Embedded Architect

I have just begun a new assignment this week at Scott Air Force Base where I am embedded in the Facilities Management office. My chief project is the consolidation of the Army and Air Force transportation command components. Unlike my job in Kabul and in Texas, there won't be much to photograph for the sake of the blog. Suffice it to say, this is another unique professional experience in a very cool place. And yes, there are aspects of it that are secret. http://www.transcom.mil/

Another part of my job will be to look for opportunities at Scott in which my employer may obtain other contract work, particularly in engineering and quality control fields where I have little experience. So that might be considered a sort of marketing job. Overall, there will be little design in this assignment and a lot more planning and project management. I'm looking forward to it!

I'll travel to St. Louis every week from Liberty. Yes, I am newly wed, and yes, being away from my new family will suck, but unlike the other two jobs I've had this year, I shall be home with the wife and kids every weekend. The professional development and the mere opportunity to have a job during VERY hard times for architects, are both what will make this next year worth the sacrifices.

So long Texas

I returned home from Red River Army Depot for the final time (this season anyway) and was sad to leave my familiar country roads. I made the last trip without my GPS on at all, which I really don't need to get there and back, or do I? Well, I know the way, but as usual I missed a few route changes, like where you get on and off of 71 highway as it crosses and shares the road temporarily with highways like I-44 near Joplin MO and I-40 near Fort Smith AR. I like the GPS mostly because it tells me my elevation and it tells me exactly the minute when I'll arrive at my destination. I like to drive a little faster and watch the ETA get nearer than further. So, here are a few scenery shots from Arkansas, my favorite state, other than my home state of Missouri.

Accident Site and Other Scenery

Here is the view of my accident site from last month's bike wreck. I was down in Texas working for another two weeks and took a drive over there to recollect. I had bought a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant in Texarkana and delivered it to Brett, the man who rescued me and drove me to the hospital some 25 miles away. He didn't recognize me on his doorstep, as I had been barely dressed in my scanty hospital garb with tubes and bandages last time we met. While photographing, I met a neighbor who had seen Brett load me and my bike into his truck and take off with me. She sent me his driveway, which I could barely remember, but I knew I was there when I found it. Perhaps I'll be back soon and can develop a real friendship with him. He was truly the Good Samaritan that day.

Northeast Texas sprouts lots of lovely roadside wildflowers. Here is a shot from a highway offramp. The last photo I shot in the local cemetery where I took a walk one evening after a long day in dusty wharehouses. What a parallel to spend the day in dusty environs of stacked crates and old engines and then come to this tranquil and lovely place full of memories of the living and fresh flora.

Dubai Visits

I have finally taken the time to upload my photos from two visits to Dubai. Here they are for your enjoyment: http://picasaweb.google.com/mmundy.architect/DubaiVisits Feel free to ask any questions or request locations where I took these. I'll do my best to help.

tangle with a pitbull

This was not my best week ever, but it sure was exciting! Monday after work Troy ran our truck out of gas and we had to spend several hours waiting on security staff from the Army Depot to help us fetch gas in a 1-gallon water jug. The next day we went off-roading and got the truck really muddy, but we also loosened up a nail so the tire was nearly flat Wednesday morning. After a torrential rainstorm, Troy and replaced the tire without even getting our pants muddy. That evening, I decided to go for a bike ride... all was well till I ran into a pitbull dashing across the road. I flipped over my handelbars, broke two of my ribs and my lung collapsed 20%. A neighbor in a pickup picked me up and drove me to the nearest hospital 25 miles away in Texarkana. I spent 3 days there, recovering with much road rash after lots of x-rays, a cat-scan and some unwanted poking and prodding. All things considered, I'm very fortunate. My helmet protected my brain, my good looks are intact and I have no broken apendages! I was released today and should be home in Liberty Monday night.

My House

Ever wondered what my house looks like? It is pretty much as finished as we're gonna get it. I took these photos today. Looks pretty good for having been built in 1886.

Flinging Mud in Northern Arkansas

I've been back to Texas for the last two weeks and have two more ahead of me. There's little to do for fun down there but play golf, ride my bike and fling mud with the H3 that one of the guys rented. Attached are some photos from our red-neck excursions. Northern Arkansas is far more beautiful than I expected. Probably it will become a backpacking and float-tripping destination for my family in years to come. It begins only 3 hours to the state line due south of Kansas City on 71 highway.

Red River Field Team

Here is a photo of the people I work with each day here in the field. This is an action photo, not a portrait. I just thought you'd like to see part of the environment I'm working in. The office is just spare room on the military base. We find a place like this at each base where we can recharge our laptops and plug in our printer. Today, being our 8th day here, we spent most of our 10 hours on these darned hard chairs doing CAD and spreadsheet work.

