From Dan Williams

Howdy Folks,As promised I'm going to be trying to provide some semi frequent updatesthroughout my journey to Iraq. So here we go with the first one...

Its been almost three weeks since a small group of us left Wisconsin to joinup with the 34th Infantry Division Headquarters (Minnesota National Guard)out here in Washington. We had a small send off ceremony before flying outof the Dane County Regional Airport. I didn't see any news stories aboutthe sendoff, we were kind of overshadowed by the deployment of the rest ofthe 32nd Brigade in Wisconsin a week later. Our flights went very smoothlyeven though we flew out on Friday the 13th. Arriving at Ft. Lewis was alittle more chaotic with our bus driver getting lost and a little confusionabout what we were supposed to try to knock out before the start of a threeday weekend.

Ft. Lewis has been entertaining, chaotic, and frustrating... all at once.We've knocked out a bunch of individual training tasks and certifications.Zeroing and qualifying on our M4s, throwing grenades, sitting through funbriefings, and other random tasks. I was able to catch up with 1SG (RET)Gaikowski, who was the First Sergeant of 232nd MICO when I went toAfghanistan, and with 1SG Harris one of the other company First Sergeantsfrom my Afghanistan Deployment. Even ran into one of my Instructors fromUtah who was returning from Afghanistan himself. It was great catching upwith some familiar folks. Unfortunatly I wasn't able to catch up with morefolks or experience Seattle or other areas of Washington. We were onlockdown and had limited free time. The group that I am with was given asix hour (really only 5 hour) pass, however due to some confusion in whatcertifications were transfering from WI I had to try to get everythingsquared away instead of going out for a bit.

I haven't been taking too many pictures but I busted out my camera coupleof times. I posted some pictures here:http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2134493&id=69201841&l=b4a5eYou shouldn't have to be a member of FaceBook to view them, let me know ifit doesn't work for you and I'll try to find a different medium.Well thats about it for now, if you have any questions feel free to askaway. It sounds like I'll be having internet access however I won't knowfor sure until I get there. Once I get over there I'll be suspending mycell phone account so you probably won't be able to leave me messages soemail is the prefered method. I currently don't have an address foroverseas. There is a little bit of controlled chaos since the unit we arereplacing is currently moving to a different Foward Operating Base (FOB).Once I have an address I will get it out to folks.
Keep it Real,
Dan