Guide dog

Note the bus.


Any trip that starts with lightning and drenching rain can't be good, so I was surprised to see smiles on most of the faces of the AFIT students getting on the bus for the trip to Perryville yesterday. Mixed with those smiles were confused looks at my uniform, as I felt it was more professional (and probably in some regulation besides) to wear it while driving the government vehicle as opposed to a Megadeth T-shirt and flip-flops. No one knew I was going to be the driver; one girl had asked in one of my classes, and another had joked, "Not Dan!" and we all enjoyed a hearty chuckle.
Fortunately, the weather cleared up after about an hour, and as those of the passengers that were still awake watched a video of a Perryville documentary on four TV screens the size of a deck of playing cards, I found my way to the Bluegrass Parkway, 127, and 68 into Lexington, Harrodsburg and Perryville. A relatively new bus (only 3k miles on it), it did pretty well on the interstates, getting up to speed limit fairly easily, though struggling on some of the hills. Between Harrodsburg and Perryville, however, is a windy, two-lane road with a surprising 55 mph speed limit, though that number is not designed for 1.5-ton vehicles. All told, I only hit two curbs, no vehicles, and zero confirmed deaths. All was well.
The park manager gave us a thirty-minute lecture in the small, one-room museum, focusing on a couple maps in the room and using a laser pointer to point out marching routes, general's photos, etc. I then left everyone forty-five minutes to explore the museum/gift shop and eat their lunch in the pavilion before gathering up for the outdoor tour.
There were exactly twenty of us, including one faculty member who asked me about the trip the day before so I'd invited him along, and one Navy Lieutenant (the were rest AF majors). The first thing our historian/tour guide did was give us ten minutes of "rank & file" training, showing us how troops were marched around and lined up for battle, spaced far apart enough to use their weapons, but not so far apart for a bunch of bullets to get through. He explained that this is what he does for the 4th and 5th graders, and while I really wanted to point out that we were slightly beyond that, most everyone took it in stride, no pun intended, as folks comically groused about being back in field training, the first row lamenting that they were going to take all the bullets, what have you. At one point, the leader failed to call a Right Face and just said Forward March, so, being in the back row, I simply pushed Rod down into a ditch in front of us. Just following orders.
He finally let us gaggle on our own accord, and took us to some of the spots I had visited in January, only adding his decidedly more knowledgeable tidbits, particularly those related aspects that took place immediately outside the park-owned surroundings. It was still incredible to be able to have a ravine pointed out to us, and be told 140-some-odd years ago a battalion of Confederates popped up over it to charge the position we were standing on. This Very Ground. We walked for almost two hours, and about halfway down one path, I noticed that a large white dog from a neighboring farm was starting to follow us. He became our mascot, enjoying a skritch from nearly everyone, and helping herd the stragglers.
We left around 2:30, and soon after the rain began again, so we couldn't have had better luck while at the Battlefield. Heavy traffic in and around Cincinnati delayed our arrival back on base until 6:30, where I got a lot of nice compliments from everyone as they debused. I asked folks to write down some suggestions/feedback, and I'm going to try and push the faculty to add this trip as a permanent part of the curriculum (hell, I'll even help write the lesson plan), if it means folks can get more exposure to real-world, if historical, military leadership issues as opposed to the generic-slash-civilian ones we've had to study at AFIT.
I'll make sure that future classes find the dog, too.