Coach

The Army's Morale Welfare & Recreation program (MWR) is in charge of giving U.S. Servicemembers things to do that take their mind of their mission. MWR here at Anaconda does supports and coordinates a lot of events for soldiers. Everything from softball leagues to Toby Keith concerts are MWR functions. A couple days ago MWR brought some college football coaches to visit us here at Anaconda - one legend, and one arch enemy of mine.

Lou Holtz was great. He's much smaller in person than I imagined - 5'7" or so, maybe 150 lbs. Fiery as heck though. When I stopped by his table, I told him it was an honor to meet him. Holtz replied with, "No sonny, the pleasure is all mine". That pretty much sums up Coach Holtz right there. Every soldier that stopped to talk to him got a firm handshake, a warm smile, and kind words of thanks for what we're doing over here.

Here is my arch-enemy, Les Miles from LSU. Les was the head coach at Oklahoma State for a number of years, but moved on to LSU a couple years back. Since his arrival at LSU, Coach Miles has been a burr in Nebraska's side. He has signed a number of blue-chip recruits that NE was also chasing. One high-profile example was about a month ago, when a highly rated high school quaterback from Texas, Jarret Lee, spurned the Huskers in favor of the Tigers. I couldn't help but give Coach Miles a hard time over this. When I asked him about Lee, Miles initially tried to play coy as if he didn't know NE was recruiting him. I pressed him harder, and Miles admitted that he knew NE was indeed recruiting Lee hard, and knew that Lee had basically chosen LSU over NE. His story was that location was big to Lee's parents, because they wanted to travel to alot of Lee's games. Baton Rouge is a 5 hour drive from Lee's home town. Lincoln is over 14 hours away. LSU wins. I tried convincing Miles that it would be most benificial for him to stop recruiting against NU, but I think he was too busy waving over the security folks to listen to my rant. I should give Les a little credit overall - he seemed genuienly thankful for my service over here, and looked me in the eye when I talked to him and never once gave me the impression he was bummed out to be in Iraq's sweltering heat instead of sitting on his deck in Baton Rouge, LA.

All in all it was a fun afternoon, highlighted by meeting Lou Holtz (Lou Holtz!), a living legend of college football.

Flying Squirrel

As some of you may or may not have heard already, I had a horrific accident a few days ago at the LSA Anaconda outdoor swimming pool. As my faithful readers will know, I posted a blog a few weeks back documenting the outstanding outdoor pool facilites here on LSA Anaconda. I'm a big fan of the pool, and try to visit a few times a week. I've been busting out a few moves on the diving towers that I haven't used since my days growing up at the Milford, NE swimming pool. Needless to say, I'm a little rusty. Anyways, one such move was the "flying squirrel". I won't go into great detail explaining the move, but for those of you who grew up at a pool (my three younger brothers, for example) you should know exactly what I'm talking about. While attempting to pull of this high-wire act, I made a very unfortuante error upon my entry into the water, and my knee ended up making a violent collision with my left eye. The picture above was taken less than a couple hours after the incident. As you can see, the swelling is spectacular. This is the first black eye of my life, and I couldn't be more proud that it was self-inflicted (although my Dad may feel differently about his first born son). Anyways, I wanted to give you the straight scoop right from the source, and kill any rumors (see SGT Kane's blog) or speculation of how I earned this shiner.

The picture to the left was taken yesterday. As you can see, the swelling has gone down significantly, but the nice dark black bruise is showing up nicely. Also, on the whiteboard you can see MAJ Teegerstrom's rendtion of how the "flying squirrel" incident unfolded, for those of you who are unfamilar with the move. Just so you know, I have since visited the pool on two seperate occasions, to get some sun and enjoy the water. However, I have yet to travel back up to the 2nd tower. I'm sure once the black eye disappears I will have no problems moving forward and jumping off the second tower again.

1-167 RSTA

I encourage you all to check out the new link that I've posted to the right. The 1-167 RSTA (my unit) has been working on creating a unit web site for awhile now, and the web site is starting to finally take shape. The main attraction, for me at least, is that the RSTA Review newsletters that I've been emailing out to all of you are now posted and archived on this site, for easier access.

One issue in particular that I will point out is the 1 May, 2006 edition, with the feature article on my section, the S-1. The article starts on page 4 of the previously mentioned newsletter.

Cabelas

As you all may or may not know, I am an employee of Cabelas. I work at the bank location in Lincoln, NE as a credit card collector for the wonderful Cabela's Visa card. I am on "military leave" until I return to Lincoln to continue working for Cabela's. Cabela's has treated me very well every step of the way throughout this deployment process. They are keeping my job for me, and while I'm gone I am earning all the normal raises and benefits I would have earned if I was still actively working at the bank. I am very grateful to the company for this.

One popular way for soldiers to take a little bit of Iraq home with them is to fly a U.S. Flag on the flag pole out front of our building here at LSA Anaconda. This way soldiers can take a flag home with them that they can say was flown in Iraq. The flag also makes a great gift to family members and friends. Anyways, I was trying to think of a fun way to say thanks to my friends and co-workers back at the bank in Lincoln, and thought flying a Cabela's flag here in Iraq would be a neat way to show my gratitude.

