Whetting your appetite for tomorrow's travelogue

Okay, I spent a lot of time last Thursday on my travel piece and tomorrow's not going to be any different. In fact, I have A LOT more photos this time around. However, it is time consuming and I have to take care of my real work, so I'm not sure when I'm going to get around to posting the Travelouge.

So, here are a few shots, some near topic. As always, click on the photos for larger images:

This is me circa 1991. I'm posting this because I promised Mike at WunderKraut that I'd post a mullet-era picture of a non-mullet me. See the super long hippie hair. Man, if I ran across this me today, I'd kick my own ass.

Goodness ... look at that Raiders shirt. And those glasses. Crud. I look like I'm about to go to an Anthrax concert and get stomped by the Pubilc Enemy fans. I'm glad Korn didn't exist then or I would have probably had to have cut my hair and/or shaved to kill the Jonathan Davies-esque thing I had going on. And I thought I looked so Chris Cornell -- hah!

Flash forward about 5 years, and this is me, as a young private first class sitting at my desk in Okinawa.

Notice how studious I look. Or is that boredom?

Also notice the stool upon which there is a cup of coffee. There are a couple of important things going on here. First of all, that stool's only mission in life was to provide a pedestal for my coffee mug of the moment. Secondly, alluded to in my last comment, somewhere off frame, I had about 6 or 7 coffee mugs in various states of uncleanliness. This is how a journalists desk should look. Never be fooled by cleanliness. Cleanliness on an editor or journalists desk speaks of their incompetence. Sure, they may have organizational skills, but if they're spending all that time organizing, what's happening to the stories?

So, my topic tomorrow is going to have something to do with Okinawa. This shot was taken from the balcony of my apartment when we lived off-base. We were literally right on the beach and the sounds of the waves rocked us to sleep every night. It was amazing. But it's about the only thing about the apartment I miss. It was tiny, with paper-thin walls and on the fourth floor with only stairs. But we still had some great times out there. Great scenery. I'd go back in a moment if given the chance (within reason, of course).

This has always been one of my favorite shots. I wish I'd shot it with a little slower shutter speed to get more movement in the helicopter blades, but I'm proud of it nontheless. What's going on here, an MP from our post is guiding in helicopters from another base. I think they were Navy, but it's been a long, long time.

I wish these shots were in better shape. Of course, they're all scans I just did from hard copies and the hard copies aren't in that good of shape. I did a lot of my own developing in Okinawa at our Arts and Crafts shop on post. Unfortunately, I didn't develop/fix the photos as long as I should have in most cases since I was only using them for the paper and then throwing them in a drawer. So, now, a lot of these old B&Ws are getting purply and fading.

Such is life.