Robert McCammon builds an elaborate web that goes across the American southwest, an epic and yet still a personnel battle between good and evil, makes you question your decisions and lays the groundwork and the reasoning behind deeds done later. The heroes of this book are hugely flawed, and the villains even after doing horrible crimes, aren't beyond redemption. The book is magic but it's not quite a fantasy, there are magical elements. It's the magic of what lies under our perceptions and the movers that are behind the scene. 


The book takes place from the viewpoints of the band members, their manager and a damaged Veteran of the Iraq war who was at the point of suicide at the beginning of the book and see's a music video that the band made protesting the war and it touched him.... but not in a good way.

Like most of McCammon's work, at the end of the day, you'll leave after grieving, laughing with joy, shivering in the shadows, saying, "Oh no!" and falling in love with the characters and feeling hope for the next day.  Good job Sir!

Key West

Back in Key West, groggy first day on the ground, I would like to say its from partying hard but we just got in late last night due to flight delays from the Lemoore fog that filled the cetral valley like milk in a cup.  A midnight trip to Dennys of which in hindsight, sleep would have done me more good.

On the medical side of the house, so far so good.  Hopefully I'll get a pole in the water tomorrow.  The bride missed this trip, she has her final for her Masters degree in a couple of days.  Yawn!  Even a bad day in Key West is better then a good day in Lemoore! 

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving!

Where Soldiers Come From

"From a snowy, small town in northern Michigan to the mountains of Afghanistan, Where Soldiers Come From follows the four-year journey of childhood friends who join the National Guard after graduating from high school. As it chronicles the young men’s transformation from restless teenagers to soldiers looking for roadside bombs to 23-year-old combat veterans trying to start their lives again, the film offers an intimate look at the young Americans who fight our wars, the families and towns they come from — and the way one faraway conflict changes everything. A co-production of Quincy Hill Films and ITVS in association with American Documentary | POV, with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. (90 minutes)" 

Watch Where Soldiers Come From - Trailer on PBS. See more from POV.

Veteran's Day # 8 for DITB

Have you gone out and hugged a Veteran today?  This year might being a close to the Iraq conflict and a general wind down.  Military budgets are also slimming down, peacetime doesn't need as many mouths to feed and boots on the other side of the world and as any period of history can show you, this is never a smooth transition.  In this time of cuts, there are still many people who are supporting the Vet.

Knott's Berry Farm Veterans Day Tribute, 1st through the 24th of November is free for the military person and a guest, each extra person is 17 bucks.

Here's a list of 195 military discounts which I'll put on my sidebar later

Stores & Services Offering Military Discounts

www.bradsdeals.com/military

Blackhawk ride around NAS Lemoore

My department does the flight physicals for the local National Guard folks up in Fresno, as a gesture of good will, they called us on Friday and asked if we would like a ride.  So I gathered the people who were able and up we went, here's a video.  Thanks guys, we had a great time!

Camping Kick

My wife is a technophobe who married a cyberpunk geek.  With her treasured AAA membership, every time we drive by one of those stores, she can’t help herself and has to grab a stack of maps which she puts in stashes all over, behind seats, glove compartments and luggage. 

Me?  Since GPS and Google maps came out, I like knowing how far I am from my destination and being able to find out what’s interesting around me and with smartphones, everything is connected.  You have a friend on Facebook, with that app and a couple of clicks, you can call them, click on their address and get turn by turn directions to their house or even spookier, to their work, someone else is looking for their contact info, in less than 10 button pushes you can that zipped over to that friend without even typing in a letter (which I did earlier today in less them then I thought possible).  You can find good places to eat, times for movies, balance your check book and be in touch news just about anywhere.

But over the last few months, I’m getting a feeling how thin that cyber spherical is once you leave the highways and the online reviews.  The Brides maps are coming in handy, in fact, we have been buying the expensive maps from the National Parks because we need the detail when we’re out in the middle of nowhere.  Some of the roads we've traveled on, we've gone down and have only passed one or two cars in in a day of travel.  Yet, we’re still noobs out here compared to the folks who hike the John Muir trail.  

It is interesting going out to the edge of a map and seeing a road that goes in a mysterious way and finding where it leads.  We’ve had some grand adventures lately using this method and found things that we haven’t been able to find in the internet. 

