Commissioned Officer Training (COT)

Waiting in the hall for early morning exercise.

There are about 150 individuals here at COT. All of us together are called a "group". We are further broken into squadrons. We are in the Griffin Squadron. Our rivals are the Falcons and Guardians. Each squadron has three flights with 15-16 people per flight. Your flight is your family. We march together, eat together, have class together. This is a picture of our flight in formation marching.

We have lectures in big cushy chairs in a huge auditorium. They are usually after lunch so we are all really tired.

Sometimes between lectures you can catch a quick snooze.

We also have lectures in a classroom setting. This is called our flight room. You can get pretty sleepy in these lectures too even with chemical stimulants.

We get to do various types of field exercises in which we are given scenarios or missions that we have to complete. They are pretty fun.

Sometimes the scenario will include one of your team members getting injured.

Luckily they don't give us real guns.

This is our entire flight. We are the Golf Flight Grenadiers.

This is a group reading their scenario card.

You have to have vigilant security or else you will get time penalties.

This is my roommate Lt West who is using a compass to determine our bearing.

The Happiest Place On Earth, Especially After Graduation

The kids, Cami and I talked about what we wanted to do to reward ourselves for all the sacrifices we had to make in going back to school. The unanimous decision was to go to California. We bought a week at the Newport Coastal Villas and planned to hit the road right after my graduation ceremony. We drove to Primm, NV the first night and stayed at Whiskey Pete's. The next morning we drove to San Diego and spent the day at Sea World. I was a bit disappointing in it as many of the attractions were closed and a lot of the shows seemed a lot less amazing than I had remembered.

That night we drove from San Diego to Newport Beach and checked into our room. It was awesome! We talked my younger brother Steve in to coming with us and he had his own room. The kids slept on the hide-a-bed and Cami and I had an awesome master suite.

We spent three days at Disneyland (which is more than enough) and goofed around the rest of the time at the pool or the beach. It was a great trip and a fantastic way to reward ourselves for all the hard work we had done.

The farewell dinner made with some of the best Tri-tip I have ever eaten, garlic rosemary bread which we made from rosemary we picked outside our door, pistachio pudding salad and a regular green salad. It was indeed a sumptuous fare.

Graduation

The day we have anticipated since starting the Nurse Anesthesia program back in August of 2009 finally arrived December 9th, 2011.  Each member of our graduating class had made so many sacrifices and overcome so much adversity to make it to graduation. Normally I am not a big fan of the "pomp and circumstance" that surrounds graduations but I enjoyed this ceremony. It was nice because we graduated in December and got to have our own private ceremony with only the 13 graduates and our families. It was incredible to finally "arrive" as they say and to celebrate that with those who had supported me so well throughout the entire experience. And in order to uphold tradition following great accomplishments, my family and I left from the graduation to DISNEYLAND. See next post for details. 

A Quick Trip

Some friends of ours from California had a son pass away and my parents were going to go to the funeral. My brother Jeff and I decided that we would also go. He had some work to do in Cedar City so I met him there and we drove together from there to St. George where we rode another must ride classic trail called the Zen Trail.

This trail is in the same area as the Bearclaw Poppy Trail we had ridden a few years previous and sunk into mud so deep we had to carry our bike about 4 miles.

This is a view from up on the cliffs of the four miles we walked our bikes.

After our ride we drove to Las Vegas to hang out with one of our cousins that we had not seen for a while. The next morning we drove to San Luis Obispo where we had grown up.

Montona de Oro State Park, one of my most favorite places on earth.

We rode our bikes around the tops of the cliffs with the beautiful blue sea and crashing waves down below. It was a surreal experience.

Jeff exploring the tide pools in his hipster shorts.

The Lone Star State

The stars at night are big and bright  . . .
We have received our initial set of orders with the Air Force. I have been assigned to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas. The kids were disappointed to not get to go to Japan but they have quickly adjusted to the idea of living in Texas and are excited about all the new prospects. We have a choice as to when we move out there. I have to do my officers training in Alabama from mid-March to the end of April and we can move before or after that. Exciting times!

