IBOL World Tour: Beaverton, OR

Imagine going to Mt. Rushmore and standing before the monument, only to have them speak to you.

Such was my day today. I got to spend the day with the family, and go to the Sew Mama Sew! Secret Lair, and have coffee with Terry Grant and Gerrie Congdon.

The walk and the tour

Just a short update on two not-so-important things.

The JDRF walk was this weekend. It was a fantastic event — they’ve been doing it on the island here for something like 16 years, and it’s evolved into a very smooth, well run event. We woke up that morning to rain — and a lot of it! — but it had stopped by the time we arrived for the pre-walk run and held off until after the walk was complete.

Thank you, for all that contributed in support of this. While I wasn’t able to meet my goal, I was able to help raise over $1000, helping Taylor’s team raise more than $8000 — far beyond their original goal of $5000! The wife and kids and I were talk of the 188 walkers on Team Taylor Kicking Diabetes — with TKD being the largest team to participate.

So, thank you. We had fun doing it, we enjoyed the morning and the great company on the walk, and we enjoyed being able to not only support Taylor and her efforts, but to help support research that will someday lead to finding a cure.

The walk, if you’re interested, started and ended in Kapiolani Park, looping around it and the (totally awesome) Honolulu Zoo. Here’s the map showing the location — yes, it’s right along the beach and yes, it is that awesome and beautiful.

Me, I loved the trees that lines so much of the route.

It helps that the view from the park features Diamond Head.

And if you’re interested, Taylor and her efforts have made the news locally here and here. Who wouldn’t want to report on a cute kid taking on an awesome challenge like this?

Now, about that IBOL World Tour.

This weekend, we’re flying to Oregon. Nothing like last minute details, right? Well, the Army was involved, so things tend to work out that way. The wife and maybe MIL and maybe even the kids and I are planning to go to Beaverton on Tuesday, 24 November — yes, just two days ahead of Thanksgiving. If you’re interested, we’ll meet at the Starbucks in Beaveton (11405 SW Beaverton Hillsdale Hwy, Beaverton, OR 97005-2929) [map] at 1400 / 2pm. I’m using my Google Ninja Skills (GNS) to ferret out where the Sew Mama Sew folks actually do their magic, in case they can’t make it to coffee. But, by all means, feel free to stop by their blog and leave a comment of “OMG! OMG! IBOL Tuesday is next week!” and help me flush them out from their secret lair. (I actually favored calling it IBOLapalooza.)

And stop two on the world tour will be 03 December at 1400 / 2 pm. The Mountain Quilters Cottage isn’t too far from where I’ll be hiding out, and they’re open something like 10 to 5 on weekdays. I figured we could just meet there and chat. If things get really out of hand, we can head on over to the Village Ice Cream & Sweet Shop, though we’d need to see if it’s still open (I heard that it’s up for sale). A little ice cream never hurt, right? Lake Arrowhead is a bit more laid back — I figure we can just play this one by ear a bit more.

Interested? Leave me a comment, or just shoot me an email. And by all means — help me recruit others to come and join in the fun. I think Happy Zombie said she’s make the drive down to Beaverton (probably just to sneak at peak at the SMS Secret Lair, if I can find it). Not sure who else would show up in Lake Arrowhead, but I do know that the shop is wonderful.

JDRF

Folks, I’ve been recruited by my neighbor to take part in the upcoming walk / fundraiser for research to combat juvenile diabetes. My neighbor — she’s small, she’s cute, and she doesn’t take no for an answer.

So, here’s a link to my page. I had to come up with a goal — and there was only one number that came to mind (3445 – the number of IBOLS). I have no idea how I’ll do in reaching it, but I thought it was worth doing. If IBOL has been all about just doing things to make the world a better place, this seemed like something that falls right into line with it.

Want to help out? I’d welcome the assistance.

There won’t be a Son of IBOL

Folks, I failed.

I am sitting at the airport, waiting for my flight out of Iraq. In the weeks since Ramadan closed, I’ve unable to find someone to take on IBOL after I leave. I was really hoping there’d be an IBOL II, or a Son of IBOL as I liked to call it. But, as I prep to fly, it looks like there won’t be one, and IBOL is indeed coming to a close

I’m been mulling over why this is. IBOL seems like such a no brainer — surely others would want to do something like this, right?

