Aug 28

Ok, I was going to do this blog entry yesterday, but I was just too sleepy. I didn’t sleep at work, but I didn’t do much of anything else. We got back from our South Carolina/Georgia trip yesterday. It was just over thirty hours going, but only twenty six coming back. We arrived back in Denver at noon. I got something to eat and unloaded the car, but took a nap after that. I wanted to sleep longer, but I guess I got used to the little cat naps in the car and only slept for about an hour or two. Then, I had to watch the Rockies game. We lost by four, but I’ll get to that later. Then, I had to go to work that night. It was a looooong night. It was a good thing nothing really happened, because I was fighting to stay awake during the last few hours.
On our trip, the best thing we did was to buy a little portable DVD player. My granddaughter was so anxious to go see her auntie in the army that she didn’t go to sleep during the entire first day in the car. If it wasn’t for that DVD player to entertain her, I can just imagine how bad it would have gotten. She watched Wow Wow Wubbsy about five hundred times, but it kept her occupied. My youngest daughter and my oldest daughter’s boyfriend slept most of the time. How they did it, I can’t imagine. I tried to stretch out in the back back once, we have an SUV with three rows of seats, but it was so cramped there wasn’t any way to get comfortable. And, the car seat was in the middle row of seats so it was even worse. Anyway, around eight o’clock or so, my granddaughter turned off the DVD player and asked us if we could just go to grandma’s house because we were driving all day and weren’t getting anywhere. I tried to tell her that we were going to drive all night and she was going to have to sleep in the car, but she didn’t understand. She did end up sleeping all night, which was good. On the second day in the car, I promised her that we would stay at a motel that night. She had never been in a motel before, so I explained it as a little house. When we arrived, the only thing that concerned her was that the beds were in the living room. After picking up my eldest daughter and going to Georgia, we got new motel rooms, and my granddaughter liked them better. She was very excited to find that there was a kitchen in the new one.
We arrived in South Carolina at eight o’clock in the evening on Tuesday. We had planned on going to Ft Jackson first thing. On the internet, they said that we could pre-check-in so that there wouldn’t be any problems in the morning when all of the families are trying to get in. But, it was late and we were tired. We just wanted to get to the motel and relax. And, I was starving. I unloaded the car while my wife went out and got Arby’s. It was nice to get a shower and everything, but I crashed right after eating. When we woke up, it was about five thirty in the morning. We wanted to get to Ft. Jackson early to get good seats for family day. By seven, we were walking down to get the free continental breakfast. It was really good at the Quality Inn, but it was so hot, even at that early in the morning, that we were sweating by the time we reached the little breakfast room. We were only about five minutes from the fort, so it didn’t take us long to get there. What we should have done, was to enter the army base in the very right hand lane that was clearly labeled “Visitors”. But, there were a lot of cars in that lane and they were stopped as they were being signed in. So, we took the middle lane. At the gate, we were stopped so that we could show the guard our ID’s. We apologized as soon as we pulled up. I expected them to send us to that other line, but the guy just checked our ID’s and gave us a two day pass and waved us in. We saved about thirty minutes. It was very cool.
On base, we found our way to the field where they were going to have a small presentation before releasing the new soldiers into their families care. We were out of the car and walking toward the bleachers when someone saw the port-a-potties. No one wanted to use them and everyone seemed to suddenly needed to go. So, we climbed back into the car and got lost looking for the Burger King we passed. We thought we found my daughter’s barracks, but it was a Charlie company in a different battalion. When we returned, the field was beginning to fill up. We made our way to the bleachers again and there were a bunch of tents selling shirts and stuff. We bought a graduation DVD. Since graduation wasn’t until the next day, they will mail it to us. And, we bought some little necklace charms that said things like “Proud brother of a soldier” and “Proud cousin of a soldier” We planned on giving them out to some of the relatives that couldn’t come. I got a graduation coin and a Proud Army Dad coin. Then, we found our seats and got ready for the program. There were thousands of parents and visitors in the stands. It was like going to a baseball or football game. As the time crept up on us, I kept looking down the sides to see if they were marching up, but I couldn’t see them anywhere. Finally, out across the field, smoke grenades were set off outside of the tree line and all of the new soldiers started yelling and running out onto the field. They all formed up and my daughter’s company was right in front of us. We couldn’t tell one soldier from the other, but my daughter is a little on the short side, and we knew she was a squad leader, so we picked her out. The ceremony took too long, but they finally released them to us.
