Wow!!! Some countries build an Imperial Castle. China builds an entire Imperial City!!! Today my Crytek associates and I had a chance to visit the Forbidden City here in Beijing. This place is absolutely GINORMOUS!!! We walked around inside it for three hours, and I'm sure we didn't even see one-third of it. At some points while walking through it, you're up sort of high, and you look over buildings, only to see more buildings beyond it, still within the Forbidden City. You've got to take different paths to get everywhere, and it's just crazy big.
Around the mid-1800s, the Chinese government started imported mechanical clocks (as opposed to the sun dials and other ancient time-telling instruments that they had been using) from Europe, and they even had a "Hall of Clocks" in one of the many temples on the grounds. I immediately thought of Nancy, my dear sweet mother-in-law, whom loves collecting clocks (I even brought a clock home from New Zealand for her on one business trip). Check out some of the photos of the, quite frankly, HIDEOUS clocks!!! One of the photos is of a room; can you tell how many clocks are in that room?
All the walking made my knee really hurt, and I've taken a really heavy pain killer. I've been sitting here with my leg propped up and my knee on ice while going through photos and creating this posting, so if some of this isn't clear, I'm blaming it on the drugs!
Check out the photos I've posted online, including this one here of my associates and I, from left to right Mark Atkinson, Christopher Raine, Sascha Gundlach, Areil Cai, and Barbara Bernad. I've posted more than 70 photos, available here on Flickr, or on Facebook (in two galleries, here and here).
Today here in Tokyo I took that train to the airport to greet my three associates coming in from Germany, and the down time finally allowed me to finish editing our pictures from our family trip to San Francisco last month. So... I'm finally continuing my San Francisco posting from last month.
The previous posting covered the first day that we went in to "the city," for which I was able to join the family. The second day we went in to the city, my trade show had sort of started (it technically started the following day, but I had setup and meetings to attend to), so I couldn't join them during the day. So I handed my camera over to my son and he took over picture duties for the day. I must say, CHRISTOPHER MADE ME SO PROUD!!! Like a complete photography geek, I like to "frame" things when I shoot, and just LOOK at this awesome picture here, and how Christopher "framed" the cityscape with a tree in the foreground!!! :-) This picture was taken from Alcatraz Island.
So... I've trained Christopher pretty well in being all geeky and framing pictures that he shoots, but apparently I forgot to train him to put PEOPLE in the pictures. I've uploaded 87 pictures that he took that day, and even though there isn't much of our family to be seen in them, they're still fun memories for us whom were there that day. :-)
After driving in to the city from Susan & Eric's house, the family dropped me off to work, and they went off to play. The biggest part of the day was touring Alcatraz - I've never been out there, so I'm sorry I missed it. But then later that afternoon I was able to join up with them for dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe at Pier 39, and then we all went to see Wicked. It was... well... WICKED!!! Seriously, it was so good!!! What an amazing show!!!
Enjoy the pics on Flickr and on Facebook (in two albums there; three and four).
That's right... the greatest sport ever has started back up in Boise, and Spring soccer is in full bloom (pun intended). And indeed, soccer can be a full contact sport; check out that picture on the left! Both players are getting pretty aggressive on the ball here, and number 6 with his back to you is Andrew. The girls on the coed teams don't slow Andrew down at all when he's going for the ball! Nice tackle, Andrew! By the way, no penalty was called here; it was just two players being aggressive after the ball, and despite crashes and burns by both players, everybody was alright and play went on.
I also like this photo on the right. It looks like Andrew is "juggling" the ball with his knees or something, but he's not. It's just a ball coming down, and Andrew going for it.
The season is going well so far. We've had two matches, winning the first one 4-1, and the second one 5-3. Andrew has played almost exclusively at left midfielder, getting lots of exercise! Enjoy these and 58 more photos from their April 4th game, that I've posted here on Facebook, or here on Flickr.
Greetings from the Land of the Rising Sun. Enjoy the picture of Mt. Fuji to the right, here, even though it's totally unrelated to this posting (other than the fact that I'm talking about Japan). One of the reasons I like coming to Asia is that it seems I always get to experience something new here. This morning was no different.
As I was walking from my hotel to the train station en route to my first meeting this morning, there was this guy RUNNING from the station to his office (I assume). Running late to work, I guess. As I rounded a corner, we met. I noticed him just before he slammed in to me, so I squared my stance to the impact. This poor guy didn't stand a chance. He must have not been much over five feet tall, and the guy just bounced off me. Literally hit me, bounced back several feet, and ended up right on his keester. It didn't even phase me, and I felt bad for the guy. He was really apologetic and I of course made sure he was OK (he was), but as he stood back up, he told me it was like he had run in to a wall. And he laughed... I laughed.
The last name "Abe" (awe-bay) is pretty common here. So... sounding close to that, you can now call me "Kabe-san." Kabe is "wall" in Japanese, and I'm now a wall. :-)
Tonight for Family Home Evening we colored Easter eggs. I'm just thrilled because I'm going to be home this Easter!!! I originally thought I'd be in Asia, but I'll be leaving shortly after Easter, instead.
As you can tell, we have a lot of fun when we color Easter eggs. In the photo on the right, you can see GREEN outside in the background. Spring is here, and it's nice that things are starting to turn green again, and flowers are starting to bloom.
We're not sure who has more fun with the eggs, though... us or the cat. Our cat is quite intrigued with them, and she loves playing with them like they're balls. When the Easter Bunny hides all the eggs around our house, the cat really goes crazy. I just hope we find them all, or you can imagine what our house will end up smelling like!!!
Below, too, is a picture from above. :-) And you can see these and 17 more pics that I've uploaded to Facebook and to Flickr.
Boise schools are on Spring Break this week, and coincidentally I have a a trade show in San Francisco at the same time (well... it technically starts later this week). So we're combining the two to get in a little family vacation.
We started driving down here after school got out Friday afternoon, and drove to the wonderfully exciting Winnemucca, Nevada where we spent the night. We continued the drive on Saturday, arriving at my sister's house in Fremont, CA Saturday afternoon. Of course, as part of the trip here, we've already stopped off at two of the restaurants we miss from California: Wienerschnitzel and In 'n Out. And we've had a GREAT time staying with my sister, Susan, and her family. Three of their four kids are either married or away at school, and my sister and her husband are practically empty-nesters! It seems weird here without all four of the Grimm kids!
