4th of July Weekend

The 4th of July weekend, I spent at Camp Funston while most of the other folks on the team spent the weekends visiting family. Saturday and Sunday the MWR facility was closed, so Friday I went to the internet cafe at the MWR facility to get some Rosetta Stone Arabic lessons completed. The MWR internet cafe upgraded their "adobe player" so Rosetta Stone now runs. The speech recognition software isn't uploaded, so we (or I) can't practice speaking the language, but we (I) can at least practice listening and learn some Arabic that way.

I also tried the Defense Language Institute software the language team gave me. The DLI software is not as intuitive as the Rosetta Stone. So for right now, I prefer the Rosetta Stone way of learning.

On Friday evening I had a filling pop out of my tooth. So, saturday morning, I decided to walk to the Hospital emergency room to see if they were able to put a temporary filling on the tooth until tuesday, when the Dental clinic opens. The Hospital is about 3 miles from Camp Funston. It took me approximately 55 minutes to walk it. When I got to the hospital, the nurse on duty apologized, because they did not have the capability to put in a temp filling. They did offer me pain medication, but I told them that I didn't need it. I started my walk back to Camp Funston. On my way back a Ft. Riley police officer picked me up and gave me a ride back to Camp Funston.

Sunday, it was a cloudy day. I decided to see how far it would be to walk to the AAFES PX or mini mall. Since I knew generally which direction I needed to go, but not the exact way, I figured I might learn the lay of the land as well. So, I started my own personal "volksmarch" to the PX or mini mall, which ever place I came to first. One hour and 50 minutes later I reached the Dining Facility that is near the mini mall. Since I was hungry, I stopped there first and grabbed a bite to eat. The mini mall is only 5 minutes from the Dining Facility. So it takes approximately 1 hour 55 minutes to get to the mini mall from Camp Funston. I estimate it's about 6 miles. It was good exercise and a good time to just think and enjoy the open nature of Ft. Riley.

Even though it was cloudy out, I still got a bit sunburned. Even more surprising to me was that I got a few small blisters on my feet. I don't ever remember getting blisters walking in tennis shoes before. I remember going on a volksmarch every Saturday and playing a soccer game on Sunday, back when I was a Lieutenant in Germany. Now my body gets sore after walking 6 miles !!!

I quit playing soccer on a local German Team in 2006 when I started the Army War College's Distance Education Program. I couldn't do all the studying and make the soccer practices, so I gave up the soccer. While the soccer made me sore after every practice and game; it also kept me in very good athletic condition. These past 3 years of not playing soccer is certainly beginning to show !!!

Getting back into athletic condition will be important before deploying down range. I plan on using this time at Camp Funston to slowly get into better shape. Once I'm down range, I plan to continue working out.

Today, Steven and I will go out and do something together. Probably go out for dinner, and hopefully he will tell me how his weekend went. (He had a friend come visit this weekend !!!) He just sent me a text message saying he is on his way. So now I will go.