The soldiers couldn’t leave the base on family day, so we had to do things at Ft. Jackson. We started off by going to her barracks. We were able to go inside and see where she spent the last three months. I’ve never seen her bed so neat. Then, we went to the main PX to get something to eat. As it turned out, several thousand families and several thousand new soldiers also had that great idea. Squeezing into the building, we were lucky to get there relatively early and even managed to find seats to sit down and eat. Then, we went inside the store part of the PX because we wanted to take advantage of all that tax free shopping. The only thing I can say for it was that there weren’t any taxes. But, they jacked up the prices to make up for the taxes. We didn’t buy anything. We went to the base museum, the bowling alley, and the pizza hut. Everywhere we went, there were several thousand people that went with us. So, we spent most of the day at the lake park. The bugs were biting, but at least we weren’t pushing our way through people.
It sucked leaving her at the end of family day, but we knew that we would pick her up in the morning after graduation. The continental breakfast the next day was even better than the previous day. Kudos to Quality Inn. But, the breakfast must have been too good, because by the time anyone looked at their watch, it was already eight thirty and the graduation was at nine. Rushing, we jumped into the car and immediately went in the wrong direction on the highway. Turning around, we hurried even faster toward Ft. Jackson. When we got there, it turned out that everyone else lost track of the time. The line to get to the field where they were holding the graduation was like ten miles long. Not only that, everyone decided that their need to see the graduation was much greater than everyone else’s. People were cutting people off. They were fabricating driving lanes so that they could get one car ahead of where they were. It was chaos. We counted down the time as we crawled toward the field. When we finally made it, we were parked way in the back. We rushed toward the bleachers which were full. So, we went under them. We had a pretty good spot picked out where we could see all of the soldiers standing in formation. As it turned out, all we missed was them marching onto the field and people making speeches. Before they kicked us and about fifty other families out from under the bleachers, we were in time to see a captain fall backwards. When I was in the Marines, they constantly drilled into our heads to not lock our knees. What happens when you do is that the blood circulation slows down and you lose consciousness. Well, this captain was part of the color guard, so he was right out in front. It was like watching someone do the Nestea plunge into a swimming pool, only there wasn’t a pool. Since about three or four guys passed out during family day, they had people ready to run out and pull the guy to the back of the formation. We missed several others falling out, but it didn’t matter, my daughter didn’t pass out. When they kicked us out, we went to the side of the bleachers with everyone else and it was a good thing, because when the soldiers did their pass and review, they ended up at that side of the field and were released.
It was so hot in South Carolina that the first thing my daughter wanted after she graduated was to go take a shower and get out of that heavy uniform. She had to keep it on during family day. She said she was used to it, but my granddaughter wouldn’t let her put her down so my daughter carried her nearly the entire day. But, she had to check out before we could take her with us. That meant standing in a line for about an hour. To ensure that the soldiers knew that they hadn’t been released until they got their orders and signed out, several of the drill instructors ‘smoked’ (made them do pushups or any number of calisthenics) them while they were waiting in line. While I waited with her and the baby, my wife was out trying to fix the car. The air conditioner wasn’t working in the back. With it being as hot as it was and with us adding another body back there, it was going to be miserable going from South Carolina to Georgia without it. As it turned out, there is a switch next to the gear shift. We didn’t know what it did and never bothered to look it up. But, it turns off the air conditioner in the back. I was glad my wife figured it out, but why would anyone put a switch like that in a car? It doesn’t make any sense. If the owner didn’t want cool air back there he could just turn it off. Why does there need to be a kill switch up in the front?
Anyway, we went out to eat and took my daughter to a surplus store where she could buy some better boots. The ones she had were the ones they issued to her and they were kind of cheap. I am glad that my wife buys my clothes for me. I had no idea how much boots were cost. Before the trip, I decided I was going to get me a pair. I used to like the ones I had back in the corps. And, I do a lot of walking in my job and the shoes I get now seem to wear out very quickly. No shoe should give out before the shoelaces. Anyway, I was looking at the wrong number when we were at the PX. I thought that the boots were forty dollars. At that price I was being a little reluctant. I didn’t want to spend that much on shoes. When my wife showed me the real price, over a hundred dollars, I nearly dropped a load. There was no way that I was going to pay that much unless they were gold lined. When we got to the surplus store, my wife got me a pair. They were still over a hundred dollars, but they were less than on base. She told me that even the kid’s shoes were about that much and at least these would last me for a while. But, now that I have them, I have to admit that I’m glad she got them for me. They are much better than the ones I had way back when. They are Rocky’s. Don’t ask me what they are called. I’m surprised that I remember the brand name. Actually, I only remember the brand name because of the Rockies baseball team. Anyway, they have laces, and I tied them up. But, I never have to untie them. They also have a zipper that runs down the side, so I just have to unzip them to take them off. They are water proof and the treads are more like car tires. They add about three inches to my height. I might actually be able to look my brother straight in the chin now, the giant.
