the clueless american

Well, after all of my whining, the US came through at the last minute. I went home early yesterday because my brain was fried after 6 straight hours at the ops desk. When I got home there was an email from my commander in Germany which said that he had a copy of the NATO agreement I was looking for and that it seemed clear to him that I was right. While I was reading that email, another one came in from Madrid that said the General in charge of training had approved my flight physical and was trying to call the base commander to pass along that info.

The "sort of" part came this morning when the #2 man on base came running in and pulled me into my supervisor's office. Apparently my supervisor was not keeping his supervisors updated, so it looked as though I had gone behind their backs or over their heads. Instead of saying that he had actually been informed all along, my supervisor played dumb and let me take the heat for my supposed failure to notify the chain of command. He also told me that in the future I'm not to call my US boss in Germany without prior approval, something that will not stand up if they try to press it. So, now I need to tiptoe around the next few days until everything settles back down.

On another note, when I called e to give her an update, she gave me one: the workers were at the house to fix a leaking hot water pipe, and it was looking pretty serious. Apparently the whole water system is 20+ years old and the iron pipes are completely rusted and broken open. What we thought was a small leak is actually throughout the house. Right now we have holes broken through all of the walls so that they can install new pipes everywhere. They claim they'll be done in 3 days, but we'll be lucky to see water flowing again by next week.

In the meantime, just to end on a good note, Fran found a great deal to the Canary Islands: €245 per person for a flight from Malaga and 5 nights in a 4 star hotel. The only catch is that I need to request a week off from work which is occasionally hard to get during the school year. I'm hoping that despite the recent troubles my boss will let me go; I'll find out tomorrow morning at work.

Back in the air! e took me to work this morning, and I treated myself to a nice warm shower since we're still without water at home. When I got out, they were looking for me in the locker room because I was on the flying schedule! Apparently the #2 man on base realized that I'm being needlessly punished by the flight physical mess, and he authorized me to fly for up to 30 days while it's being resolved.

I can't tell you how happy I was to be able to go up again, even after such a short break. My poor alumno, who's flown nearly the entire instrument phase with other instructors, was almost as happy as I was! All problems aside, that is why I came here to do this job: to have students and fellow IP's happy to see me on the flying schedule.

Today's flight was a lot of fun. I'm glad that I got to fly my student's last normal ride instead of watching someone else do it. Monday he'll do fine on his instrument check, and within a few months he'll be seeing some real instrument training at Salamanca.

Believe it or not, this photo is now circulating through the Argentinian Air Force as an example of how not to land during the student solo. Anyone with minimal Photoshop experience will recognize it as altered. Here's the story:

In January my student had his solo ride to the sector. When he came back to land, he reportedly had a steep descent angle on final. After shutting down engines, he confirmed that he had landed with 5 G's when the aircraft has a limit of 3.68 G's for landing. In an attempt to not sound like an idiot, he then tried to blame the hard landing on the fact that his camera fell out of his pocket on final, and the noise distracted him and caused the bad landing. The news of his hard landing and the camera made it to the base commander in about 15 minutes.

Now, I like my job here and the people in my squadron, but in all honesty following the regulations doesn't rank very high in the Spanish list of priorities. However, when they've decided that something is really bad, as opposed to all of the other illegal stuff I've seen here, they go ballistic. To make a long story a little shorter, my student wound up getting about 2 weeks of arresto where he wasn't even allowed to leave his room except for meals and classes. The punishment wasn't for the hard landing but for having a camera in the airplane on his solo flight.

About a week later I decided to inject a little humor into the situation by showing this photo at the morning briefing. On a side note, I really wanted to do the whole thing in the The Gimp, but at the time I had version 1.3 which had a broken intelligent scissors tool. I Photoshopped a picture from the solo flight of my student from last year into what you see above. I thought adding the date with the mechanical-looking OCR-A font was a nice touch. I introduced the photo by saying that I had encountered a directory on the local net which had photos taken by a remote camera of all the recent landings. My poor student turned white as a sheet when I said I had found a good one from 29 January, the day of his solo. He didn't get much better when the photo came up, but the other studs realized it was a joke and laughed.

Now, the best part is that the weather guy, a nice 60+ year old who's recently started using computers, didn't recognize the photo as a fake and didn't understand my explanation. So, he took the copy I gave him and emailed it to one of the former exchange officers from Argentina. That guy also didn't recognize it as a fake and started passing it around his Air Force. Within a few days the current Argentinian here was telling me what a stir it was causing there. In fact, this morning he told me that he received another email asking for a detailed description of the "mishap" and photos of the plane after it hit the ground. I'm tempted to concoct a fake story and email it to Argentina, but I'm not sure I want to cause any more problems there than I already have!

Because it's very easy to make a claim without proof, I'm including the original photo below so that you can clearly see that the top picture is a fake.

Well, the US finally decided to give in on the flight physical. Turns out the Spanish actually were right the whole time, but it doesn't explain why they've accepted the US flight physical for years and suddenly decided not to. Anyway, after receiving my orders from both chains of command, I took a Spanish physical yesterday. As predicted, it was no big deal, but it was wasted time nonetheless. It was a little weird doing the written and oral psych exam in Spanish, but I made it through ok. Now only 4 months until my next physical, the American one, but then I'll be back in the US and do one a year.

