Once Upon a Night in Guam ...

I think I am just going to make a blanket apology here that will cover the rest of the time that I am here in Guam and apply to whenever I go more than a week without updating. This particular blog will deal mostly with one particular night in Guam BUT before I get to that I'll give a small recap since the last update. Crew 4 got to fly twice last week which was awesome ... God only knows just how little I enjoy sitting at a desk for multiple hours a day. Wasn't that one of the main reasons I left my last job as a programmer? Whatever, we made another trip to the Chammoro Village. I do like the food there. The dancing was pretty similar to the first time we went. I was kind of hoping to see some people walking on fire. So far this week, there hasn't been a whole lot of excitement. We did make a trip over to the Naval Base to see where they assemble the mines we drop. That lasted for about an hour and then we headed over to what amounts to a Class 6 because we heard their beer selection was a hell of a lot better than pretty much anywhere else on the island. This is what our refrigerator looks like now ... This island may kill me.
I do have a link to an article discussing some of the things we've been doing while here in Guam. AND Crew 4 is inside the jet in the pictures you're going to see. Here is the link ... Koa Lightning sharpens B-52 aircrews' war fighting skills .
Okay so onto the fateful night in Guam. Ryan and I made a conscious decision this past week that we were going to take things a bit slower over the weekend. It started like any other, we headed over to the O'Club for Baron Fly. We had a couple of beers and things were good. Then Salty's promotion party started. Salty had the tab for all the beer. So, we did what any good crew dog would do, heck any good American, we drank Salty's beer. Its what he would have wanted. This went on for awhile, through the Hail and Farewell that followed the promotion party, for awhile ... At some point it was time to head home, change, and then out into the night. Unfortunately for house 55, I had already had quite a bit to drink. Without getting into all the details, banana was everywhere, people were covered in shaving cream (ruining Green T-Shirt Night), glass was broken (not my fault), and buckets of water were thrown. No I have no pictures. Then we went out. For those of you wondering, yes we had a sober driver. Ryan and I immediately broke off from the main group and headed over to Ball Scratchers to play pool. Fah, the sober guy, and Miyagi were with us for a little while. I'm not sure what time we got there or even what time we left but we played pool and we drank. And because it was country night at Ball Scratchers we listened to every song by both country bands they had on the jukebox about 300 times. Not an exaggeration. We played pool for a really long time and we played poorly ... again. Miyagi tried to get us to leave at some point and we probably should have listened. Eventually we left after ringing up quite a bill and headed to Ramen Corporate Headquarters. This is where it started to rain. And not just a little. And we looked like this, except there was no umbrella ... We hid underneath a tree for awhile and then ran some more. Eventually we made it to Ramen Corporate Headquarters, hammered and soaking wet. We sat down and ate our 6 dollar bowls of Ramen (believe me its worth it). At this point, the bad decision making probably should have stopped. I had heard the cab over to the base would only be about 10 to 15 dollars so we went looking for a cab out in the rain. Lets start by saying that I had 8 dollars and Ryan had 17. So we got into the cab and watched as the toll rose above ten dollars before leaving downtown. We had nowhere near enough cash to pay for this cab. Oh yeah, and this is about the point the cabbie told us he could drive us to the base but not ONTO the base ... awesome. So we stopped at an ATM and pulled out some money. The toll came to 60 dollars by the time we reached the base ... awesome again. So we figured we could probably make the walk home from here but no. The gate guards made what was probably the right decision and said they'd get us a courtesy ride home. Thats great, I just wish they would have driven a little faster. Right before our courtesy ride showed up, a van full guys from the squadron rolled up to the gate to find us standing there, hammered and soaking wet ... awesome yet again. I'm sure we'll never hear about this again. Okay, time to end this because I am tired. Talk to you soon.