Day Twenty Eight - February 28, 2010

We remain in Seattle as day Twenty Eight begins. Hard to imagine February is coming to an end but at the same time that is a good feeling - start clicking those months away!

Today was low key and had a cloud hanging over our heads as well - we knew that later in the day would be the time to once again say good-bye; the first one went well, I wasn't so sure about this one. Outside, the weather was very nice especially for Seattle.

The morning was spent in the hotel room, packing up and watching a little TV - just relaxing and hanging around. Once we checked out of the room, we stopped by Target so my wife could pick up a few things. From there we drove down I-5 and visited Olympia - a very pretty town. It was nothing like we imagined it would be like especially since it is the capital of Washington. The capital building is pretty but understated. The area around the capital was clean, neat and full of people enjoying the sunshine. The marina was full of boats and it seemed like a very quaint town.

My wife spent part of the afternoon making those dreaded last phone calls - to our friends in Rockville and to her parents. Communication will be poor at best as we go forth from here - we've known for awhile that I will be the point person in forwarding information to others; she just reinforced that during these phone calls. The drive back to the base was good and we tried not to let the impending good bye creep into the car but it was hanging there. On day one when I took her to the airport, it was more of a jump out of bed, drive to the airport and gone type of thing - this one took its time.

The base has a gorgeous view of Mt Rainier and the snow covered mountain dominated the view from all angles. There was a couple of times that it was all you could see - even from several miles away it was huge.

Some good-byes are more painful than others and this one was a bad one - we all knew exactly what one month felt like, now we have seven more staring us in the face. Even with the painful departure, I wouldn't have traded the weekend for anything I can think of.

After saying good bye, my wife returned to her barracks and started packing her issued gear plus she had to return to the armory to get her weapons. The next couple of days will be a drill/exercise to culminate the training process she has been through. I promised I wouldn't fuss about the military in this blog but the entire process of this month's training makes zero sense and really needs to be looked at for future training evolutions - this is the first navy team to go through this particular training and they have a lot to work on.

Our drive back to the airport was quiet. I returned the rental car and we started the long process of returning home. Our timing was good and the TSA lines were short so we didn't have any issue with them. We did take the tram from the main terminal to our departure gate. SeaTac airport is pretty big but it is nice, full of good food choices and several things to do. We had a good supper, found our gate and settled in until time for our flight a few hours later.

Being in close proximity to the 2010 Winter Olympics, the airport had well over 20 people in USA and Canada hockey jersey's going home after Canada's overtime victory - I was able to watch the highlights on CNN and each time they showed them, the Canadian fans started cheering. Nearly all of them were flying on an earlier flight to Atlanta.

During our few hours there, it would have been fun to watch the events of the airport in some sort of stop motion camera - people come in waves, then go in waves; flights arrive, flights depart; a constant symphony of motion and movement.

As Day Twenty Eight and the month of February came to an end, we sat in SeaTac airport, gate S8 waiting for our departure - the little one passed out on two chairs next to me, the oldest daughter reading her book and playing video games in the chair across from us - all three of us feeling quite certain that Day Twenty Nine was going to be a long one.