RVTPilot

Are there still plenty of open spots? I figured with the way the weather has been that this weekend would have filled up early. I am stoked to get out there Saturday. I am one day into this work week and ready for the fookin' weekend already!

Not to take from Hollywood's friend, but if he's booked or can't make the trip, my neighbor (who obvisouly would live in Ridgetucky) does painting and remodelling. Will get you his info if you'd like it. He's had his own business for a while.

Team Broketrack Mountoneanother

Why do you think we were able to get 5 in? I was there. Shit, Bad and I could use a port-a-john for a garage if need be, and still do tire changes.

Yep, I am in.

:bukkake:

a golden shower if I get there Friday night.

Semper Field-dayis......Always Cleaning

What a complete and total waste of taxpayer funds, regardless of what the verdict would have been.

This coming from a guy with the Rangers shield as his avatar.

Perhaps this means Chicago thugs are better marksmen than Afghanis?

Oh c'mon. You have lower standards than this!

Touche.

This is arguably one of the bests posts of this thread, well above any of my own. On point, smash. Kudos!

Oh he would make this epic! Spontaneous periods and all.

It's worth discussing. I spent some of my time prior to being married living both in a barracks, and in my own apartment while being an E3. A couple of my barracks rooms were akin to a college dorm room, some were open squadbays in barraks that would be borderline condemned building by current civilian housing standards. But until I was an E3, living off bas wasn't an option. I had to live in the barracks, which wasn't entirely horrible. I guess what I am trying to say is that it is semantics, to a degree.

I wouldn't invalidate this opion, Cheech, other than to say I think this could very easliy be an entirely different conversation that you may even find a lot of vets agree with. With regard to the previous generation's missteps, I think it's simply our society's emotional pendulum swinigng back the other way, yet to find its center. There has also been a lot in the way of folks arguing since the war started that if you don't support the war, you're not supporting the troops, which is beyond ridiculous. As you said, war isn't dictated by the troops, it's done so by the governments in power. To your point about a camera being present, anytime you involve the media you are going to have a polarized view of a given situation. There are plenty of ways in which the liberties of Americans can be improved upon that wouldn't fall under the responsibilities of our armed forces. In fact, most of it can be done at the citizen level by doing things like registering to vote and actually voting. Again, this conversation can have a true life of its own. However, any of those liberties and freedoms would be moot were it not for those who volunteer to defend them. And once more, we're not asking for anyone's thanks to do so. We just did it because we were comfortable taking on that task knowing that it needs done.

You really have the oversimplication of life down to a science. But to entertain your somewhat irrelevant and nonsensical analogy, let's look at a high school grad who takes a job with a constuction company, starting off with manual labor, but hired to be a drainage pipe layer. His buddy joins the Army and is assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers. We'll give the construction kid $9 an hour, as the national hourly starting wage in construction is $9.06. An E1 makes $1471 a month. $9 x 2080 hours in a standard work year = $18,720. $1471 x 12 = $17,652. For the sake of argument, the construction kid gets a 10 cent an hour raise in 30 days. (That was SOP for our construction company for new hires. 10 cents at 30 days, then another 15 at 90 which came to a 25 cent raise at 90 days. So after 3 months, the construction kid is making $9.25, or $19,240 a year, without any overtime. That E1 in the Army will get promoted to E2 after 6 months of service, and gets $1671 per month, or $20,052, now $812 more annually in base salary. But given that the construction kid was making $9.25 for 3 months before his buddy was promoted to PFC. Now, it will be at least 9 months before that PFC is promoted to E3, so he is done for promotions this year. He will not see any increase in pay, unless he is deployed to an active combat zone. At that point, even the most remote comparision between what the occupations are goes out the window. Don't even try the occupational hazard argument, it doesn't hold water. But our little construction buddy is apprenticing and gaining more responsibility. he's the best, hardest working high school graduate the world has ever seen. However, we can't calculate when he'd be promoted, so let's just give him 3% after a year from his $9.25. That's $9.54, or $19843.20, still $208.80 annually less than his Army buddy. So after a year, our young construction worker has worked no more than 40 hours a week, and made $18,070, given his raises to $9.10 and $9.25 at the 30 and 90 day marks, respectively. The Army private made $18,852, given his promotion to E2 after 6 months, a difference of $782 in his favor. However, that private doesn't get paid overtime. That salary is based on being on duty 24/7. Most days his job has him work the minimum of 8 hours in a day. Typically, that is not the case for young Privates, as they are also discharged with any number of tasks because, as we all know, rank has its privileges! So what is the value of the time spent outside of the 2080 work hours one might work in the private sector compared to what our little soldier made working past his standard 2080? One way we can accomplish this is to see just how many hours of overtime his civilian counterpart would have to work to earn that extra $782. Since he is paid time and a half for OT, his hourly rate would be $13.88. 782 / 13.88 = 56.34 hours, so let's just say 56.5. Divide that by 52 weeks in a year, and he would have to work just over one hour of overtime a week. By comparison, the soldier would have one form or another of 24 hour duty at least once a month. This is known as duty section for most services, and it is typically broken into 4 groups, mainly because there are 4 weeks in a standard month. There are other variables, but this is the industry standard, if you will. So let's take the 16 additional hours he works every month as his only OT. That would be 216 hours. So, all things being equal, our construction lad worked not 56.5 hours of OT, but 216. That would be $2998.08 in his first year, giving him a total salary of $21,068.08, or $2216.08 more than his Army counterpart, and an average of $184.67 a month. So please tell me again where the significant pay disparity is between the military and the private sector? Because, again...having already lived it, I have yet to see it.

