Retirement Ceremony and the Alpine Coach “mini-rally” continues…(Elks Lodge 309 – COS, CO)

Another fun day!

First of all, I had the pleasure and honor to attend a former co-workers retirement ceremony.  It was held at Schriever Air Force Base within the highly-secretive Missile Defense Agency Integration & Operations Center (MDIOC).  I worked there for ~7 years after I retired from the Army at Ft Carson in 2007.  It was truly a ‘grand ceremony’ for a ‘grand gentleman’.

Pictures aren’t allowed inside the facility, but I hope to receive some “official” photos that the public affairs group took during the ceremony… if so, I’ll post them later.  Meanwhile, here’s a front page photo of the ‘flyer’ or ‘handout’ with biography that everyone in attendance received…

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Arthur, or ‘Art’ as he is known, completed over 32 years of government service in DoD Contracting and now plans on retiring to Hershey, PA.  Good Luck Art!  It was a privilege to have known you during my time at the MDA.

It was great to see the old workplace and coworkers… it’s been just a little over a year since I resigned my position there and we went full-timing in the Coach.  Other than the awesome ceremony, the best part was catching up with the many fine folks I used to work for and with.   Many of my old coworkers follow along on this blog or Facebook and know what we’ve been up to (somewhat), but many also do not.  So, when asked (repeatedly) by many folks during the reception; I found myself trying to remember some of the many places we’ve visited in the last year.  It’s truly difficult to pick a favorite place we’ve been over the last year, it seems like we’ve been to so many.  I passed out a lot of my “non-business” UrbanEscapeVehicle.com business cards, so maybe more will follow along now.

When I returned from the ceremony, I found Stilla at the Elks Lodge pool with our grandson Kaan, and a couple of her girlfriends. (Sorry, no pics)

And then, before long we were hanging out with our Alpine Coach friends again as they trickled in from their day of sightseeing around the Colorado Springs area.

Another fun evening of good conversation with good people ensued…

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This picture (below) almost looks like a repeat of yesterday, but it’s not – we just happened to snag the same table at the downstairs bar.

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And then we spent some time out on the patio when the karaoke got a little too loud for conversation…

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Jack Giddens and Ricky Broussard at Elks Lodge 309.

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Like I stated at the beginning of this post… Another fun day!

We expect to meet up again tonight (Friday) for dinner here at the Elks Lodge with the Gidden’s and Broussard’s.  Unfortunately the Foster’s left this morning to visit relatives in Littleton.   Maybe they’ll be back by before we leave here on the 2nd of July.  Hopefully, the Foster’s will sign up for the Alpine Coach Lake Powell Rally in October and we’ll see them there… I know they were tossing around the idea. 🙂

Stay tuned for more impromptu Alpine Coach “mini-rally” fun…