Six of our team are young single people. Most have been out of college just a few years. Their titles range from Civil Engineer, to Environmental Scientist, to CAD Drafter, to Soil & Agregate Technician. They all use Tough Books, which are a type of laptop that is water and shock resistant. The project owns them. The older team members, including me, are married with children and we all have professional registrations and many other credentials. We use our own fragile laptops. There is one other architect like me. The other two are project managers with backgrounds in field inspection work. All these people have quickly become friends. They are not "Clique-ish" in the least. They are all very interesting and good natured.

On a typical day, I take an assistant from among these young people, with our computers, to several warehouses to measure and draw them, take photos and fill out schedules for wall and door types, heights of trusses, roofs and locate curbs and mezzanines. Our first priority is to determine the volumes of storage space available in each building. We collect other information to document the aspects of each building which will help our client manage and maintain their facilities for years to come . Also attached is an aerial of Red River Army Depot. I'm working on the 14 similar looking white roofed buildings on the east side of the depot between 3rd and 8th streets. Probably they are about 50 years old.

The depot stores all kinds of army stuff, but they also rebuild Hummers and tanks. There are lots full of these which are newly painted and reassembled. There are also lots full of those which have been badly damaged. I have seen some tanks which are totally destroyed, having run over mines or IEDs in Iraq or Afghanistan. The inch-thick steel armour plating has been shattered like a clay pot. It is a sobering thought that for each one I see there were also many lives lost in and near them.

On a brighter note, RRAD also has some of the new MRAPs, which stands for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle. They have a V-shaped underbelly. After an IED attack, the wheels may be blown off the thing, but the soldiers climb right out with few injuries but bruises. They are a real life-saver. Less a jeep and more like a "short bus" on steroids. I just wonder when SUV dealerships will start selling a glossy chromed version to civilians.

I'll drive home from here on Friday. Eight hours through the Arkansas Ozarks is actually quite refreshing. I'll be back here the first few weeks of April. In May, I believe I'll be in Oklahoma at Tinker AF Base. Well, it's not great to be away from home so much, but it's better than being at home all the time without a job at all... like so many architects. I read in a trade journal that 17,000 US architects have been laid off in the last 5 months! Etc, etc. Tune in next week...

Turpentine Creek

This weekend I met my family in Bentonville Arkansas for goodtimes in a hotewell (as Ben calls it) what with the swimming pool and waffle maker. We took a day trip to nearby Eureka Springs for some toy shopping and lunch overlooking the steep-sided valley lined with victorian homes and shops. We then went to nearby Onyx Cavern, which is such an old show cave that we found most of the stalactites had been broken off. The tour was self guided with the use of headphones. Also nearby is Turpentine Creek, which touts itself as the world's largest publicly accessible refuge for Big Cats. When asked which was better this or Disney World, Ben said, "This." To say the least we enjoyed stimulating the economy with our little vacation.

Shortest Distance vs Shortest Time

I bought a Magellan Road Mate GPS navigator for my travels in my new job. On Sunday I drove down south on 71 highway through western Missouri and Arkansas. When I first left town I set the GPS to Shortest Time and it calculated an 800 mile route. Must have been only using Interstate highways. I then set it to Shortest Distance. Well somewhere in Arkansas I got off 71 where it turned east to bypass a mountain. I bought a snack and starting the car again, the GPS told me to go through town southward. Before long I was on a road without stripes and the pavement was pretty rough. Common sense said "Stop!" and so I did and took time to zoom way out on the GPS map. I could see that some miles ahead the road I was on ran into 71 as it returned from the mountain bypass. I proceeded driving and before long I was driving over that mountain on a red dirt road! Well if you know me you know I love to take scenic detours. I did finally get to the highway and it remains a mystery as to weather the "shortest distance" route was equal to the "shortest time" had I followed 71 around the mountain.

+ The worst part of the drive was the half hour I spent on pins and needles when I realized upon descending the mountain that I had but a 16th of a tank left. It was Sunday, after 5 pm in rural Arkansas. I turned off the blue-grass music I'd played all day as I imagined spending the night on the shoulder with some hillbillies like the Greiner Brothers watching me from not far enough away. (Movie reference there... Can you name it??) Alas I did find an open station. Amazing how all my fears went away when the tank was full again!

Snoopy's Pier

Okay, here are a few of my friends from the Mactec field team taken at lunch today. Phil is the QA/QC manager, Christi is our technician, Troy is a fellow architect. He is showing me how a master does this work. The bird's name is Woodstock.

Padre Island

I arrived in Corpus Christi yesterday for a week of work on the Naval Air Station. After a day at work I spent the first evening in the sand dunes of Padre Island and at Snoopy's Pier where I had a tasty dinner of fish, clams and shrimp. Here are a few photos of the beach and sunset.

