Happy 236th Birthday!!

Two hundred and thirty-sixy years ago, on Nov. 10, 1775, at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, Capt. Samuel Nichols, the first commandant of the Marine Corps, began recruiting the first two battalions of Continental Marines.

For those of us who've claimed the title of United States Marine, it's a special day. A day we reach out to our brothers and sisters we've served with, remember the years we spent together, how we were young once and say a little prayer for today's Marines - in whatever clime and place they may be.

One special tradition on the Marine Corps Birthday is the reading of General John A. Lejeune's 1921 birthday message. Even after 90 years it - especially the last paragraph - says exactly what it means to be a Marine.

Today is particularly special for me because not only was I a Marine, but so were both of my brothers. So, if you will excuse me, I've got a couple of phone calls to make.

Semper Fidelis.

So, it's been a while...

I was a little taken aback when I looked at the date of the last post. It's been more than a month and half since I last posted and, well, I feel a bit bad about that. But not so bad that I'm going to beg forgiveness.

There are still many things I want to write about - elections anyone? - and just like a fine writer in my neighborhood, I'm just going to have to make the time.

How's this for a topic: Social media has made us less social. I say this not in the way everyone thinks - that Facebook and Twitter and such allow people to cut themselves off from actual human interaction - but in that it forces us to restrain ourselves and our opinions.

I succumbed to Facebook's Siren song a little more than a month ago, probably right about the time I should have been updating The Foggy Dew. I've reached out and reconnected with people I haven't seen or heard from in years and, truthfully, I got some friend requests I had to think long and hard about. What is the social media definition of a "friend"? Does this person sending me a "friend" request really count as a friend anymore? Why hasn't that person responded to my "friend" request? Oh, God, Why!

Except for a very small number of people I work with - who I actually count as real-world friends - I haven't sent, and received only one (from my boss, which I ignored) "friend" request from co-workers.Strangely, I do have two "friends" I've never actually met, but with whom I've corresponded electronically over the past year or so (both of you read this, so you know who you are). I find this almost old fashion. Long ago people would correspond with people they didn't know through these things called "letters" which they sent through the "mail." I'm speaking of people like Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. They had correspondence with a wide array of people, shared their thoughts, ideas and dreams, and built a network of friends that spanned the Atlantic.

The hard one's to decide about are the college and high school friends. Except for the two guys I count as my best friends, I've not accepted any of the three friend requests from people I knew in high school. If I'd wanted to stay in touch, I'da done it before now. College friends? Do I need to be Facebook friends with the girl who broke my heart, but who I (now) have nothing but fond memories about? (FYI, I did.) Also, my how some of them have changed.

The world of social media is a minefield my friends. A single misstep can have lasting consequences. I've seen it, you've seen it. A misconstrued comment or status update can cause drama that continues long after the real-world friendship gasps its last.

[On a completely unrelated note, I just realized the clock in my office was still on Daylight Savings Time and lunch is still an hour a way. Doh!]

To avoid those kinds of situations, I've adopted the "Primum non nocere" Facebook doctrine. First, do no harm. I will do my best to avoid mean snark (as opposed to the funny kind), ridicule and passive aggression in any status update or comment. The effort involved in being nasty is just not worth the calories burned. But, also, because I know that many of my posts are only important to me and someone, somewhere is annoyed to see them pop up in their feed. Yeah, sorry 'bout that.

Finally, for those of you who like irony, did you see the videos I posted on Facebook last night? If not, here's a link to my Flickr page where they're posted. My first attempts at time-lapse photography. Sorry for the jerkiness. They'll get better.

I'm proud to claim the title...

…of United States Marine.

Sgt. Dakota Meyer, somehow just saying Semper Fi doesn’t seem like enough. How do you say thank you to a man credited with saving three dozen fellow soldiers (13 Americans and 23 Afghans)?



That there is the picture of a hard, hard man.

For those of you not familiar with Sergeant Meyer's story, he received the Medal of Honor from President Obama today, becoming the first living Marine to be so honored in almost four decades. He got it for willingly running back into a withering enemy fire not just once, not twice, but five times to rescue his fellow warriors during a battle in Afghanistan on Sept. 8, 2009. The last time he went back, he went to recover the bodies of three Marines and a Navy Corpsman who’d been killed in the ambush.

That is what being a Marine is.

If you want to read more about Sergeant Meyer, go here.

With a humility that's difficult for any Marine to summon, but is easy today, "Thank you."

Here's health to you and to our Corps
Which we are proud to serve;
In many a strife we've fought for life
And never lost our nerve;
If the Army and the Navy
Ever look on Heaven’s scenes;
They will find the streets are guarded
By The United States Marines.

– Marines’ Hymn, Third Verse

9/11 Memorial at night

Living as close as I used to to the Pentagon, I thought it was strange I'd never been to the 9/11 Memorial. I'd ridden past it countless times, but I'd never stopped to take it in. So Friday night I changed that.

It's pretty moving.

