Trip to Tinker AFB

I just got back from 11 days in Oklahoma City. I was sent to assist our site team at Tinker AFB get back on track. It definitely was a fun and eventful "work-cation." I had a tornado develop right over my hotel the first Wednesday there. Luckily I happened to be downtown with a coworker and the tornado ended up touching down 15 miles to the east of my hotel.

During the weekend I had the opportunity to visit the Oklahoma City Federal Building Memorial. It was a quiet, yet sobering experience.

It's About Time........ Time to Set Those Most Important Goals

Yeah, yeah, yeah...... I know: It has definitely been a long time since my last post. With this post I am going to outline the goals which mean the most to me: Winter Time Fun. After I detail the dreams, desires, goals, and "have-to's" that keep me going through the day, I'll brief you with a status update on what has happened since my last post.

Goals for the 2008-2009 Winter Season: (Not in any particular order, just as they pop in my mind, but important non-the-less)

1. Ski at least 45 days; includes both front country and backcountry
   
2. Ski at least 800,000 vertical feet (yes I have a watch that tracks this; last year about 600,000 feet)
   
3. Ski the the south face/couloir of Ben Lomond from the peak w/Christian
   
4. Ski Little Superior on a good powder day w/Christian: Round 2 = my terms
   
5. Get Avalanche Level 1 Certification
6. Get Avalanche Level 2 Certification
   
7. Huck a certain cliff on Banana Dayz in Big Cottonwood Canyon
8. Huck a certain cliff on Honeycomb Cliffs in Big Cottonwood Canyon
9. Drop Corbet's Couloir at Jackson Hole
10. Learn a backflip
11. Ski Silverton Mountain
12. Ski Monte Cristo in Little Cottonwood Canyon
13. Film one or two short ski mountaineering films w/Christian
    
14. Call in sick to work at least once for a weekday storm dump of 15 inches or more
15. Ascend all 3 pitches of Malan's Waterfall
    
16. Solo Willard Peak ice drainage at least 3 times
17. Take an ice climbing trip to Ouray, CO
18. Find a super hot Backcountry Babe to date (that's to satisfy your wishes Mother)

Ice Climbing in Cody, WY February 2007

So this is all I have for now, but trust you me, this list will be growing. It's getting late and my brain is ready to shut down, but before I turn in for the night, I need to give you that status update.

I have been quite busy, not just with playing, but work has picked up. Our new fiscal year started October 1 and so ended our period of performance for our last contract. Now onto 2 new contracts with a lot more taskings. These new contracts allowed for the UID team to grow from 9 individuals in Latyon, UT/Hill Air Force Base, to a team of 32 at Hill AFB, Peterson AFB (Fort Collins, CO), Tinker AFB (Oklahoma City, OK), Robins AFB (Warner Robins, GA), and Tobyhanna Army Depot (Scranton, PA). With all of this growth my responsibility has also grown. Because I did the initial ground work for 2 of the new tasks prior to the new hirings, I have been put as the Junior Project Lead for 2 teams. It's fun to finally have work and short suspense deadlines. Really my work load has gone up about 500%. I have already put in 41 hours this week, and I have decided to work tomorrow on my Regular Day Off (RDO) to finish some work.

But honestly, I'm finally having fun. I have no problem putting in the time now because the winter is coming and everyone knows that I will be travelling and having "sick days" frequently.

I have joined a Senior Hockey League and have played 3 games. Right now we're #1 with 3 wins and 35 goals for. I have 1 goal and 5 assists. Yes it is quite apparent that my team is stacked. I will admit that I played absolutely horrible last game. It is actually really hard to breath when your head is up your .......... well you get the idea.

I also started my last indoor soccer season tonight. We played really bad. We only had 2 subs and we had 2 new guys on the team. We did manage to win 11-0, even though I got beat bad 3 times on defense. I should have had 3 goals tonight but I did get 3 assists. That's not bad for the sweeper.

