Friday Pictures

Today I drove a couple of hours southeast of Fairbanks and took some pictures:

"A man to be a sound politician and in any degree useful to the country must be governed by higher and steadier considerations than those of personal sympathy and private regard."
-Martin Van Buren

Pirates vs. Ninjas

Let it be known that any real man would rather be a ninja than a pirate. Anyone who says otherwise is itching for a fight.

Facts (courtesy of realultimatepower.com):
1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.

FWA Pics

Here's some pictures I took during a bike ride around Fort Wainwright today.

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
-John Adams

Ninja Alert

Here's some pictures of my vehicle commander and myself using a ninja sword while riding in the Stryker. Because you never know.

Part of the training area up here. Squint to see the mountains.

"No man in the nation desires peace more than I. But I prefer the troubled ocean of war, demanded by the honor and independence of the country, with all its calamities, and desolations, to the tranquil, putrescent pool of ignominous peace."
-Henry Clay

Army Stuff

The boys doing Army stuff.

Mountains and Machine Guns

This past week I had the privilege to run a machine gun range up in the mountains about an hour away from Fort Wainwright. Mountains and machine guns are a great combination: killer views of snow-capped peaks and M240B machine guns expending thousands of rounds of ammunition. When two gunners know what they're doing and talk their guns back and forth it's a beautiful sound. We're spending the next two weeks out in the field so I'll try to get some pictures of all the minions doing actual army stuff. This time of year is really busy as we're trying to maximize the rest of the good weather for training and simultaneously prepare all our equipment to be shipped down to Fort Irwin California where we'll be for 5 weeks in September and October. But, no one's complaining because we're actually getting good training and the guys are staying out of trouble since they're worn out by the end of the day.

"Gun control often serves as a gateway to tyranny. Tyrants from Hitler to Mao to Stalin have sought to disarm their own citizens, for the simple reason that unarmed people are easier to control. Our Founders, having just expelled the British army, knew that the right to bear arms serves as the guardian of every other right. This is the principle so often ignored by both sides in the gun control debate. Only armed citizens can resist tyrannical government."
-Ron Paul