First day on the ground

Luckily, I've never really had a problem with jet lag. I'll admit that I feel the effects more as I get older, but I still don't seem to suffer with it as much as my colleagues. After almost 30 hours of wakefulness for the trip over (I had a great book!), I fell into bed the first night and slept soundly. By 7:00 a.m., I was out for a morning run in the already hot & humid day that was to greet us. By mid-morning, it was already in the upper 80s with 85% humidity! Loved it!



There are 6 staff that came out early on the advance party to get things ready for the disabled Swimming and Track & Field teams for their training camp here on Kadena AFB. We each broke off to spend the morning with our respective contacts here on base. I had breakfast with Lou who runs just about every dining establishment on this base plus the golf course, marina, etc. He and his staff took me through their plans for the teams' arrival and stay. Now, he and I have been emailing for weeks about the menu and logistics in preparation for this camp, but the amount of work and preparation they put into this effort blew me away. After rallying back up with the other staff members of the advance party for lunch, we all marveled at how much these folks have bent over backwards to make sure this camp is successful and that the athletes are as prepared as possible for their competitions in Beijing. I can't comment enough how amazingly enthusiastic and hard-working both the military and civilians on this base are as they continue to go above and beyond for our athletes.



Of course, a lot of my excitement about being on Okinawa involves the food! For lunch, I revisited the meal I practically lived off of on the flight line for 6 months while I was deployed here back in the day- yakisoba! Okinawa has it's own variety of soba (noodles) that is stirfried (yaki) with meat (chicken, beef, or pork), cabbage, tofu and vegetables. It was still just as tasty as I remembered it!



After more meetings and base touring, we finally ended up at an off-base restaurant in the evening for dinner. In the picture is Kim and Tina sampling some of the Awamori, a type of sake unique to Okinawa. It's an alcoholic beverage made from rice, but it's distilled instead of brewed like most sakes. It was served to us in a small ceramic pot with a large bucket of ice and bottled water. You fill the small glass with ice, pour Awamori until the halfway mark, then top it off with bottled water. Unlike sake, it was surprisingly smooth and mild- quite nice!





For dinner, I ordered nigiri sushi. In this picture, you can see the array of fresh seafood I was served. Fresh raw slices of ahi tuna, albacore tuna and mackerel sitting atop lightly vinegared sticky rice with a thin layer of wasabi (Japanese horseradish) were accompanied by lightly cooked shrimp, pickled ginger and some type of scrambled egg cake. The salad had raw seafood and roe with a slightly tangy soy-based dressing. The black and orange item you see at the bottom left of the long white plate is gunkanmaki (vinegared sticky rice surrounded by a strip of nori, AKA dried seaweed, and topped with large, plump roe, AKA fish eggs). Click on the picture for a closeup view of these delicacies!

The seashell plate contained some type of edible mollusk that tasted somewhat like an oyster but had the rubbery consistency of pickled calamari. The blue bowl contained what I thought was a warm flan for dessert, but after sticking a spoon it it and stirring it around I discovered what appeared to be gizzard and unidentifiable seafood bits. Undaunted, I tasted it and confirmed that yes, it was a gizzard in a yellow, gelatinous mild custard-like consistency. Not terrible, but not worth another biteful!


Day 2 will involve a little sightseeing and preparation to receive our 100+ athletes on the airlift from Colorado Springs!