PTA

So everyone and their mother were upset with me for going to Hawaii. They all thought it was going to be beaches, bahama mamas, and surfs up. Well as you will clearly see, going to Hawaii can mean a lot of things.

Thursday

Well we started a journey flying to LA, and then I got upgraded to first class for the Kona trip.

(Okay so don’t pay attention to that part.)

We next checked into the 4 star Hilton Waikoloa Resort, where I slept in a giant queen size bed.

(Also, strike from your memory that you just heard that part.)

Friday

We headed up to Pohakuloa Training Area. This is where you can start paying attention, and if so choose, you can feel sorry for me. PTA is a dump from the Korean War. These barracks were filthy, mice and ant infested, as well as poorly insulated. Did you know it gets to 40 degrees in Hawaii, well not in Waikiki, but where we were it was about 6500 feet. Yeah very cold. So, due to some sort of constraints we had to double up. I got to share with senior most member of our group. He was 44 years my senior. We got along marvelous though, he went to bed late, and he got up late too. The rest of my team thinks that no matter what time you go to bed, waking up at 4 is a good idea; they also think you should go to the chow hall the second it opens. So many fallacies, I have no idea where to start. They also snore. I thought grizzly bears were attacking our Quonset hut. So you say you have no idea what a Quonset hut is. I double dog dare you to Google it right now. Well don’t Google it, I couldn’t find any good examples of it. It’s basically a 180 degree arched building. You’ll see pictures in a later blog.

Saturday

The mess hall was not serving breakfast on the weekend. They only had brunch and dinner. Mas puta!!! There really wasn’t anything set up for us. We had to get chairs, tables, power. What kind of facility doesn’t supply power? Other than that we didn’t really do anything.

Sunday

Kind of the same. Pre exercise setup, only two meals again. Aaaaand more beer drinking.

Monday

This was the first day of testing. It was as if a cluster had a cluster of its own and somehow managed to jack that up. There were so many countries with missing equipment, missing batteries, “I don’t know how to use the equipment I brought”, ”When you say 0800 you mean 0930ish right?!?!?” Good night. Plus the leadership there is bumfuck backwards. Way too many chefs, not enough sous chefs. I think we should do it my way; well my way is better than yours, but its 180 degrees different than yours. Yeah but, my way is better and I’m fly, so we’ll do it my way. They ended up cancelling testing for that day.

Tuesday

Testing commenced after the opening ceremonies. The days following were pretty uneventful, so I may jumble them together starting tomorrow. At the end of the day we had to attend country briefings. This is when a country gets up and gives a quick tourism report on what they do and what they offer. Pretty boring, but whatever, OTC FTW!!

Wednesday-Friday

Pretty much the same thing happened every day at work. Print DCFs, eat a lunch, drink lots of beer at night and go to country briefs. New Zealand, Japan, and Philippines were very funny. They had funny things to say as well and some things got lost in translation, especially with their accents.

Saturday

We were off the entire weekend. Saturday was a bus long cultural tour. We had a very knowledgeable tour guide who gave us the entire history of Parker Ranch. How Parker came to power, how he got his start, how he got in on with the natives; it was very interesting. Our first stop was to Akaka falls. It was a very beautiful waterfall; 400 feet long. It also had an interesting story. The falls are said to be the tears of a betrayed lover. Next it was on to the Volcanoes National Park. It was pretty sweet. If you’ve been watching the show for some time now, you would know that I’ve done all this before. You would remember my analogy to Mordoor and such. The Volcanoes were steaming like normal, although since my last visit they have had more lava floor and part of the road was closed. So I actually saw a lot less. Then we were off again to taste some Kona Coffee and Macadamia Nuts. Now in case you were curious why those things were so expensive, it’s not because they are better quality and are only grown on that island. The reason they are so expensive is that they are handpicked. There is no way to get machines or vehicles along the hills, because the hills cannot support that much weight. So they must be handpicked and thus the price is so expensive. Next, we headed to the black sand beach. It’s a beach like any other, soft crystalline sand. This sand, however, was once very coarse lava, over the years through water erosion and such it’s now sexified and soft. Our driver was talking about avoiding the sea turtles, not to touch them less ye want a fine. What does every single motherfucker do when we get there? Touch them, touch their flippers, touch their shell, and take pictures with them. No fines were levied, oh well. We then had about an hour drive back to Kona and I took a nice nap, as did the rest of the bus. We stopped in a mini shopping center and grabbed some pretty crappy Chinese. It was better than crappy mess hall food. We got back to the base around 8 or so and I just watched a movie.

Sunday

Got up late this morning and watched another movie. I finished out the Bourne trilogy. Then I joined my comrades for a barbeque at the gazebo. We had hamburgers, and hot dogs, and lots of beer. Ohh beer, the cause and solution to all of life’s problems. I did some internet surfing on that day. It was mostly just a chillax day.

Monday

We did a little bit of minor testing; one of the nations did all of their tests that day. The rest of the exercise was for spectrum training and scenario play. Kind of lame if you ask me, but that’s what the nations want to do. The next few days I helped out with minor stuff, but I mostly just poked it and surfed the internet.