And then I remember the amount of stuff involved in this. Bulk mail, sometimes topping 600 or 800 boxes a day. A warehouse. Coordinating with other units, in other parts of Iraq, for sending them stuff. Stealing, er, I mean, acquiring dunnage, pallets, nets, trucks, forklifts, anything and everything.

Maybe if it had been 500 bundles, it’d be an easier sell. 3445 is a lot to chew on.

So, here’s where we stand.

1. I’ll update this site from time to time, as things develop. One easy way to keep tabs on when there are new posts is to use this RSS feed, or bookmark this. If you use GMail or Yahoo Mail or something like these, you may be able to add this link and it’ll notify you when something new gets added. As this site slows down to a crawl, it might be easier to have the site notify you when there’s something new posted, versus checking in from time to time.

2. I’m starting in on the big write-up. It’ll be either free or as close to free as possible. I’ll likely distribute it digitally, in a few formats, since one of the keys to the success of this whole IBOL thing seems to have been the embracing and leveraging of all things webby and geeky. Got Kindle? There may be a Kindle friendly version, if I can figure it out. And since Wil Wheaton is a hero of mine, there may be an audio version as well. Who knows. But all of that would come out through this site, I think.

3. Somehow, I think there will be other things that will come up this year, if you too are bitten by the bug. Like the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JRDF) walk — for which my wife has signed up (and the kids and I will tag along). I doubt these things will make it to this website; there’s probably some way to discuss / share these things.

4. And there’s always the IBOL Guy World Tour, currently set with three stops — Oregon before Thanksgiving, Lake Arrowhead after Thanksgiving, and on Oahu in the spring. I’ll likely share the details here.

I wish there was a follow-on version of IBOL. It would have been cool.

Q West

I didn’t think I’d ever post this to the web: 6 pallets have moved from here to a place called Q West, and will make the rest of the trip this weekend, most likely.

I keep waiting for someone to call and, say, ask for a credit card number for all this.

If you’re looking for some more (mis)adventures in Iraq, swing by and see what Sygnett is up to (these days, it’s cookies from my sister, by the looks of it) or where in the world Erin is.

The End of Phase 2b

Wow, I’m a bit tired.

I got up last night before midnight, in order to go and meet the forklift guy and the truck guys. One 10k forklift and two eighteen-wheeler trucks in tow, we went out to IBOL World HQ and Warehouse, and loaded the six pallets onto the trucks. Loaded, the trucks rolled away and headed to the container yard, where they’ll likely hang out for a few days before moving on. The hour was late, the dust was blowing, so I broke out a disposable camera someone had sent me a while ago, and took a few pictures; it’ll be weeks before I can get them developed and posted.

I have, more or less, figured out how to distribute 3445 bundles. I never thought that would happen, folks.

This week, those six pallets, representing around 1500 bundles and about 12,000 pounds of love, will head to Kirkuk City (map). Five of the pallets will stay there, with one of our combat brigades, and the sixth will get cross-loaded and head further on into the Kurdish region to Sulaymaniyah (map).

So, about 2000 bundles made their way our into my neck of the woods, and the rest are headed to Kirkuk. This might not seem like much to you, but it means a lot to me.

Saddam Hussein is from these parts of the woods. Part of what had me thinking about this whole IBOL thing was wanting to make some kind of a positive impact on this area. Thank you — there are two thousand bundles coursing their way through this area. Which is pretty fantastic.

And if you watch the news as much as I do, or maybe even a fraction of what I watch and read, you’ll know that Kirkuk is… interesting. It’s disputed. It’s debated. It’s seemingly tied to most every other topic here in Iraq. At times it’s been led by Turks, Arabs and Kurds. It’s rich history, diverse people and mixed cultures makes it a land, a city, a community in need of some, well, love.

My year here is almost up. I’m working with the unit replacing mine. My kids are counting the days until I leave Iraq, for what may well be the last time. When I was young, Iraq was a re-emerging leader in the Arab world, but faltered and spiraled downwards under Saddam Hussein. But even during the darkest of times, when this land was being ravaged by war or hate or strife, I’ve held out hope that I’d be able to help do something to move this country closer to not just peace but the greatness it is capable of. I never would have guessed it would be this — almost 3500 boxes, packed by some amazing and great people, distributed here, there, and everywhere in northern Iraq.

So, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

I have two more things to do. Well, okay, three. I’ll be in touch with the folks that have these last 1500 or so, and I’ll see what I can get from them to share here on the website. I also know that there’s a small snippet on IBOL in our own unit magazine, if I can every get my hands on the digital version of it.

The second thing is to see what if anything will carry on after I leave here. The warehouse is still there. CSM Flores and his crew think their replacements will support is being used the same way — if someone does something crazy like this. I need to find that someone, I guess. I’d like to leave here with a name and an address, and to be able to tell you to send what you want, when you want – I have no idea if I’ll be able to put that together.

And lastly, I need to look back at this whole thing, and do some writing. For my unit, for the Army, I need to capture what this was, why it worked, and what can be used again. This IBOL thing was pretty powerful; I’d hate for the Army to not learn something from this little undertaking. I’d like some crazy dreamer out there to have that crazy dream, and not have to start from complete scratch like I sometimes felt I did. Why think tens when you can think thousands. Writing about this, teaching the Army about this, is my Phase 3.

Two last things, before I call it a day and go to sleep. Who saw my wife’s quilt in Houston, and who took a photo that they can send me?

And who is going to be near either Eugene or Beaverton, Oregon, before Thanksgiving? The IBOL Guy Family World Tour will be kicking off then, with stops in Oregon and the mountains east of San Bernardino, CA. Coffee’s going to be on me, and the locations will be small fabric and / or yarn places.

IBOL Kitteh!

I am slowly trying to catch up on other IBOL related things, now that there are six pallets built, waiting to go. Today, I finally got to the box of cards, notes, and other seemingly-non-edible things that people included in their IBOL boxes.

Cards, photos, notes, and even drawings from kids. All kinds of neat things.

I had thought that the best was going to be the family photos from Edie. But no — the best was literally saved for last. Here’s what Susan sent.

Pretty darn tootin’ cool, I think.

A picture is worth a thousand words

That’s folks from 4-1 INF BCT, dropping off IBOL’s and some other humanitarian assistance to one of the small villages not too far from here. At some point, we started to remove address information from the boxes, and moves the bundles in the boxes — much easier to manhandle that way. But yeah, that’s a village-worth of IBOL’s and other HA, all stacked up. And smiles. Lots of smiles.

We built the last 4 pallets tonight, too. We finished after dark. I’ll go back and take pictures again in a couple of days, when my arms have recovered enough to hold a camera. We built 4 x pallets, each with ~266 bundles. You do the math and tell me how many boxes we just carried.

I found a special bundle that just had to be shown off. Anyone recognize this one?

Signet found her special one, too. Pretty cool.

Some good, some bad

So, plans went afoul Sunday, to build the last 4 pallets. I had asked a few folks to come and join me, and to meet me outside our HQ so that we could all go over there. I got no responses, save for Swan, but when the prescribed time arrived, I was waiting, alone.

I found out later that yes, other were ready to help, but had headed out to the warehouse instead. Whoops.

So, we’ll try it again on Thursday. I’d do it Wednesday, but there’s — wait for it — rain in the forecast. Rain!

On the good news side of things, I saw a photo today, of bundles being delivered the other day. Now, I’m trying to track down the photo so I can post and share it. But I saw one. 500 to 800 bundles later, and there’s one photo — that ratio seems out of whack, if you ask me. I guess we’re better at delivering bundles than taking photos of delivering bundles.

Better than a bran muffin, I tell you…

Things are moving.

During the night, I grabbed a few of the guys and moved pallets. And by moving pallets, I mean there was one of us on each corner and we carried them over and put them on dunnage next to IBOL World HQ, to prep them to load IBOLs. Why four big strong soldiers to move a pallet? Each weighs 200+ lbs., and they are very unwieldy. But that was last night — we did get-er-dun.

Today, I swung by the air cargo guys and got nets for the pallets, and ratchet straps, too. And then I headed out to the warehouse, to build pallets.

I had hoped that by going out there today, I’d be there in the morning when one of the new infantry units came to pick up bundles. Oh, we’ll come gets all of them they said. I think they ended up picking up 400 or 500 — a very good start, but not all of them, by any means. I was not there to see them, but CSM Flores was.

