The Holidays and Students

Friends,
Things are chugging along here at Fort Riley and is increasingly looking more and more like "groundhog day" with each new class of students getting trained to deploy. This weekend will be VERY busy as we have about 180 students leaving then coming back at the top of the year - we are setting up all the travel logistics (busses, plane tickets, etc), quite a challenge for a small staff of 3, including myself. But hey, it's the holidays and whatever we can do to make the student sailor's life easier we'll do if we can. For example, we have students graduating on Thursday, they they fly out Friday. We meet the bus for them at 0300 to ensure they get loaded up then they go on a 3 hour bus ride to Kansas City airport to fly out. Saturday, we have more students flying home (0200 this time), meet the bus, load them up and move them out. We also have some students coming BACK to Riley on Saturday in preparation to go into theater shortly after Christmas. I have to hang back to ensure they get situated with weapons, berthing, etc so the are good to go - will try to get back for Christmas this year myself. Then, the process repeats in reverse on 2 Jan and 4 Jan. Not hard, just time consuming. Looking forward to spending the holidays at home myself - wishing all a very Merry Christmas and a great New Year in 2009, especially our brave sailors and soldiers deployed overseas or deploying overseas. Be safe.