In September I got the opportunity to swim with two whale sharks. For the purposes of research 2-3 whale sharks are kept in a huge net off of Torii Beach, Okinawa. You might think that the animals would want to get out but they're released when typhoons come by the island and always come back. The shark handlers wouldn't let us feed them. That's me in the second photo.

July has been an exciting month for Veronica and I to say the least. On July 1st, 2007 I asked for her hand in marriage at the Nagano Marriott Resort in Okinawa. The above photo on the right is just after she said yes! We walked out on the balcony with champagne and I had convinced her we should have a special dinner before she had to move to Hawaii leaving Okinawa the 5th of July. With the cover of a romantic dinner before leaving I totally caught her by surprise.



Luckily I was able to find a nice ring on Okinawa. Veronica mentioned she wouldn't want any "blood diamond" jewelry so I was a little worried that with my limited jewelry buying experience I could find an appropriate band/stone. A good friend of mine mentioned she'd had her eye on a sapphire ring from Sri Lanka that was very unique and was available at an on base jeweler. As soon as I saw it I knew Veronica would approve. The only problem now is that I'll be in Okinawa until May next year. The plan is for me to move to Hawaii then.

I've been slackin' on posting lately. May and June have been busy for me flying back and forth to the U.S. I was in Vegas and CA then Tokyo for about 10 days in May. Then in June I went home to Weed, CA to see both of my parents retire from teaching. In Tokyo we went to Disney Sea park and the photo with Veronica is the Redding, CA Sundial bridge. More pictures to come in the next posting. Please send photos if you went to the retirement party!

Last Friday on April 20, 2007 I woke up at around 4:30 in the morning to the first noticeable earthquake in the two years I've been on Okinawa. I have felt other small tremors where the building I work at would shake but it would be hard to tell if I just imagined it or it was from construction on the base.

It was scary because I felt like someone pushed me or pushed the bed to wake me up. My first thought was there's someone else is here or my apartment is haunted! Then for about 30 seconds it was like a very rythmic moving wave sensation kind of like being on a boat. Above my bed there are some storage shelves with boxes and extra blankets so as soon as I realized it was an earthquake I hopped out of bed thinking it might get worse and all that stuff was going to fall down on my head! Luckily it stopped right away and as far as I could tell there weren't any aftershocks or tsunami's. I listened up for any annoucements in Japanese on the local PA system. I'm not sure if I would understand a tsunami warning....hopefully I could pick out the time I have left to get to higher ground!

I just found this interesting website by the US Geological Survey. Turns out it was a 5.7 on the Richter scale and about 50 miles from my apartment. The article has an interesting link to a map and a survey on where/when/what you experienced. I also subscribed to an alert that will send me an email with information on a 5.5 magnitude or higher quake.

This year I spent my St Patrick's Day in Fairbanks, Alaska. The funny thing was we left 70 degree weather in Okinawa and got to Alaska during unusually low temperatures for February and March. The lowest being -45 degrees F. It has been raining a lot in Okinawa lately but I'll take rain and 70 degrees over 40 below at night with daytime highs in the single digits!

For dinner we ate the the "northernmost southern restaurant" Big Daddy's Bar-B-Q. The beef brisket was great and the cornbread was a little sweet but good as well. We had trouble getting help from the waitress. As you can see from the reviews that's nothing new. During dinner we enjoyed some green dyed Alaskan Amber and Summer Ale. I turned in early while the rest of the group hit the Yukon club on Eielson AFB.

The highlight of my trip has been by far Chena Hot Springs Resort. The outdoor hot springs pool was awesome! It probably wasn't at the 110 average temperature...depending on where you were at in the pool but it felt great. Some of the granite rocks on the sides make great recliners. I sat on one rock half in and half out for at least a half hour. You have to occasionally get back in because the water on your hair, eyelashes, nose hairs, etc. would freeze in about 10 minutes. At night there's limited lighting and you can barely see from one side to the other through the steam. This is great for couples that want some privacy. I don't think I interrupted any couples' quality time. Unfortunately no Northern Lights, but we did see a small strand of the lights a few nights ago.