Drottz Group

It has been so long since I entered an update on my roller-coaster life that I left out my other job. I haven't made a penny, but I'm a tentative partner in a small architecture design/build firm called Drottz Group. So far my contribution has been building a website. http://www.drottzgroup.com/ The founders, Vern Drottz and Doug Drottz (brothers), have made a place for themselves in the field of historic preservation and garage additions. They are awesome.

Honestly, it is a real priveledge to be part of Vern's business endevors. In the long run, when this depressing economy turns around, I hope I'll be working with the Drottz Group full-time. Here is a picture of me at my card-table desk in the file-storage room behind Vern's office. Oh, and Vern's office is behind his dad's accounting office. I guess when my website wins him a big comission, I might get an upgrade in workspaces. While I'm out measuring military warehouses, Vern and Doug have a lot of marketing to do.

Same name, New game

In case you've been wondering, I still work for Mactec but I won't be back to Kabul. After several weeks at home, I'm now involved in another military-related project for the Defence Logistics Agency. They keep track of everything the military owns that is in storage in locations around the world. Last week I was in Jacksonville FL at the Naval Air Station documenting warehouses. The resulting product of our labors will be reports and data that will support the DLA's facilities management needs. The photo shows an aerial from http://maps.live.com/ of some of the buildings our team measures and draws in cad. The subject matter isn't too exciting, but the experience (being part of a field team, visiting cities and bases, working outside the office and, once I return to the office, recording these structures with BIM software) is very fulfilling to me having had needs unmet during most of the last 14 years of my career. (Whew, long sentence.) In coming weeks I'll be in Corpus Christi and Texarkana.

Life at the Corps of Engineers in Kabul

I found this article online written by a lady who volunteered for deployment to Afghanistan. She is an employee of the US Corps of Engineers at the AED compound, which stands for Afghan Engineering District. Her experience is similar to mine, with exception of living quarters. She does complain about being confined, but frankly, she has it a lot better than I did. I had a private bathroom at the villa, but I had nowhere to go for a jog, play volley ball or sit in the grass under tall pine trees like you'll see in the photos. Of course there are many pros & cons to our two situations. For example the Corps employees must wear those baggy uniforms & floppy hats all the time. http://www.aed.usace.army.mil/News/Stories/reflection2.html


Here is an article about a guy I met at the AED compound. I really enjoyed reading his impressions: http://www.defendamerica.mil/profiles/june2006/pr061406ms1.html

Flying to Dubai

I flew out of Kabul on the 3rd of January, the first day it snowed in Kabul. I was quite nervous because of the snow. My visa expired that day and I feared what might happen if I couldn't leave Afghanistan till later in the week. I have heard enough stories of Afghan prisons and bribery to know you don't want to get caught doing anything illegal there. After only an hour's delay, I finally boarded Kam Air and was off the ground. The snowy weather was behind me by the time we got over eastern Afghanistan. The desert-like mountain terrain of Iran and Iraq were clear to see below.

I spent the night at the most luxurious hotel I've ever visited called the Le Meridian. I ate at a "fish-market" style restaurant where I chose fish from beds of ice to be prepared however I liked. I ate a baby shark! I spent the 4th mostly on a tour bus or wandering the shopping centers of Dubai. I'll soon post those photographs.

For this entry, I'll just upload a shot of a familiar guy in front of a familiar building... "familiar" as in, "you should have seen this stuff on the net already."

Dirty Place

Kabul is a very dusty and dirty place. When you go outside, the air stinks of exhaust from the diesel generators that power the villas in the neighborhood. Remember that public electricity is only available for a few hours every 2nd to 4th day. At night, now that winter is here, it also smells of wood fires too. Because Kabul is surrounded by very high mountains, called the Hindu Kush, the pollution doesn't float away. It is very dusty here too and most streets are packed dirt. In the photos you'll see a boy sweeping the muddy street behind his house. I took that today through my staircase window. He's standing in a very shallow puddle. I suppose his mom sent him out there to clean up a bit. Yuck. The other photo shows my carpet after I packed away my rug, which I shipped home today. That rug only lay there for about two months. I know the cleaning ladies vacuum my room about once a week. Extra Yuck.

Christmas Cake

Check out the pretty cake we got for our Christmast party last week. We held it for our Afghan employees. It had to be early because the Ex-pats began leaving for their R&R 2-week vacations. Me and two other fellows are staying here over the hollidays to hold down the fort.

Folks from far and wide sent all kinds of gifts, which we bagged for each Afghan employee to share with the children in his family. Many of the families included kids from newborn to their early 20's, all living under one roof.

Treasure Chests from Pakistan

A store on Camp Eggers sells these elaborate chests, which are built in Pakistan. They come in sizes 18", 24" & 36" wide. Some have drawers on the front side. Some have secret compartments! All have inlaid brass and hand carvings. You can order them with your name inlaid too. Aren't they beautiful? The prices range from $95 to $250. Small price to pay, huh?