Thanksgiving Weekend

On Thanksgiving day I joined some friends from the church/squadron to enjoy the standard meal with turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes. In all there were about 30 people, so I actually felt somewhat at home with the large crowd. Many times back home we have 30-40 people at my Grandma's place for the holidays. Lunch started soon after 12:00, and there was a lot of great food. I actually did a decent job as pacing myself this year and didn't eat too much.
Around 2:30 I was ready to hit the road to Zermatt, Switzerland. A few of us had rented a station wagon for the weekend, which was already packed with our clothes and snowboards. We felt a little bad for leaving the party so quickly, but the drive takes about 6 hours and we didn't want to drive through the mountains too late at night. The weather forecast had also called for snow, so the pass could've been difficult. Lana's flight schedule had changed last minuet, so unfortunately she wasn't able to enjoy the tirp over the weekend. She left for a flight to San Fransisco and wouldn't be back until Sunday morning. She's a great snowboarder, and I really missed her on the slopes!

We arrived at our hotel, Gasthof Weisshorn, around 10 and called it a night so we'd be ready to hit the slopes early the next morning. Lana had found this gasthof on the internet in the middle of Zermatt and close to the main ski lift....a perfect location. Friday wasn't the best snowboarding due to bad weather and winds, but we enjoyed being on the snow again after the summer. At noon we had lunch at an apres ski on the mountain and finished the day around mid afternoon.

Saturday was much better! The weather had cleared up and the view of the Matterhorn and other parts of the Alps was...well, just take a look at the pictures. What an amazing Creation! We bought an international ski pass for the day and were able to take advantage of both the Swiss and Italian snow. Both sides of the mountains were great, but I actually thought the Italian side was a little better for snowboarding. The bad weather from the day before had brought over a foot of new powder. We spent the whole day up there and were back in Zermatt around 4 o'clock...time for a shower and nap before getting dinner.

That evening we enjoyed cheese and beef fondue, similar to what Lana and I had eaten our last time to Switzerland. The next morning we hit the road about 11 and arrived back in Sacile by 5. I'm thankful I was able to see Zermatt again before leaving Italy, and now Lana and I are planning a couple more snowboard trips before I leave Europe...how I wish the Air Force would let me stay here! We'll be snowboarding in Austria on the squadron ski trip the middle of December and we're planning Austria over the new year as well.

Ok, the moving compay will probably be here in a little bit to pack my things destined for Korea and I need to make sure they're in order. By the 5th, our apartment will be completely empty and we'll either be staying with friends or in base billeting until we leave...I only have one more flight left here at Aviano, crazy!

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Zermatt, Switzerland

Packing Up

Last weekend, Lana and I spent most of the time packing our things in preparation for the movers who will be here on 2 December to load our household goods onto a truck. Thankfully we don't have too much, and it will definitely easy the stress of moving. We have three separate areas of things around our apartment...one is headed to Korea with me, one is headed to Munich with Lana and the other back to the USA to a storage house in Virginia.. It will stay there until I get an assignment out of Korea and will be shipped to the new location.

I don't remember if I mentioned it previously or not, but Lana and I bought an apartment in Munich for her to live in while I'm in Korea. My assignment is what they call "unaccompanied" which means I can't bring a family...the base doesn't have the facilities (big hospital, school, etc.) to support families. Lana can come to visit me for up to 30 days at a time, and with her Lufthansa job we plan to see each other every month. She can actually work a flight Munich direct to Seoul, so I hope to take advantage of a free night's stay in a nice hotel downtown. Since the government pays for Lana to have a place in Munich, we decided it would be a good investment to buy rather than continue to give our money away in rent to pay someone else's mortgage. After I leave Korea, Lana will move out and her mom will continue to rent the apartment from us.

I have two fly days left here at Aviano before we hit the road. One is early next week before the movers come and the other the week after before our squadron ski trip to Austria. The second week of December I also have to do a refresher course in both water survival and combat survival training. I did both of these after I finished pilot training back in early 2005, and they're good for four years. We will eventually finish up the paperwork and leave Italy by mid December...time flies! We're looking forward to being in the US for my sister's wedding and Christmas with family before I head off to Korea.