I finally completed my first marathon! It has taken me over a year to run one even though I started training back in Februrary 2006. The original plan was to run the Kona Marathon in 2006 but I went to Diego Garcia. I started training in Diego for the 3 December 2006 Naha, Okinawa Marathon but tried to sign up in early October and the race was already full. Needless to say I signed up early for the Okinawa City Marathon.



It was a perfect day to run...about 70 degrees with overcast skies and some light showers here and there. For the first hundred yards the crowd of about 7,000 runners walked for about 50 yards to the start line. Each runner tag had a Radio Frequency ID tag that tracked your pace through check points along the course. By my timing I was on pace to finish in 3.5 hours up to mile 20 but the hills at about mile 21 to 22 kicked my butt! I didn't stop running but my pace was walking speed up the hills. This first photo was about mile 10 and I was still smiling. The three amigos photo are my friends Kevin, Cody, and Greg.

My proof of completion...finsiher's list. At 4 hours 4 minutes and 40 seconds I was 884 out of 5,830.







With the RFID tags, you can see one on Cody's number in the photo above, they scanned it at the finish line then you walked/crawled just outside the stadium and they printed the completion certificate with your name and time on there. In the third photo I was concentrating on not stopping to walk! I couldn't quite catch the lady in the yellow shirt on the last 400 meter lap around the stadium track. The funny thing was when a volunteer on race staff asked me to fill out a survey about 10 steps past the finish line and I couldn't even stand up straight. Veronica helped me to the orange slice and drink station and kept asking me if I was going to pass out. At the massage station they rubbed down your legs with packs of ice...sounds like it would hurt but it felt great! My soreness after the race was a lot less than I expected. By the 1st of March I was fine. A 75 minute massage two days afterwards helped.

Less than a week to my first marathon! I got back from a longer than planned trip to Kansas this past Sunday, just in time to finish up a few more runs in Okinawa weather before the race day. Yesterday I ran my last long run for 13 miles up by Okuma. The best part about the race is it starts and finishes less than a block from my apartment. So if I need to I won't have to crawl very far to make it home. Check out this Google Map. The start/finish is in the stadium at the center of the map. My apartment is next door to the Joy Home builiding which is now Manga Souka or Treasure Hunt...it's a big thrift store that buys/sells just about anything.

I'm stuck in Wichita, Kansas! It's nice to see snow again but the below freezing temperatures have taken some getting used to. The photo is the view from my Holiday Inn 2nd floor room. This is my first blog for 2007 and I'd planned on doing one in January but as you can see that didn't happen. Taking on two online courses this semester for my MBA with Touro University takes just about all of my free time.

As far as January goes it was a good month. The Japanese have a lot of New Year traditions like getting your fortune at a Shinto shrine for the coming year. Another tradition is to eat soba noodles with tempura vegetables. Shuri castle had some ceremonies reenacting the days when there was a shogun king ruling Okinawa. Just in the first week I did two medevac missions picking up critical newborns from Guam and taking them to better hospitals in Okinawa or Hawaii.

Since my December vacation to Korea I've kept my mustache. It's coming in nicely. After vacation I had a full beard going and couldn't shave it all off. For a while I was getting the "molestache" comments, or there's "dirt" on your lip. Lately I've gotten more compliments that it's looking good....depends on who you ask I guess. Anyone up for a mustache ride?

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.

I have a new favorite restaurant! It's called the Blue Dog Cafe; American Country Kitchen. They have the best french toast I've had on the island! You even have the option of a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of your french toast along with chocoloate syrup, blueberry sauce, caramel syrup, etc. The coolest thing about it is the place is less than a mile away from my apartment.

Looks like Amanda is having fun in Mississippi!

