Air Show & Animals

The highlight for many people this weekend will be the Malmstrom Open House and Air Show, featuring the return of the Canadian Snowbirds aerial demonstration team. Welcome back, Snowbirds. You’ve been in our collective thoughts since last year, and it is great to have you back in Great Falls to amaze and thrill our community.

On a more terrestrial note, don’t forget that the annual “Spay-ghetti” dinner will be held tomorrow night to raise money for The Animal Foundation’s spay & neuter programs. For more details, call 454-1720. And in related news, don’t forget that the newly-formed “Diamonds In The Ruff” will be conducting an “adopt-a-thon” on Saturday at PetCo.

MORE: got an e-mail from Alan, a local racing fan:

“…there will be Sprint cars at the local track tonight and tomorrow night. Sprints are the fastest cars on the track, they hit a top speed of over 100mph on the straight stretch. There will be cars from Canada and the USA; the race is called the ‘Can Am Challenge’.”

More details at the Electric City Speedway site. Thanks Alan!

May 16, 2008 | Filed Under events, military, animals | 2 Comments

Malmstrom Wins!

Good news from Malmstrom Air Force Base! I’m sure most of you know about military competitions: intra-service contests to determine the best of the best. In the Air Force world of Space Operations and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM), the competition is known as Guardian Challenge.

Read The Whole Thing >>>

May 12, 2008 | Filed Under military | 1 Comment

Malmstrom Update

A few tidbits about Malmstrom Air Force Base: first, the 2nd Avenue North gate (formerly the “main” gate) will be closed on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday (May 8-10) due to construction. The normally closed gate behind First Liberty Federal Credit Union will be open to inbound traffic from 6:30-8:00 am, and to outbound traffic from 4:00-5:00 pm on Thursday and Friday. As far as I know, the 10th Avenue North gate will be open for business as usual during this time.

Second, if you’ve been to the Malmstrom Clinic lately, you know that there’s some serious renovation going on: the entire front lobby and roundabout have been torn down and sealed off, and will likely be closed until September. The pharmacy has temporarily relocated to the West entrance until the front lobby is complete.

Third, it’s been a helluva few weeks at Malmstrom: first we had Al Roker and NBC on hand to broadcast from a missile silo; then we had the tragic shooting involving two Airmen; and then the flaming Humvee. Add all of that to the joyous return of the deployed Airmen, the Open House & Air Show coming up next weekend, plus the normal routine of maintaining hundreds of nuclear ICBMs, and you’ve got a bunch of busy, engaged troops. Hats off to all the Airmen and those who support them!

May 7, 2008 | Filed Under events, military | 1 Comment

Malmstrom on “Today Show”

If you’re up early enough you can catch some of Malmstrom’s finest as they are featured on a segment of “The Today Show” titled “Access Granted,” which takes viewers to locations that are not normally seen by regular folks. From the AF Times:

Al Roker will broadcast one segment 10 feet above a nuclear warhead while standing on the exit doors of the missile silo, said Maj. Laurie Arellano, an Air Force Space Command spokeswoman.
“He’ll be standing on the deadliest location in the world,” she said.
The segments will air from Malmstrom at 7:45 a.m. and 8:45 a.m. local time. The first segment will be broadcast from the missile silo, the second from the missile control center.

It will air locally on cable channel 6. And if you’ve never seen a missile launch, check out this video clip. Awesome.

UPDATE, Tuesday afternoon: here’s what the Air Force had to say about this Today Show visit, and a picture of Al Roker on the scene.

Al Roker Gets Frisked at a Malmstrom Missile Site

May 6, 2008 | Filed Under military, media | 3 Comments

Redneck Hippie is…

…you fill in the blank. I know that I once promised to forever ignore Redneck Hippie, aka Larry Kralj, but his lunacy is so venomous and so mean-spirited, that it deserves some sort of response, if only to provide a counter to his rants. Oh, and besides suffering from BDS, he’s also flat-out wrong on some of his recent claims.

Read The Whole Thing >>>

Here’s some of his latest rants from the Tribune Forums, directed at both (1) the media’s coverage of the return of Air Force troops from their deployment to a war-zone, and (2) the Airmen themselves:

Redneck Hippie
Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 9:19 am Post subject: DOH!
Enough with the welcome home crap. As the dick, cheney would say, “SO”? It AIN’T like they’re comin’ back from WWII! They got their overseas pay, their combat pay, and a very pleasant stay! For THIS they get a front page picture? Sheesh. This country has gone goofy! We’ve gone soft in the head!

