Hey ya'll - Just wanted to welcome all of the visitors from AFBlues.com!

Feel free to check out the site. Sure it's not as interesting as Air Force Blues, but some folks enjoy my ramblings.  :-) - Feel free to leave a message too!

Oh, and since you're here, read the post below about Airman Colton Read below if you're not familiar with him and his situation. He and his family really need our help!

I had another blog post I was working on, but am putting that on the back burner for right now so I can get this information out.

I'm just now catching up on my favorite online comic, Air Force Blues, and I happened across information regarding Air Force Airman Colton Read and how something very tragic had happened to him during what should have been a routine surgery.

21 year old Airman Colton Read went in to have surgery on his gallbladder, a fairly common operation; and now because of an Air Force doctor's mistake Airman Read has now lost the use of both of his legs! The Air Force doctor nicked Read’s aortic artery during the operation, shutting off blood flow to his legs. Because of this mistake, Colton has had his left leg amputated to the knee and his right leg to the thigh.

Now, due to someone elses error, Colton's dream of an Air Force career is ending and because of a lot of  bad policy & bureaucratic red tape, Colton and his wife Jessica, are looking at having to survive on a $1600 a month, medical pension. This is wrong and the Air Force & our government needs to do more to support him and his wife Jessica.

Colton is now at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX and is undergoing physical therapy. While Colton is now on the road to recovery, he and has family needs your support more than ever. Please visit their website, http://www.coltonread.com and then contact your congressmen and senators and let them know that he needs their support and that an investigation needs to take place to prevent further incidents like this from happening again to our other service members and their families.

If you've read the 'About Me' section of my blog, you know that I can imagine,  if even for a small part of what Colton must be feeling. While I still have my legs, having your dreams of an Air Force career yanked out from under you can be pretty traumatic; especially with it being someone elses fault!

I can only imagine what his parents must be feeling at this time. As a parent of two children, who are looking at Air Force/Miltary careers, the thoughts of something like this happening to my kids makes me want to have them rethink their career plans.

Jessica & Colton, if you're reading this, know that you'll be in my family's thoughts and prayers and I'll do whatever I can to get your story out there! Stay Strong!

Tomorrow @ 0600 3 CAP vehicles will start rolling towards Alpena, MI from Grand Rapids, MI; each loaded to capacity with Cadets and three daring Senior Members and a whole ton of gear. What the occasion you ask? Well now... that would be the 2009 Great Lakes Region - North/Michigan Wing Summer Encampment.

This will be my third year in a row for me to make this pilgrimage; to what most people who've been there, call their 'second home'. This will also be my third and final year acting as Public Affairs Officer for it. This may come as a shock to some, I know, but it's time for me to move on to bigger and better things. What those bigger and better things are, will remain to be seen.

Do you have ideas? NESA seems like a possibility, for what, yet...maybe Archer training, Il'l have to decide. I think it would be a blast to escort for IACE.  But an important thing to remember is, no matter how much you plan for something, things can change with the beat of a heart. So who knows, right?

So at this point, I'm wondering... how do I top what I accomplished last year as PAO? I got top story in the local newspaper, with follow up full page photos and an article on the local unit the next day, a rather decent bit of TV coverage on the only TV news station in town and I was able to, with the help of a few keen folk, put out a daily 2 page, 3 column newsletter for seven straight days.

A plus this year will be the fact that we will be honored to have our National Commander, Maj Gen Amy S. Courter on hand for the graduations of our RCLS and MRE (Model Rocketry Encampment) classes as well as the 'Basic Encampment' graduation and PIR (Pass In Review).  I have also heard that our Region Commander, Col Charles Carr will also be in attendance. So graduation will be quite exciting!

Not to jinx things either, but I would have to say that I believe the stars have aligned for this to be the best encampment, as far as I'm concerned anyways. Not only will my son will be on cadet staff for the first time but he'll be receiving his Mitchell award from Maj Gen Courter. Plus my daughter will be a 'basic' cadet this year.

I guess I should end this entry for now and call it 'the first in a series of blog posts about encampment 2009'. Next time you hear from me, I'll be breathing that fresh (naturally) pine scented northern air!

Anyone who knows me personally, knows I have quite the collection of goodies from Thinkgeek.com. I've got a dresser full of black t-shirts with all kinds of geeky messages to share with the world at large; With my personal favorite, that the younger crowd likes a lot, 'meh.'. Which has been my stock outlook and response to most things as of late.