A Blast Up The Pass

I was born in Ogden, Utah and lived there for the first eight years of my life. When I was six years old my dad and older brothers decided to climb the enormous mountain behind our home. Not wanting to be left out I asked if I could join the mountaineers. I do not remember if it took any coaxing on my part to get my dad to let me go but I was allowed to do it. I have vivid memories of the climb which went right up the face of Ben Lomond (the mountain pictured above). It is a 9700 foot peak with views all the way into to Salt Lake and beyond on clear days. I remember that on the way down the mountain my dad suggested that we go down Ogden Pass rather than going back down the way we had come up. We consented and began a very long and nasty hike down. Several "shortcuts" took us through mountainsides filled with stinging nettle. These were the days before camelbacks and hydration packs so I think we had one canteen of water between the 5 of us. I distinctly remember being so thirsty I couldn't even conjure up any spit to swallow.  So now, 29 years later my brothers and I decided to ride up the skyline trail, which follows much of the path we had come off the mountain on all those years ago. As in childbirth, time had diminished the memory of the pain and anguish we experienced on the previous journey and we all agreed that it would be great fun.

We visited several sites of our childhood frolicking including this King's store in which Mike (the brother I am standing with) nearly severed his finger with a butcher knife he was playing with. Most of the money we ever earned as lads was spent on candy and worthless toys. We must have kept the store alive because as you can see it is now closed. As an aside, behind this King's store was a small field that seemed enormous when I was 5. One rainy day we walked to King's to buy some things for our aunt who we were going to visit. On our way home we cut across the field and sunk into deep mud. Some hilarious guy in a truck driving buy yelled out his window, "What are you guys doing, don't you know that's quicksand?" Having watched our fair share of Gilligan's Island Mike and I were well acquainted with quicksand and frantically began to trudge through it to the safety of the sidewalk. We arrived home covered in mud, barefoot and tear-stained but safe. Mike and I also took all of my mom's jewelry ripped up her pearl necklaces and buried it all in a makeshift treasure chest. Our map making skills however were not good enough to help us find the box again and it was lost forever. 

Here is our group before beginning the ill-fated ride; much like Gilligan's aforementioned three hour tour. Everyone was all smiles because we had no idea what we were in for. The fall colors were pretty though.

The smiles are waning as we are half way through a 1500 foot climb up a rocky switchback trail.

Shortly after the climb from HELL Greg's chain came off and wedged itself under his frame and we could not get it out. After about an hour he got it back together. Notice the sweat stains on the clothes. It was not a hot day but we were working hard.

I do have to say the ride was beautiful. Looking into Eden and Pineview Reservoir.

Just before the trail became impassible with our bikes we saw a heard of mountain goats. They are surprisingly large beasties. Right after we stopped and saw the herd of mountain goats I noticed that my shock on the frame of my bike had come loose and the screw that held it in place was missing. I had to McGyver it with an allen wrench and tape.

A view from the trail looking into Ogden.

The final ascent to the top. There were multiple times where we asked ourselves if we should turn around. I must admit that if I had not done the hike at the tender age of 6 I probably would have turned around.

The intrepid explorers on the summit.

It took us 5.5 hours to ride and walk to the summit and 41 minutes to get back to our car. The decent while much faster was not particularly fun because of the roughness of the trail and being worried that my shock was going to break. All of us with the exception of my oldest brother Jeff took at least one spill on the way off the mountain. My body is covered with spectacular bruises in places I do not recall hitting.

Exhausted we made our way to an old drive in restaurant that was in the old neighborhood. My older brothers used to walk here from our house and ask what they could do to earn a milkshake. The would do menial jobs and the owners would give them a big ol' shake. Genius!
Needless to say that while this trail is a "must ride classic" on utahmountainbiking.com I would put it on the "ride at your own risk" list. Not one of my favorites but it was good to spend a day with my hommies.

Who's on First?!

Today I received an email from the person in charge of making base assignments for the Air Force. She asked me to provide information about when I would be graduating and she would tell me which bases would have needs for a nurse anesthetist at that time period. I quickly responded to her request and twenty minutes later received a response listing four state side bases asking me to choose my top two. The first was Keesler AFB in Mississippi, second Eglin AFB in Florida, third, Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX, and last Nellis AFB in Las Vegas, NV.  Of those choices we picked Florida and San Antonio. There was however a sentence under the stateside choices that said "If Misawa, Japan were available would you be interested?" My wife, Cami, and I stared at the question in absolute disbelief. We responded that we would absolutely be interested. The kids are thrilled with all three possibilities. We will find out where we will be assigned in mid-October. I will keep you posted.