Fun At Work: Introducing Lt. "Gas Can" Dan

So today had a good start to it. I was at my desk going at another wonderful spreadsheet when I got a call. GTACS's very own 2nd Lieutenant Dan Luczak called me in distress. Yes, we have a Lieutenant Dan, just like on Forest Gump. He stated very desperately that he needed my help and to not tell anyone. When I asked him what was going on he said that he's car is stuck on the side of the interstate, to leave and pick him in 5 minutes at the West Gate entrance, and to not tell anyone.

So I go pick him up and what was going on? Lt. Dan, who is a drag racer, from Detroit, lives, breathes, drinks, dreams, and talks cars, has just run out of gas a 1/4 mile outside of base. So to say the least, my buddy is a little pissed and embarrassed. Why wouldn't he be embarrassed? The man practically pisses high octane with how involved he is with cars. Why was he pissed off? Well more than 20 cars passed by as he was walking down the off-ramp to base and no one stopped to see if he needed a ride. "I get no respect I tell ya. Everyone sees that I'm just a 2nd Lieutenant and they just walk on by laughing," he bickers. For those of you that don't know, a 2nd lieutenant is the lowest of the commissioned rank (officers).

I, of course, was having a great time and laughing my butt off. So we go to his apartment, grab a 5 gallon gas can, return to his car, and get him with some fuel to drive the remaining mile to work. Of course, as his friend, I can't let this go unnoticed with the other cowokers. so what do I do? I took out my nifty little iPhone and take the following picture:

Anyone on base would first recognize that exit sign to be the off-ramp to get on base. Next if you look at the right side of the picture, you'll notice a couple of intercontinental ballistics missiles that mark the entrance. He was quite embarrassed to get that far and not make it in.

As we get back to our building, Dan places a gag order on me. As he goes to talk with a boss regarding an item to be brought up in his staff meeting, I email the picture to the guys in the cubicle and others in the building. They just happened to put it on their desktops to see how long it'd take Dan to notice. Well since someone unintentionally let him know that I did that, I had to make up for it. So I printed out a copy and gave it to his boss to pass it around in the staff meeting. I guess that was the funniest staff meeting that they've had in GTACS in a long time.

Now Dan was a little upset at my antics, but it was more to him feeling embarrassed, being a man with a high octane stature. We were joking about after their meeting and came up with a great call sign for him: Gas Can Dan. Yeah it's no Maverick or Goose, but it sure is funny.

Even after all the prodding I did, Dan still took me out to lunch to show his appreciation.

Fun at Work

Let me start off by saying that working for a "for-profit" organization that deals with a government "not-for-profit" organization is quite different. The first thing that is does for me is that it makes me glad for capitalism and "for-profit" organizations. The interaction that one has with that government organization can be very slow and arduous.

Anyway with that being said, I have managed to fit in with one of my" customers," The GTACS Sustainment Program Office. Instead of being the fly on the wall contractor, I have managed to become one of the guys. In doing so I decided to pull a little copycat joke with one of the guys in the program office. Lieutenant Dan, yes I have a Lt. Dan (Forrest Gump) in the program office, decided that we would pick on Neil, the Equipment Specialist. So I decided that I should look like him for a day. This is what happened:


Everyone seemed to get a kick out of it. I had a meeting with my company’s VP of Operations and he was laughing so hard at the beginning of the meeting that we couldn't get started on time. When someone would ask me why I did it, I would just reply, “I just needed to feel like more of a man today.”

The one person that hated it, of course, was Randi. I sent her a pic of it and she replied back as fast as humanly possible that I “need to fix that ASAP!” I told her that I would. The unfortunate thing for her, and myself, was that the guy I was pranking was out sick the day I did this. So I had to keep it for another day. But I did manage to keep it for a family birthday dinner. She was very tolerant of me and that was a good thing. Randi made sure that I took it off before our next birthday party the following night. But as long as it kept her happy, I was fine taking off my "manness."