My New Favorite Car Commerical!

My mom told me about this and I thought I'd share. That is my plane!!! Now I just need that car :)
Click below or watch in Hi-def here

Minneapolis Wedding

This past weekend I had the pleasure to be best man in one of my best friends weddings. The amazing thing is that I had only known him for about 6 months before he asked me to be his best man last summer, I was quite honored. The military has a strange way of making great freindships in a relatively small amount of time and I'm finding that those bonds stay throughout all the persistent changes (moves, deployments, ect.) in our careers.

In short, the wedding went great. The groom and all the groomsmen were in our mess dress. It was a beautiful Gothic-style Methodist church in the heart of the the downtown Twin Cities. I fulfilled my duties by making sure the groom was present for all the events and took the blame when we were a few minutes late for the rehearsal, the bride was very patient. The reception was a ton of fun and my speech went really well, there was plenty of laughter. I opened up with with this, "Hi, my name is David and I'm the best man, hold for applause." I think that softened up the crowd for some of my more corny jokes later on.

I also had the chance to go see my OLLLLLLD buddy from the days that I lived in Minnesota. He took his wife, and his two very young children down to the twin cities to pick me up and drive me back up to where we had lived back in the 90s and took me out to lunch. Then without even blinking he drove me back to the hotel downtown. You just can't beat Minnesota hospitality. I had a great time catching up with the family.

Here are a few of the photos from the trip:

John, his wife Amanda, and John's Father, and the two kidos

Oh the places we will go...

 These photos were taken by Josh Lawton so I wanted to make sure he got the credits, very good photographer

Joshua Lawton // Joshua & Co. Photography
www.joshuacophotography.com 2011 JOSHUA & CO PHOTOGRAPHY

Joshua Lawton // Joshua & Co. Photography
www.joshuacophotography.com 2011 JOSHUA & CO PHOTOGRAPHY

Joshua Lawton // Joshua & Co. Photography
www.joshuacophotography.com 2011 JOSHUA & CO PHOTOGRAPHY

Joshua Lawton // Joshua & Co. Photography
www.joshuacophotography.com 2011 JOSHUA & CO PHOTOGRAPHY

Reflections: A look back over the past couple years

Training as been really slow lately. I seem blessed by 96% on all my tests so far, yet cursed that I can't just get two more questions right and get the 100%. The plane is a beast, it takes a lot of muscle to move its old school cable and pulley system which moves the control surfaces (ailerons, elevators, rudder) are a bit archaic, but it's definitely a pilot's plane.  

On a different note, a neat thing about my iPhone is that as I take pictures on it, it uses the built in GPS attach a latitude and longitude to it. Apple has taken advantage of this feature, called geotagging, and has made a cool little app that will show you all the places you have taken photos, using the camera on a google map. I bought my first iPhone back in November of 2008. Since then, I have slowly made it into my everyday point and shoot camera. You can see I've covered a fair amount of ground and I thought it would be interesting to share a couple of these locations with you.

A little information on my soon to be new home

Okinawa, Where Service Triumphs

New life In Oklahoma

Things are going well here. I'm in Oklahoma now till July doing KC-135 PIQ (Pilot Initial Qualification). It's basically graduate level training so it's super laid back, nothing like what I had to do in Del Rio, but the exceptions are pretty high. Right now, I just have to show up for classes and various times and then I'm on my own to get my studying done. The first of many tests went pretty well but the a much tougher one is on it's way. My first week I was taking full advantage laid back atmosphere but now I've realized there is still a ton of work to do so I've been hitting the books pretty hard. This plane has so many redundancies as well as very intricate systems.

Two weeks ago my old housemate from Del Rio who lives in San Antonio now, along with some of my friends here, met up with me in Dallas for a proper 25th birthday celebration. It was a solid weekend, one of the best birthday's I've had.

That's all for now, I just got back from a simulator from 11pm till 1am, talk about the swing shift!

Mexico Dayzzz

 Well after this point in time we started so many different activities that I got way behind in my journal and didn't write anymore in it. So to get caught up quickly, I'm just going to post my photos from the trip. I have other, more current things to write about anyway!  here we go!

 The Sun rising over the horizon on my way to Gaudalajara

 The first thing I ate when I got to Mexico, nachos and a michelada (beer with some add ins)

 Steph's family's patio

 Steph's pool

 Matt outside a fancy Italian restaurant we went to the night after new years

 The guys (Neto and Matt) at La Dolce Vita

 Finishing up our wine outside

 Trying out the Menudo, which is cows stomach in a broth, I wasn't the biggest fan

 Steph and Carlos at breakfast our last day in Vallarta

 Mexican country side

 Mexican country side

 Wendy, the family's little old dog

 Matt and I downtown Guadalajara, shopping for my chess set

 Dr. Simi and I, Dr. Simi is a drug store that sell generic, or SIMIlar drugs

 Guadalajara Cathedral

 The Theater

Day 2- mas guad y la voyage a Vallarta (more Guadalajara and the voyage to Puerto Vallarta)

The next morning I slept until about 10 the house maid had come in the morning to prep the house for the families return. I got out of bed, put on my running shoes and went for a small 3 mile jog around the nice, quiet neighborhood. After that I returned to the house and Mari, the maid offered to make me desyuno. She made me eggs and ham with some toast and it was delicious. After that I decided it was time for a shower and then went on foot to explore the local plaza del sol to check out shops and kill time before the family came home around 330. I went and looked at suits because at the time I was thinking about buying one for new years. It turns out that most clothing and textiles can be found cheaper in the US than is Mexico. It was about two and thought it should be time to get some lunch and had scouted out an area that had some good restaurants so  I strolled on over and quickly decided on a little whole in the wall called tacos el paso. There were other locals who where eating there during their lunch break and I took a look at the specials posted on the sidewalk and decided on a torta al pastor, and two taco el Durango. The torta had a special kick that can only be found in that area. it was a torta ahogadas, or a "drowned" sandwich. A light tomato sauce was poured over it and was served with a spoon. After looking around and seeing what the other customers were doing, I decided it wouldn't be acceptable to try to use my hands, no matter how hungry i was by that point. The food was amazing and even more amazingly cheap. I paid 28 pesos for the tortas and tacos, another 12 pesos for the horchata the standard 10% porpina (tip). It came out to 40 plus tip. That comes out to about $3.50!

After lunch I walked home and found Mari, the maid still doing some work. I went out on the amazing patio and did some reading and tanning since I'm about as white as a ghost.

Matt, Stephanie, and her family arrived later that day from Monterrey later that evening. Neto came by in his car and picked us up. We hit the road about 1800 for the 4 hour drive to Puerto Vallarta.

We arrived later that evening to Carlos's place. We walked down the block to a little taco shop where we had some great al pastor (pork) tacos.

We laid low that night and went to bed at a decent hour in preparation for a big weekend.