Let's start with Andrews AFB

We'll throw some pictures out . I usually add them after, but lately when I do, blogger adds all this weird spacing to the text that I can't seem to un-format. It is quite upsetting, really. So, here are the pics, followed by the post. I admit it, I bow to the reality.

Here is my company provided "intermediate sized, automatic" rental car. Pretty snazzy, huh? I'm not a Ford dude generally, but I am enjoying these wheels a lot. Hey, I never said I had a rough life.

A view of Waikiki Beach from th 18th floor. Today or tomorrow I will walk down there for some pics. But yesterday was a battery recharging time. I'm not the go, go, go youngin' that I once was.

Number 1 on my list of unnecessary things. Judge fer yerself.

I had a good frend in the Pittsburgh (PA, not KS) area. He had a couple of sisters. One, as it turned out, was a lesbian. Seems that the first lesbian I ever knew, I didn't know. In fact, much later, after she had already joined the Air Force and shacked up off post with her girlfriend, the conversation between me and her brother went like this:

"Ed, hyou know she's gay, right?"

"What? No."

"Yeah. Always has been."

"Really? I never knew that."

"What, you didn't notice she was always wearing a baseball uniform?"

"I just figured she liked baseball."

But I went to spend the 3 day weekend with her anyway because my problem is naiveté, not intolerance. And we had a pretty good time. She even offered to take me on a tour of D.C. And this is where today's blog really begins. Because her offer went like this, "I'll take you to D.C. if you want. I can drive you straight there, but I always get lost and drive around a lot getting back."

Well of course I went. And we went straight there. And we got lost coming home, but I got to see Arlington Cemetary because of it. The lostness, that is. And we had a great time.

OK. So I am in the Doubletree Alana Hotel in Waikiki. I have a special government rate, which I still think is twice what the room is worth. Coming in night before last, I drove around and around in circles looking for the hotel. Unexpectedly, I passed it once. I say unexpectedly because I thought it was still a few blocks off, and, after discovering I was in the wrong lane to u-turn, and the next street was a one way... that forced me to turn on another one way (read wrong way), it was indeed a few blocks off. Anyway, I finally got there and chalked the confusion up to a 26+ hour trip getting here.

Yesterday I decided to make a practice run to the airport and back just to make sure I had it down. I DO NOT. I got lost trying to find either Nimitz Highway or H1, instead finding my way to the entrance of Diamond Head. Asked directions to H1 and found the airport fine after that. Coming back, I once again got within a few blocks of the hotel but was over an hour again driving in circles on streets that were named using only enough consonants to hold the strings of vowels together (why do you need 6 u's in a word, anyway?) trying to find the hotel. I would spot it every once in a while, but.... Like my little Air Force friend leaving D.C.

She'sall the proof you need, by the way, that when I joke about the Air Force's lack of masculinity I do know better.

OK, so besides the practice run fiasco, mostly all that I did yesterday was lay around in the sun. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I am at least one quarter pure lizard. Give me a nice flat rock in the sun and I'm in heaven.

Cleaned with care by LORETA, out

Ramblin' Ed