This past weekend I got to visit Guam thanks to the latest typhoon
Shanshan which passed close to Okinawa. It's a US territory but with all the Japanese tourists it feels like you're still in Okinawa. It was still nice to catch up on American things we don't have here like Wendy's, TV commercials, or the lastest movies. The military bases on Okinawa have just about every fast food joint except Wendy's. So I had to eat dinner there once. Our TV is not regular cable...it's called the Armed Forces Network. There are no commercials because the military doesn't pay for it...they put together the most popular programming including sports and replace the commercials with local public service announcement stuff that gets old fast.

My favorite restaraunt at Guam is easily
Stanlee's. It's a liquor store slash sandwich shop slash ice cream shop. The guy is from Australia and his store carries a good selection of down under beer...no Foster's by the way. My favorites are Castlemaine XXXX lager
and Hahn premium lager.

You would think that Diego Garcia and Okinawa both being tropical islands would have the same humidity. Well I can confidently say that it's not even close. Okinawa is hands down the winner. As soon as you walk out the door you're instantly sweaty. I ran about 9am the other day for about 6 miles. Afterwards I sat down on a park bench to rest. In about 30 seconds I was sitting in a puddle of my own sweat.

Luckily I got a few days off to explore the island after returning from my stressful tdy to Diego. Somehow I lost the pictures from Cape Hedo. It's the northern most spot on the island. When Oikinawa was officially under US control the locals would light signal fires here to show their solidarity to mainland Japan.

The fireworks are from the Orion beer festival. As far as beer festivals go it's a little disappointing. There's no beer garden....just a bunch of food booths with the usual yakisoba and other healthy fried food. Although the fireworks are worth sticking around to see.

It's finally August and I thought my time in Diego would be over by now but I'm still here. I can't complain too much. For the month of July since my lasting posting I learned how to sail a Hobie Catamaran. At the marina you have to sail the smaller Laser Pico for a total of 8 hours before they let you move up to the Hobie. I think my total was 7 but they still let me graduate to the bigger boat. The first day I took it out with Will and Bill the marina staff worker Mahan didn't have time to show us how to rig the sails. So he told us to go rig it ourselves, and we said no problem how hard can it be. Needless to say we had the main sail on all wrong and the jib sail didn't even have the right rope. After Mahan helped us fix all of that we cruised out into the lagoon with no supervision. Of course Mahan told us to stay close. Winds were good and afer cruising back and forth in front of the marina we were getting bored and deicided to do some capsize drills. For some reason it took all three of us pulling on one pontoon to bring her back upright. After the third turnover we had it down, but I got caught under the pontoon just as it was coming down into the water as we got the boat upright. It gave me a pretty good sized knot on my forehead. It's hard to see in the photo but you can just make out the red part of the bump.





The fourth time we flipped it wasn't on purpose. I turned downwind too fast and our front pontoon dug into the water. It felt like a car crash as we went from 15-20 mph to an instant stop! Bill got thrown into the mast and ended up with a good sized bruise on his thigh. Will was luckily thrown clear of the rigging and I managed to miss the mast too. Yesterday was the fourth time I've taken out the Hobie and the boss at the marina, Rick, signed off my license for sailing the Hobie without adult supervision.

Fourth of July week in Diego has been a little boring but not too surprising for an island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Luckily my crew and I had the 3rd and 4th off so we were able to drink a few beers. Unfortunately no fireworks! No pyro-technics allowed on the island per British policy. Some of the ships in the lagoon shot off flares but that was it. We grilled out in front of our dorms. One of our guys was shouting "Down with the Brits." This wouldn't be funny normally except that the British island police station is also in our dorm building.

My crew was recovering from the latest summercamp event on the 1st of July which was a mini-triathlon. It took me about an hour and a half to swim 500 meters, bike 12 miles, and then run a 5k. By the 2nd mile on the run my quadriceps and hamstrings were cramping up. First place went to a really tough girl, Jennifer, whose actually finished a full ironman race before. I didn't feel so bad getting beat by her.

