Heading for my next USA Road Trip!!!

Yeah!!!!! Wow Weeee!!! Heading for my next USA road trip starting from tomorrow. Had just finish packing my baggage for the trip consisting of clothings, toiletries, water, field chair, sleeping bag, cold weather clothings...etc etc. Last week I have made an online reservation for a rental car through Budget Car Rental which will be the primary mode of transport during this tour. Driving my own car for the tour was an option but the pain and agony and time wasted in the event my old car break down which will seriously spoil the tour makes me think otherwise. Mind you, my car have clocked 125000 miles and have minor problem here and there. Will be collecting the rental car early tomorrow morning with the help of my good colleague, LC Goh.

What road trip should be committed without a map? With country so big chances are that I gonna lost my way sometime. Gone are the days of compass reading and map glancing while having a hand on the steering wheel and feet on the pedals. Nowadays there is such thing call a GPS Navigation system which I experienced using first hand during my Las Vegas/Grand Canyon tour earlier this year. Sure the highway might be an easy road to navigate as long as you know the exits to take but the minor roads is a mumbo jumbo of headache and time wasting when you miss the turn. Just key in your destination and drive, that simple. With the digital map displayed and turn cues right in front of the driver plus a voice prompt to keep your eyes on the road, it sure is hard to miss any turn. Furthermore if you miss a turn, the GPS Naviagtion system reroute. I picked up a Garmin Street Pilot C330 from Walmart at US$288 to assist me during this road trip. Now here is a catch against Walmart; Walmart offer a 15 days return and refund policy for GPS Navigation system (most other stuff is 90 days), my tour only last 10 days so isn't it great that I can buy it now and return it before 15 days and get all my money back??? Ha ha... its like borrowing from the store with a deposit.

I got the car and navigation aids. Now how about what to do during those long long drive when there is nothing to stop by a see at all? Mun Kit lend me a car dc to ac adapter and a FM Audio transmitter. Garfield is gonna bring along his laptop. Now for some in car entertainment, the improvised style. We gonna plug the laptop to tap power from the car cigarette socket using the DC to AC Adapter and we gonna transmit the laptop sound output right to the car stereo system using the FM Audio Transmitter. Yup, time to watch dozens episode of Anime and Movie while driving, keep the boredom and sleepiness out of the driver. Some may argue this is dangerous and distracting. Whats more dangerous that falling asleep on the wheels?

Hmm...Food. Gonna fill those stomach along the trip. Well, got tons of left over MREs from the last Exercise. Kapo a box of it to solve the hunger problem during the road trip. And as for water, I have at less 4 gallons of it in the car....home made filtered water in used containers.

Finally where shall we go? Here is the list of places we wanna covered. Look short and simple but places are many miles apart. I hope I have the time to cover everything in the list otherwise Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone National Park is a definite must go.

YellowStone Road Trip Itinerary

ON THE WAY TO YELLOW STONE NATIONAL PARK

1. Visit Cadillac Ranch at Amarillo
1. Bring along spray paints!!! Use expired POLs.

2. Head to Francis E. Warren Air Force Inn for a day rest
1. Crow Creek Inn
2. Call 1800-AFLODGE

3. Rocky Mountain National Park at Denver, Colorado
1. Entrance fee US$20 per vehicle
2. Head to the peak in our car. To Alpine Visitor Center

4. Yellowstone National Park at Wyoming
1. Visit Old Faithful Geysers
2. Visit Mammoth Hot Spring

c. Tower Falls to see the Waterfall

d. Petrified Trees at Specimen Ridge, Along NE Entrance

e. Explore the Canyon area South of Tower Falls

f. Row a boat at Yellowstone Lake and fishing in the middle of the lake

5. Visit Car Hedge at Nebraska
6. Visit Precious Moment Chapel, Carthage Missouri
7. Head to Arkansas, Little Rock Air Force Base and meet up with Ah Lim
1. Stay in Little Rock AFB Inn.