In other news, it looks like I won't be getting my shiny new car for 2 more weeks. About 2 weeks ago, the dealer wrote to tell me that the car was in Jerez (near Rota) and that if he could get it registered I could have it by last week. When last week came and went with no word from the dealer, I asked again when we might get the car. The dealer called e today while I was at work and said if we wanted the car so bad we could drive 400 miles out to Jerez, register it ourselves, and drive it back. The other option was to wait 2 more weeks when he would have time to register the car and send it out here. I'd really like to know what he's been doing with himself the last two weeks! It's not a huge loss not to get it this weekend since we're also going to be gone all next week, but it's annoying that the car has spent a month sitting around at the dealership when they could have delivered it to me by now.

Speaking of going away, after checking lots of ofertas for next week, we decided to go back to London. e and I spent a long weekend there in December and had a great time. We're looking forward to being able to see things in a bit more detail now that we have a full week. We decided to go ahead and buy the 3 day London pass. Even though we've already seen two of the biggest attractions on the list--The Tower of London and Westminster Abbey--we figure we can see enough in 3 days to make the pass worth it. I thought for sure I blogged our December trip, but I can't find it in the archives. We're leaving from our local airport, which is nice, and flying to London Stansted on Ryan Air. We'll take the Stansted Express from the airport to the Tottenham Hale station where we'll jump on the tube for the trip to Victoria Station where our hotel is located.

On a final note, San Javier moved into the big time yesterday when they opened up a huge Eroski grocery/department store that has a small mall attached to it. We'll actually be 2 mins away from great shopping and even a Burger King--things we had to drive 30 minutes to find before. We went to the grand opening yesterday with the hordes and thought it was funny to watch the old men in Eroski. They were traveling in groups, and you could tell they had never made the trip to the big stores in Cartagena because they stopped at every end cap to marvel at the 2-meter high stack of detergent boxes. They stared at them open-mouthed as if they had never seen something so amazing before. Life in little ole San Javier will never be the same!

Well, the final countdown starts today when the new gringos come into town. We're picking them up at the airport this afternoon and taking them to Rota Monday to inprocess.

We can't believe that 2 years have flown by so quickly and that we're now the ones sponsoring a new family. I've managed to coordinate our HHG move and the BMW shipment this week. While I'm at Rota I'll see about setting up our travel back to the States in just eight short weeks!

Well, after another flight physical fiasco, I was able to make my first C-130 flight in 2 years today! It started out badly when I rushed myself and skipped a whole page of my initial briefing, but once I calmed down it went better from there. I'm still fairly rusty, but I think it will come back quickly.

That's right, I got the call today! We're on our way to Turkey in February! I had gotten to the point where the assignment was way back in my mind because so much time had passed. It was very surprising to get just a quick phone call saying, "tag, you're it!"

Now there's so much to do in 3 months it's almost overwhelming: call everyone, sell the house, sell the motorcycle, sell everything else we've been meaning to sell. Separate the stuff: what goes on the plane with us, what goes in the small shipment, what in the large, what stays behind.

We won't even know right away if e and MJ get to come with me. Housing is limited enough over there that they may bring me over by myself until the house is ready and then fly them over.

My mind is naturally going in 50 directions at once. We have to keep doing the normal things to live here while avoiding things we won't need in Turkey. That means no more Sam's Club. The membership expired last month and we won't renew (I have been told we won't) for such a short time. No more plants and plant-related products that won't ship.

It's crazy because we'll probably put the house up right away, and if it sells we may wind up moving into an apt while we wait to get out of here. That means we could be in our last days of turmoil-free living as opposed to our last months. All this with baby #2 on the way! More on that later.

Wow! Did I mention we're excited-apprehensive-happy-sad-confused-sleepy-hungry-dopey-anxious-puzzled about this news? I need a vacation! Unfortunately, what I get is a 3-page book review of a book I intend to use for my 25-page research paper. Ugh! Did I tell you I was in a Master's program? I think I'll be taking next semester off while we move overseas.

I know it will work out. I know that in 3 or 6 or 12 months I'll be writing a post saying how great things are going here in Turkey, but in the meantime I'll be stressing about all the details that will get us there.

After more than 15 years I'm starting to get the first signs of a major relationship problem. Not with e, thankfully, we're doing just fine. I'm talking about the Air Force.

I've been in a committed relationship, you might say, for nearly 16 years now. In fact, I don't have the option of trying to leave until 2013. The Air Force, on the other hand, has no such obligation to me. It demonstrated as much by letting me know that I wasn't worth promoting to lieutenant colonel this time around. Being passed over puts me in the bottom 25% of the 1,000+ majors who were up for promotion in this board. It also means that if I'm not selected next year then the AF will have a second board to decide if it's worth keeping me around. A lot of pilots get what's called selective continuation each time they get passed over, but there's no guarantee. Without being continued, I'll be unceremoniously asked to leave the Air Force within six months of the decision to pass me over.

