SOOOO let me begin with two options – You can either read this from a positive point of view (A) or from a SLIGHTLY more negative one (B)
The choice is yours –
(A) SOOO this holiday has actually been pretty dang sweet. I mean, there was an air show that I almost got to watch that seemed pretty cool. I, for the first time in a long while, felt at ease with the Japanese Nationals…That sort of came about in an odd turn of events as well. After all of my working and set-up… We had to wave off the truckloads of busses that filled up the parking lot (I should venture to guess around 140+) each and every one filled to the brim with locals. In all honestly the whole day went a lot smoother than I had anticipated. You can attest that to the professional drivers we were able to work with, having such a large place to park them, or even the efficiency of the Japanese themselves… either way Friendship day went off smoothly. When a bus had accounted for its entire people, each would pull out normally and start to head for one of the marines to be directed where to go. The coolest thing however, was how most of the people onboard would wave to you when they went by – this simple gesture really made me feel more welcomed over here. And I’m not just talking a little wave – you would start to wave and half of the bus would start standing up – climbing to the windows, and waving hysterically.
(B) So this is about the schedule I went through
1. Wake up around 2:15
2. Walk in the rain to PMO for formation @ 3:00
3. Stand in the rain @ PMO for about an hour
4. Walk in the rain to the bus parking lot
5. Wait around in the rain until sun up
6. Sun up – vehicles start to arrive, start to park them
7. No it’s about 7:30ish…. no one can move until the ribbon ceremony, try and explain that to the Bus drivers as best you can
8. Continually park busses until lunch
9. Take your 30 min, eat an MRE, walk around – find lost child and forget about lunch
10. Half the air show is over – busses begin to leave
11. All busses are gone, begin the tear down
12. Walk across the entire flight line to north gate – told to do something…
13. Get fed up with superiors, take another marine and start to work…
14. hundred Zip ties, probably 45 barriers, 45 concrete bases, steel plating to go with that, and about 300 yards of orange traffic netting later – north gate is clean.
15. Rest of group catches up – no one elects to help you, so we keep working on lcpl initiative.
16. FOD walk swoops us up – check the whole flight ops area for debris…
17. Word isn’t passed; we arrive to fod walk an already cleaned area
18. Wait around some more
19. Getting dark… lets pick up trash after the vendors..
20. Dark… get your stuff and march to PMO
21. Awesome… we are here, but there is a gear accountability problem.
22. He had someone else’s backpack, a Kevlar and flask appeared out of nowhere, and the radio was dealt with…
23. GO home
Overall I think it was a pretty good experience, it bought and paid for THIS weekend. By that I mean everyone here is working through the weekend because the higher ups say so… So I have been working on logos and playing video games this weekend… Hopefully you have had a blasti blast as well – P.S. – Like the redesign? lol