8. Head back to Dallas

Ok, this probably gonna be the last blog entry before I head for my trip. Will be back 1 week and a few days later. Stay tuned for my post road trip travel blog!!! See ya!

The Three Stooges from 46th Senior Tech Batch

Once upon a time, there was 3 monkeys.

This 3 guys are my RSAF 46th Senior Technician batch buddies in the Chinook community. In less technical sense, this 3 guys are the only guys who graduated from the 46th Batch Senior Technician course and the only 3 guys from the Mechanical course who ended up working on the same Helicopter (right in the background), the CH47D Chinook.

Introducing, on the left weighing at 170 pounds, with no martial art background but born with lightning fingers and sharp eyes. All the attribute of a great photographer who could not leave any places without his camera. This is Garfield Soh.

And in the Center ring. Eccentric, Smart, action packed and never a moment boring Mr "Know it all". Fluent in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, English, Thai and nonsense. He is a Flight Engineer with a library beneath those hair. This is "BaYi" Yong Li.

Finally in the right corner. He is 25 years old coming to 26 this year, he is single and always available, he is not that bad looking (not that good looking either), pretty broke, have a love for collecting weird stuff and soft toys, dreamt of been a pilot but became a grease monkey for RSAF instead and he is the owner of this blog you are reading right now. This is Riccardo a.k.a Maj Moron.

I'm not cool but...

Die at work in 5 minutes

The Japanese like to work to their death, "Kiroshi", 做到死. In today featured game, you are a 8-5 white collar office worker who could not take the pressure of meetings after meetings, minutes after minutes and the lack of pantry and pretty Office Ladies plus the insane deadlines and puny salary. You decide to die in the office to shame the boss and pull down the name of the company. Can you die in 5 minutes using whatever the office could supply?

http://www.adultswim.com/games/fiveMinutes/index.html

Good times with Weapons

Spotted this store call KnifeWorks at Rushmore Mall during our deployment selling all sorts of weaponry from Daggers to swords, from Battle Axe to Samurai Katana and even a couple of weapons replica from games like Zelda, Final Fantasy and Soul Caliber. Boys like us sure got a good time handling those weapons and taking pictures. I thought it might be a good idea buying some of those Video Games themed weapons back to Singapore and sell it to the local Cosplay community.

Soul Caliber

Wolverine

Weapon of choice

What would you like to use today?

Pirates of the Caribbean

Cloud's Sword is really heavy, From Final Fantasy 7

Zelda's Sword

Squall's Gun Blade from Final Fantasy 9

Lord of the Ring???

Sabre Riders.

Gunslinger Boy I

Gunslinger Boy II

You know what? All this weapon handling remind me of South Park Episode 801 where the boys brought couple a swords from a local shop and role played as ninjas. There is a song sung by the creator of South Park that was played when the boys fight each other.

Summer is here, so hot.

I came back to Dallas and fall sick. First of all its suddenly so hot right now. Second, the sudden lack of trees and greenery means the oxygen content is reduced. For someone who have live the life in the South Dakota highlands of mountain trees aplenty a grassland amasses, the sudden change in environment take some getting use to. Falling sick is a way for my body to re adapt to city lifestyle.

No more room service staff to clean up the mess in the bathroom and bedroom. No more free air conditioning and new bed sheet change everyday. No more in door water theme park and the exciting water slides. No more free pick up to and fro tourist destination of our choice. Its back normal once again.

I just received a letter from my doctor billing me US$25 for not showing up for an appointment. KNN.... when was the last time someone charge me money for not turning up for an appointment? WTF. This is the kind of policy the Doctor here got. I don't think there will be such shit if I miss my appointment at the local clinic in Singapore. Maybe doctor here don't have much client so every client count but they sure piss me off with that US$25 bill.