The winds were kicking up today so I took the Pico laser back out on the lagoon. This time I was able to keep from capsizing. My last excursion I capsized the boat to where the mast was pointing straight down into the water. Normally the boat will stay on it's side with the mast floating in the water. It was raining and it took me five tries to finally get it back upright and sailing again. For about 15 to 20 minutes I wasn't sure if I was going to get it back over before getting pushed into shore and catching the sails on some coral.

Cowtail Stingrays

I just figured out what species of stingrays we saw at Diego Garcia's Turtle Cove pictured in the 23 June blog. Thanks to Amanda we have a great site for identifying rays or sharks spotted while diving or snorkeling. In this case just walking on the beach! Check out the link describing the Cowtail Stingray. The part about not gettting spooked by people is definitely true of the Diego cowtails. Cowtail Stingray

I sent the photos to the webmaster at Elasmodiver. Maybe they'll update the species distribution to Indian Ocean as well.

Anthony has been asking me to post something for a while now and I always tell him I don't really do anything exciting to write about. But today I actually didn't have to work and I volunteered at the Special Olympics that were held at Kadena Air Base. It was very hot and humid but no one seemed to mind. It was all about the children and adult athletes! There were an amazing 900 athletes and 300 artists that came from around 30 different schools on the island that participated in this years olympics. And its the largest special olympics event held in Japan!
I arrived early to help set up and prepare for the opening ceremonies. Once the torch was lit and the speeches were said, it was time to get to work! I was then asked to help in the entertainment section (no, don't worry I wasn't the one on stage). Actually 250 performers were scheduled to entertain. They ranged from traditional Okinawan dancers and drummers, children performing religious song and dance routines, and an Okinawa rock band. There were clowns - even Ronald McDonald showed up and was a huge hit! I think he made the other clowns jealous!
The games opened with the 30-meter and 200-meter dash. Other events included the wheelchair 50-meter dash, frisbee toss, field hockey, and the wheelchair beanbag drop. Many athletes, whether in wheelchair or on foot, fast or slow, finished their race or event with expressions of determination and joy. I didn't remember my camera and wish I had so I could capture a few of the images and include them in my post. I know I will never forget all of the happy faces and the sounds of laughter and cheer!
- Amanda

Last week we explored Turtle Cove on the south side of the lagoon. Unfortunately we only saw one turtle. It was fairly good sized maybe a 2 foot long shell. I think it was a hawksbill. The coolest thing we found was a family of stingrays swiming a foot off the beach and they were cruising along parallel to the shore not minding us only a few feet away.

I haven't been able to figuer out what kind of rays these are.....If anyone has an idea please put it in the comments.

Time is flying by here on Diego Garcia. It's like summer camp with sailing classes, windsurfing classes, 5K runs, lagoon swim competitions, etc. Just today I got my license to check out the Pico Laser two-man sailing boats at the marina. It was only my second time out on the water and I pretty much got the hang of it.

The hardest part for me was launching the boat off the beach. You have to keep the boat pointed into the wind and at the same time control the tiller/rudder and hold onto the lines that stabilize the sail. Once I got going it was awesome with winds of at least 15-20mph. There was only one scary moment where I almost capsized but I managed to get the boat pointed back into the wind.

On June 10th there was a parade for Philippino Independence day which falls on the 12th. That morning me and three of my compadres competed in an 800m lagoon swim. The first photos is just after we finished. We were worried that half of it would be swimming out into the waves, but fortunately a marina worker drove all the swimmers, about 10 total, to a buoy that was 800 meters off shore. I finished in just shy of 19 minutes...which was surprisingly first in my 30-39 year age group. The winner finished in 13 minutes. The timing was great because we got done swimming just in time to see the Independance day parade. The pictured float is General McCarthur's return to the Philippines.

