Teenage Rock star, race care driver, wizard, pirate and Little Bo Peep

Tonight was a great evening for Halloween and the kids had a blast terrorizing the neighborhood. Here is Harry Potter a teenage rock star and race-car driver. Jake is ready to go.

Amanda was a natural at her teenage rock star role.

This is Madison (6 month old pirate) after a fun night of trick-or-treating.

Aunt Mary (Little Bo' Peep ) holding the little pirate.

Isn't she just the cutest?

Ben, stopped by for a short moment before the weird-o's hit the street.

This was the "tub" full of candy before the evening begin, after 2 hours of kids it was empty.

Jake taking a little rest before the evening begin.

Alaskan's in town

This evening my brother Nathan, his wife Mary and their 6 month old baby girl Madison arrived for a week stay before they head off to Maui for a few days. So a trip to the Lei stands prior to their arrival was in store.
Amanda loves shopping for Lei's and tell the ladies who is coming to visit her and why the Lei has to be extra special. She always gets the best discounts.

Even the little one gets a Lei

Amanda is getting tall enough she can put them on guest as they arrive.

Jake decided he needed to read his Oreo book to Madison.

Pizza party, $900M Golf ball

Today Amanda's class and several of the parents planned a Halloween Pizza party for lunch. Lynn volunteered to assist in the activities center as long as Jake could come along (which wasn't a problem) he fits right in with all the kids. The kids were so excited to have pizza for lunch in their rooms.
After they all finished their pizza they had little Halloween stations set up for the kids to take little treat bags with some cool stuff.

When I took Amanda to school this morning before class we got to see (yet another time) the $900M dollar golf ball heading out to sea.

Sea-Based X-Band Radar is a floating, self-propelled, mobile radar station designed to operate in high winds and heavy seas. It is part of the United States Government's Ballistic Missile Defense System.

Sea-Based X-band Radar stands 280 feet tall & 380 feet long tall and has a crew of 75 individuals. SBX is powerful enough to spot a flying baseball in San Francisco from New York, and more importantly, to tell the difference between a real missile heading for America and a decoy.
SBX Radar

Week of Transition

This week has excluded all forms of exercise and 4 days of class to help transition into the Civilian workforce. This class is mandatory for all military members prior to retiring. It is called TAP (Transition Assistance Program). Very good course with tons of info
Now that I have to find a job in Colorado Springs, I will be using USA Jobs to help assist in the search of a Civil service job. If I can get all the stars and moon to align correctly, I will have a job working for a good friend at the AF Academy performing Quality Assurance on the aircraft maintenance. To assist in the transition is the Veterans Affairs (VA). These are the individuals that provide all the benefits a Vet receives once retired from the military.

And of course they are all helping with the resume writing. Wow it's only Wed. and it feels like the end of the week.

Long weekend

What a long weekend, that ended on a good note. Today was a really nice day to ride to Barbers Point and enjoy the views at the beach. The ride consisted of Ben, Dev & I, thankfully they didn't hurt me too bad but I was not feeling my best today. 45 miles in 2 hours 45 min., 2500 calories
It all started on Friday with the mandatory flu mist. Just haven't felt that well since.
I also finally broke down and reformatted my computer and spent all weekend getting all the programs and files loaded back correctly. What a royal pain but everything finally seems to be working much better now.

The highlight of the weekend was watching these two play in the pool both days. Here's yours truly back-flipping in the pool.

Field Trip with Amanda's class

Today, I got to join Amanda and her class on a field trip to the Kualoa Ranch. Kualoa Ranch is one of the most historically significant destinations on Oahu. Ancient Hawaiians considered Kualoa one of the most sacred places on Oahu. It was a residence of kings, a place of refuge and sanctuary - a pu`uhonua - and a training ground for royalty who were instructed at Kualoa in the arts of war, history and social traditions.

This estate, Kualoa Ranch, was so named in 1927 and has been used for various purposes over the last eight decades. During World War II, some of the lands of this estate was used as an auxiliary airstrip with many of the large monkeypod trees providing natural hangars for small planes.

The photo above shows the ranch entrance off Kamehameha Highway just beyond Kualoa Beach Park. There are two major areas of the ranch: the northern half of the ranch including Ka'a'awa Valley which contains most of the movie locations sites, and the southern half that includes Hakipu`u Valley, the 800 year-old Moli'i fishpond, and Secret Island. If the ranch's views look familiar, that's because Kualoa Ranch has been the site of many television shows and Hollywood films such as Jurassic park, Windtalkers, Pearl Harbor, Godzilla, Tears of the Sun and 50 First Dates. TV shows include Hawaii Five-O, Magnun P.I. and most recently the hit show LOST.
This above aerial view shows the main ranch houses on the left, the fishpond above and Kaaawa Valley in the middle
Amanda petting "Ralph" the horse

Jake and Amanda swimming with a dolphin (well almost swimming with a dolphin)
Jake's new haircut, he's going to be a "lady-killer"
Jake playing with his new girlfriend Sammy

Team Specialized

This morning, Ben organized the ride and had a couple Coasties that flew in from D.C., Dev and Wade (from the Bike Shop) made for a 6 man team all riding Specialized. It was quite the sight to see ($$$$)
The ride is called "5 Sisters", all hills on the leeward side of Oahu. This was my first time doing all 5 climbs in one day and it was quite the challenge. 43 miles, 3 hrs 35 min, 4100 feet of climbing and 2800 calories burned.

Today was also a small milestone for me on the Roubaix, I've rode over 2,000 miles on the bike since mid March, 126 hours and over 121,000 calories burned on the bike.

Movie, fall break, recovery ride

This afternoon we decided to take the kids to watch the latest family movie "Beverly Hills Chihuahua". It was very funny and overall a good movie. Amanda laughed the entire time and Jake kept saying he wanted to get a dogie. This was a nice way to start the week off since Amanda is out of school for "fall break".
I also took the kids to the base book fair (1st Sat. of every month), what a deal. Paperback books for $.25 and hardbacks for $.75. They had a really good selection of Pre-teen books and Amanda is determined to get all of her new books read before she goes back to school.
This morning I met up with Ben (and waited for someone else who never showed) to climb 5 of the hills on the leeward side. We decided to change our plans since it was raining in the mountains and didn't want to risk safety on the descend with very wet roads. So we decided to stay local and just enjoy the morning ride.
Nice little 35 miler without any major hard efforts. Hopefully hill climbing next weekend