I wonder if living in a 4 season country will make me grow older. I sense my cells are dying faster. Yet again, living in a 1 season country like Singapore but with all the stress level building up, cells still die faster anyway. In any case, we all will kick out bucket sooner or later. Better enjoy while you have the time and money. So I'm heading to Rocky Mountain and Yellowstone National Park this week!!! A Road Trip!! Yeah!

Think I gonna make a scrap book out of this road trip, collecting bits and pieces of interesting stuff along the way to document my journey. Will not be bringing a laptop this time round just a scrap book, some glues, a few pen of different colors, my imagination and my creativity to do a "OFFLINE BLOG" during the road trip.

Into the ocean

Just celebrated Boss birthday a while ago during our overnight stay at Amerinn Hotel. Went ahead and show our appreciation for his leadership with a birthday cake, a birthday song and a birthday pool dip. A couple of our guys fell into the swimming pool while trying to thrown boss into it. Someone must have push them from behind while they were struggling to drop him into the water in celebration. I was not spared from the water treatment when Matthew took "revenge" thinking I was the one who push, Russian Bear hug me and thrown me into the :pool. Damn was I shivering when I got up... What a night. :)

Pack of Predators wait patiently for the prey to take the bait

The Prey took the bait and was awfully outnumbered and captured

Ended up in a pool of cold soup seasoned with Chlorine and whatever was leftover from the morning patrons.

I was not spared from the cold soup too.

Riccardo's Joint Thunder 2007 Debrief

6.53pm Amerinn, Garden City, Kansas

The morning flight to Kansas was much better compare to what I experience 2 weeks ago. Probably, I got used to long route flight that I first experience 2 weeks ago on our way to South Dakota. Obviously the travel pillow I brought along the flight gave some creature comfort. The journey here might felt a bit warmer as we did not set off early in the morning as schedule due to overcast weather, pushing the flight back 2 hours late. All in all, a smooth, no complain flight to our usual half way stop of Garden City.

Today, I was chosen to stay around as a stand by technician crew while the Flight Engineers did the AF servicing for all 4 aircraft. Assisted Johnny and “Camel” with pressurized refueling, tying down the blades and cleaning the wind shield. Windshield got bombarded by thousands of dead bug carcass during our 3.5 hrs flight from Rapid City. Never knew bugs could fly that high.

This is my first military exercise deployment since joining the RSAF 4 years ago and I got to say that it could not have been much better. No rectification for my trade, couple of free time to do some technical manual reading , spare time to take photo for memory sake and opportunity to build up work and social rapport with guys from other trade and the pilots like Major Yicks, LTA Eddie and LTA Quek. In my opinion it’s the most uneventful 2 weeks of my time in the Chinook community speaking in aircraft maintenance context, felt more like a holiday visiting all the attraction than a military operation. In the words of my boss, if we could relax in an exercise it means we did a great job during phase servicing that prevent any problem from occurring during operational flight. We don't fly our aircraft hard and leave it wet.

Come to think of it, the most hectic day was our first day of operation flight. I have wrote about our “Bloody Sunday” Flight in a previous blog. Back than, I thought I did not bathed enough flower water but thankfully that the one and only day for our crew.

I seriously don’t think I made any major contribution in this exercise. Most of the time, its all about learning from the senior guys who has been here before and observing what is right and what is wrong. For one, I sure learn that things get done faster over here than back in base cause of all the extra hands around to assist during ad hoc aircraft servicing. Couple of good ideas noted during this deployment in my little white PDA for my benefit in any future deployment. Its all about been there and reaping in the experience.

Highlight of my tour of duty here got to be the couple of local attraction that we head to. It couldn’t have been possible without Encik Ho enthusiastic invitation every time he wanna explore new places . From Ellsworth AFB Museum to Mt Rushmore, from the Blackjack Table at Deadwood 4 Aces Casino to the Native American Museum at Deadwood. Well, there is still lots of places around Rapid City that I have not explore yet probably gonna come back the next time (Next time means my 2^nd USA PP Det tour of duty after this one, I don’t have much Leaves to spare right now).

