07/28/2012 or The Longest Bike Ride.

* All mentions of the word "bike," refer to my Dad's motorcycle.

I am the most uncool biker chick...Ever.   Despite me being severely uncool, riding behind my Dad, in a pack of seven motorcycles makes me look...or at least feel super intimidating!   There was a huge cruise and rally today, so if our little group drove close to another group.  Boom. Instant Banditos.  Also there is this this not secret little hand wave that most bikers do to bikers passing by.  Riding on a motorcycle makes me part of a club full of bad guys and pretend bad guys.

Other than pretending like I had scary knuckle tattoos I got to ride through pine and cedar forests full of deer, sprawling fields of vegetables and berries, pastures of cows, horses...alpacas. Small logging towns, the state capitol, and oyster beds. A mushroom farm, Indian reservations, and in my opinion some of the prettiest little roads in WA.

And even with all of that, I got to spend time with my Dad, not saying much...just hanging out, just the way we like it.

07/26/2012

This adventure starts yesterday evening.   My husband tells me he thinks I should send my overseas clearance packet again, just to be sure it gets through so we can have our conference call and hopefully get his orders for us to be moved to Europe.   Not a big deal I open my Inbox, click the "Military" folder and forward it to the person I need to.   Fifteen minutes later I get an auto-response that the send has failed due to size limitations.    I sent to my other email no problem.  I sent it again...send failure.  I change the size to smaller...send failure.  I change the format...send failure.   This is obviously not working so I email the person in charge and ask for size limitations and best format.

This morning I get an email saying it might need to be two to three different emails with different attachments, or I could fax it to their new fax number (The fax numbers I was given were...disconnected.)   I punch the number and on the last page; Communication error *403 send failure please try again.  I do.  Error *403. Again. Error *403.   I fax one page that reads "TEST." Sent.   So I break up my fax into two parts.  Sent and Sent.    I email the person I need to informing them I sent the fax.   Ten minutes later I get an email saying that it was received, everything looks great except the provider didn't sign pages 8,10,11.  Hilarious.

I email back asking if I can use a different provider.  The response, No.  So I flip through my packet and find the provider's number.   Disconnected.   I send him an email asking if I can fax them my packet.   I get that faxed over to them and now I'm waiting because I'm not sure if the signed fax is coming back to me or to going to my husband's base.

My question is, if my husband hadn't asked me to send it again...how long do you think we would have gone before someone in Admin got to us?