Spring Break and my new blog site

Welcome to my first attempt at my own web blog. I've sort of been doing this all along by sending out bulk emails. Some of our friends received similar entries about our move across the country in 2004. A lot of our friends expressed that they really enjoyed our adventures so I decided to do it again for this trip. It makes me feel connected and less of a stranger out in the world, not so lost if you will because we tend to wander the country (and now the world) without advance reservations or really knowing where we will end up between points A and B - our beginning and final destinations. I've been keeping a sketchbook/diary which is easy to do when you spend so much time hurrying up to wait. Now I won't clog mailboxes and people can read about our adventures as they want to.

We decided to take advantage of our proximity to Travis AFB, CA and the change in flying rules for family members as of 2001 and head west over the Pacific for the 2 week March spring break with a goal of visiting our friends and former Ft. Meade neighbors Karen and Rick in Bangkok. Flights are free but you have to be flexible as missions change all the time and safety is stringent. We have been flying Space Available and our status is based on a category assigned to us. Fortunately our status is at the top of the middle so we haven't had any trouble getting on flights that we want to. But all decisions have been made last minute since information is not given out in advance for security reasons and prior research was what we could gather by calling every so often to try to figure out the pattern. Unfortunately there isn't really a pattern so we often found that our research was for naught. So, you could say that we have been traveling on "a wing and a prayer." It's been a lot of work, but also an exciting adventure as we pack on a moment's notice and run to airports only to hold our breath during roll call as we watch the number of available seats decline until it's our turn. It may seem strange to some but we've found a whole sub-culture of fellow military travelers who find it the norm - they are as adventurous as we and were very encouraging about our trip. The rest of this blog will include my emails and other thoughts from my sketchbook. Hope you all enjoy reading as much as we have enjoyed experiencing!

It's 2AM, do you know where your children are?