San Diego

Greetings all,

It has been a busy time, these first two months of 2010. First out in San Diego for integration with the team, which included morning PT on Imperial beach near the Amphibious Base on Coronado. While sand runs are pretty brutal on the legs, the weather out here is very nice – you can do worse than wintering in San Diego. Lots of process training (i.e. types of software, procedures for the intelligence cycle [every institution does things slightly differently]) and, just as important, meeting people and sorting out responsibilities.

After we got tired of beach runs, we all went to New Mexico for a few weeks of desert training and force protection skills - weapons quals, live fire drills, vehicle drills as well as nvg practice. The latter is very cool.

Then home for only a day or two before packing up all my gear and shipping back out to San Diego. Not a ton of stuff – I tried packing light – but still awkward. All the snow back in DC didn't help, as I dodged between storms but faced packed flights.

Got all settled in out here, spending the latter part of last week getting all my administrivia done. I should be all set at my end. Now I just have to get the five sailors on my team ready to go.

Terre flew out for a few days and we had a great weekend in San Diego. There's a picture below of me from a hike we took on Sunday (it was very bright) and another of a man-eating cactus attacking Terre -- she only just got away...

Tim

Fair Winds and Following Seas from a Brown Sand Box Sailor!