Thirty-Something

Well, 09/09/09 was a notable day in the uniqueness of the numbers involved as well as in the fact that it was my 37th birthday. Everyone was bummed that I had to be in Iraq for such a big day and Nedra couldn't believe that they wouldn't send me home to celebrate. I told them that I would much rather spend my Birthday away from them than Christmas and they all agreed with me. It was OK, though, because we had our own way of celebrating 9/9/9 in Kirkuk and I had a great day (despite the fact that I was away from my family).

I started it off by running my first "official" marathon! It actually isn't very official in that I was the race sponsor, coordinator and only participant - at least for the full distance - but I named it the "First Annual KRAB Marathon."

I started at 0500 in the morning figuring it would take me around 4 hours to run. I divided the course up into 4 loops of 6.55 miles and scheduled myself to run each loop with a different running partner from my Unit.

Here is a picture of Col Mark White and me starting off in the morning - you can see that we both look completely awake :).

Capt Heidi Simpson ran the second loop with me and this is taken after that loop at the 1/2 way point. I was feeling pretty good at this time, but my partner for the next loop forgot his show time and I had to run it on my own. That turned out fine and it was actually my fastest split time - probably because I didn't spend any energy talking. I paid for it on the last loop, though, because by the time I came to the start of #4 (19.7 miles) I was feeling pretty spent. Fortunately I planned for this and had my best friend out here - Greg Stroup - scheduled to take me through the final stretch. We finished up pretty strong and here is our picture afterward.

You can see that my shirt is completely dry (as opposed to at the 1/2 way point). That is because the sun had come up and the temperature had climbed to over 100 degrees.

Also notice that a combined 50 years of formal education did not help us figure out that we had the "37" numbers backward until we looked at the picture later.

Unfortunately, in the end, the sponsor got cheap on us and we have no T-shirt to show for the effort, just these pictures! That's OK, we don't run for the T-shirt - we run because we are bored :).

Later on that day I opened Birthday packages from both Mom and Amber, which was a lot of fun. They contained some great treats along with pictures that the kids had drawn, which are now hanging on the wall next to my desk. Mom sent me 37 cinnamon bears and 37 candles with which to make myself a "cake."

We did this in the ER and the smoke alarms immediately started going off. Fortunately there were no automatic sprinklers and no patients in the facility at the time!

This picture is a bit blurry, but in it with me are Greg Stroup and Melissa Dooley - my good friends who came out here with me to Kirkuk and will leave with me in a couple of months.

Overall, I would have to say that it was a pretty good day - all things considered.