Wow. That's a hard blow to me. I've been wearing an Air Force uniform since I was fifteen years old. Granted, the first 4 years were as a JROTC cadet, but every day since 29 June 1988 has been with an active duty ID card, no matter what the retirement laws say about my time served. That's more than 20 years wearing the blue, olive green, and camouflage colors of the Air Force. I've said "yes, sir" and saluted more times in those years than I can even imagine. I've been around long enough to see the pendulum swing back and forth more than once on a host of topics.

It seems that the particular topic which will force an early end to my career is the infamous Master's degree. For years it has been an Air Force tradition to get a degree--any degree--to help get promoted. There wasn't any consideration to whether the degree was worth the paper on which it was printed or if the person did their job even .0001% better with that rag on the wall. The assumption was that the haze of getting a degree--even if it involved only sending off $$$ to a degree factory--made a person worthy of the next level of promotion.

A few years back, just when I was getting ready to complete ACSC--another mandatory, probably worthless haze, but that's an entirely different post--I realized that I was old enough to start thinking about a Master's degree soon. It was then that the Chief of Staff of the Air Force decreed that his officers should stop wasting their time on meaningless degrees and that from now on officers should only obtain a degree if required by the Air Force and that only those degrees would be visible on official military records. Fool that I am, I obeyed the CSAF, even though I realized his term was very short and that his decision would probably be quickly reversed.

As it turns out, the reversal wasn't nearly as public as usual because there really wasn't a leg to stand on. The previous CSAF had said his AF officers should stop wasting time and money--much of it gov't money--on useless education. The new CSAF could hardly say that he espoused wasting dollars and effort to help officers "fill a square," could he?

So it was with relatively little fanfare that we were told advanced education would be "unmasked" on future promotion board records. We weren't told to go out and waste time and money, nossir. We were just told that a harmless unmasking would take place, one that effectively returned the Air Force to the wasteful good old days without coming right out and saying it.

I'll admit it again: I was dumb. I shouldn't have believed the leadership when they said unneeded degrees were a thing of the past, because deep down I knew they were just paying lip service to the CSAF. But I was lazy. We were coming back to the States after a tough (but fun) tour in Spain, the baby was on the way soon, and ACSC was d-u-n done. I took a nearly two-year vacation from education, all the while hoping that I would make LTC before the pendulum came back. Instead, it got me squarely in the face. Not only was I not able to complete a degree fast enough after hearing that education would show up on my record, I'm still not able to do anything about it. I need to finish 6 classes by November if I want any chance of having a Master's on my record, and that just ain't gonna happen.

For starters, I can only take 4 courses a year at government expense. With 2 down already this FY, I'd have to pay for 4 of the 6 I need, a total of over $3000. Besides that, I'd have to basically take a "full load" of 18 credits--as a part time student! I'd have to be so involved in my studies that I'd stop working, which as far as I know might also impact my chances of promotion.

Yes, I am wallowing just a bit in self-pity, I realize that. I'll probably come back to this post in a week or so and hit delete, but for now it's hard not to lose hope. As far as I can tell, there's almost no way to avoid meeting the next promotion board without a degree, and that means this time next year I'll be looking for a new job. For the record--not that the AF cares--I'd have stayed until 2013 with no complaints. Heck, I'd have stayed until 3013 if it were possible. It's in my blood far more than any words like job or career or even family can describe. But you don't want me. Wow again. That's hard to take. You won't even blink when I walk out the door, but what am I supposed to do without you?

One of my pet peeves is wearing diapers because someone else peed their pants. You know what I mean: an organization institutes a policy without guidance or consent of their leadership because they’re tired of dealing with the small percentage of fools who can’t do things right. I just came back from one of those. I’m trying to pay the USAF some money I owe them. First off, they can’t get it out of my paycheck, which is confusing to me because they’ve sucked money out in the past with no problems. So, I follow the rules. I’m supposed to go to the finance office to obtain some sort of code that says it’s ok to payback money. Let me interject here that I will never, ever, require a code from anyone who wishes to give me cash. Then I’m supposed to take this magic code 15 feet away to the cashier’s cage to pay my money. Recently, the cashier’s cage people changed their hours so that they could stop working 12-hour days. I’m down with that, but the change I don’t like is that they’re closed during lunch when most military people try to run errands. Hey, no big deal, I work in the same building so I’ll get the code now and come back later, right? Nope. “We don’t give out codes when the cashier’s cage is closed because too many people get the code and don’t pay right away, which screws up our system.” So now I’ve made a completely wasted trip to the finance section because of an unpublished policy. Again, no big deal for me since I work in the same building, but what about the 98% of the base who don’t work here? What about the guys who work literally 25 minutes away thanks to the ridiculously low speed limits on base? Ziiiip, riiiip, let me open up a diaper.

I’m seriously considering getting the code and then coming back upstairs “because I forgot something” just to see if I can freak out the finance people.

Just to show it's not all bitterness and complaining, I offer you this video that I found on the USAF site. I 've been trying to locate the full version to use in briefings, etc but can't find anything bigger than their grainy one. It still gives me chills every time I see it.