Mount Washington

I went back to the White Mountains on Friday to climb Mount Washington. This is the off season so the auto road is closed and the snow coaches have not begun yet. I arrived at Pinkham Notch in the afternoon and started up the Tuckerman Ravine trail. I passed the Hermit Lake shelters around three and continued up the Lion Head trail. As the sun set behind the mountain, I knew that I was out of time. I made it up around 44°15’ 50.4”N 71°17’24”W at an altitude of around 1442 meters when I had to turn around. It took my GPS about twenty minutes to acquire my position so I used terrain association to come up with a good estimate. I ran into a Russian mountaineering team on their way down. Apparently, there was some sort of competition although I didn’t see any other teams.

In the Beginning…

First, there came the Warning Order.
And the Order was without detail or substance.
And darkness fell upon the faces of the soldiers.

Thus, another wasted weekend passed without information or constructive training. I guess we can leave that for when we get there.

Farewell, Mr. Rumsfeld

I woke up this morning to world gone mad! First, the democrats are poised to take both houses. Second, Microsoft signs a deal with Novell to make Windows compatible with Linux. Third, a few hours after the Pentagon press secretary announces that Mr. Rumsfeld has no plans to leave office, President Bush holds a press conference nominating Bob Gates as the new Secretary of Defense. Why do we bother reading the news when investigative journalism seems to be completely absent from major news outlets. Speaking loosely of news, how do they judge the quality of a news anchor? Is the ability to speak without a queue card really that scarce? I guess the ability to express one’s self is not a prerequisite in the journalist profession, but I hesitate to associate news anchors with journalists. Speaking of highly qualified individuals, I can’t wait to see which waste of sperm manages to win in Virginia’s senate race. Anyway, farewell Mr. Rumsfeld. As President Bush told former FEMA director Matt Brown, “You’ve done a superb job.” And I was so looking forward to visiting Bandar Abbas.

Cantigny

We visited the 1^st Division museum in Wheaton, IL today as part of our professional military education. Several families were surprised to see a group of uniformed soldiers moving amongst the life size mannequins. While reading the history of the 1^st Division during World War I, a seven year old boy walked up to me and asked if I was a real army man. I told him “yes” as his mother walked up behind him. Without any prompting the next thing he said was, “Are we winning the war in Iraq?” His mother seemed embarrassed as she shuffled him along the hall to the next exhibit. I suppose that I could have easily told him “yes”. It certainly would reflect the sentiments of many of the other soldiers in my unit, but I believe that it would have been too far from the truth to be a simplified answer for a child. I still don’t know what the right answer is but I know that I did both the boy and the military a disservice by replying, “It’s complicated.”