Today we went in to San Francisco, and took Dan with us. We went to Pier 39 and strolled/shopped around there (even rode a merry-go-round!). The photo above and to the right is taken from there. We toured a WW2-era liberty ship and submarine. We visited a wax museum. We rode a street car and a cable car. We strolled through China Town. And we even stopped at an outdoor Italian cafe and had some wonderful desserts and hot chocolate as people strolled by us on the sidewalk (people were looking at us like we were nuts - it was a little bit cold outside). That's where this photo at the left comes from. When we travel, it's all about experiencing as much as possible, so it was a busy and fun day!
Tomorrow I start working, but the family will still be playing in San Francisco. They have tickets to go on a tour of Alcatraz tomorrow afternoon - it's a bummer I won't be with them, but I'm sure they'll have more fun and frivolity tomorrow, like this goofy picture at the right. Then tomorrow night, we'll all meet up again and go see Wicked!!!
Last night our Cub Scouts had their monthly Pack Meeting, and the theme was careers. We had a Boise City Police officer come and talk about his 22 years as a policeman. He's done a lot in his career, including SWAT (a sniper in that unit) and currently a motor(cycle) officer. To the right here is Steven sitting on the police motorcycle - did he have fun with this, or what?!
A funny part of the evening was when the officer was showing us a sniper rifle. The rifle was on the ground, and Steven was sitting right in front of the business end of the .308 rifle. During Q&A, one of the cub scouts asked if the officer could show them what one of the bullets looked like. The officer said, "Sure. In fact, there's one right in the rifle." I said, "Um... Steven... can you move, please?" Everybody laughed.
Of course, it was perfectly safe, as the officer meant there was one in the rifle, but the round was not chambered and there was no way the rifle could fire. :-)
To check out all 20 of the photos from the Cub Scout Pack Meeting, including the kids all sitting around the sniper rifle, please click here.
The GT sixth grade students here in Idaho are required to participate in a "National History Day" project. The project has to cover some aspect of history, and can be creating a website, putting together a commentary, writing a research paper, doing some kind of performance, or putting together some sort of exhibit. Each participant's entry is judged at the school district level, and winners there get to go on to State competition (and Nationals after that if the entry goes on).
Mark's entry won!!! He did a video commentary on Claus von Stauffenberg, the German colonel during WW2 who tried (and failed) to kill Hitler. For his efforts, he was executed by firing squad - bummer. Claus von Stauffenberg was even the subject of a recent Tom Cruise film, Valkaryie. The State competition is next month (we think - details still pending). At stake are college scholarships of $25K, $50K, and $75K!!!
Mark's video commentary is embedded below, but can also be viewed on YouTube by clicking here. This is a pre-subission draft, and not the one that went to competition, but it's nearly final. Enjoy.
Brianna and her friend Danielle Despres sang again to kick off the Idaho Steelheads game tonight. I think they should sing before every game, because every time they do, the Steelheads win (4-1 tonight)!!! As they played the Victoria Salmon Kings from Canada, Brianna and Dani sang both the Canadian and USA national anthems. We thought it was very nice of the 4,170 adoring fans came out to see the two of them sing.
But of course, after they sang, we all very much enjoyed watching a fight, and occasionally a hockey game broke out. Seriously though... tonight's game was pretty violent. One of the flights left blood on the ice - yikes! What's that you ask? Of course I got a picture of the blood-splattered ice (to the left here). During another fight, the officials literally could not get the two players separated. There were three officials tackling two players rolling around on the ice trying to get it broken up. It was crazy!
Anyway... we had a great time. I'd never been to pro (or semi-pro) hockey games until we moved here to Boise, and they're a whole lot of fun. There are a few more pictures (including more blood splatter - now this link will strangely get double the amount of normal hits that I usually get, I'm sure) that I have posted from the evening, here on Flickr.
The two videos, one of each national anthem, are also embedded below (and of course, here and here on Facebook).
NOTE: The "Oh Canada" video is not working right at all on YouTube. But the Flickr one is embedded below, until I can figure out why this video isn't uploading correctly. Sorry about that.
This morning we decided to go to IHOP for breakfast - YUMMY!!! Steven was being really silly, though, and drew the drawstring to his sweatshirt hood so tight that you could only see his mouth. Then he started making really weird noises, and he's just a mouth. Very silly, Steven (video embedded from YouTube below. Also here on Flickr.
Last Saturday (February 28th), it was wintry, cold and windy, so we decided to go do some more Idaho exploring! Since moving to Boise almost three years ago, it's amazing how LITTLE we've still seen of our new home state. We didn't go too far on Saturday, just to neighboring Lake Lowell in Nampa, only about a 30-minute drive from home. The shot here is a panorama of six photos that I took standing at the water's edge. Yes... I am a geek.
They have a fun little indoors visitors center there, where it was warm and toasty. Then there's a nice half-mile trail down to the lake. Andrew, Steven and I were the only ones brave (stupid???) enough to go walk the trail in the cold wind. That's Andrew in the picture at the left, walking down the trail. Ironically... we may get to know this place A LOT better. We thought this would be a GREAT place for Andrew to do his Eagle Scout project: putting some benches along the trail. Andrew has called them, and they're interested in having him do it.
Of course, we also found a fish head down by the water's edge. How cool is THAT for two young boys (and their dad)?! I'm posting a picture here to the right, just so you can start singing in your head, "Fish heads fish heads, rolly polly fish heads..."
And finally, at the entrance to the visitors center, they had this "robot" constructed entirely of trash found on the lake. Steven thought it was cool and had to pose with it, but isn't that GROSS??!! Please don't litter; keep our land beautiful!
I've posted all the photos from our fun little family outing; for the full album (13 pics), please click here for Flickr, or here for Facebook.
The photo here to the right was taken yesterday morning at about 7am. The temp was low 20s, and we had had a dusting of snow overnight. Soooo many shots of our pool have been taken from this angle, with friends and family diving in during summer pool parties. Anybody for a swim now??? Of course, you'd bounce off the cover more like a trampoline (hmmm... sounds like fun!)