Man, I missed out. That would have been sweet! A light bar on my FZR back in the day would have been titties and beer!

Mags, I was about to recognize your last reply to me with proper respect. Then you type up this gem. You seriously have no idea what you are talking about here. If you take someone's MOS, what they make and compare simply that asepct of their responsibilites to what one makes in the private sector, it pales in comparision.

As many will attest, the fact that you are here to tell us the tale matters most. Think of today as an expensive but well taught bike life lesson. Props for having proper gear.

Agreed that there are drawbacks and incentives to both. But the decision to enlist comes with the severing of a person from a great deal of the culture and the liberties that go along with that culture in order to preserve it. No other occupation comes close to requiring that. Civil law enforcement comes close at times, but not as frequent and with as inconsistent in its sources of risk as military life does. Compound that by an American society that has learned from its mistakes with how they treated the folks that came home from Viet Nam, the sights of their next door neighbor reservists and national guardsmen that come home in wheelchairs or not at all, and folks appreciate those sacrifices much more. I just have a problem with the generalization that being the military is simply an occupation, when very clearly it is not. Having a job in the military doesn't mean that being in the service itself is just a job. You leave behind a great deal of all the other aspects of life that even the most demanding civilian jobs do not impose upon. And to your point on unions, it simply went with the analogy. I am not nor have I been in a union of any sort since I got out. We are also paying on my wife's student loans from way back, and she doesn't even do for a living what she was educated for. Life just happens that way sometimes to us all. I will take you at your word that if called upon, be it drafted or "strongly influenced by current events by our government" that you would server without issue. But I will say with a great deal of confidence gained by experience that once your time was done, you would look back at your time spent as more than just career choice. HAHA! Given that I ended up working on jets for my time in, the Air Force had MUCH better facilities, had much newer equipment, and had better looking women to serve beside. Then again, if I ever wanted to hook up with an Air Force chick, all I needed to do was show up in my dress blues on any Air Force base. The flyboys never stood a chance.

