What this is

First and foremost I am a father of two wonderful boys. I live in Montana, they live in SW Washington with their mother(my ex). Every other week I drive 1,200 miles to see them and spend the weekend with them. They are the lights of my life. Before I was a father I was a Marine, nothing special just a regular infantry grunt TOW gunner. I served 8 years and saw my share of war. Now I am an engineer and I also write software for other engineers mostly in the field of optical engineering.

So what this blog is, is an open letter to my boys that they can read when they get older about their father's travels to see them so when I am gone some day they know what I went through to be able to spend time with them, so that they know how much I love them. When they turn 18 I will hopefully be printing all the entries and images into a small book for each of them to have.

I see a lot of neat things on the drive over and back as well so hopefully there will be pictures and neat stories too. I have been doing this drive for nearly 2 years now. I average about 40,000 miles a year on my car between regular weekend visits, holiday visits etc. So some post will be about working on the car and keeping it in shape for those long drives. My vehicle is a diesel VW Jetta that averages around 40+ mpg and I do 99% of the work on it myself to keep it healthy. Some posts will be about my life here in Montana so they can see the things I do here while I am not with them.

If you happen on my blog by chance and decide to read it, then welcome, but bear in my mind this is ultimately for my children not for anyone else and they may be reading it as they grow older so if you comment please only post things that are child friendly.