My tour of duty ends in May 2008 and I’m sure I gonna miss out Joint Thunder 2008 unless management decided to extend my stay in PP Det for another 6 months otherwise I will very much like to go on the Deployment again. Next deployment should be in September where we guys will be heading to Tucson Arizona to joint our Apache guys over there for a couple of joint training flights and a few rounds of soccer.

My New Toy....

Brought this special assassination sword from Rushmore Mall near our hotel... You thought its just another ordinary stick or pole until the silver blades are unveil. Pretty cool huh?

Coming to the end of Exercise Joint Thunder

The exercise is almost coming to an end and I will be leaving South Dakota with the rest of the guys on Thursday. Same old thing, flying in a Chinook out of Rapid City to Kansas, Garden City for an over night stay before flying back to Dallas. So far so good, everything went smoothly for me in this exercise. No screw up whatsoever. Well, maybe could relate a bit of an incident that we learn today.

2 days ago, there was a forecast of tornadoes hitting our operating base and we got to evacuate our Chinooks to Ellsworth Air Force Base for shelter. I was one of the few guys ordered to accompany on flight to Ellsworth Air Force Base. Along the way, I already spotted lots of Chinook helicopters from the US Army landing in the Air Base for Shelter. We landed and went on to tow the aircraft into the hanger. The hanger was smaller than expected thus we got to parallel park 2 Chinook into it else the hanger door will not be able to close at all. With both Chinook rotorblades inter meshing each other, our guys managed to get the birds in safe and sound. Took lots of care to execute the parking maneuver with many pair of eyes watching out for obstruction and collision.

Today, from our daily briefing, I learn that one of the US Army Chinook suffered rotor blade damage, structural damage to the tunnel cover and damage to the Synchronizing shaft when in a hurry to evacuate, someone left a tool around the forward rotorhead. The bird flew and the tool got knock and spun around by the rotor blade turning at 225rpm, flew and damaged the aircraft in flight. Good thing their Chinook landed without an accident.

There maybe lots of policy in RSAF that I am not convinced of or do not even wanna support it or sometimes bend the rules a bit or find it extremely stupid and inefficient but TOOLS CONTROL top my list of policy that I will always support as long as I am in the aviation line. The incident of the US Army Chinook as written above highlight how critical tools control is in aviation maintenance. Life can be lost as a result of misplaced tools on the aircraft and for the reason that I sometime got to be on the flight makes it even more personal to ensure nothing is left behind that could jeopardize my life (or career).

Heres a picture of our Chinook supporting the US Army Combat Engineer to construct a bridge across the river during exercise Joint Thunder 2007. Don't think its a restricted picture at all cause there are so many civilian taking picture of our Chinook and the US Army Chinook laying the bridge across the water. Unfortunately we never got the chance to see the finish product.

The pickup....

The Hauling...

The Delivery...

The part of a bridge.

Digging Gold!!!

There ain't gold in this rock...

But there is gold in the Broken Boot Gold Mine!!!

A bottle of pure gold flake suspended in water! Can you see it?

According to the guide here, we are the first group of Singaporean to ever visit the broken boot Mine.

What happen if one day I was send to Iraq.

Made our mark in South Dakota...

Our Intelligence officer shared with us our role and responsibility during the Joint Thunder 2007 exercise. As a CH47D unit, our role is to provide logistic support for resupply mission and to perform troop lift if I could state simply. As far as I could comprehend from his sharing section was that every military operation consist of many units and a HQ. This small units are the extended arm of execution for the HQ plan of operation. The term full spectrum warrior is what describe us right now which mean we are able to perform our roles not only in War times but also during mission carried out "Other Than War" or "MOOTW" (Military Operation Other Than War). Example of "MOOTW" are humanitarian mission like Operation Flying Eagle, the relief mission carried out by RSAF for our neighbouring country during the last tsunami disaster. Another example will be peace keeping mission of our UH-1H at East Timor many years ago. In the US right now, Operation Enduring Freedom is also term as a "MOOTW" because its not a war between 2 countries but a mission to support the fledging government and maintain peace in the country against the insurgents.

