What we really did in the states

Well I realized that my last post was a little abstract and really didn't talk to much about our time in Denver and DC. I do that sometimes but there were actually some cool things that happened in the real world. As apposed to the abstract confusing one that I refer to as my gray matter.

Denver

We got into the airport and nothing unusual happened except being picked to get our bags x-rayed again when we flashed where we were coming from. The looks we get are interesting but as long as we were patient in explaining our story of where we were from and what we were doing the customs guys played nice. I got taken pretty bad at the rental car place. The people were so nice but after I realized how much they lied / deceived me and after talking to my coworker the next day I returned the car. From now on Hertz = Bad Enterprise = Good. Part of it was me not knowing the options and part of it was them phrasing things in a way were misleading. My biggest gripe was when they said how about you agree to pay for us to fill up your car here so you don't have to before you drop it off. We are also a dime cheaper then the gas station down the road. If you don't agree to, we will charge you $5.90 a gallon for anything you missed. Huh, well I guess it would make sense. The trade off was I agreed to purchase a full tank, not whatever was left to be filled. Well live and learn. I still wanted to burn the place down.

I had my first taste of American food at Jason's Deli with a fresh Rubin. I guess it's the German blood in me but that's my favorite sandwich when it is prepared right. We got to the hotel where we slept all the way to 2:00 in the morning. We spent the next day wondering around these neat places that they call malls and making sure that we got all of our "We'll wait until we get back to that states" stuff done. I got to see my “Old Lady” from A&M and his new wife of two years. He’s been doing ministry with the Navigators since he graduated A&M and decided to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserves just for fun. It reminded me how far away I was from my friends and family while living over here.

I didn't get to see my best good friend Dave on Sunday because he was delayed by a winter storm. Yeah, a winter storm by CO's terms. Easy transition from the Middle East. The first day of class I was met with a car that had a foot of snow on it and roads that were more white then anything else. I was glad to see that even natives took it slow. The first class was pretty interesting. It was an in-depth look at XML schemas which basically a new way to describe data.

I picked up Dave that evening and we did what good guy friends do who haven’t seen each other in a while. Yeah that’s right, fart on and punch each other. It’s hard to describe Dave but I’ll try. I’ve known him since my freshman year in high school and we ran cross country together for three years. At about the same speed as well. We both worked at Macaroni Grill, helped to start BCA at A&M and he was the best man at my wedding. After graduating and doing a tour with Kelloggs through all the Wal-Marts in the Southern United States he took off to CO with nothing more then a desire to do something. I was incredibly envious but in a way that I wanted him to succeed. He’s done all the jobs that people usually just talk about and his next one is to be a ski instructor. He’s the type of guy who you call when you want to Trek South America for a couple of weeks. It was good to see him.

Coming home from dinner one night we saw a bunch of water coming off the roof. I logically came to the conclusion that it was snow melting, actually a lot of snow melting. I realized I was wrong and found out that the top floor where our room happened to be was flooded. Luckily we were on the dry side of the hallway. Not so luckily we still had to move all of our stuff to the hotel next door.

Before leaving I got to see Drew one more time. His reserve unit was training in Denver and he had the first night off. We basically talked about the future and it was a lot like being in college except we had wives and actual jobs now. Our goals were for the most part the same we just have a better picture of the landscape now.

Washington D.C.

After a flight on Frontier Airlines which sounds sketchy but is a great value we landed in DC. Unfortunately it was at the wrong airport from a friend of Danna’s. No big deal we just went to pick him up. We were staying in Reston VA next to our training facility. It’s close enough to get to DC but you’ll have to drive for about 1/2 to 2 hours depending on the time of day. The first night we went to eat some real Tex Mex food with some more college friends Shane and Desi Porter. They did a great job of showing us around the different areas of town. Another travel tip from me is when you go somewhere define a couple of places that you want to really see and enjoy them. It’s a lot better then running around snapping pictures of everything but never seeing anything. We spent the most time at the museum of American History and the new Aerospace Museum. I got to see the Anola Gay and several other planes that I can’t remember right now. That night we saw all the memorials and the White House at night. It was hard to be impressed by it because it was so far away from the fence but I guess I wouldn’t want to have people looking through my windows while I was trying to sleep either.

After our weekend of touring I spent another week doing some insightful training that wasn’t nearly as interesting as the week before. Kara and I got to see some more friends of ours before we left. We knew Rollin and Mary from College. Rollin was in my Corps Outfit and Mary was in the girlfriend support group with Kara. They took us to another Mexican food restaurant but you can never get enough of that while you are back in the states. The last night there we went to a Christmas concert that kind of drove home the fact that we were not going to be home for Christmas. It was tougher for Kara seeing that I don’t have any emotions to worry about. Then it was off to Doha.

After piling about 30% above the maximum in luggage on the plane we were on our way. I was in business class the first leg and Kara told me to take it for the second one as well. I appreciated her being practical about me needing the rest seeing I had to be at work the next morning. She luckily got bumped up to economy plus and we were all happy shiny people. When we got to Doha the first thing we saw was a really smashed up car and both a the police and an ambulance outside of our building. Two separate incidents from what I could tell. The first was usual Doha driving while the second was some fight where one guy was going to the hospital and the other was being arrested. At least they both had a ride. Welcome home :)