The picture above is of the mountains just to the north of the base, which I took today. We had our first big snowfall of the year a couple days ago and we're all gearing up to hit the slopes for some good snowboarding. I'm leaving tomorrow again for Zermatt, Switzerland to enjoy the Thanksgiving day weekend snowboarding with friends, but sadly Lana had to fly to San Fransisco and won't be there. We'll be back together Sunday to finish packing the last of our things as we get ready for the week ahead. I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving and great Christmas season...there's a God who provides and was born to save the world from sin!

Amsterdam, Netherlands & Altitude Chamber

A few posts ago I wrote, "I have to go to Amsterdam, Netherlands the weekend of 15 Nov to attend training in the altitude chamber. If you remember way back to a post of mine in early 2004, we did altitude training in the beginning of pilot training; it's required every three years, and I have to get it done before moving to Korea." Aviano doesn't have an altitude chamber, and the nearest one is at Soesterberg Air Base in the Netherlands, which is about 45-50 minuets southeast of Amsterdam. Lana and I flew out early Saturday morning and enjoyed Saturday afternoon looking at art works from famous painters, one of them being Rembrandt. We also went by Anne Frank's house, where her family hid from the Germans during WWII before being captured and taken to a concentration camp. From there we found a theater and watched the new James Bond movie, Solace of Quantum. By the time it finished, we grabbed a quick dinner and called it a night.

Sunday morning we did a Google search for an Evangelical Church in town and found one a short tram ride away. The service was in English and Dutch and encouraging to worship with Christians from another culture. After church, we wanted to get out to enjoy the nice weather, so I went for a run in a park near our hotel while Lana walked. At mid afternoon, we took a boat tour through the city and then went to an Indian restaurant for dinner...great food...so good we went back the following night after the altitude chamber!

Monday, I drove to Soesterberg for the altitude chamber with another guy from our squadron who needed to update his currency. While sitting in the cafeteria, in walked my good friend Matt Chapman from officers training school...the same one I visited during my cross-country to Britain. We hadn't coordinated anything prior; small world we live in. Tuesday morning I caught an early flight back to Italy ready to finish out the week of flying.

Before Lana and I leave Italy, we have more plans to travel and snowboard. Over Thanksgiving weekend we're going back to Zermatt, Switzerland and then the weekend before we leave we're going on our squadrons ski trip to Tirol, Austria. Only 23 more days left! Oh yeah, November is "no hair November" in a fighter squadron.

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Amsterdam, Netherlands

Tactical Leadership Program (TLP)

The NATO Tactical Leadership Program (TLP) is a multi-national flying course for fighter jets. It takes place at Florennes Air Base, Belgium and is designed to train and teach the pilots who attend about the tactics and capabilities of other allies within NATO. If needed in the future, it will be very important to understand each other's capabilities in order to operate effectively together in war. At the completion of the course, we are qualified mission commanders with the training needed to lead a large force of fighters effectively into war. There is much to learn still, but we have the baseline tools to do so.

Each day of flying at TLP, the mass weather and training rules brief started sharply at 0800. Once complete, the air tasking order (ATO) for the day would be passed out with the specifics of what the "General's" objectives were for a successful mission. On the ATO one of the pilots would be tasked as the mission commander for the day and it would specify the location of the targets. A mission commander has the overall responsibility to coordinate "blue" air-to-air fighters, air-to-ground fighters, tankers, AWACS and other assets to come up with a plan to strike a target in "bad guy land" without getting shot down by "red air" fighters or surface-to-air missile sites. "Blue" and "red" is used in reference to "friendly" and "enemy" forces either in the air or on the ground. During TLP, there were 15 flights scheduled for the month of which we only flew 12 due to weather, birds (yeah, it's migratory season) etc. These flights use airspace in Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and France. So, in addition to quickly planning a safe mission each morning, there were different airspace rules to followed specific to each country. In general, regardless of the target, the plans basically boiled down to the air-to-air fighters pushing first to shoot the "red air" threat followed by the air-to-ground fighters following once it was safe to do so and bomb their target. Once the planning was complete, we would go fly a mission early in the afternoon and then spend until about 2000 that night debriefing lessons we had learned. Since we were busy the whole day, a few days a week Chris and I would go to the gym at 0630 for a quick workout before breakfast and then head over to the TLP operations building.

