Battered but Alive

Recovering from the year 2005. Today I'm on leave before I start back to work tomorrow. I really don't feel the least bit caught up from everything that has happened in the last several months. Pretty much, my life has been a shambles outside of work because a)I was busy at work and I placed the priority on doing a decent job and b) when I had a free chance I was taking advantage of the travel opportunities in an attempt to blow off steam. However, I really wasn't able to do the little things that make normal life necessary: grocery shopping, laundry, personal hygiene (just kidding.) Really, it's been sort of tough but I asked for it.
I hope everybody had a great Christmas and New Year's. I really wanted to make it back to the states for Christmas--but since I had to work to finish my upgrade at work, it really wasn't possible. This bit me in the end, since my Grandmother died and I hadn't already "pre-positioned" myself in the states. Let me tell you, trying to get a last minute flight out of Europe in the holidays for the next day is almost impossible. I guess that goes to show why you should be really wealthy and own a private jet.
I wanted to thank everybody for the emails, cards, etc. that you guys sent me. It's weird spending your second Christmas away from home. Not too bad--just weird.

Here's the breakdown of my most recent journey:
Left Aviano on the Friday before Christmas early in the morning. There were 3 of us that would be joined later by some other folks from base. We pushed north to a town near the Italian border in Austria. Neustift--aka, Stubital ski area. We snowboarded for 2 solid days there and had a Christmas dinner in the little town at a pretty nice restaurant. A cool family from Australia gave us a good dinner conversation. I nearly paralyzed myself attempting a 360 on my snowboard off of a pretty steep jump. Caught on video. I was able to wiggle my toes and I knew I was still mobile, so I continued boarding. My back still kills me. Possible life-long injury and I will forever hate myself for it.
We met up with my two more pilots and one of their girlfriends and pressed to where the snow was even better: Switzerland. We drove to an area known as Davos. We crossed a mountain pass that was ridiculously high and NO attempt was made to clear it by snow trucks/salters. I didn't like this at all--but luckily my SUV has 4wd and we made it. My mom would have collapsed from terror in this situation. Davos was cool--some real world-class skiing. I snowboarded one day and then broke out my skis to hit some cool runs.
Now the story gets interesting. Trigger and I left Davos early in the morning after 2 nights and headed to Milan airport. We were able to get some cheap tickets on RyanAir to Scotland. Final destination: Edinburgh--site of Europe's largest New Year's Eve Festival. We flew into Glasgow--(nice city...a bit rough at night...so be careful if you go.) Once we got into Edinburgh we checked into our hotel. Actually, it was a hostel. I really would classify it as a mix between a campground, brothel, crack-house and prisoner-of-war camp. It was ridiculously terrible. I just went into survival mode a this point and hearkened back to my days at Air Force Survival School. Our fault, of course, since we didn't make an attempt to book good rooms well in advance. Anyway, Edinburgh is an awesome city. Great castle, people and sights. I really enjoyed it. By this point in the trip, I had no clean clothes and probably looked like some sort of soccer hooligan. However, we did our best to clean up and see the sights: 2 art museums (free), the castle, and I got the best personal tour of a nearby bay/seaside town--which was my favorite part of the entire trip, hands down. I got to see a neat little sailing club and walked down the cobblestone streets of the old village. Really cool.
Overall, Scotland was great--we met awesome people and learned a good bit.

The pictures above: one of a performance by a bluegrass/scottish infusion band during the festival and one of the sun setting at the seaside at the sailing club.