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:04 am Post subject:
WHAT did they DO for us? Hell, I know TRUCKERS who are away from home longer than that! How many guys did they lose again? Sheesh. Murcans have become soft in the head.

Posted: Tue Apr 15, 2008 11:22 am Post subject: DOH!
Here, I’ll make it REAL simple for the whiners. The homecoming should be commensurate with the amount of sacrifice! HOW MANY TROOPS DID THE LOSE? HOW MUCH DID THE “SUFFER”? WHAT DID THEY ACCOMPLISH?
They GOT their overseas pay. They GOT their combat pay. They probably GOT some other pay I have forgotten. And they did this for a job! Where’s the big sacrifice? Again, I know TRUCKERS that are away from home more than THESE guys were!
They were NOT protecting me. For you see, NO Iraqi has EVER done anything to me! An IDIOT, bush, started a war for nothing! If you morons want to be mad at someone, be mad at bush! HE’S the one who’s bankrupted our country and killed so many innocent people for NOTHING!
I will say that these folks returning probably did a good job at what they were supposed to do. That’s pretty much what we ALL do.

Oh, where to start…I’ll have more on this soon. Anyone wanna have fun picking apart his diatribes in the meantime?

UPDATE, 10:20 pm: AJ is right, in the comments, when he advises me not to feed the troll. Larry does far more damage to his credibility and reputation with his own words than I could ever do.

Deep breath. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled blogging.

UPDATE, Thursday afternoon: I have edited one of the comments below; the original comment, from Mike, contained information that I deemed inappropriate for this site. No offense intended to Mike - his comment was sincere, but references to Larry’s family on this site is off-limits.

« Hide It

April 16, 2008 | Filed Under military, media, people | 4 Comments

The Horse Comes Home

Good news yesterday as members of the 819th RED HORSE squadron returned home from their long deployment. They’ve all earned their “down time,” and I’m sure they will appreciate seeing the signs around town welcoming them home. Here’s an example of the amazing things the Horse did “over there.” And if you’ve ever wondered what the phrase RED HORSE means: Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron, Engineer. A bit clunky, but it works. More RED HORSE here and here.

April 15, 2008 | Filed Under military | 1 Comment

Malmstrom AFB Access

Some changes to the hours of operation at the gates to Malmstrom Air Force Base, effective last week: The 2nd Avenue North gate is now open 24-hours a day, 7 days a week. The 10th Avenue North gate will be open only Mondays through Fridays, from 6:00 am until 10:00 pm; it will be closed on weekends, holidays, and Air Force Space Command family days.

January 23, 2008 | Filed Under military | 3 Comments

Thank You

Nifty way to send a quick “thank you” to military personnel - a brief text-message!

Trust me - it may not seem like much, but every little bit of support that troops receive is very much appreciated.

UPDATE: hmmm…looks like the links in the graphic don’t work too well - not sure if it’s a Firefox thing or not…but here’s the bottom line: you can send a text message to “the troops” by sending a short (160 characters or less) message to 89279, or you can click here to send one via the website “America Supports You.”

November 19, 2007 | Filed Under military | Leave a Comment

Montana Veterans Memorial

We visited the Montana Veterans Memorial a few days ago, and were both proud and humbled. It’s a beautiful place, and seeing the names of so many Montanans who served is amazing. We found the plates for my girlfriend’s father and grandfather - her father was an Air Force pilot in the 60s and 70s, and her grandfather was a Marine in WWII. We also saw the plates for Colonel Einar Malmstrom (Malmstrom Air Force Base) and Capt Shawn McCaughey (Canadian Snowbirds). There’s also a bench dedicated to the First Special Service Forces, the American-Canadian team assembled during WWII at Fort Harrison in Helena that became the forerunner to modern-day Special Forces units.

(click to see full-size pix)

October 7, 2007 | Filed Under history, military | 2 Comments

Six Years

Today marks six years. Six years since the unthinkable happened. Yes, life has returned to “normal” in many ways, for most people, but what happened on 9/11 will never be forgotten, and indeed lives on every single day for the American military. Although Malmstrom does not have fighter jets or heavy bombers, the Airmen of Malmstrom are serving literally on the front lines around the world, as noted in a speech that I wrote four years ago. And today - September 11, 2007 - another team (RED HORSE) of Malmstrom Airmen is being deployed “over there” in support of the Global War on Terrorism. Keep them in your thoughts, and start thinking now about holiday “care packages” that you can send to them.

September 11, 2007 | Filed Under military | 1 Comment

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