This has to be, without a doubt, be my favorite internet retailer of all time. Sure Amazon.com has EVERYTHING, but ThinkGeek is the most unique, as far as I am concerned. Especially when it comes to geeky little gadgets, toys and clothing. There is always something new, and most times it'll leave you laughing...that is, as long as you get the joke.

My personal favorite 'joke' being "There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and those that do not." ;-)

One thing I have really come to appreciate from the fine folks over at ThinkGeek is their appreciation for small, kitschy and VERY useful survival gadgetry. I would probably go bankrupt if I wasn't careful. With so many wonderful things for sale at ThinkGeek, I think I'd be broke by now if I didn't show some constraint.

Now for us CAP, SAR & Emergency Services types, the new euphemism, 'GEARdo' can be a quite fitting term; and the GEARdo in me approves of everything ThinkGeek serves up to the Smart Masses.

A simple search on their website for 'survival', will bring up a whole host of geeky goodies. Anything from the ingenious Swedish FireSteel, to the very sexy Van Hoy Snap Lock 2, to the ever so clever 'Survival Kit in a Sardine Can'; you're sure to find something that piques your inner survival 'gadget-<censored>' attention.

One thing I found quite interesting is what is pictured above and to the right. The SurvivalStraps Survival Bracelet. This bracelet, for all intents and purposes could be the best thing you can have on you in the event of an emergency. Think of the possibilities, yep....limitless, that's what I was going to say too!

I could sit here and go on and on about all the neat stuff at ThinkGeek, but I've got some other geeky things I need to be doing today! ;-)

If you do intend to shop at ThinkGeek, I would kindly ask that you mozy over to my 'Secret Links' page and follow the link to ThinkGeek from there. Doing so supports this website and my bad ThinkGeek habit. Thank you...thank you very much! :-)

Well, I had this blog post cued up to publish two days ago, but the computing gods saw fit to blast it into the ether for some reason; so here I am again, lets hope I have better luck this time.

As I mentioned in my previous posting, I said I was going to be in Ann Arbor this past weekend for Michigan Wing's Guided Training Exercise, or GTE for short. This is where our CAP-USAF overseers come in to work along side of us during a Search and Rescue Exercise and point out areas of improvement for next year when we have our 'evaluated' mission and actually get scored on how we do things; and if we keep doing things the way we are doing them and improve a few little things here and there, an Excellent rating is surely ours to have. Everyone at the mission should be proud of the efforts they put in.

It would have been nice to have seen a larger cadet presence at this SAREX. Not sure if it was vacations or what, but they really missed out, I think. For the cadets who were there, they had a ball, and actually seen two real ELT missions, one on Saturday evening and the other Sunday afternoon.

Our Region Commander, Col Charles Carr flew in for the day on Saturday. It was good to see him again and have a chance to talk him about my new assignment at region. It's nice to have your efforts recognized, and it's even nicer to have a new fan of this blog! Thanks Col Carr! :-) 

Click the "Read More" for more info and photos!

With close to 100 members of Michigan Wing on hand, everyone broke into their individual groups and went to work. It wasn't too long before I got the opportunity to fly myself. Two missions in a row and I get right seat on a Highbird sortie, nice! According to the Hobbs meter, we were up for 4.6 hours. Thankfully the weather was nice. 2d Lt Duncan Harper was the pilot for this flight. At a spry 71 years young, Duncan knows his way around a cockpit, and was quite the company on what can usually be a pretty 'ho hum' flight.

We started out at 6500' MSL, but the clouds wanted that airspace, so we went up to 7500' and played above them. Some nice views of the University of Michigan campus (GO BLUE! ;-) ) and the Chrysler Test Track.

The next day the weather was looking a little rough for flying at the start of the day, but soon the sun rose and burned away the clouds; but the winds picked up and gave everyone a heck of a crosswind to deal with, but that's nothing for our skilled pilots. I didn't get to fly anymore that weekend, but that's ok, it gave me time to catch up on some misc. tasks.

Besides, I got to play Safety Officer later in the afternoon... but that's a story for those who know me personally. ;-)

Next mission is set for September in the U.P., and from what I hear Wisconsin Wing is coming to play with us, so that'll be fun! See you all up there!

So as I sit here trying to prepare for this weekends Michigan Wing Guided Training Exercise, I thought I'd dig into my unit's squadron history file; aka, the plastic tub with 'stuff' in it, and see what's interesting.

As I rifled away at different papers, I came across the following article that was torn out of a local Grand Rapids, MI magazine. I carefully cut away the torn edge of the page and taped the crumpled bottom edge of the paper to further preserve this history.