I got in touch with the Human Resources department at the bank, and shared with them my idea. They were able to hook me up with the Cabela's flag that was actually being flown on a flag pole at the bank location in Lincoln, and sent it my way. I received the flag in great condition a few weeks ago, and yesterday I finally took the time to have it flown over the clear blew Iraq sky. See a couple pictures I took below.

Here I am attempting to attach the massive green Cabela's flag before I raise it up. The Cabela's flag was much larger than the U.S. Flags that are usually flown, so I had to rig together a custom hook-up procedure with zip ties to attach the flag to the rope.

Posing with the flag before hoisting it up the pole. You can really tell in this picture how large and in charge the Cabela's flag actually is.

Thanks to all the folks at Cabela's who were able to make this project happen - specifically L. Prater and J. Fisher. Cabela's has been a big supporter of mine ever since I got deployed. I really appreciate everything they've done for me so far. This is not the last post, hopefully, related to the Cabela's flag. I plan on taking the flag with home with me on my R&R back to NE, and have plans to do something special with it once I return home. I will give you the details of the event at that time. Until then, thanks for checking out my blog and continue to keep me in your thoughts and prayers - I really appreciate it!

Non-alcoholic beer

I'm always brainstorming ideas for things I can write about here on the blog, and one topic I haven't touched on yet would have to be non-alcoholic beer, or NA beer for short. Since we are U.S. Military service members serving in a hostile part of the world, one simple pleasure in life that we are denied is access to alcoholic beverages. All alocholoic beverages of any kind are prohibited in a "combat zone" such as ours. However, one way that soldiers such as myself are able to get around this rule and still enjoy in the pleasure of a beer every now and again is in the consumption of NA beer.

My section sergeant, SFC Kerchal, and I have tast tested a handful of different NA beers during our time in the desert, and we've seperated the haves from the have-nots, based on taste. NA Budweiser was by far the worst we have tried up to this point. A handful of others have also dissapointed. Becks and St. Paulies have been favorites so far. The dining facilites stock NA beer, and every once in awhile we'll have a NA beer with dinner. Little things like the NA beer are not neccessary, but serve as a decent reminder of what home is like, and also allow service members to kick back and relax for a bit and feel like a regular person.

Below is a picture of SFC Kerchal and I enjoying a can of NA Amstel in the office.

Mail Call

I was planning on putting together a post here sometime covering our mail operations and all that they entail. However, my co-worker and workout partner SPC Kane stepped up to the plate and hit a home run on his blog with his own mail operations piece, so instead of trying to match the high standard he has set, I instead decided to do the American thing and simple ride the coat tails of his good work. You can check out Kane's outstanding post by clicking here, or by using the link on the right hand side of this page. I encourage you all check it out - the article is a good read.

Tomahawks

Our unit (the 1-167th) is a Cavalry Troop. I don't have the knowledge or the time to go into a big history lecture on the Cavalry, but most folks should recognize a Cavalry trooper as a soldier riding a horse, wielding a saber. Click here for a better explanation of Cavalry history. The Cavalry trooper has a long, rich history in the United States military. Aside from the saber, another weapon that the Cavalry trooper was known to carry on occasion is the tomahawk. I believe this goes back to the Cavalry troopers close ties to various Indian tribes - but don't quote me on that (like I said, I'm no history buff). Anyways, the point of all this is that our Squadron Executive Officer, Major Eric Teegerstrom, is a big fan of the tomahawk and it's ties to the cavalry. While our unit was conducting pre-mobilization operations at Camp Shelby, MS, MAJ Teegerstrom ordered a few tomahawks and was determined to share his love of tomahawks with the 1-167th soldiers. One thing led to another, and tomahawk fever spread throughout the Squadron. Once we arrived to LSA Anaconda, one of MAJ Teegerstrom's priorities was to build a tomahawk range, where proud tomahawk carrying soldiers could go to polish their tomahawk throwing skills. I would rate my skill level at this time as "novice", and that is being generous. On Saturday evenings, MAJ Teegerstrom holds a weekly tomahawk gathering, where tomahawk owners can get together and throw their trusty tomahawks, discuss their love/obsession with tomahawks, check out all the different types of tomahawks, and so on. The main attraction of this event is the tomahawk HORSE competition, a game that most should be familiar with (most normally played on the basketball courts). I recently purchased my own tomahawk and participated in my first tomahawk night last Saturday, and I'm already looking forward to tomorrow evenings festivities.

Below you can check out some pictures I took yesterday, when SPC Kane and I went out to the range to practice and brush up on our skills. We played a practice round of HORSE, and SPC Kane came out on top. I look forward to seeking my revenge in the future.

SPC Kane throwing his tomahawk towards the center target.

Removing my tomahawk from one of the targets after a solid stick (tomahawk lingo).

Up close shot of the head of my tomahawk. You can make out the "167 CAV" that was hand stamped into this custom made, hand-fabricated tomahawk. MAJ Teegerstrom's contact does an excellent job of making these tomahawks - they are of the highest quality.

I will try to take some more pictures tomorrow night at the weekly tomahawk get-together to give you a better idea of how the whole thing works.