But by afternoon it had swarmed up to the high-30s, and I felt like BBQ'ing. So for the first time this season, we uncovered the grill and I cooked some yummy steaks. In about 10 weeks, we'll be having BBQ pool parties - I can't wait! :-)
Yup... those are pineapples waiting to be fried on the BBQ, too. And of course, Andrew just had to get a picture of the steaks. This is just after we threw the steaks on the grill, but even at this state, it's cooked just about right for our carnivorous Andrew!
Just to let everyone know, my family and I decided to move the drill postings and other NG postings to their own separate blog off of the family site to allow easier navigation of both sites like we did with Justin's missionary blog. Due to the length of my postings and the fact that some people don't care about either my postings or the general family postings we decided to break it off. The URL for my blog is http://pfcgoodale.blogspot.com/. All old posts will remain and but new posts will all be on the new blog. All prior relevant postings have been moved to the new blog as well.
Last August, Brianna started having some major abdominal issues. Lots of very sudden, intense abdominal cramping that could only be relieved in the hospital emergency room via morphine drip. After several trips to the ER and many many tests, we determined that it was her gall bladder that was causing the trouble. Hence, on October 3rd, surgeons removed her gall bladder.
On Wednesday of last week, though, she had one of these episodes again, and had the priviledge of getting her second ambulance ride from school in the same school year. We didn't really figure out what the problem was, but morphine put it to rest, and we were waiting to do more doctor visits/tests.
Advance to today. Brianna had another episode in her AP Biology class (AP Bio would make me sick, too!!!) at school today, and her teacher called Michelle (whom was also at school, at BSU), who called me at home. Hoping to save another embarrassing ambulance ride from school, I raced over to the school and picked Brianna up. I'm not sure how many traffic laws I broke on the way to the hospital, trying to get her to the ER, but we both survived the trip.
Short story long... we still aren't sure what's going on. Brianna's gastroenterologist suspects that she is a spastic duck. Oh... wait a minute... that's not what he said. What he said was that he suspects that the duct emptying in to her small intenstines from her duodenum is spasming, causing the trouble. We will try to verify that and/or rule other stuff in or out, and then decide how to treat it. Meanwhile, Brianna is resting comfortably at home now.
Being the blogger that I am, and with Brianna's permission, I took this photo of her in the ER today, after her spastic duck calmed down. She is doing a "This is me being dead" pose and trying to be funny. She gets downright goofy in hospitals, with or without morphine. :-)
Thank you for keeping Brianna in your thoughts and prayers, and for doing the same for her doctors, so they can figure this thing out, and how to treat it!
Last night was our high school's "Sweethearts" girl-ask-guy dance. Brianna asked Jeff Brann from our ward, and Christopher got asked by a Japanese foreign exchange student whom is living with Amy Keithly, Brianna's friend. Christopher and Marina, Brianna and Jeff, and Amy and her boyfriend all went as a group, and they had a great time.
To the right here is a picture of Christopher and Brianna. Aren't they cute siblings?! You'll see some more pictures, below, and all 16 pictures I posted on Flickr (click here) or on Facebook (click here). Brianna has also posted several photos that she had taken, here on Facebook.
So... what's up this year with medical emergencies at home while I'm out of the country??? Steven last month while I was in Frankfurt, and this past Thursday morning I wake up in Shanghai to find a text message from Michelle, "I'm in the ER with Mark. His face is paralyzed."
Apparently, he had awakened with his face feeling a little numb, and he and Michelle thought he just must have slept on it funny. But later that morning he was in full-fledged facial paralysis on the right side. The doctors say that it was likely brought on by some sort of viral attack, yet it isn't contagious. He's on some anti-viral medications and some steroids, and they say that it'll likely go mostly away in 2-4 weeks, and totally heal in about four months. Sometimes it can last longer, so we wish him the best!
The right side of Mark's face is paralyzed, and he wanted me to take pictures. The picture you see here is not Mark making a face; the right side will not move. The biggest problem with that is that he cannot blink, and there is danger of his eyeball drying out and getting damaged. So he has to close it manually with his hands, and at night we have to tape it shut.
It's actually a bit creepy looking, especially when Mark laughs hard. But he's taking it all in stride. Please pray for a speedy recovery for Mark.
Mark has also done his own posting on Bells Palsy. Please click here.
Not THAT kind of court, silly!!! The basketball court. Andrew is enjoying eighth grade basketball this year, where he plays point guard and can often be seen dribbling down the court (even though Michelle and I tried to teach him better manners than that!). I'd love to say that the photo to the right is blurred because of amazingly fast action (which is partially true - notice that the non-moving cheerleaders are clear), but the fact is that I eventually need to take a better camera to his games.
As for me, I employ the same tactic playing basketball as I do in referee'ing soccer: I just stand in the center circle and casually observe what's going on around me. :-) But Andrew dribbles, runs, sets up plays, shoots, and SCORES (a lot). I wish I had his talent. And his good looks. Of course, it could be argued that Andrew got all of his good looks from his father, because his mother still has hers. :-)
Enjoy the two videos below, one of Andrew dribbling down the court and setting up a play, and the other of him making a free throw.
I've written before about our family's connection to Buena Park, CA-based Hi-Tops, and of Michelle's brother Michael and how he performed with them for 26 years up until his death just over four years ago.
We had a very special treat this past weekend, as the Hi-Tops were in Boise to perform at the 2009 Special Olympics World Winter Games. Over 2,500 athletes from more than 100 nations are in Boise this week, and the Hi-Tops are in town to entertain them. This past Friday night, we invited them for a pizza fest at our church building, and afterwards they treated us to a great show, featuring all of their numbers (including two that had never been performed before).
It really was a great event, and all in attendance were deeply moved. It's tough not to be affected by this group; they're very inspiring. Our hats are off to Sandy Garcia, their director, and all of the volunteers who work so hard to make this such an awesome group!
For some reason, I'm having a hard time uploading photos to the blog, though I took well over 100 on Friday night. To see all of the photos/videos I've posted, please check our Flickr site (click here). They're also in two separate albums in Facebook (here and here).
Embedded below is a video of the group performing to Neil Diamond's "America." This was by far one of Michael's favorite Hi-Tops numbers, and our family can barely watch it without crying our eyes out!