Than a question was popped "What will happen if suddenly we are told to head to Iraq to support Operation Enduring Freedom? Which is actually peace keeping operation at its core although you still have IEDs exploding and killing soldiers everywhere. First of all, I am very confident that we guys will be able to deploy and operate in Iraq. We have went to places like US, Australia, Thailand and Indonesia with our Chinook, Iraq will just be another of those deployment site slightly further away. As for support from Home base back in singapore, as long as there is Fedex, the Internet, Long distance phone and a fax machine, we will more than enough link back home to get the support we need. We will also need local Iraqi logistic support for necessity like food, water and everyday supplies which thankfully the US is probably very established right now when we really deployed there so we got our self the US Army to do all the liasing. The last thing will be the fact that we will be operating as a logistic unit (both the chopper and the technician) thus operating many distance behind the front line, the last thing that will happen is for a suicide bomber to blow us up.

The real question here will be a personal one. Am I personally prepared at all? Do I really want to go to the Desert? For one, I love going to new places and work in new enviroment. For the second, I am a soldier and I take orders and excute it. When the button is pressed, and the order is pass down, I just carried it out. But for a third, I am pretty against what ever the US is doing in Iraq right now... interfering with another country matter. Maybe I don't see the big picture right now and not aware of the many goods the operation is doing for the world with. Think about it, if I really go there...my opinion might change. The saying goes "A side bench observer will never understand the game better than the players." Maybe I will have a change of heart if I ever deployed there, for the better of my support or the worst of my critics.

The Devil's Tower and The 4 Face Buddha.

Wow....I thought I could really blog every day on my R&R during off duty hours at South Dakota but I was wrong. Just getting to places of interest is a journey, not a trip and the hours spend at each attraction equates to late hours back to the hotel. The time in the hotel is should be spend resting, checking e-mails and blogging but it turn out to be a STARCRAFT Lan-gaming party with Ricky, Garfield, John, Lit and Danny almost every evening. Old game it might be but we guys are totally hooked to the multiplayer game. Unpredictability of human player is always an attraction power in the game. So much so, I indirectly helped Blizzard to sell 2 more copies of the games when Danny and Lit headed down today to the local BESTBUY store to get the Starcraft Battlechest edition at only US$9.99.

1 hour more to the night-shift work today so time to write about my experience during this 2 days of absence from the blogging scene. We headed out to Devil's Tower National Park 2 days ago to 's view the Devil's Tower. What is the Devil' Tower? Its a unique natural protrusion of volcanic rock, almost vertical all around its waist and flat as a plain at the top. Properly termed a "Monolith" as read from Wikipedia.com. Around 386m from where I stood. Legends tell of a giant bear tried to climb the Devil's Tower to reach the top so that it could devour some Native Indian kids. This bunch of kids was chase by the bear while picky flowers and some heavenly being saved their butt by raising the earth beneath them. The bear tried to climb but kept slipping down the the edge and eventually gave up, leaving the distinctive scratch mark all around the Devil's Tower.

This is the visitor center...

and this is the little devil and the Devil's Tower

Did you know? The Devil's Tower was featured on the Film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" which I never watch before and could never relate to at all, unfortunately else it could had been an even more interesting tour. Anyway, Encik Ho was joking to us that we might see MGM Studio ( The movie production company) sign board on top of the Devil's Tower.

The Devil's Tower is consider sacred by the Native Indians in the area. Why???? Might it be that the Angel trapped the Devil inside thousands of years ago? Else how did the name came about? Saw a sign informing visitors to respect the place and stay on the trails. I guess no one read the sign board at all since a bunch of kids have already scaled the numerous small rocks at the foot of the tower to get as close as possible to the monument...

Respect...Stay on the trail.