In our TLP class we had British F-3 and G-4 Tornados, French F-1 Mirages, Spanish F-1 Mirages, F-18 Hornets and Harriers, Italian Eurofighters (from Grosseto where I had flown before on a previous cross-country), Greek F-16s and our F-16s. Thankfully our squadron commander and director of operations let us take two of our new CCIP jets to the training. Operating on the Link 16 with other nations and the AWACS provided a lot of good learning for both us as we're getting used to the new "toys." It was a great experience for the two of us and really increased my overall understanding of how we and our allies would integrate to accomplish a mission during war time. After the last fight on 2 Oct, we had a TLP graduation and officially became mission commanders.

As you already saw in my last post, the weekend were free to travel. In addition to Brugge and Paris, I did some site seeing the other two weekends in Belgium. The third weekend I went with some British and French guys to Reims, France. Reims is in the Champagne region of northwestern France. One of the French pilots has a friend in the business and we were able to tour his small winery over the weekend. It's quite an intensive process, which takes years to complete depending on the type of Champagne. Reims is also well known because it was the town the new kings went to to receive their crown. The fourth weekend Chris and I went to Bastogne, Belgium...where the famous Battle of the Buldge took place. The 101st Airborne fought the Germans for the better part of month here during WWII, with most of the fighting taking place in the Ardennes Forest nearby. If you've seen the Band of Brothers series, it gives a great depiction of what the 101st went through...real heroes of WWII. We visited a museum and also drove out into the forest where the 101st airborne fought to see what remains of the foxholes they dug for protection and to stay warm. We also drove a little further down the road to Luxembourg to see the WWII memorial there. It's sobering to see so many white crosses in one graveyard.

On 3 Oct Chris and I took off and flew back to Aviano after a month of successful training. Sadly, Lana and I now have only about three weeks left here in Italy. Our last day here is 16 Dec and the movers are already coming to pick up our things the first week of December. As much as we don't want to leave, we know God has more in store for us over the year ahead. We're already talking about plans to visit Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Vietnam while I'm stationed in Korea. Fly safe...check six!

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TLP; Bastogne, Belgium

Brugge, Belgium & Paris, France

As mentioned in my last post, Lana and I planned to do some traveling while in Belgium for my TLP flying course and we did. I flew in with my F-16 on 3 Oct and Lana flew from Munich to Brussels the same day. After dropping my things off at the dorm room on base and packing a bag for the weekend, the other pilot who flew to Belgium with me for TLP, Chris, drove me to the Charleroi train station. I was in Brussels about 50 minuets later where I met Lana before we caught a train on to Brugge for the weekend where we would spend our anniversary on 6 Oct.

Brugge is a very nice town in the northwestern part of Belgium and is referred to as the "Venice of the North." Lana had done some research on the internet and found us a nice hotel in the city center for a couple of nights. Brugge used to be a very rich city during the Medieval times as it was a main port of the North Sea. It's great because it was essentially untouched by the world wars, and most of the old buildings and churches are still intact. One of the old churches in town had Michelangelo's Madonna status in it...one of his only works outside of Italy. As in Venice, there are many small canals throughout the town and we took a boat trip while there. We both thought Brugge was the perfect place for our 1st anniversary!

After a week of flying at TLP, Lana and I took the bullet train from Charleroi to Paris for the weekend leaving on Saturday morning...we reached our goal of making it to Paris before leaving Italy. Again, Lana did a good job and found us a nice hotel close to the center, near the Paris Opera House. We both had been to Paris quite a few years ago, but it was great to travel there together. While in Paris we saw the Paris Opera House, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triumph and the Basilique du Sacré Cœur among other smaller things. Paris is another one of those great cities that wasn't destroyed during WWII, and has many great places to see. We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower on Saturday night to watch the sun set before going out for a nice dinner that evening. Sunday morning I went for a run and my route took me by the Opera and through the gardens at the Louvre...a great venue to say the least! After getting cleaned up, Lana and I went to a church we found on the internet to worship with some French people. It was cool worshiping the same God with others from a different culture.

Lana and I have seen so much in our lives before and since we've been married...it would be interesting to see a map of the places we've been. To add to our list, I have to go to Amsterdam, Netherlands the weekend of 15 Nov to attend training in the altitude chamber. If you remember way back to a post of mine in early 2004, we did altitude training then as well; it's required every three years, and I have to get it done before moving to Korea. So, soon I'll explain how TLP went and about our time in Amsterdam. Enjoy!

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Brugge, Belgium; Paris, France

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