So Sgt Waters is one of my favorite guys in our platoon. I met with him when I was first looking at joining up and he gave me a tour of Gowen Field which is my base. He was an MP(military police) when he started and then became a security specialist later on. He also spent time driving in a convoy but I don't know if this was during his time in one of these MOSs or if it was separate. We had a great time going around the base and meeting with Mr. Queen (one of the Apache pilots), one of the fixed wing pilots (whose name escapes me), and some of the other guys on post. Very nice guy.
He's told a few stories about his time in Iraq which I found interesting.
The first story that I remember from him he told when I asked something about whether or not they ever had a problem with rocket attacks or something. He told me of a time when he and a few other guys were driving a suburban around the perimeter of the base. Their base in Iraq had a 2.5 mile perimeter making it a fairly sizable compound. As they were driving around a rocket was fired at the base. It went completely over the base and landed outside the perimeter, about 6-8 feet from Sgt Waters Suburban. They were obviously shaken but when they returned to base he said it was comforting to find the rocket hadn't even scratched the paint and it was nice to think that the people he was fighting couldn't even hit that large a base and their weapons had that small of an effective radius. Now, the point of this story isn't to diminish the fact that the people we're fighting are dangerous and the war in Iraq is certainly no picnic by any means. It's simply nice to know that 90% of the time our enemies succeed it's through luck and we can win this war simply because we are good at what we do.
Sgt Waters told many stories of his time as a driver in Iraq. His job mainly involved driving high powered people from one side of Iraq to the other. He said it was pretty nice driving people of high rank and dignitaries because it allowed him to get good equipment more easily than the other guys. He said it was also cool going around with them because it gave him a different look into what was going on in the area as he drove from meeting to meeting and negotiation to negotiation. He talked about how his favorite thing from his deployment was gaining that perspective and talked about how you can listen to talk show hosts babble all day long and never really know what goes on in the way he does from being there. His stories are very interesting and he's great to talk to because he really seems to have learned a ton while he was over there.
We also spoke for a while about IEDs and the affect that they have. I guess over in Iraq the convoys go absolutely everywhere going as fast as they can (which, for a fully armored Humvee, is about 80mph). They do this because people are smart enough that they no longer attempt to fight us directly except on rare occasions. The fighting is now done simply be a guy with a button who's trying to hit it at the right time to do some damage. This timing is obviously made more difficult as a convoys speed increases. He said they actually had the road explode behind him fairly often. There were a few times though where an IED went off in the middle of the convoy and disabled them and they were ambushed on some of these occasions. Luckily he was there later in the war and our strategies and equipment is much better at dealing with IEDs then when we first went in. The new Humvees are about 2000 pounds heavier than the old ones and have much better protection. One big problem was that the flames from the IEDs would come through the transmission tunnel and the firewall and into the vehicle. This problem has been addressed and that has drastically reduced casualties. They also have changed tactics to where when a Humvee is disabled, the soldiers very rarely get out for very long. Instead they have tow bars they just slap onto the dead Humvee and they drag it to somewhere safe to avoid a second, generally larger IED which is popular after the convoy has been stopped. Because of such improvements his convoy only had two casualties despite multiple IED hits. One man went home due to a piece of shrapnel in his wrist and one with a piece of shrapnel in his ankle. Again, that's comforting to hear. Of course, the insurgencies methods are improving as well but I have faith in our organization and our commanders to stay ahead of the curve.
Well, Sgt Waters has told more stories than that but I'll leave this posting there, maybe I'll have time to put up more later. I still have a few more people's stories to do though.
By the way, I feel like my posts should have pictures to go with the text. If anyone reading this has pictures that would be usable please email them to me.
OK, so Sgt Barrier isn't actually in the National Guard, he's a Reservist who works in the ADA County Sheriff's Office where I worked until just recently until their budget ran out. It's still a good story though.
So, first off, to me Sgt Barrier is Johnny so I'll just refer to him as that from now on since my foremost relationship with him is not military and we're not in the same branch. He has two stories that I thought were shareable on the blog.
The first was of the very beginning of his deployment to Iraq. He was a mechanic and was in Iraq a couple years back. He said the first few days they were really freaked out a few times when mortars hit the compound and they thought it was weird that they didn't really scare the guys who were already there. A few days in Johnny got called into his CO's office and while he was waiting he notice a pegboard on the wall with a map of the base on it. It was completely covered in little red thumbtacks. He asked his CO what they meant and was informed the little read tacks indicated all of the places where a mortar had hit in the last year. That freaked him out a bit.
Luckily though, the Iraqi's can't aim. Despite being there during a period where they had dozens and dozens of mortars hit his base the only had one casualty- another soldiers X Box. He said after a while you learned really well where the things would hit and they weren't really a problem although they were pretty ticked about the X Box.
He also told a story about an awesome picture they had in their shop. In it was a Talibani man on a camel. This man's eyes were all bug-eyed and he was obviously beating the camel trying to go faster. Right behind him, was an American F-16. Kinda reminds me of the saying they have about the Apache's, "Never run from an Apache, it just makes you die tired." I have to say, I'm glad to be on our side.
So, I thought it might be fun to share some stories I've heard from the guys during my drill weekends. Military stories are always interesting.
I'll start with my favorite story from my drill sergeant/recruiter. I think it's his favorite as well when talking about how we really are making a difference over in Iraq. He was a medic while he was in Iraq (another cool thing about the military, you aren't stuck in one job all the time, my drill sergeant is also a recruiter and a combat medic which is pretty cool). He was on post and a man came in with a little girl in his arms who was obviously having issues. He couldn't speak English and just kinda put her in the arms of one of the soldiers there (I don't remember if it was SFC Stace or not, I'm writing these from memory so details may be off). They got him an interpreter while checking out the baby. One of the medics in the group there was a pediatrician and was able to address her properly. (That's another thing I like about the Guard- you can have a regular job as well which allows for a huge mix of skill sets. I'm not positive but I doubt the military specifically trains in pediatrics since we don't have our kids fight but in the Guard it totally makes sense.) They found an abscess on her side and were able to treat it before putting her and her father on a Blackhawk to Baghdad for surgery. After the operation the doctors were sure that the abscess had been within hours of bursting and would have shot toxic crud into her abdomen and almost certainly killed her. In short, they without a doubt saved the life of this young girl. All of this of course was done with no charge to the father. Now, I don't care who you are, that's pretty cool. The only thing I don't like about that story is the fact that it was never reported. A group of Idaho soldiers did that and not even our local paper reported it. That's life I guess but it's still too bad.
