Tub o' Soju

I really miss the commaraderie of Korea sometimes, if only because that was practically the only time I was ever social--as social as I could be constantly behind a camera. Each flight I was on was usually pretty tight; on my final tour, I was still accepted by my old flight after I got whisked away to head Operations Training, a day shop. Well, they tolerated me, anyway.

The tour before that, I deejayed at the unit lounge when I wasn't bugging everybody with my Super8 HandiCam. The tour before that, I "Godfathered" an Assassin Game (until some of the "dead folks" got out of hand with their Airsoft Pistols. Undisciplined bastards.

I was never much of a tourist there. I did most of my sightseeing during a 1984 TDY to Yonsei University for a semester of Korean language and culture training; filled up a couple of photo albums from that trip! (I need a new scanner.) Even then, my tutor would ask "What did you do this weekend?" and I would answer (in Korean) that I went down to Osan Air Base to visit friends, then I watched football on AFKN. I'm still not a good tourist; the next year, I scored a primo three-month TDY to Bavaria and I only managed two Morale, Welfare, and Recreation tours (Paris Air Show and N. Italy shopping trip) and one "weekend excursion" (not really, I was doing shift work) for a roadtrip to Austria. Yeah, this was no war-tempo deployment; I had a rental car and stayed at a nice little guest haus in a little town. They offered me a long-term assignment to that post, but I turned them down. I've never regretted that.