Tuesday

Pretty much the same as Monday

Wednesday

Pretty much the same as Tuesday

Thursday

This was the DV day, what some call the Day of Stars, because generals and admirals come out to play. You do a lot of picture taking and glad handing. It also came one day early that was scheduled. Our boss gave us the option to either stay as scheduled or put us up in a hotel for two days. We chose the hotel. On DV day it’s usually a shorter day and then you get a bunch of free time. Normally on the last day there is a big party at night. On this night, however, they had the going away party and DV dinner on the same night. Like I said, we chose the hotel. So as soon as the closing ceremonies were over we packed up and got the funk out of dodge. PTA was a huge dump and I was glad I went, but also glad I’ll never go back. We checked back into that 4 star resort that I told you to forget about. Had some pizza for dinner, drank a beer and went to sleep amidst a cacophony of wild birds. The wild birds would not shut up, but I managed to fall asleep in my big luxurious queen size bed with a nice comfortable thermostatified temperature.

Friday

Woke up early, had some breakfast, went to the pool and had a bahama mama. Oh yeah life is good. Then we were off on our own journey of the island. We went to most northern point on the island. We got some macadamia nut ice cream. We got some grass fed beef hamburgers. We went to another black sand beach, but we had to hike down the side of a freaking mountain to do it and it was worth it, hot damn was it worth it. Then we went to the other side of Volcanoes National Park. Remember when I said the road was closed because of recent lava flows; well this was on the opposite side of this lave flow. We got there just before dusk and boy was this baby cooking. This particular lava flow has been oozing for over 20 years, never really explosive, just slow and steady. When the lava hits the water it instantly turns to steam and the steam cloud rises some 50 feet in the air. Every once in awhile you would get a “gusher” and you can actually see the glowing amber of the liquid magma. As night was settling the ground appeared to glow and you could see more and more of the lava. The area is not lit up night so we had to leave before it got too too dark. Its about a ½ mile trek from the vantage point to the parking lot; by the time we got back to our car, that steam cloud was emitting a nice orange glow. We had about a 2 hour drive back to the hotel. I wouldn’t say this beat the greatest one day road trip of my life, but it’s a close second.

Saturday

Got up, had some breakfast, and went back to the pool to work on my tan and workout my liver. Mas bahama mama and some drink called a 180 seconds. Not sure what’s in it, but I pretty much drank it in 180 seconds. And now Im buzzed. I stayed out there for about another hour maxing and relaxing. I ended becoming one shade darker; a shade I call dark pale. We had to check out at noon, but our flight wasn’t until 5pm, so we went over to Macaroni Grill and had some bread, and some pizza, and some wine. The bartender even bought us a round. What a jolly good fellow. We headed to the airport and we still had quite a layover, so we had some more beer and watched football. Our flight from Kona Honolulu was pretty easy, it’s pretty much up and down. I was hoping for an upgrade from Honolulu to Dallas since I get unlimited domestic upgrades. I had called during the week and they said I was on the waitlist and then they said business class was sold out. When I got to Honolulu I didn’t ask for an upgrade, I just assumed I was still on the list. My coworker, who is my equal in AA’s eyes, got upgraded. So I just assumed I would be next, the next person who got upgraded was below me. Well I just lost it, I threw a freaking tantrum, and turned into that douchey white guy I never wanted to be. Now keep in mind these feelings were all in my head, none were vocalized, but I was so embarrassed. I thought when did I turn into a guy with a blue blazer, who drinks white wine spritzers, and who has a old girlfriend named Muffy who hand carries her little white dog named Schnookums. Ohh I was upset with myself. I went over to the counter and asked them about my upgrade, they said I wasn’t on the list. They asked if I would like to be. Why in the heck would I not want an upgrade? You should just upgrade me automatically and if I decline, I decline, but suffice it say I got my upgrade and all was well. I had a shitty shit eating grin on my face, I went ahead and ordered a white wine spritzer and went to bed.

Sunday

I woke up around 7am CST. I slept through breakfast but it was okay, I got about 4 hours of good sleep. We had our flight about 2 hours later. Or so we thought, we took off as normal, but about 30 minutes into the flight, alarms started blaring and the pilot came over the intercom. Sorry folks we lost our fuel pump. We are going back to DFW. They later cancelled that flight altogether and we were put on the very next plane. Problem, though, was that the flight was already booked. They found room for me but it was in the way way back. The rest of first class was in the way way back. The people wearing fancy pearls and diamonds, and I think some women had a on fur, they were all in the back. “Oh how quaint, I haven’t been back here in years” I hadn’t been back there in 1.5 years. It was tough, when I do sit back there I usually have exit row, but I was in the way way back and my knees were in my chest. To top it all off we were on the plane for an hour before takeoff, on this plane the hydraulic pump had broke. So we had to wait for that to finish. So we ended up being delayed about 4 hours total. Oh well, OTC!!

So that was my trip to the Hawaiian Islands. Over all pretty good. I would recommend, Oahu, Maui, or Hawaii, they are all pretty good. I would not recommend PTA, you can go ahead and skip that one.

Until next time,

Hugs and Kisses,

Jacob