I've decided to divide these stories individually so this post doesn't end up too long, so there's going to be a lot more to come.
Another drill, another posting. This month we did Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT). This involved going out and learning how to breach and raid buildings as well as how to maneuver while on a combat patrol. Before we got into our training we did our obligatory PT test. For those of us who have yet to go to basic training we do as many push-ups as possible in 1 minute then as many sit ups as possible in one minute and finished with as fast a mile as possible. For those who have already been to basic everything is doubled. I'm up to 44 pushups in a minute and 42 situps. Unfortunately, my legs were really sore from running and skiing this week so I added 23 seconds to my run and ended up with a time of 6:49. Kinda sad, but it'll improve. One thing I like about the National Guard is that our fitness is on our shoulders. It can be a bad thing for some people who end up just not working out and do 24 pushups and 11 situps and get chewed out at drill instead of working out. They'll get fixed in basic training though.
After our PT test we ate a quick MRE lunch and moved into our day. We started by prepping with M16A2 mock-ups which we call "rubber-ducks". We went through the fundamentals of room clearing and then got into fire teams of 4 or 5 to do drills in "glass houses" which are just rooms mocked up with black tape on the floor. The glass houses taught us basic movements but obviously you can only do so much with mock-ups.
After some glass house training we moved into some of the old barracks and discussed how we would clear such a building if we had to. These barracks had a total of 44 windows and 3 doors between the two floors and had lockers and bunks spread throughout as well as some half-a-dozen rooms and a latrine. Such a building makes for a very dynamic raid since you have so many "fatal funnels" (openings where people are easy targets). This, unfortunately, took forever since we are up to 97 troops showing up at drill and we still only have under a dozen people rank E-4 or higher who know what's going on and can lead everyone through. We also have a shortage of buildings and equipment which makes equipment intensive drills such as this very time consuming. Because of this we ended pretty early that night and hit the barracks to rest before we put what we learned into action by clearing rooms with paintball M4s.
At 0200 the next morning we woke up and were in the drill hall starting to run teams through our mock village by 0230. My fire-team had a visiting civilian added to it around 0500 and we practiced with him to get team cohesion until we moved out sometime around 0600. (Yes, that does add up to 3 and a half hours of waiting in the drill hall. When you have to move 97 people through a 15-20 minute exercise 9 at a time things go REALLY slow. Some people took advantage of the break to nap but I wasn't able to do so since the drill hall was kinda loud.)
When we got to our "village" we were surprised to find that the buildings were nothing like the buildings we had been training in although we had been made to believe we would be clearing the same sort of structures. I'm sure this was done on purpose as it forced us to scrap all of our plans and adjust on the fly. The buildings we cleared looked like stacked cargo containers with doors and walls added to create buildings. Each building had between 6 and 9 rooms per floor, a staircase to the second floor and a balcony on the second floor. The lights were all off when we entered and at 0600 it was pitch dark which made clearing the buildings very difficult since noone thought to check for light switches once we had secured a room. Our first building was very sloppy since we were brand new, weren't use to being unable to see and were trying to do the building without any verbal signals which didn't work as well as we had hoped. Luckily, the first building we picked to go into happened to be the one with no one in it and we were able to get away with it.
Our second building we decided to scrap the stealth approach since we weren't really kidding anyone anyways. We're newbies, everyone knew we were coming. When we started into the room with the staircase in the second building we suddenly had rounds flying all around us. We could hear them bouncing all over but couldn't pinpoint them since there were three rooms across the hall from us after we passed the staircase and the rounds we were using were rubber bullets instead of paintballs to avoid a mess. I thought I saw a shadow up on the second floor and went to fire at it while entering the room and got quite the surprise when my gun didn't react at all. Of course, being a stupid newbie, I backed around the wall again to get cover. Since I was point, the three other guys behind me followed and took cover in the other room. Unfortunately, our third man, the door breacher, was not directly behind me since he was going the other direction through the door after breaching it. He didn't realize we had left and ended up stranded in the other room for a good five seconds before he was able to get out. Luckily, he did get out since the enemy upstairs was just blind-firing around the staircase but I very nearly got him "killed". Once we got into the other room I switched out my gun with our number 2 man since, as point, I kinda needed a gun that worked. However, shortly after we switched and before we had re entered the room we realized my gun had just been uncharged by the soldier who had used it last for some reason. We hadn't checked that because all of the guns were charged on the first round and remain charged until they were manually uncharged so our cadre hadn't even told us we had to charge the weapons. Having never been paintballing before I didn't realize a paintball gun even had a charging handle like a real gun.
Switching kinda stunk though because I now had Private Gallaher's gun which only had 4 rounds in it to start the game. We reentered the room and the civilian and I charged the staircase while the other three covered us from below. We noticed SSG Walls' head sticking out around the corner of the doorway to the balcony and the civilian and I opened fire on her but she ducked back onto the stairwell before we got her. We then posted on either side of the door to the balcony and Gallaher came around and we attacked the balcony. Gallaher got the first look and got her three times as she tried to run for cover which left us with a clear building.
When we entered our third building we ran into a similar rain of fire at the staircase. Gallaher got shot in the back while moving behind the staircase to cover the men going up. The civilian was supposed to cover him while he moved around but it didn't work for whatever reason. I didn't see whether the civilian failed to watch his opening or if Drill Sergeant Zupancic simply got a good shot in. At this point I found that I hadn't done a very good job of keeping aware of my weapon again and was out of ammo since I had used four rounds getting Walls to duck back in. Thus, I had to charge the staircase with an empty weapon hoping that maybe I could help keep the Drill Sergeant's head down while the other two who were going up with me got around to where they could kill him. Luckily, it succeeded and I was able to take his gun after he died which had a good 45 rounds in it. When I popped around the corner to the balcony I saw someone lying on the ground with a gun pointed at me but managed to shoot him twice before he got me. I thought I hit him and thought he put his gun down but he was back lit and I couldn't quite tell so I shot him three more times. I probably shouldn't have done that but I did and he didn't say anything. Luckily it was SGT Cole who is huge and probably didn't care at all.
