Saturday, March 22, 2008

Winter Carnival

Since leaving the United States and crossing the Atlantic. After many drill and even a rescue of a very ill merchant sailor from a ship at sea we arrive at the French Riviera. Imagine how glad we are to see trees and buildings. In the back ground are the Maritime French Alps.

For some of the new crew members, it is the first foreign country that they will see.

It is just our luck that we have arrived during the Nice winter carnival. We anchor off the coast of Cannes, on the Riviera. Home of the Cannes Film festival and playground of movie stars. We are close to St. Tropiz and to Monaco and the castle of Princess Grace. By train we can go to all these places and still get back to the ship before we are Awol. I visited a town named Grass where they make perfume. Those of us that toured the perfume factory returned to the ship smelling like a French lady of the evening. I got my mom a bottle of "Christmas Night' (Noe de Noel) and send it to her. Many months later I learn the my little niece had dumped it all on her bed.

Best of all was the winter carnival in Nice. Dress blues were in season this time around. Confetti was a very marketalbe item in Nice. It was all over the place and in no time at all we were covered in confetti. You may not know that confetti will stick to wool dress blues like white to an egg. It took forever to get it off and if any was left laying around it found it's way back to your uniform.

The harbor in Monaco is beautify. It was something seeing all the yachts tied to the piers. The biggest one in harbor when I was there was the royal yacht of Princess Grace and Princes Renee. Their castle looks like a story book picture with guards in candy strip uniforms standing in little cute guard houses.

We take a well deserved rest. We tour the towns, the Casino at Monte Carlo and some of us (not me) go skiing. We took time to visit the museum of Jace Costo.

All in all, a nice time but a sore taste caused by the people of France. They didn't seem to like Americans. Even after 2 world war fought to keep them free.

In to short a time, we must depart for more training. We are not there to have fun, we are there to protect our home land. Better to defend it over there then over here.


Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Mud Rain

I woke up this morning to an automobile covered with dirt. There was a great dust storm in Mexico and it sent a cloud of dust north and it went right over us in San Antonio, Texas. However, at the same time a front was moving in tho south Texas from the north. This met an area that was in the middle of an area that was, at the time, in the middle of a tropical front. Full of moisture.

This started a rain storm that washed the dirt out of the air but as it mixed with the rain it made mud. Some cars that were moving down the road when it hit had to stop and clean their windows and windshield so they could see where they were going. Some cars look as if they had run an off track race, other were not as bad. My van looked like it had been parked for about six month, dusty and streaked.

The mud was rust colored. Red and it stuck very well to paint jobs. I have seen this before but this was the worse. Most of the time when we see this it is sand from the Sahara. It rides the wind from Africa and dumps sand on us.

Anyway, before I could go do my shoppiong I had to run to the car wash. It was 8 Am and there was a line up! Just what I needed to start my day.

Hope your day was better.

Saturday, March 1, 2008

my hobby



I have been building models since I was a lad of 10 years old. I built ships, tanks, and aircraft. Here are a couple of them, maybe not my best work but I like them.
The first is an air force F4, Vietnam.
The other an English Hurricane fighter, about the time of the Battle of Britain.
May post more later of some of my armor models.