Ohio visit

A brief photo recap of our July trip to Ohio and Wisconsin. Top photo is Katie and Asher, Anissa's daughter. (anissa is my sister, seated at the table).


Next up is Katie in Lebanon Warriors football helmet. She didn't get stuck in it this time, but you might ask her what the longest time she ever wore that helmat was.

And Katie and Eric in downtown Dayton.

Katie and me in Bangkok

Kat and I spent a week in Thailand in early May. Our only real tourist activity was seeing this reclining Buddha. We're on our way to the Philippines now.

Embed with Marines

Here are some pictures from my three week embed in Helmand province in April/May. Hot as hell and surrounded by poppy plants. The platoon I was with traded fire with Taliban militants about twice a day -- morning and evening. We had to take cover for incoming rockets, but I never really felt in danger.

The first pic is me taking a picture of AP Photographer David Guttenfelder. The photo he was taking here was on the front page of the NY Times on May 3.


The foreground isn't poppy, but the background is:


This is a photo of several dozen resupply parachutes being dropped outside of a firebase in Helmand province.

Military movies

Here are some movies I took with my little Cannon point and shoot camera while on the embed with the Marines in Helmand province.

A Walk Above Kabul

Katie and I took a walk above Kabul last Saturday along an ancient wall that once garrisoned the city. It's a good view and great to get away from the fray of Kabul. The snow capped Hindu Kush mountains rise above along the horizon.

India, minus the Taj

Kat and I took a five-day trip to India and spent the first two nights in a 15th century fort-palace that's been turned into a very nice hotel. Our taxi driver had no idea how to get there from the New Delhi airport, and he turned a two hour drive into a three hour one by roaming the Indian countryside, but it was a fascinating trip down single dirt track roads and small villages. We saw a half dozen camels hooked up to plows moving through fields. We also saw women gathered around a village well hauling up water. It was worth getting lost.

This first photo is Kat lying by the pool taken from the balcony of our room.



Below is the Red Fort in New Delhi, basically our only tourist activity. Otherwise we spent our time walking around the main shopping district and riding in these little motorized rickshaws. No Taj Mahal visit. We weren't interested.

Helicopter to Afghan-Pak border

I took a day trip with the military today to the Afghan-Pakistan border. I'm riding in a Chinook, one of those huge double rotar helos that can carry about 35 people at once. They keep the back open with a gunner looking out. There's also two gunners on the side up front. Out the back you can see two Blackhawk helicopters, one of them carrying Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan.

The French Alps

Kat and I went to La Clusaz and Chamonix in the French Alps, er, um, all the way back in early February. (we've been told we're lousy at updating this page.) This is us riding up one of those poma horse lifts in La Clusaz, a lovely small village with a vast network of lifts up about three or four mountains. We stayed in a small inn where we ate fabulous breakfasts and dinners.


Kat doing her Olympic speedskater impression (not sure why it's sideways -- or how to fix it):

Canoe and Kayak story

When Katie visited Afghanistan last spring she brought a collapseable canoe, and we paddled a beautiful region of Afghanistan's central highlands, right past where the ancient Buddhas used to be (before the Taliban blew them up).

With help from Katie's brother, Sam (who now works for Outside), I wrote about the trip for Canoe and Kayak magazine, and it's been published in the March edition on sale now, in case anyone is interested in reading it. There is no online version, but I pasted the text of the story at the bottom of this page. (Warning: It's long.)

A bit more explanation regarding marriage attire

From Katie:

So here's the thing. A few observant friends and family members have asked, appropriately so, what's with the wedding attire--meaning, why the hell are you in winter jackets, hats, and scarves? Okay, well technically only I have a hat and scarf on.

The jackets--It was cold! and, as typical of Afghanistan, meaning: defying all reason, in the winter it is often colder inside than out. And it happened to be, and still mostly is, damn cold outside. So, as follows, it was incredibly cold inside our spartan family court room. Matter of fact, my toes remained white for several hours afterwards (I could digress to tell you about the later incident on the treadmill where I, with numb feet, 1. Fell off and 2. obliviously rubbed some the skin off my feet. Oops, I digressed)

The hat and scarf--My meek attempt at trying to keep my head covered out of respect for Afghan culture. I'll leave it at that for fear that our blog would become an endless diatribe.

(The below picture has absolutely nothing to do with what I was just talking about, but it was taken on a military base in Afghanistan by my loving husband.)