With 130 days left in Korea we still don’t know where we going yet. It’s the question everyone asks. And I get it…but  believe me, I want to know more than you do. Because it would kinda be nice to start figuring out the best neighborhoods to live, what I’ll have access to again…{crossing fingers there’s a Panera}.

But it’s a total crap shoot.

The Army gives us the chance to submit our top 3 choices – but it’s completely their call on whether or not they even factor them into consideration.

Since Eric has a specialty MOS [military occupational specialty] it means that’s there’s only a handful of places we could get sent. In some respects knowing the contenders in advance is nice – it takes out some of the fear factor. But then again, it’d be great to be able to choose from more than just our normal handful.

So let’s run down our options:

1. Fort Eustis, VA
2. Fort Rucker, AL
3. Fort Irwin, CA
4. Fort Polk, LA
5. Fort Bliss, TX
6. Fort Hood, TX
7. Fort Campbell, KY
8. Fort Drum, NY
9. Fort Carson, CO
10. Or the great unknown…always a possibility

FORT EUSTIS: It’s in Newport News, Virginia along the Chesapeake Bay – but we’ve been there before & the magic Army 8 ball says “all signs point to no”.

FORT RUCKER: Alabama. South Alabama. It’s a TRADOC base – which stands for training & doctrine. It’s where they train the Apache pilots to not crash them into the ground – so it’s bound to be out in the middle of nowhere.

FORT IRWIN: California. Another TRADOC base. Needless to say, not in my top 3.

FORT POLK: Louisiana. Not too far from home.

FORT BLISS: Just send me to Hell, that would be preferable over Bliss although it would be just as hot. It’s New Mexico – just south of White Sands, but just north of the drug cartels in Juarez. And they deploy.

FORT HOOD: Closest to home. Only a 2 – 3 hour drive depending on traffic on I35. It’s the largest Army base in the world & we’ve been there before, so the odds aren’t so great. But they also deploy.

FORT CAMPBELL: All I can get out of Eric on this one is that he’d…[quote] prefer to never go back there again [end  quote]. Although Kentucky sounds nice to me. It’s bound to be green & actually get cool come Fall.

FORT DRUM: Outside of the Adirondacks in upstate New York. It’s bound to be gorgeous there – but they get 200 inches of snow a year & deploy left and right…and it’s also the furthest away from home.

FORT CARSON: South of Denver in Colorado Springs. It’d be great to be so close to the mountains – we’d be getting friends & family visiting us for a change.

And last but not least…the Great Unknown.

With the Army you never know what you could get, so you always have to factor in some wild curve ball like “congratulations! You’ve been selected to become a recruiter”…been there, done that.

So I thought it might be fun to do a giveaway – if you guess where we end up, I’ll send you a….ahhh….[looking around]…umm…yeah, I’ll send you something. Maybe a box of Korean snacks: green tea KitKats, Korean moon pies? How about a Seoul Starbucks mug? I don’t know, I’ll think of something.

In the meantime, one guess per person please. And although I wish I could tell you when we’ll find out – set a time limit on this thing – the Army doesn’t work that way. Just know that sometime over the next 130 days we’ll get an email saying….

“Congratulations! You have 30 days to report to….”