After that we simply cleaned up and did our AAR (After Action Report) and took off early because the cadre all wanted to get home for Super Bowl Sunday and I was even able to make it to 2/3 of sacrament meeting. It was a pretty good drill I think.
P.S. I should make a correction to an earlier post. I spoke before of Colonel Goodale telling the guys at Gowen to make sure to mess with "the other" Private Goodale. I realized that when I had heard this I had flipped it in my head. When I heard "the other" I thought it was from Colonel Goodale's perspective and not mine so he was really telling them to mess with his son which makes more sense.
Indeed, these are emotional times; I find myself Crying CONSTANTLY while working these days! I just can't help it!!! After all... I do work for Crytek now. :-) And in fact, these ARE emotional times, but in a good way. I am very happy with my new job, my new associates, my new company, my new products... it's all good. Crytek is the European developer behind the successful and stunningly beautiful game franchises Far Cry and Crysis. They are headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany and have studios in Budapest, Kiev, and Seoul. They have approximately 300 employees from close to 30 countries, and ironically, the primary language in their Frankfurt headquarters is English.
Their award-winning CryENGINE game engine is, in my opinion as well as that of most developers I've spoken to, the best game development technology in the industry. To date Crytek has not had a real aggressive engine licensing business; however, in spite of that they have been fairly prominent in that space. We are becoming quite aggressive in the business, though, for reasons that I cannot yet announce because an official announcement will be made just before the Game Developers Conference in March.
I am joining the company as Director of Asia Pacific Licensing, and will be responsible for the engine licensing business in North America and Asia. I will be working closely with their Seoul studio, and I will be establishing operations for them in Shanghai, Tokyo, and in North America. I am crazily putting together business plans for each region and preparing to hire more than a dozen staff members in three countries for my team. All the sort of stuff I just love! The tougher part of the gig will be all of my travel. Last year I spent a total of more than four months overseas during six different trips (plus domestic travel); this year looks to be no different
I had some memorable experiences as General Manager of Asia Operations for Emergent Game Technologies and they had some compelling products. Since parting ways with them in October, I've really been enjoying spending so much time with my family; on my fifth day of this current business trip to Frankfurt, I'm feeling quite homesick already! But to have a job in today's tough environment is a blessing; to have such an awesome job is just amazing! :-)
Pack meeting this month was "game night" where each cub scout den introduced a game to all the other cub scouts. One den introduced "monkey in the middle," another group introduced a fun game throwing tennis balls at ice cream sticks on the floor and trying to hit/flip them, and another den introduced charades. Good times!
Enjoy the photos here, and you can see all 24 from the evening, posted here.
Dawn Cannariato's Wolf den also did a cute little skit of "Flea Olympics." There are still some missing fleas that were not found following one particular flea jump, so look out on Sunday at church. :-)
We were fortunate enough to have several members of the Boy Scout troop visit us, to sing us one of their favorite songs. So embedded below are the Boy Scouts singing through the song once, then it's repeated with the audience singing along. This is sung to the tune of "Do-Re-Mi" from The Sound of Music. Enjoy...
Our good friends the Beauforts own a cabin up in the mountains near Donnelley, Idaho (about 90 miles north of where we live), and their cabin sits right on the shore of Cascade Lake. The photo above is a panoramic view (stitched together from four photos I shot) from their deck overlooking Cascake Lake and Tamarack Ski Resort. Since Monday (yesterday) was a holiday, we drove up to their cabin after church on Sunday for some fun in the snow!
We arrived there in the evening and after a delicious dinner (Mark making a lovely face at the dining room table, at the right), we sat around and watched "Iron Man" by the nice warm fire (the Beauforts hadn't ever seen that flick). When we arrived, the outside temperature at their place (about 6,000 feet elevation) was a cozy 14 degrees, so hot chocolate and a nice fire in the fireplace were the order of the day!
Their cabin has this great (heated) bunkhouse right next to it, and all the kids slept in there while the adults were in the cabin. When we awoke in the morning, the lake just out their front (back?) door was completely flat - not a wake nor ripple in the water. Of course, that was because the lake was completely frozen and covered in snow (this third picture is of a bunch of us standing in the lake), but otherwise it would have been great water skiing conditions! :-)
We had a great time going down the hill from their cabin down to the lake (about a 30-foot vertical drop), and sliding right out on to the ice on inner tubes. We had some pretty spectacular crashes, but nobody got (seriously) hurt.
After tubing in the snow, we went out riding their ATV. Christopher has ridden ATVs quite a bit, and he had fun teaching his younger siblings how to ride/drive the ATV. I love this picture here of he and Steven; are they having fun, or what?! Brianna, whom just got her driver's permit this past Saturday, was a bit crazy at first, but eventually got the hang of it. Her throttle thumb was at first in digital mode, meaning it was either all the way on, or all the way off. Eventually, though, she found her analog thumb, and her driving became much smoother. Everybody enjoyed doing power slides on the packed-snow-and-ice on the street out in front of their cabin!
Does the look here on Andrew's face say it all, or what?! We had a really great time, and I have posted 100 photos from the weekend online. Click here for the photos on Flickr, or for Facebook, here or here (albums 1 and 2, respectively).
Whomever would have thought that after moving to Idaho we'd accumulate such an arsenal? Notice the firepower in front of three of my airsoft-war-loving charming boys, though; each of the weapons have orange tips. Despite all of the stereotypes about Idaho, we don't actually own a "real" gun.
Check out this song and video, "An American Soldier," by Toby Keith. What great men and women we have serving in our United States Military! And what a great son we have, serving in those forces! Here are the military-related posts we have on our blog, regarding Christopher in the Army National Guard:
Michelle has an aunt and uncle (Uncle Steve and Aunt Ruth Dillon) whom have nine children. And people tell Michelle and I that we're crazy with six! Five of these cousins of Michelle live in the Boise area, and it's GREAT to live so close to have so much family nearby!!! We always have so much fun when we get together with the Dillons.
