Two and a half weeks after I returned from Canada, the family left for the States on home leave. This was the first time that all the relatives would see Will who was now almost a year old. But first we would visit the Pacific Northwest to include British Columbia, fly to California, and drive from California to Colorado. I believe in breaking in our kids at an early age for road trips. Tamara was almost five and Rosanna was almost three, and they all did great. 20 July 1990 Friday. We flew from Brussels to Chicago where we spent the night at an airport hotel, having learned previously that it is better to avoid connections late in the afternoon when there is a possibility that thunderstorms could disrupt the follow on flights. 21 July 1990 ... read more

Although our usual Infrastructure Committees visits to various host countries were a week or more in length, upon occasion we took trips to see only one or two projects of significant interest. In these cases we didn't take the spouses. On this occasion, Norway wanted NATO to fund a radar site on top of a mountain in northern Norway. They wanted to show us why this location was of strategic significance, and the difficulty, and therefore the higher cost, of building in such rugged terrain. So on Tuesday, 5 June 1990, we flew from Brussels on a Norwegian military cargo aircarft to Bodo Air Base in northern Norway above the Arctic Circle. From there we took several Huey helicopters to an existing radar site in the Lofoten Islands, where we went through a tunnel into the ... read more

I happened on a great deal from Club Med for a ski week at their club at Leysin, Switzerland, where the kids were free and Linda and I were half price. So from Saturday, December 30, 1989 through Saturday, 6 January 1990 I spent a week skiing while Tamara and Rosanna participated in the children's club that included some very elementary bunny slope skiing, and Linda watched Will, who was too young for their children's club. When I say I skiied, I perhaps overly exaggerate. The snow conditions were not ideal, and I had to exchange my skiis halfway through the week when the metal edge came loose from hitting a rock. I joined an English speaking class; the other option was French. In reality both were French because our instructor didn't know any English. I ... read more

After switching to the Infrastructure Committee which met on Tuesdays from the P&P Committee that met on Thursday, my Easter vacations could start on Wednesdays instead of Fridays. We always looked forward to vacations in the Spring as the long cold winter was over and the flowers were blooming and the sheep were lambing...life was once more upon us and we had to get out and enjoy it. This was especially relevant as Linda was now four months pregnant with new life within her. This time we headed south to the Alps and on to Northern Italy, Tuscany and the Ligurian Sea. 26 April 1989 Wednesday. We drove from Overijse to one of our favorite places in Switzerland, the small village of Steckelberg, at the end of the Lauterbrunnen Valley south of Interlaken in the Bernese ... read more

The committees trips to Iceland was prompted by the refusal by most countries in the committee to grant further exceptions to the International Competitive Bidding rules that allowed sole source procurements through the Icelandic Prime Contractor for all NATO funded construction in Iceland. As the U.S. represented Iceland on the committee (Iceland has no armed forces; their Foreign Ministry was only a dozen individuals located in offices above the Reykjavik Fire Station), we decided that it would be best to take the committee to Iceland to hear first had from the Icelandic authorities why it was in NATO's and Iceland's mutual interest to continue as usual. We also would take this opportunity to show the committee the results of their extensive funding of airfield facilities at Keflavik, POL facilities at Helgavik and the radar installations under ... read more