Rick's Weekly Chime-In 9 August......MASTER'S CLASSES COMPLETE!

Hello everyone!

It's me, the worse half, updating you on what's all been going on over the past week. First and foremost, I'M DONE!!!! I finished my last Master's Course today. It only took me 9 months to finish up the course work. I'll tell you though, for this last class, I had a heck of finishing project. Two other A-10 pilots in the course and I were assigned to do a 45 minute minimum presentation on "Gender Issues in the Workplace from a Feminist Perspective". As you guys can imagine, I'm not exactly well versed on feminists issues since I 1. work for the Military and 2. am a fighter/attack pilot that has less than 2% females in that career field. Typical fashion though, we rose to the occasion and did a pretty good job on it. We stole some material from the movie The Proposal (which I have not scen) and used that as a Case Study. It got a great response from the class and most importantly, the Professor. All I have left now is my internship (which will simply be me working) and completing my comprehensive exam (a question picked by the Human Relations Board at OU) and I type up a 20+ page report on my answer and logic behind it. I will be turning in my application for graduation in December this week. It would be great to actually get to see the University of Oklahoma campus, but I won't be making the trip to "walk" in the ceremony. Normally, they have a ceremony here, but OU's contract was not renewed and this was the last class. Again, typical Rick luck, I signed up just in time to perfectly time finishing my class work with the last opportunity that I had here with OU leaving Osan AB. Long and short of it, I'm happy to know that no matter what assignment comes from here, I finished my Master's degree while in Korea.

Aside from that, work was long as usual. Unfortunately, I only got to fly one time this week, but boy, it was an awesome flight. I had the privilege and honor and flying in a 2-ship formation of A-10's in a Army Chief Warrant Officer's "fini-flight". We took our 2-ship of A-10's from Osan and met Chris in his UH-60 about 20 miles southwest of Osan. We proceeded to "rage" as we call it, at 500 hundred feet and lower all across the southern portion of the Peninsula. The visibility was amazing and there was the always cool perfect amount of moisture in the air that create contrails off the wings whenever we did high-g maneuvers. This made us look really cool. Chris took a video from his cockpit of Capt Nathan "Booster" Owen and I flying the A-10's and says it's freaking awesome. Expect that to be posted soon. Aside from that, Rachel and I participated in a fish-fry on Saturday night. It was a small gathering of our closest friends here and we had a really good time. Some of us more than others, but I'll just leave it at that!

This week is another long week for us. Notice a trend here. We do have a "Roll Call" on Friday which quite frankly is an excuse for fighter pilots to get together, tell stories with our hands, make fun of ourselves and people, and generally blow off some steam! Rachel will probably see me in a drunken state on Friday night. 

For both Rachel and I, we do have something really exciting coming up; we've booked a nice hotel for Labor Day weekend in Busan, Korea. We are right on the beach with a view of the Sea of Japan/East Sea.....depending on who you talk to. There are several couples and of course the single, party guys making the trip down there. It will be a nice, relaxing time for us. Looking a little further out, I am going to Alaska on ~September 14 and will probably be there for over a month. We're unsure if Rachel will make the trip up there, but I'm hoping she can so she can see yet another amazing place in the world.

With that, I bid you all a good day!

Love Rick