One of these cousins, Sarah, got married this weekend, and the whole Dillon family descended upon Boise for the wedding. We all had a wonderful time!!! For Joel's bachelor party, a bunch of us men got together and went shotgun shooting. We went to this great shooting range out in Homedale, Idaho, about 40 miles west of Boise. They had 12 shooting stands, most of them had two traps, so on each stand you got two different clay pigeons to shoot at, each coming from a different direction. You did two repetitions for four total shots at each stand, and you never saw the same trap clay more than twice - it made for quite a variety of clay trajectories and shooting situations. On one stand we did three repetitions, and it was a unique stand where you climbed up quite a few stairs and shot down from a platform, at clays actually coming from beneath you.
So if you did the math there, we each got 50 shots. I know that the "winner" of this wild and crazy bachelor party hit 32 clays. Somebody help me out here and post a comment to this posting... who won (I don't remember since I had to leave a little bit early)? I won't report my score here, because it was embarrassingly low. Even though I've shot rifles and handguns, this was my first time shotgun shooting. But the important part is that we all had a GREAT time!!! :-)
Posted here are three shots. The first is of me, getting instruction from the range master. The second is of Michelle's cousin, Steve. Check out that smile; were we having fun??? The third is a shot of the entire clan walking from one stand to the next. I've posted these and 40 more on Flickr (click here) and on Facebook (click here).
Alrighty then, the pictures to the left are obviously me in uniform, I swear it looks a whole lot less dorky when we're in formation with all 100 of us. Normally there would be a rank patch in the center of my chest but they ran out of patches for my rank and I will not receive one until next drill.
For January's drill we did what was called weapons immersion which consisted of weaponry mechanics and BRM (by the way, if you haven't read my other post yet do that first). When I arrived at 0845 I was directed to get a Gortex (ACU jacket) and an MRE from Private Biggins (the girl I accidentally hurt at last drill). When I reached her she informed me in a very polite and friendly manner that no matter how much crap I got at drill there were no hard feelings between us and that we were all squared away. She then warned me that I would be getting a lot of crap that drill.
We then moved in to the PT phase of drill at 0900 and I did 43 push ups in my minute which is still not amazing but is 6 more than last month and I didn't run out of steam even at the very end. When I moved to the back of the line after my push ups my MSG (Master Sergeant) MSG Gordeley (also an awesome guy, he's the highest rank we see at drill) and he informed me that the "other" PVT Goodale had come to drill. This other PVT Goodale is someone who I have heard about every time I do something new on post and who I receive calls about on a fairly regular basis. His father is a West Point grad and a colonel in the IDARNG. He is also named Christopher and Colonel Goodale's first name is ironically John as well. I've never met him but I've heard about him all the time. MSG Gordeley than told me that he was going to have the two of us fight and then the winner would fight PVT Biggins. He then said, "You hurt her last month by the way. Even if they don't tap out, when the tears start, you usually stop. You underestimate your own strength PVT Goodale." There are few things that are better than having your MSG tell you that you underestimate your own strength, even if it's preceded by a tongue-in-cheek chastisement.
During the sit up portion of the PT test I did 36 sit ups, down two from last month. Not because I was tired, I had energy to go at the same pace for another 30 seconds without slowing but I could not figure out how to do full sit ups faster than I was already doing them. It was frustrating. When we went out to do our run I met PVT Goodale for the first time. He graduated from Bishop Kelly High School (a local Catholic school) last year and is now attending ISU and is in the ROTC. He was accepted to West Point but decided he didn't want to be in that atmosphere. He is a couple of inches taller than me and outweighs me by 34 pounds but we have a very similar build, a similar facial structure and about the same haircut. We even have the same model of cell phone. Kinda weird. We got along very well though. However, he had gotten 51 push ups and 57 sit ups so I wanted to stay as close to him as possible in the run which resulted in my dropping 12 seconds to 6:26 which put me 10 seconds behind him which isn't bad. Cool guy though.
We then were sent to our barracks to eat and change into ACUs and we had 43 minutes to do that and be back in formation. We had to change barracks once and had trouble getting our linens squared away so by the time I was dressed I only had time to crack open my MRE and eat a small amount of each part of the MRE. I then rushed back outside to get back in formation since we were all supposed to be formed up, accounted for and ready to move out at either 1110 or 1210. I arrived outside at about whatever:00 and was accounted for and ready to move about 5 minutes later. However, some of the people in our battalion treat RSP as they do school and not as a military unit. Therefore, we had people running out at 12:12 improperly dressed (no caps, unzipped Gortexs, etc.). MSG Gordeley and SFC (Sergeant First Class) Stace (my recruiter and drill sergeant) were both VERY unhappy. Especially since they had informed us on the way to the barracks that this month's drill would focus on getting our discipline back. Because of this we received a half-decent amount of yelling since the first time since I joined and we were smoked since the first time since I joined. (Being smoked by the way is when you are punished with PT). We were required to stay in the push-up position until we were all accounted for by our squad leaders but he had us flip over and do flutter kicks after a while because some people could not hold themselves anymore. It was difficult but I've had worse at water polo and football practices and we desperately needed to be smoked. You should not ever be running out half-dressed to formation after the departure time. But we eventually moved out and went to our first stations.
Our first station was going over the M249. It is the fully automatic rifle to the left. It was created in the 1980s as a replacement to the M16A1 (the automatic version of the M16)which was found to be a poor replacement for the Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR). It fires a 5.56mm round 850 rounds per minute with a maximum effective range of 1000 meters with open sights which means that at 1000 meters the M249 is accurate with only the sights you see in the picture to the left. The M249 has a maximum range of 3600 meters (that range is essentially pure flight distance). We learned how to clear, disassemble, reassemble, load and fire this weapon along with all the other weapons we worked with. These weapons are surprisingly easy to take apart and I was shocked that the M249 only weighs 17.5 pounds.
We then moved to a class where we essentially just updated our info with the Guard and made sure our military emails and other sites were squared away. We were with MSG Gordeley and PVT Biggins again at this point and when MSG Godeley found out that the other Goodale outweighed me and outperformed me in PT he informed me that I still had the upper hand because I had the ability to say that I had kicked Biggins' butt and he didn't. He also told me I was still PVT Goodale 1 to him and would always be the original PVT Goodale despite his fathers' rank. He also told me that Col. Goodale had told the guys at Gowen that if they were to mess with a PVT Goodale to make sure it was PVT Christopher D. Goodale (him) and not PVT Christopher J. Goodale (me) which everyone found funny especially since his son belongs to A Company and B Company has a nice rivalry with A Company. I'm glad I was first though because it allowed me to get the right email and he got screwed up. I am christopher.goodale and he had to be c.d.goodale.