Kids inspired a bunch of Singaporean adult to climb the rock for a shot.
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The Entrance to Mount Rushmore National Monumet

Its pretty cold, please respect nature and bring your jacket.

As the Great Wall of China is to China, the Mount Rushmore National Monument is to South Dakota. Lossly termed by our guys as the "4 Faced Buddha", an American icon that took 14 years, tons of dynamites and and 400 workers to sculpt. I almost could not imagine how this guys were able to blast and chisel their way from a faceless granite cliff into the face of the 4 President of USA. The impossibility imagined easily make this one of the proud National icon of the American. There is a video show right there to tell visitor the development and creation of this famous icon. It might have been here for many decades but still it attract tons of visitors, not only foreign tourist but majority Americans.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.

Of the 4 faces of the President, Washington was the first to be created and in my opinion its the better looking among the four. The loss rocks below the monument are left overs granite during the construction of the monument. If Singapore gonna create a "4 Face Buddha" who will it be? Lee Kuan Yew definitely got to be in for his politics and for being the Godfather or God-Grandfather of our nationa. Next should be Jack Neo for his brand of comedy and reviving Singapore's movie industry. Fandi Ahmad will be the third one, he brought glory to Singapore soccer scene during Malaysia Cup times. Could not think of the fourth person.... hmm

Me!!! They sculpt a special edition head and painted it right next to Washington.

Looks especially serene during sunset.

Ellsworth Air Force Base Museum

Welcome! Admission is free!

Yesterday a day of poor weather and no flying, Encik Ho organized a group outing to Ellsworth Air Force and Space Museum. Below is a short description of Ellsworth Air Force Base extracted from their website

Located in South Dakota, Ellsworth is home to the 28th Bomb Wing and the B-1B Lancer aircraft. Ellsworth has a long, proud history of excellence and innovation. Our mission is to provide rapid, decisive and sustainable combat airpower and expeditionary combat support -- anytime, anywhere.

and a reach history it got as one of United States Air Force bomber/ ground attack Air Force base. Not to mention this Air Force Base is also home to US ICBM missile command during the cold war era. Other than that this base is home to many well known bombers and ground attack aircraft from the B-29 Super Fortress during WWII to the F-105 Thunderchief of Vietnam war, the B-52 Strato Fortress of the cold war and now the B1 Lancer bomber.

The museum is a must go for military aviation enthusiast like me so you can imagine the tons of picture I took while touring around "Ellsworth Air Force and Space Museum"...

The B1B Lancer bomber, the welcoming icon of the Museum

F-105 Thunderchief. Ground attack jet seen in action during the Vietnam war. It got the most unique engine air intake maybe to scoop more air?

Someday, I'll get our name on this aircraft....using Photoshop.

Munkit and the old UH-1 "Huey" Helicopter that he use to fix. The RSAF UH-1H had retired from servicing to make way for better helicopters to meet operational requirement.

B-52 Strato Fortress! Its huge and 1 of this aircraft could easily flatten my neighbourhood with dozens of bombs hanging from its wing and stored in its belly.

The Vought A-7 Corsair treaten to swallow our Singapore visitors with its awkward air intake. I joke with the guys that its actually a big cannon hanging below the cockpit.

A de-armed ICBM missile on display and a sentry in black t-shirt foolishly guarding it.

The museum is divided into 2 areas, the out door exhibit of all the military aircraft past and present flown by Ellsworth AFB and also the indoor exhibit showcasing the History of the air base. I took too much picture that if I put all in this blog, it gonna take forever to load. My favorite one got to be this one, a technician holding a spanner. I think its a very good idea of honoring the doc and nurse of the aircraft/helicopter. Somehow, this is the exhibit I can relate to alot.

Technician holding a "SNAP-ON" Spanner instead of a rifle.

I will upload all the pictures I took to my online photo album when I head back to Dallas. Will post a link here when its done. One last picture to show you guys which I hope the museum could do something to it...

Is that white paint or...