Back to Tennessee

You guessed it (maybe) by the title. After a long 6-month journey training in the way of Warrant Officers and Ammunition Officers respectively, I have made it back to Tennessee. It is definitely nice to be back and have access to the comforts of home. Through my recent travels I have collected a bunch of coffee beans to try. Who’s coming over to taste test with me?

Last post I mentioned being back at Fort Lee, VA (renamed Fort Gregg-Adams) where I attended Ammo School again. This time I was learning my craft at a Warrant Officer level. It was a good experience. We had opportunities to ask many questions, take field trips, and use our weekends to explore the greater Virginia area. It wasn’t a bad four week period.

My family came up one holiday weekend and we met in Williamsburg to hang out at Busch Gardens. The cool part about the Busch Gardens family of parks is that military folks get a one-time free admission per year. We took advantage of that opportunity as well as the All-Day Dining plan. With everything we ate, that plan was well worth the price. It was a fun time with family!

At the end of June we graduated. There were no frills, but we did have a guest speaker, Marines from other classes showed up, and we sang the Marine’s Hymn. It was nice to be done with everything because now I can say I’ve completed all my initial Warrant Officer training. That’s a great feeling.

After graduation, I booked it out of there and headed to Greenville so I could meet up with friends (shoutout to Mr. and Mrs. C!) for dinner. I checked back into the Greenville unit on Friday and then headed up the mountain to camp. It was great to hang out with my brother as well as the camp family. Over the weekend we went to town to hang out and Saturday night we got sushi at our favorite spot. So good!

That Monday I hit the road again back to the Nashville area. Remember in the last post I asked for suggestions of places to travel for vacation? Nobody responded. Thanks.

Hey, it worked out though because I did ask people I met up with what ideas they had. I didn’t end up doing any of those things even though they were very viable options. The trip I ended up taking started that Tuesday after I arrived in Tennessee. Long story short, I booked a flight to Seattle to ride the Coast Starlight down the coast to Los Angeles. Well, not everything went according to plan and I experienced a ton of new things all along the way.

Speaking of new things. I started a new online project entitled A Couple New Things. You can check it out here. The whole vacation I took is going to be documented there because of all the new things I experienced. I’ll post some pictures below so you can at least see what I got into. It was awesome.

On July 5th I returned to Ramsey Solutions for a 3-day workweek. It was awesome seeing the team again! Well, most of them. There were a few folks on vacation still. We’ll see them later.

Next month starts my first drill back in the Marine Reserves since May 2022. I will be drilling “indefinitely” (that’s what’s on our record now that we are Warrant Officers) but in all actuality, I will be drilling at least another four years. The reason it’s four years is because I took a bonus which obligates me to four years of service. Or maybe it’s the Continuation Pay benefit for being in the Blended Retirement System. I actually don’t remember. Either way, I’m here for a while.

Thank you again to everyone who prayed for me during WOBC and everyone who was thinking about me while I was gone. It’s good to be back in Tennessee. Until next time: Be strong. Love God. Love others.

rejoice.always