So I made it here but my bags didn't...

It's ok though, I had packed enough of the essentials that I at least had set of T-shirt and skivies among other things.

My bags arived the following afternoon, and man was I glad to have some uniforms to jump into. Nobody said anything, cause they all understand how it is, but it was just odd to be the only one in civies while the entire rest of the base was walking around in uniform.

On the one hand, I could get away with a lot more, because nobody was really sure what my rank was, and I think some of them thought I was an officer. On the other hand, there's something to be said for the annonymity of a uniform. When you look just like everyone else people tend to give you the once over then forget about you. When you're the odd duck out, everyone wants to know your business.

Anyway, things are going well.

I've caught colds bigger than this 'lil guy, but that doesn't mean he didn't put up a fight...

I've been to Valleyfair more times than I can remember, and each time I've watched people on the ripcord just wishing I was frivilous enough to spend the extra cashola to ride it. So this time I came prepared with an extra bit of what makes the world go around for just such a purpose. Oddly enough, my brother Matt must have had the same idea because he was more than happy to pony up for it as well and our fearless-type sister in law was right behind him.

Also, I was lucky enough to be the one who got to pull the ripcord and am also the fool yahooing like Goofy off the end of a skijump.

It's been so long since I told ghost stories that I forgot 90% of the ones I knew. The other 10% wasn't really cohesive enough to share. Towards that end, and so I'll be prepared next time, anybody got any good ghost stories?

I celebrated my independance today by jumping over the side of a cliff.



My friends Taylor and Amber were camping up near Tettegouche along the North Shore of lake Superior, and invited me to stop on up for an early morning climb.
"Trust us." they kept saying as I was about to go over.
"Trust the equipment" I kept saying as I leaned out and repelled down...

You see, I've never been rock climbing before but this month has been full of new things and so when the opportunity came along I went for it. The hard thing about this climb was that we had to repell down then climb back up, instead of starting at the bottom. The way it was explained to me there's no room for changing your mind with this type of setup, once you're over the ledge you have to climb back up.

So, I was over the edge and repelled down to the point where there's no more line left and I'm at this itsy bitsy four inch ledge. Once I changed where my line is clipped from the front of the harness to the back, I began the journey of a thousand handholds by taking my first grip.

Taylor and Amber were great sports about it. It took me longer to make one run than it had taken both of them together, and that's including the ten minute cookie and water break between climbs. At any rate, I'm hooked and plan to spend a bit more time at some climbing walls in order to learn my head from my butt and get a little better at the safety aspect of it.

Here are a few pics of other stuff I saw while in the park.

He didn't have them for long, but somewhere between the morning shave and his better half finding out, my kid brother had chops...

I went to a Twins Game today!
Surprisingly to me, they smoked Milwaukee 8-0. I know I've been gone a while, but I don't remember them being this good.

In other news, I spent Thursday and Friday with friends in Alexandria and Brainerd, and hope to maybe go rock climbing over the fourth!!!

Anyway, it's time to run.
bye