Recruiters/recruiting is a whole conversation in and of itself. Would some recruiters lie or omit the truth? Yup. They're salesmen. They have quotas to meet. My experience with recruiters from all branches went from deliberate lies to blatant truth, and all points between. But like any decision, I solicited information from all angles, and resources. If one makes a significant life-impacting decision based solely on the information the salesman provides, who is the bigger fool? You're absolutely right. Ford doesn't offer you free housing. You are free to return home each night to the home of your choosing, paid for by wages agreed upon by both your employer and your union representative. (Or perhaps you are in a private sector job that is non-union and your wages are established by the market and your negotiations during your job interview.) Nor do they give you a free education, just offer a tuition assistance or reimbursement program. Probably not nearly as good as what our service members and veterans are simply given for their service. Perhaps the next time the UAW and Ford square off on a labor dispute, the UAW can use the G.I. Bill and the job a relatively equal to one found as a member of the armed forces that they can use a leverage in negotiations. I'm sure Ford or Chevy would love to discuss the parallels between what a line foreman and platoon sergeant do, since really, they're just jobs. Oh, and the free food! Yes! Like your fridge open all day long to chose from whatever you want, whenever you want. Oh, wait...mess hall hours are from 0500 to 0830, 1130 to 1330, and 1530 to 1730. Though admittedly some bases have really fine chow halls. Which compliments well the free housing you receive at the base of your choosing. Oh, wait...my bad. I forgot, I am on orders, not choices. Hope I like what I find when I get to my next duty station! But what difference does it make..it's all free! Just like the MREs I will get to chose from when I get to the field/deployment/combat zone. (Omelet with ham was one of my favorites, but most will disagree. Then again, I never had a discerning palate.) One thing you forgot to mention is the duty sections they have at Ford, where every 4th week, your line is responsible for non-stop manning of security posts and things such as barracks watch or being the staff duty officer, regardless of whether there is a 96 that weekend for Thanksgiving or not. Shit...how did I forget free medical?! Meh...our fucking president is taking care of that for everyone. Moot conversation. But the next time you feel that you need immediate medical attention, skip the ER at Cleveland Clinic and head over to the sick bay tent. There you will find (and I genuinely mean this) the most dedicated staff of medical personnel absolutely dedicated to their job as much as you are to yours of not more, but are doing so hamstrung by a congressional approved budget that often struggles to keep them supplied with even the most essential provisions. (Side note to anyone else reading this. Navy Corpsmen are the most gallant of all battlefield personnel that exists. Every one that I ever met are the most selfless of all service men and women I have had the pleasure of serving beside.) Oh, you know what else you forgot...physical readiness. I forgot about Ford's weight, appearance and performance standards! I will have to ask my cousin who works at the Brookpark engine plant what is latest run time for 3 miles is. I hope that he wouldn't run the risk of having to do additional PT outside of his work hours that he didn't plan for. Is there anything else here I am missing? I mean, I know I have just made the Marines sound like I spent seven years in Alcatraz and not as a Marine. I thoroughly enjoyed my time and miss it very much sometimes. But it wasn't all fun and games, it certainly wasn't a democratic or free society - and I accepted that and understood the ramifications when I signed up. Therein lies part of the sacrifice. You give back plenty of your own personal freedoms so others never have to. And I did it not for the thanks, for Christ's sake. I never boarded a C-130 for God-knows-where looking for a ticker tape parade when I got off the ramp. The most I think I ever asked for was someplace to catch a couple hours sleep and maybe a cold beer if another Marine knew where they were. It was a lot of many different things, but for goddamn sure it wasn't just a job. But please...continue to explain to me where I am wrong. Because apparently I have somehow missed how the other half lives between my time "on the job" as a Marine, and the 14 years afterward where I have held a job or two that were so incredibly similar to my time in service that it was fucking creepy.

I don't recall asking for one's praise, or on behalf of anyone else for that matter, but perhaps you found some of my commentary to ambiguous. To this point, I haven't seen anyone soliciting praise, only appreciating when thanks is given. Collecting Thank You cards wasn't on my mind the day I signed up for the Marines, or the day I left. However, I would not ever consider being unappreciative and potentially insulting anyone who took the time to thank me, regardless of whether or not I thought they understood why they should or should not be thanking me. Semantics, perhaps. Taking your comments at face value, you clearly have very little understanding the responsibilities one takes on when they take the oath to defend our nation, and the sacrifices made along with that decision. That, or you simply have callous disregard for them. It goes without saying that a lot of what makes military life so vastly different than any civilian occupation cannot be fully appreciated until one is subject to it. So I don't expect you to be armed with the knowledge necessary to make a comments that can be taken as anything more than one's opinion based merely on observation. However, I might take your opinion in higher regard had your comments been more inquisitive and less pointed, and would be willing to give your commentary better credence. But curtly dispensing your opinion as if it was fact does little to support your argument. Again, you are absolutely entitled to feel that way. I genuinely wouldn't want your opinion changed because I was any way even remotely involved with defending your right to have it. Nor would I care to have your opinion sway to my side against your better judgement. I simply would appreciate it if someone who so strongly exercises the freedoms that have been provided to them to exercise a modicum of respect for the fact that getting in line to join the Army isn't akin to getting in line to punch your time card at the Ford plant.

A very Happy Father's Day to all the other Dads out there.