We then moved to an M4 carbine class. The M4 is the same as the M16A2 (the Army staple) and shares about 80% of its parts with the M16A2 but has a shorter barrel and a telescoping butt stock for short-range combat. Both guns weigh 7.5 pounds. We did the same clearing, disassembling, reassembling and firing procedures as on the M249 and went into the proper way to clean a weapon. We then listened to some awesome war stories from SGT Waters (SFC Stace's brother-in-law and my second favorite soldier in our platoon).
We then moved on to the M16A2 class where we briefly covered the same procedures as with the other weapon and then moved on to marksmanship fundamentals (Position, Aiming, Breathing, Trigger Squeeze). We then learned how to aim properly and were required to squeeze the trigger to fire an unloaded M16A2 with a dime balancing on the front sight to make sure our trigger pull was good. We proceeded from there to do a training exercise where we shot targets in the building with a laser mounted in the barrel which was recorded by the targets we were shooting. My sight picture was not the greatest at first but by the end I was finishing withing the top three soldiers in my 12 man squad and hitting nearly dead-center mass at 250 yards very consistently.
We finished up there and were back in our barracks around 2130 with lights out at 2200. I was smart enough to volunteer early for fireguard and got the first shift so I was in bed about 2300 with lights on at 0400 so that we could be in formation and ready to go by 0530 to make chow at 0600. I slept in my boots, pants and shirt on top of the covers in case one of the morons outside got caught smoking and we had to go out and get smoked in the middle of the night and to save myself some time for sleeping. I would have slept very well except for the antics of PVT Grzadzieleski (no I'm not kidding) who woke up the whole barracks at 0215 running around the bay pretending to be MSG Gordeley. Despite this however, I slept well enough to be wide awake the next morning and still going right now at 2148. Luckily, our battalion learned its lesson and we were all present and accounted for before the drill sergeants even showed up.
We then traveled down to the FATS (Fire Arms Training System), where they had modified M16A2s to fit air hoses into them that made them kick like a real M16A2 while we fired them down a digital BRM qualifying range. At this range we had targets pop up from 50-300 meters away (simulated) and we had a certain amount of time to hit them depending on how far out they were. We had 20 shots in the prone supported position, 10 in the prone unsupported position and 10 in the kneeling position. We had to hit 23 out of 40 to qualify and I had 21 after the first 30 but only was able to hit one while kneeling. Unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties and I did not get a chance to try again but I am nonetheless fairly confident with the M16A2 now.
Our next class was the M240B class. The M240B is the largest rifle we have that is carried by a single soldier as far as I know. It is different from the other three in that it is the only one that does not use 5.56mm ammo. Instead it uses 7.62mm ammo which is NATO ammo and can be interchanged with most NATO weapons and AK-47s. It is the heaviest gun we worked with at 27.6 pounds and unless you are carrying it with the carrying handle in the center it feels like a heck of a lot more than that. This gun fires as much as 950 rounds per minute but the heat is so much that if more than 200 are fired in one minute the weapon must be allowed to cool for 15 minutes to prevent a "cook off" which causes rounds to go off prematurely due to the heat of firing the previous shells. We also timed ourselves in the clearing, disassembly, reassembly, functions check and loading and I was the fastest in our squad with a time of 3 minutes 51 seconds when starting with a loaded weapon. Not bad for a newbie I think.
When we finished our final station we returned to building 521 which is themain building for the RSP. While we were waiting for the other guys to finish up we sat around and talked and the sergeants told stories and argued about things like the necessity of an NCAA championship. Once the other squads arrived we started our major cleanup of the base, our barracks, and our weapons. However, the 15 series guys (people with my MOS and other MOSs in my area) were pulled out because the 183rd commander had come to talk to us and meet the troops who would be joining his unit after training was complete. There were six of us who went to talk to him. I am one of four 15Xs in our battalion. We will all have the job of fixing the electrical systems on the AH-64 Apache. We are also responsible for loading the weapons systems on the Apaches. The other two soldiers were both MOS 15R and will be responsible for the mechanical systems on the Apaches. All six of us wish to eventually become pilots. According to the Captain, 15X is the busiest MOS because the electrical systems are constantly failing on the Apaches. He says we also get a lot of respect from, and correspondence with, the pilots. One of the reasons for this is that we load and ready their weapons systems which is cool. He said we have a lot more to do than the 15Rs and we'll feel like we are drinking out of a fire hose for the first couple years but that we'll have a blast doing it. He also told us that we have a tendency to gain the first few ranks after basic more quickly than he'd like and that sometimes hurts us since we haven't learned enough yet. I can see where he's coming from but I'm not going to complain about gaining rank. We also talked about the path to being a pilot and he said there's generally about 10 spots per year and all six of us that were new are interested in being a pilot eventually. So it'll be competitive but not too terrible I hope. I'm glad to be a part of the 183rd though because we have the best flight record in the nation and we've received tons of accolades from other commanders including Iraqi generals. So I'm lucky to be where I'm at. After this we did a quick AAR (which my dad's half-brother informed me means After Action Report) and I was able to come home.
Wow!!! Some countries build an Imperial Castle. China builds an entire Imperial City!!! Today my Crytek associates and I had a chance to visit the Forbidden City here in Beijing. This place is absolutely GINORMOUS!!! We walked around inside it for three hours, and I'm sure we didn't even see one-third of it. At some points while walking through it, you're up sort of high, and you look over buildings, only to see more buildings beyond it, still within the Forbidden City. You've got to take different paths to get everywhere, and it's just crazy big.
All the walking made my knee really hurt, and I've taken a really heavy pain killer. I've been sitting here with my leg propped up and my knee on ice while going through photos and creating this posting, so if some of this isn't clear, I'm blaming it on the drugs!
Their award-winning CryENGINE game engine is, in my opinion as well as that of most developers I've spoken to, the best game development technology in the industry. To date Crytek has not had a real aggressive engine licensing business; however, in spite of that they have been fairly prominent in that space. We are becoming quite aggressive in the business, though, for reasons that I cannot yet announce because an official announcement will be made just before the 