And he was there when I arrived. Helped upload the nets and stuff, too. He had some other work to do there, but I didn’t stop to chat — I went on the hunt for a cornerstone box to use, so I could start in on building a pallet or two.

The pallets are located between the warehouse and one of the chow halls. It was ribs for lunch, BTW — the smell was truly awesome. I was starting right before lunch started, so people were walking by and checking things out most of the time I was building pallets. Nothing gets people curious more than an open door to a warehouse, apparently, as lots and lots stopped to stick there head in, or go in and wander about. Strange.

What I don’t understand is, two weeks ago I ran the Army 10 Miler race here, on an obviously swollen and sprained ankle, in lousy form because my back was out. And people told me I was nuts for running on the sprained ankle, and continuing on when my back hurt. Less than two weeks later, here I am single-handedly preparing to build six pallets of stuff, moving it all out of the warehouse by hand, but that seems normal and OK to people. Go figure.

Anyway, I found my cornerstone. Some, I know would look for a strong, rugged box on which to anchor the effort. Other would probably look for the rejected box –something about the stone rejected by the builder becomes the cornerstone, or something. Me, I went with the prettiest one. Did you think I would choose any other ones?

From there, I started to frame out one the pallet would look like.

It worked out to five rows that were seven deep and seven high, and the middle row that was seven deep and three high.

After that, it was carrying boxes. And carrying the boxes gave me a chance to look at some of them. Which brought a lot of comic relief. Really, I wanted to stumble across bundles from people I knew, but instead I could messages, IBOL logos, and all kinds of other things that made me smile or chuckle. Like this one:

It says, Redirect to address below, and someone wrote in Any Iraqi Police Officer, which I thought was great. I’d seen similar things before, and it always made me chuckle and smile — smile, because it’s such a great idea, and chuckle, because I wonder what the mail folks would actually do.

Oh, and notes. You all wrote a lot of nice things on the boxes. Here are a couple that I saw today. Keep in mind, I only built two pallets, each with 266 boxes.

So, here you have them — two pallets, each of 266 bundles.

And here’s me, my ever faithful sidekick, Mr. Pistol, and the dining facility right behind us. And yes, I wear a different patch on my left shoulder, than on my right. That’s not by accident, that’s actually by choice.

We put the nets over them, more or less just to keep people from messing with them. They will get a lot more work before the actual flight date.

And remember how I mentioned that all of the curious stopped by? One was the aviation guy who’s ready to schedule the helicopters. He looked inside the warehouse, and said something witty about there being a lot of boxes. I don’t think he could visualize what a few thousand boxes really looks like — I knew I would be able to before this.

The guy who gave me the straps and netting — he stopped by en route to his lunch, too. Walked me through how the netting and stuff worked, gave me guidance on how to do it all. I think he was impressed that it was me out there actually doing the work — I had not passed it off to poor junior soldiers who’d otherwise been voluntold they were going to help. Nice enough guy. Said he’d come back when it was time to load them out, to help make sure they were really as ready as could be.

Another was a senior Sergeant who stopped by and asked a few questions. Nice enough guy. He was on his way to lunch, but thought it sounded like a neat project. Later, on his way out of lunch, he came and found me and asked me how I was going to move the pallets next. I said by air — and before I had a chance to confess that I had no idea how I would get the pallets to the air pad to be loaded onto the helicopters, he gave me his name and phone number, pointed to where he worked, and said he would take care of that — he’s got a big forklift, and big trucks, and his guys move this stuff all the time.

I’m telling you, IBOL brings out the best in people.

Last war story, I promise. I had one volunteer for the last half of the second pallet. She was just back from her R&R to the states, she outranks me, and she’d just finished lunch. But she carried boxes and then helped with the nets, and then took the photos of me. And told me to pick a day to finish the other four pallets, and that she would round up others to help — and started to rattle of names of folks who also outrank me. Who am I to argue with putting senior Army officers to work, doing manual labor in support of IBOL?

So, maybe Sunday. I need to see if that will work. Might be the plan, though.

Oh, and thank you. I know the excitement of the climbing box count has come and gone, and now I’m into the boring part of IBOL distribution. But every day I see the value in this project, and every day I am thankful that you all have helped me with this crazy idea I had. So much for cursing at the darkness — here’s to lighting a candle every once in a while.