One hundred and eighty-four benches and reflecting pools dedicated to the men, women and children who died there. It's an amazingly peaceful place considering what happened.

The memorial is filled with symbols representing those lives. The wall surrounding it begins at 3 inches eventually rising to a height of 71 inches, the ages of the youngest and oldest people to die: Dana Falkenberg, 3, and John Yamnicky, Sr., 71. The benches are arranged so if you're reading the name of someone who was aboard Flight 77 you look up into the sky, and if they were in the Pentagon, you look at the building's south facade.

As I said, it is a powerful place. Here, let me show you.

As you walk in, the first bench you come to is dedicated to Dana Falkenberg, age 3, who was aboard Flight 77. Because they're arranged by age, Dana's bench sits by itself.

As you move deeper into the memorial, the benches become more numerous.

As the 10th anniversary approached, many had small tokens placed on them.

One thing about the memorial, the 184 reflecting pools - combined with the week of rain beforehand - made for some condensation on my lens. I kept clearing it off but, in the case of this picture, it made for an interesting effect. I particularly like this shot.

Another example of the moisture on my lens working with the light to create an otherworldly effect.

Looking back across the memorial toward Pentagon City.

This one took me a couple of tries to get right. Trying to focus on something a good quarter-mile away, in the dark, isn't the easiest thing in the world.

For some more pictures, check out my Flickr page. The link's at the right.

It's been a week of remembrance in D.C., New York, across the country and around the world. I was in Texas getting ready to go to work covering the Army on one of the biggest bases in the country. Little did I know how interesting, exciting and, yes, tragic that job would become.

How do you remember that day 10 years ago?

Ummmm, salty

According to Time: "Today Ben & Jerry's announced their newest ice cream flavor—which might not immediately sound appealing. Schweddy Balls, an homage to Saturday Night Live, is vanilla ice cream with a hint of rum and a huge scoop of cheekiness."

Yep, Schweddy Balls...balls of malt and rum covered in fudge.

I can't say it any better than the folks at Time already have.

Definitely not like tears in the rain…

As anyone who’s ever read this little corner of the interwebs knows, I’m a sucker for just about anything that has to do with human spaceflight. The video below comes to us courtesy of NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and shows some interesting pictures of the moon’s surface. Specifically three of the Apollo landing sites – take that moon landing conspiracy theorists!

According to NASA’s website, LRO carries six instruments, one of them being the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera. This camera, “…[R]etrieves high resolution black and white images of the lunar surface, capturing images of the lunar poles with resolutions down to 1 meter, and imaging the lunar surface in color and ultraviolet. These images provide knowledge of polar illumination conditions, identify potential resources & hazards, and enable safe landing site selection.”

Just another way of saying some pretty cool pictures. Like this one, of the sunrise over Tycho.

With that thought in mind, let’s go to the video. These shots are of the Apollo 12, Ocean of Storms (one of my favorite place names on the moon), Apollo 14, Fra Mauro, and Apollo 17, Taurus-Littrow, landing sites.

For a non-chopped off version of the video, go here.


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I know why it is, no wind or weather, but isn’t it amazing that 42-plus years on you can still see the tracks the astronauts left in the regolith?

Stuck the landing…finally

Back in March I set goal, a goal I came tantalizingly close to during both June and July only to watch it slip through my fingers like quicksilver. Failure almost reared its head again in August, but I knuckled down and last night, somewhere across from Terminal B at National on the Potomac Trail, the trip odometer on my handlebars rolled to 25.00 miles.

Doesn’t seem like much, but the 25th mile of the ride was my 200th in August (ftr – the ride ended up being 27.25 miles). When I set the goal, I had no idea how hard 200 miles in a month would be. Actually, looking at my ride-tracking app stats, there was a period between mid-June and mid-August where I’d done 400 miles in 60 days, but it wasn’t quite the same.

It was like the Tiger-slam of goal fulfillment.

But August was different…and a bit the same. I kicked ass the first half of the month riding a total of 136 miles on the 4th, 9th, 11th, 13th and 16th. Then I took a week off because of weather, alcohol and just not giving a shit and had to get 64 miles in during the last eight days. For some 64 miles isn't a big deal. For me it's three medium rides or two long rides. Or one really, long ride and a couple of laps around Haynes Point.

I did it, but let me tell you it as a Herculean task making myself hit the road last night. Once I got out there I was fine, it was the gettin’ that was tough. You wouldn’t think it’s hard to ride eight times in 31 days, but it is. I think my biggest stumbling block is that I most often ride alone. Most of the people I know who ride, ride a lot faster and longer than I do. When I ride with them it kicks my ass and I don't have fun. When I ride along I ride at my own pace (about 16-17 mph), but I get bored after about 90 minutes.

I don’t know if – OK, who am I kidding – I’m pretty sure I won’t be hitting the 200-mile barrier in September. What I think I’d like to do is get to 1,500 for the year (I’m at 973 right now), which I think is pretty doable averaging about 150 miles a month till the end of the year.

Who knows, now that it’s cooled down a bit, might be able to go even longer. Yeah, no.