I know we’re not the first people who have been to any of these places but we get the feeling that they’re rarely seen and from what we can tell, the people that see them don’t post them online.  Maybe I’ll show you something new.

Anyhow, here’s a video of our last trip and by the way, have I mentioned that I’ve been selected to transfer to NAS Whidbey Island in the spring? 

Tales from Afghanistan

Since I'm not the same milblogger that I used to be, let me point you to a rising talent and close friend Nate.  He deployed a couple of weeks ago and started blogging over at Tales from Afghanistan.  He tells a good tale. Keep your head down brother, I'm looking forward to turning up a bunch of cold ones with you.

If money could have bought a cure…

I’m feeling a bit guilty today, you see, back in 2004 I had 16 thousand or so songs on my 160 gig external hard drive in Iraq and at that time maybe 10 thousand pictures.  Once of my Marine buddies wanted asked to copy some of my music and I said sure.  He plugged it into his Mac laptop and it changed the format of the entire hard drive and I lost everything.  Well, all of the music anyhow, I still had the pictures. 

But I was stressed out by Iraq and it made me so angry that I swore to myself, I will never buy a Mac product.  I did get over that angry outburst but when I had a choice between Apple and something else, well I’m a Zune and PC user and use a Creative Zen for Audiobooks.  And I really do love the IPad and since I’m a photographer and video maker, Mac’s do sort of rock. 

Steve Jobs changed the face of the world and if anyone seemed more then human, he did.  He has passed away earlier today, but no one can say his life was wasted.  Tonight, I’ll put an Apple product on the wish list.

Remembering

A few snap shots of what September 11th means from friends in blogland what I really found out in this search?  That many of my old blogging links are dead or haven't blogged in years.  I deleted a bunch of links and need to move some around it looks like.  This is what happens when real life intrudes in your cyber life.  I've decided to leave the blogs up of those who posted in Iraq but quit when they got home but here is the stories I found about 9/11...

Before Some Soldier's Mom went to Prescott, she was there, Drunken Wisdom remembers Rahma Salie, MaryAnn remembers, Taco answers his daughter and this is from One Marines View.  


Fixing my links took an hour and a half but looking through them, not many of my old friends writing about it.

A Decade...

Tonight, I’m sitting in front of a flat screen TV watching Frontline on PBS, my dogs snoozing on both sides of me and my beautiful wife working out on the elliptical on the other side of the room.  I have 14 squadron Corpsman, of whom I herd like cats and spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to keep my programs at work running on a day to day basis.  Life is full and busy, both professionally and personally. 

A decade ago today, all I was responsible for was child support and some other minor bills, not a care in the world other than making it to my next paycheck.  My entire world stretched out to a dozen or so people, my connection to the world and was though Morning Edition on NPR on the way to work.  I had taken a hiatus away from the world as a whole and couldn’t imagine anything dragging me back in to it. 

Little did I know…

I grew up on September 11^th, 2001, a part of my childhood died that in disbelief.  I came back into the Navy a changed man, I wasn’t the rebel who had joined because he was running from something at 18, I was a man with a focused goal to do something that had meaning and had a core of fire burning bright inside of me.  Since, ten years have gone by, I’ve spent a quarter of that time in a war zone in a country that I was a bit vague about the location just ten years before but has since become my home away from home. 

With OBL (I won’t spell his name out) no longer in the picture, much of that anger that I had as faded.  Today, I can’t name anyone that I hate and have left many of those emotions on the other side of the world.  Each year on this date, I’ve thought about how much has changed for me, I’ve wrote about it here, here and here and maybe this year, I think I’ve come to the point where we need to start working past that event and start healing and maybe atoning for things that anger made us do.

I for one, am a better man then I was before that day.  I love the person I’ve grown into and love the richness of the people in my life with all of their differences.  I still grieve for the loss that day but I think that it is time for people to start looking at other people as people again and to once again value human life, beauty and dignity.  This glamor of anger that has been cast over much of the world needs to come to an end because I think a lot of people are tired of it.  Not that I’m going to be the guy to make it happen but I’m sure there are people out there like me who believe the same thing.  I’m just putting my thoughts on the internet and maybe some of these folk will too and eventually if enough of them speak up, that will add up to a voice that might turn a mind or two down a different path. 

I'd welcome you.