Eagle, CO and The Academy

I managed to stay in San Jose for six short days. The time went so fast and I'm kind of disappointed that I didn't get to stay for at least one more week. Everyone was taking about the beautiful redwoods, San Francisco, the ocean. Unfortunately I didn't see any of that or even much of San Jose. I worked five days then spent the last day packing up everything that I just unpacked and trying to figure out my travel arrangements.

Now I'm in Eagle, CO. If you're not from Colorado, you've probably never heard of it. It is a small town near the better known Vail. The airport is often called the Eagle/Vail airport so I thought Vail would be closer, but it is actually about 25 miles away. Eagle seems like a nice town. Not too much for entertainment, except a few small stores and some hiking trails. I should have plenty to do though since I only expect to be here until Aug. 29th. (I'll get to that in a minute.)

First I wanted to share a little about how TSA was jerking me around again. As I said in my last update, I heard almost immediately after arriving at SJC that I might be leaving soon. The story kept on changing from one minute to the next. For awhile, I even thought that I might be going to Mexico to assist in the Hurricane Dean relief efforts. The emailed everyone asking if they had a passport and could speak and understand Spanish. I immediately thought "yes" this would be the perfect opportunity for me to finally use my degree. The NDO put me on extremely short notice for deployment which meant that I should pack my bags because I might have only two hours by the time I got my itinerary. Because Hurricane Dean, slowed down so quickly over land and Mexico wasn't damaged as much as they were predicting, those orders were cancelled not long after I got them.

The next day, Tuesday and my first day off, was not as good as I hoped because I wasted so much time trying to figure out when I was going to be leaving. I got a call in the afternoon telling me to get ready to go, then in the evening I got my itinerary for the next day. The strange part was that I had also received an email asking me to be an assistant coach for the new NDF Academy. Yes, they really call it the "Academy." And that's just one reason I'm not sure if I'm going to like it.

So I read the email saying that I had been specially selected and blah, blah, blah. The letter was pretty lengthy and it wasn't until the very end that it said that we even had a choice. It was very apparent that they expected you to agree and that they wouldn't be happy if you said no. So I agreed, mostly to keep myself off the s*** list.

The NDO came up with this "Academy" idea last fall with their first October class. When I started traveling, the training wasn't quite as intense. I have a friend who was in the first academy and she had some mixed feelings. She became good friends with some of the other new NDF, but said that her coaches were super critical. Just as an example, the training building was really confusing and one time while on break she got lost on her way back to the training room. She was only one minute late and her coach wrote her up for it then picked on her for every little thing for the next 6 weeks of the class. I have a feeling that the Academy will have a real military feel, especially since most (all?) of the bosses are former military. So I'm suppose to be the jerk running around doing all the dirty work for the head honchos. Yay, can you feel my excitement. I'm bursting.

In that email, it said that we would leave on the 29th. We will train 2 classes then on Sept. 22nd we would be sent to a mystery location in the smaller groups we worked most closely with. Since deployments are usually 2 months. I think that might mean that I won't be returning to MSP until late November. I'll try to keep you up to date. That's all for now. Bye!