Tomorrow will be the end of my first week on Diego Garcia. It's a small lagoon island in the Chagos Archipelago under British Indian Ocean Territory or B.I.O.T. as you can see on the link to Wikipedia. Work is steady but I have had some time to relax and get some good workouts in. My marathon training is on hold since I won't be able to do the Kona marathon on June 11th. I'll be here at DG then. The gym recreation services down here have some cool activities. This morning the latest event was a mini-triathalon; 600 yard(200meter) swim, 6.4mile bike(10kilometer), and a 1mile run(1.6kilometers). I was hurting after the swim, but once I got into a groove on the bike I was fine. For the first few minutes of the run I thought my legs were going to cramp up on me but I was fine. I can't imagine the feeling after a full triathalon! Next week there's a 5k(3.2mile) run and a 800m(2500ft) on different days that I'll probably try to finish if I'm not working.

I can't talk too much about work, but you probably guessed it has to do with the global war on terrorism or GWOT. We're a big fan of acronyms in the military. The only bad thing about being on a tropical island in the indian ocean is being away from my sweatheart Amanda! She's braving NBC exercises back in Kadena AB, Japan! No pictures yet but I'll post some shots in the next few weeks.

It's good to be home in Okinawa after a spring vacation trip back to the US. I partyed with my good friend Amenra Buckley for his bachelor party in Las Vegas over the weekend of 29 Apr. That next week Amanda's family and one of her college buddies - Chris, came up from San Antonio....the partying started all over again.
I stayed at the Luxor for a few days then moved to the Rio for the last four days leaving Vegas on my birthday Cinco de Mayo (May 5th). I've decided that a week in Vegas is too long. Between hotels and gambling I easily spent $2500!


On 6 May Amenra Buckley married Amalia Pappanastos in Aptos, CA near Santa Cruz. It was a nice outdoor ceremony. They're probably just now getting back to Los Angeles from the honey moon in the Virgin Islands. Southwest was the only way we could get around to so many places this trip. Amanda and I flew from Vegas into San Jose, CA and then on the May 8th down to LA. On the way to Aptos, CA we swung by my Uncle Ray's place in Campbell, CA. The origianl plan was to leave San Jose on the 7th but we got caught in traffic on the 17 going into San Jose and missed our flight. On May 8th Amanda went on to San Antonio and I stayed in LA and hung out with my cousin Ernie. We toured the Getty Center and a traveling art show called Ashes and Snow. Amanda had fun in San Antonio at Canyon Lake with her Mom, cousin Michael, and friends. I left LA at 1:15 am on 10 May and arrived in Okinawa at about 10 am 11 May from a thirteen hour flight into Taipei, Taiwan and then a 1 hour hop up to Okinawa. Amanda came into Okinawa at 9pm on the 12 May with her dog/baby Tasha. With all the customs hassel she almost didn't get back to Japan. Fortunately she just had to promise to take Tasha by the on base verterinarian within 72 hours of arrival.

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!

St Patrick's Day was pretty cool this year on Okinawa. Being in Japan you wouldn't think there's much of a celebration, but with so many Americans running around and some random Irish pubs it's not too bad. The luck of the Irish was with us that night. My cousin Garth, first photo, had just moved to Okinawa in January but I hadn't caught up with him yet. Not 15 minutes after I was thinking of calling him we bumped into him and his friends at the bar Fujiyma's by the Irish pub Patty Mac's. I guess it helps that we're all part Irish!



We had a great time catching up and drinking fresh Guiness from the tap and many rounds of car bombs.....as you can see from the photos!



Garth is happy to be settled on the island but unfortunately broke up with his girlfriend before moving out of the states. Jordan(double fistin') and I took turns trying to hook him up with random girls at the bar. On Gate 2 street you can hit chicken yaki-tori stands, kind of like hot dog stands in the US. It's basically a chicken shishkabob. In the next photo you can see us throwin' down at about 2am on some yaki-tori.