The article described the actions and accounts of one Marie J. Cady, one of Michigan Wing's founding CAP members. This was the first I had seen this, or had even heard of, Marie J. Cady. So I decided to scan the article into a PDF to share with all of you. I have also ran OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the article to include in this blog entry for 'Teh intarwebs' to forever index and keep a record of.

I hope you all enjoy it. As my unit's new historian, I will do my best to create 'YACAPB History Moments' to share with you all. I look forward to your thoughts, comments and insights on what I post here.

Click 'Read More' to get the text of the article and to download the PDF file.

The first attempt at "Operation:GO!" was relatively successful! Especially when you take into consideration all the factors that were in play; a short lead time for planning, a conflicting date for other events, the weather, etc.

The weather was really the biggest factor affecting us, as it had been raining/storming off and on for the better part of the week leading up to the event. We had the mother of all storms blow through the night before that dumped many, many inches of rain on the area; flash flooding of areas that I can't recall having ever flooded before, were going underwater, quite wild. The rain pretty much cleared out in the early AM.

The storm system was still trudging east; which presented another issue for us, our glider tow plane and pilot were still in Flint, and the glider was in Marshall. Flint was IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) and Marshall was MVFR (Marginal Visual Flight Rules). So unfortunately, the glider flights had to be scrubbed.

The weather almost caused an issue for our change of command for our group commander. Two of our color guard cadets were getting an O-Flight in from KGRR (Grand Rapids) and by the time they made it into Sparta, they had all they could do to get changed from their BDU's into their blues!

For whatever reason, the outgoing group commander decided not to show up, nobody could get a hold of him, so we could not do an official 'Change of Command', but Michigan Wing Commander, Mike Saile was able to give Maj Keith Sikkema the Oath of Office at least.

We were able to fly 18 cadets in 16 O-Flights throughout the day, so that is the best thing to report from the day. We had plenty of hot dogs and Coke products/water and Frito-Lay chips to keep everyone there fully satisfied.

It would have been nice to have seen the news media show up, but apparently a bunch of cars sitting in flood water was more important than covering an event such as ours.

Plans are in the works already to get ready for next years event. With the advanced timeline we should not have any problems getting everything and everyone into place for an even better event.

...well...except for the weather!

Well, in less than 24 hours from now, I'll be at the Paul C. Miller Airport (8D4) running around like a 'chicken with his head cut off', most likely, or at least I hope, with a big smile on my face.

Tomorrow is "Operation:GO!" a Civil Air Patrol (West Michigan Group 703) Open House and 'Fly Day'. This event was a culmination of a few really great ideas that came together at light speed.

The idea, originally, from my end anyways, was to have an open house with a few other closer CAP squadrons and use our 'strength in numbers' to help raise awareness of each of our unit's; as in the past, trying to get anyone out to a unit level open house is like pulling teeth, especially with regards to the media.

At the same time, the group senior squadron was planning an O-Flight (orientation) day with the wing glider. From a planning perspective, both of these events were set to be on the same day. Coincidence? I think not.

Once we got our heads together, the ideas started flying, one thing let to another and this turned into an open house that involved all the squadrons in our group, included BOTH powered flights in our Cessna C-172 and C-182's (some with the G-1000 'Glass Cockpit'), as well as our wing glider. We also invited the United States Air Force recruiting office and many other emergency management folks from the area to join us in the day.

We solicited donations from Coca-Cola for drinks and a local charitable grocery store for hot dogs and buns, as well as other sources for other needed supplies. So we'll be feeding upwards of 200 people at least 2 hot dogs each with some chips and a 12 oz can of soda. Not bad eh? Especially for free.

At the start, I setup a website for the event and have been 'tweaking' it pretty much every day since I created it. Things have changed regarding the event nearly every day, all for the most part, for the better.

I've been on edge all week as the weather outlook hasn't been the best, but what else would you expect for early summer? In fact, I'm currently running on about 3 1/2 hours of sleep thanks to the storms that rattled the house from top to bottom, and from the looks of things, we're not out of the woods yet today, more storms on on the way. From what I can tell though, this all should move out of the way in the early AM hours of Saturday, leaving us with partly cloudy skies and high's in the 70's and some good sustained winds to keep the glider up quite nicely! (excuse me while I go find a piece of wood to knock on)

As this is our first time planning and working an event like this, I'm sure there will be a TON of lessons learned, but all in all, I'll be happy if I see just one cadet leave the airport with  a smile on their face like the one pictured above.

THAT my friends, is what it's truly all about!