Trip to Osan

I'm one of the few naval aviators stationed in Korea.  As a flyer, one of my requirements is to get an annual flight physical from a military flight surgeon.  You know, cause only the flight surgeons have the extra large calipers to measure an aviator's huge head.  Well, the closest flight surgeon is at the Osan Air Force Base, about a 4.5 hour drive from Busan, traffic dependent.  Here are a couple of pics from that trip.

We saw many of these traffic speed cameras.  As crazy as the driving is in Korea, I think the accident rate is pretty low.  I'm sure these cameras have a lot to do with that.  It's hard to sustain a high rate of speed on the roads with these cameras.  Unless you don't care about paying a bunch of speeding tickets that is.

Houses are a rare sight here.  Most everyone lives in high rise apartments.  There just aren't a lot of houses in the city.  These houses were on the outskirts of Osan.  They were pretty big too.

This is me and Mr. Yun eating lunch at Chili's at Osan Air Force base.  Mr. Yun is one of my command's Marine Transportation Assistants.  We are very fortunate to have him on our staff.  Chili's was awesome!  I want my baby back, baby back, baby back ribs...and we got 'em!  We talked about how huge American meals can be.  Koreans just don't eat that way.  No wonder so many of them are slim and trim.

This was hanging in the doctor's office.

And so were these.  Let's just say I was glad the flight surgeon didn't have to use the large gloves.

This is the scene of the crime.  I gotta say that I was a little humiliated for a split second.  There I was, butt-ball naked with my elbows on this table just like the doc asked.  He's just about to become intimate with my nether regions, when all of a sudden, he stops.  He says that I might want to angle a little bit to the left so that he has more room to maneuver.  Sheesh.  I graciously scooched my exposed ham hock a few inches to the left, I guess so he could get more leverage or something.  Yeah, I know - too much information.  At least he was kind enough to leave the tissues so I could clean up the collateral damage.

I joke about the whole physical thing but it's crucially important.  Back in the day, as a young junior officer up for my flight physical, I was ecstatic when the flight doc would simply ask me how I was feeling and then sign my physical paperwork.  The older you get, the more you realize that glossing over the physical isn't a good thing.  I've heard too many stories of tumors, cancer and other major medical issues being discovered (or not discovered) in an untimely manner.  The doc at Osan was very thorough and I was glad for it.  Get your stuff checked out.  Even if you have to drive 4.5 hours and scooch your behind a little bit to get it done.  Until next time -- C2