Last Saturday was Amanda's scuba diving certification weekend! The previous Saturday was her first ocean dive at Sunabe Seawall. Check out the webcam too. For the second dive the plan was to dive at
Maeda Point, but due to some renovation on the rock steps going down to the water we dove at Sunabe again. You should see the bruise on Amanda's leg after she fell walking across the treacherous coral with waves coming in on the way out to deeper water. She says it was worth it and is now a PADI certified open water diver. On 22 April we have a reservation to dive in the Keramas. It will be our first boat dive together!

Last week I was running through the Outback in the middle of the day when a mean old crocodile got in my way. Ok the part about the crocodile isn't true but I was jogging in Darwin City - Northern Territory Australia last Thursday the 6th of April. Some of you might recognize the first line from a running cadence"jody." I still sing jody's, not out loud since basic training, when I run and it helps me keep a good pace, especially when I'm on mile 12. I only ran 6 miles in Darwin, but it felt like more because the temperature was about 85 degrees with at least 80% humidity. My plan to run the Kona Marathon may have to change because of work. Maybe I'll run the Maui marathon in Sept this year.

My trip to Darwin was for business, but we had plenty of time to check out the bar scene. There's a good Irish Pub called Shennanigan's, not the chain restaurant in the US. We tried kangaroo, crocodile, and barammundi at the pub restaurant. I don't remember a lot of the clubs names but one cool bar was called The Arck. Unfortunately it's monsoon season right now so a lot of the roads were flooded out going into the national parks just south of Darwin; Kakadu and Litchfield.


My crew was in Darwin to play in an anti-nuclear terrorism exercise. A New Zealand 757 was simulated hi-jacked and Australian Air Force F-18's did the intercept and of course, my jet, the mighty Stratotanker did the air refueling of the F-18's. There was a story about it on CNN but I don't think our jet was in the pictures. We will get some video and photos from the F-18 that had the photographer on board. While we were flying around Darwin we got a chance to go VFR and fly over Litchfielf park at about 5,000 feet. Definitely a fun trip!