Well one good helping of yaki-tori always deserves another so we hit another stand on the way to our cars/taxi, but it turned out to be more like yuckey tori. The meat tasted like chicken skin, which it probably was or maybe liver among other things! Amanda being a little tipsy explained in no uncertain terms, and many adjectives I will not repeat that it was nasty...right in front of the guy cooking it. I had to spit out some myself. I guess you can't expect too much from street vendors. So that's the moral of the story today. Tune in for more pearl's of wisdom next time. Yes we're being sarcastic in case you were wondering.

This past Sunday was a busy day. Amanda and I really wanted to sleep in but I climbed out of bed around 8am. The fact that Sunday is my long run day, 11 miles, for my marathon training made it even harder to get out of bed. The good thing was that the weather was awesome. Clear blue sky and probably around 75 degrees
with a slight breeze is about all you can ask for. Lucky for me I live right next to the Okinawa Prefectural Comprehensive park. It's about 10 acres with tennis courts, a stadium track, baseball fields, etc. The 5 kilometer running track goes right past the beach on the east side of the island by port Awase. Amanda kept up with me for the first 45 minutes and then I was on my own for the next 8 miles or so. 11 miles sounds like a lot but my pace was maybe a 9 minute mile so not much more than a jog. In fact a speed walker paced me like I wasn't even moving. The locals are all bundled up in jumpsuits and hats, which seem way to warm for me but it is their winter time.
After frittata for lunch we headed off to find the Southeast Botanical Gardens. They're about 15 minutes from where Amanda and I live, but we managed to get lost and drove for about an hour. We ended up on some back roads behind Camp Shields and stumbled onto a flea market. You know that you're near a base on Kadena when you spot 8 foot high fences with barded wire along the top. The flea marketeers had what looked like discarded uniforms hanging on the fences for sale. Most of them still had the nametags on them. Eventually we found the garden and paid 1000 yen admission and then 300 yen to ride a tram that cruised around one half of the park. The current rate is around 100 yen per dollar. It's kind of a tourist trap but they do have some impressive hibiscus flowers growing everywhere, as you can see from my photos.
It was already 4pm and we had to get to 5pm mass so we had to leave the gardens without seeing the non-tram side. After mass we had a quick bite at an on base sandwich shop and hit the theater to see the movie Munich. Not a bad movie but very depressing. I knew about the hi-jacking of the Munich olympics but I didn't realize so much retaliation had gone on afterwards. Not much has changed in 30 years.

I've been back in Okinawa since the 10th of February. Amanda picked me up from the terminal and had the pre-Valentine's Day weekend all planned out. She took me up to some nice little cottages on White Beach Naval Station. We spent a couple nights at the cottage and then it was back to work for me. Despite what you might think from reading the global securiy link it's a nice getaway with a good restaurant and white sand beaches just down the road from the cottages. On Sunday, Foundation Day we watched Japanes Naval cruisers leave the port.

Since finishing instructor pilot school I have to be the one with all the answers on the mighty KC-135 Stratotanker. Last weekend I was flying somewhere south of Vietnam and my receiver aircraft, the one scheduled to get gas from us, decided not to show up. If you're curious about my jet it's basically a flying gas tank. It's fun to fly despite being 40-50 years old and I've had a chance to travel all over the world. Ok I'll stop with the Air Force recruiting pitch.

In January I decided to run the Kona Marathon on the big island of Hawaii in June this year. I've been training since the 7th of February. Just the trainig has been kicking my butt! I've lost 10 pounds and my feet were not pretty to begin with. My nipples get raw from shirt rub anytime I run at least 6 miles. Despite all that I can tell I'm in really good shape. Last week I played basketball for my squadron team in the base intramural basketball league and I felt like I could run up and down the court all night, at least until the second half. I also had my annual fitness test for the Air Force last week and ran the mile and a half in 9:32. After the run I just kept going for another three miles to knockout a weekly marathon training session. Unfortunately it's been raining quite a bit lately but that hasn't stopped me from running yet. The photo is the rainy view from my apartment on 25 Feb.