Well I've been slacking on updating the blog! It's hard to believe 2006 is almost over. The year is wrapping up with a lot of celebrity obituaries, James Brown for instance and who can forget the hanging of Saddam Hussein. It's hard not to think back for the obligatory "year in review." For me 2006 started out in lovely Altus, Oklahoma. There I finished up my instructor pilot training in the KC-135. After returning to Okinawa in February I got the running bug and decided to run a marathon. The plan was to run the Kona Marathon in Hawaii but that fell through when I had to take a business trip to Diego Garcia for a few months. I also missed the Naha marathon in Okinawa's capital city for trying to register late. It's so popular that registration was closed in October for a December 3rd race day.

In March I was training for my June marathon in the Okinawa Prefectural Comprehensive park right next door to my aparment. I also got to explore the island a little and checked out the Southeast Botanical Gardens. On St Patrick's Day it was great to catch up with my cousin Garth. He also lives on Okinawa and this was the first time we literally bumped into each other at bar.

In April I got to fly down to Darwin, Australia to do some work with their air force. This was my second trip to Darwin and the weather was just as I remember since my first trip was in 2005 during their rainy season. A lot of the roads were flooded out so we didn't get to explore much. The best part was a flying tour of the nearby national parks in my own jet...namely Kakadu park.



May was fun because I got a couple weeks of vacation and went to Las Vegas for my birthday! The timing was great because Amanda had family and friends coming to Vegas and my college friend Amen-ra was having his bachelor party in Vegas. Plus Amanda had to pick up her dog Tasha to bring back to Okinawa. We made it to Amen-ra's wedding on May 6th in Santa Cruz, CA. I also got to spend some time with my cousin Ernie in Los Angeles. After that it was off to Diego. In Diego I had a blast learining to sail the Laser Pico and a Hobie Cat. I got back from Diego in August and did some scuba diving in the Kerama islands. One of my goals in 2006 was to scuba dive twice a month and the Aug dive was my last for '06!


























The highlight of September was typhoon evacuating to Guam. The funny part was Shanshan missed the island of Okinawa. Partying is Guam was worth the trip.

In October I did my first legitimate long run race at the Camp Kinser half marathon. My time was 1 hour and 41 minutes to run about 13 miles. The best part was that after finishing the 13 miles I felt like I could have kept running and maybe have finished a full 26 miles.

November was depressing because Amanda got deployed to the US for training and then onto Iraq by December. I took more sailing lessons and got my ASA license and signed of on our marina's 18 foot Capri sailboats. Thanksgiving was fun...I had dinner with my friend Knute and Ninni. Their apartment is about 3 blocks from mine and has a shared back yard right on Awase Bay and the Pacific Ocean. All the Americans in their building had a potluck dinner in the backyard.

In December I took two weeks off to go to my cousin Elaine's wedding in San Jose, CA. On the same trip I wanted to visit my friend that I know from way back in Weed elementary school, Shannon Maas, who teaches english in Seoul, Korea. The wedding was on December 17th and I had to be back in Japan by the 21st and wouldn't you know it all the flights from the west coast to Japan were booked that week so I just spent two weeks exploring South Korea including Seoul and the De-militarized Zone between North and South Korea.



2007 is looking good from here. I'm signed up for the Okinawa City Marathon in February. My trainig is going great. Out of my three running workouts per week I only missed one in Korea because it was too cold to run 13 miles and a treadmill just won't cut it.