We took a day off in Georgia. We had to have my daughter there by noon the next day. So, naturally we were late. We got there with plenty of time. But, everywhere we took her, they told us it was the wrong place and sent us somewhere else. Fort Gordon is a huge place and we saw nearly all of it looking for the right place to take her. As it turned out, we were supposed to take her to the movie theater so she could get processed into her new battalion. (Why didn’t we guess?) There was a girl there from boot camp, so at least she knew someone. We followed her as they took her to get checked in. They said that after check in, they were going to give her a weekend pass so we could have her for another day before we left. As she filled out paperwork and they inspected her stuff, I started talking to another dad doing the same thing I was doing. I told him that the first thing my daughter wanted when she got out of boot camp was McDonalds. He said that the first thing his daughter wanted was a pack of cigarettes. The drill instructors at Ft. Jackson wouldn’t let the recruits have any type of tobacco products while they were in boot camp. They were there for three months. You would think that she would have broken her habit while she was there. But, the dad gave her a pack. And, the mom smuggled a pack into her stuff after she was inspected. (Parents of the year)
Since the new motel had a kitchen, we decided to give our checking account a break and make sandwiches and stuff that day. We would go swimming and play cards and have an indoor day. It worked out pretty good, but my daughter wanted to do something with me. She said that she probably wouldn’t have joined if I hadn’t talked to her about how it was when I was in the Marine Corps. So, she wanted to get a father daughter tattoo. Tattoos are her thing. She has few of them, a butterfly on her back, her mom’s name on her ankle, and so on. I have a tattoo of an eagle and a snake on my right arm. I got it about thirty years ago when I had just gotten out of boot camp. I never intended to get another one, but she asked. So, we went and picked out one that has two dolphins, a father one and a daughter one. I got it on my left shoulder and she got it on her other ankle. They look pretty good.
It was rough spending time with her and then having to drop her off. But, Sunday came pretty quickly. She didn’t have to be back until two o’clock, but we had to get on the road. We decided to go a different route on the way back. It looked shorter on the map, and it was. On the way down, we went the southern route on highway 20. The only reason was we wanted to go through some different states and we didn’t want to go through stupid Kansas. But, I had to work that evening and no one wanted to be in the car any longer than necessary. We did cut several hours off of the drive. But, we’re going to need to get a new gas card. The one we have, we have had for a long time. We used to use it going back and forth from Denver to New Jersey. Before, we could stop at all of the BP gas stations. There are a lot of them on highway 70. But, sometime over the years, the card changed or was bought out or something. Now, it was only good a Valero or Diamond Shamrock. There are quite a few of them here in Denver, so we weren’t concerned. Out on the road, there were a few Valeros, but that was only in Colorado and New Mexico. By the time we hit Oklahoma and Texas, we were using a Target Visa. It was a good thing we had it, because we put nearly the entire trip on it gas-wise. I put about a hundred on my debit card until I realized that I wasn’t going to have any money left if I kept up using it. So, kudos to Target on this trip too.
The baby was very disappointed that she didn’t get to see any bears on the trip. The only animals she saw were cows, horses, and one deer. But, she said that the cows were very beautiful even if they don’t go to their houses at night. They stay out way too late. On the way back, I think we were in Missouri, I found a radio station that was playing an Angels Rangers game. I was able to listen to the last three innings and the sports baseball league recap before it went out. I had bought a MP3 player before we left so that I would have something to listen to on the overnight driving. It turned out to be cheap and difficult to use. So, I burned about ten CDs to listen to. I tested some of them out in the car before we left. But, that was only on short trips to work and the store. As it turns out our CD player is about as good as the MP3 player. It plays one CD all the way through and you might be able to listen to one or two songs on the second CD before it goes out. So, I mostly only had the radio to listen to. Actually, I listened to a bunch of static while trying to find stations all night. But, the game was interesting. The Rangers won and during the recap, I learned that the Rockies beat the Dodgers that night. The announcer said that they avoided the sweep by beating them. I haven’t actually looked, but the Rockies are still in a slump. I believe we are twelve or thirteen games back. This season sucked. I did manage to watch part of yesterday’s and today’s game against the Diamondbacks. We lost both of them too.
Well, this is now a five page blog entry. That’s what I get for going on vacation. It’s one o’clock in the morning, but I’m going to put this down as Tuesday. I’m putting Billy Joel, Tesla, and Bon Jovi in the playlist for background music and I think I’m going to get started on the River of Magic. I am much more awake than yesterday so I should be able to get back into the groove.
-Thom