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When we arrived in Seoul I’d been awake for more than 40 hours. All of us were beyond exhausted but amazingly, everyone is still smiling. I can’t count the number of times I’ve given silent thanks to Angie Sweers from Ataj Salon for giving me a hairstyle that travels so easily. Before I got off the plane I ran my hands through my hair to rumple the spiky top, and away I went.
The sight of all customs workers wearing protective masks across their faces was a bit disconcerting when we went through customs. We were given a form to fill out asking if we’d had any flu symptoms and what countries we had visited in the past 7 days. We couldn’t help but wonder if we had missed breaking news stories about widespread flu outbreaks.
We were met at the airport by Shirley Commander, entertainment director for Morale, Welfare and Recreation Installation Management Command, Korea region. She hails from S. Carolina originally and has been stationed here in Korea for six years. With her was Mr. Yi, a very nice man who has been assigned to be our driver for the Korean leg of the tour. Mr. Yi has been chauffeuring AFE touring bands around for quite a while. He has been a huge help and is very pleasant company to travel with. We piled our luggage into the (short) bus and headed for Kaya Hotel in Seoul – about an hour away.
Seoul is utterly immense. There are thousands upon thousands of high rise apartment buildings for miles in every direction. Approximately 10 million people (almost half of the country’s residents) live in Seoul The Kaya Hotel, where we’ll be staying for a good portion of our trip, is located on a busy street. We were exhausted after the flight but wanted to eat some dinner before going to sleep so Rusty and I walked down to an Outback restaurant down the street. I ordered salmon with mushroom and vegetable sauce and a sweet potato. I learned that a sweet potato is not necessarily a yam, but may be a sweetened potato. Hmmm. The sauce was very good but was very spicy hot.
In the morning, Rusty and Lee walked down the street to the USO for breakfast. I stayed in the room to pack since I’m allergic to eggs and potatoes, which rules out most breakfast foods for me. I brought plenty of protein bars for the trip because I anticipated that it might be difficult finding foods I can eat. I didn’t have allergy problems years ago when I was on the road full time, but a whole slew of them have cropped up in recent years. Common foods like eggs, potatoes and soy cause crippling fibromyalgia pain now, so it’s been a relief to learn I can survive quite well on the road.
Show #1 Kunsan Air Force Base: Home of the 8th Fighter Wing "Wolf Pack"
The first show of the tour was bound to be a bit stressful since it was our first time setting up and using an unfamiliar sound system, keyboard, guitar amps and drum kit. There were some small parts missing from Pete’s drum kit but fortunately someone kindly loaned him a high hat cymbal and stand to use for the night. And instead of his Hammond B3 organ and full scale Yamaha keyboard, Davey is using a single small keyboard and is running a B3 simulation program through his laptop to give him the B3 sound.
At the start of the show, Colonel Dennis Malfer gave us a very gracious welcome and presented the band with a VERY cool wolf head plaque in appreciation for our performance at the base. Colonel Malfer, whose family resides in Hawaii, told us personnel at Kunsan are usually stationed at the base for a year. Work is underway to “normalize” the base so service men and women can bring their families with them, but it will be a while yet before this is becomes a reality. According to Colonel Malfer's bio , he has served as an instructor pilot, weapons officer, flight commander, operations officer, squadron commander and deputy operations group commander. The colonel also flew as opposing and lead solo for the U.S. Air Force Demonstration Team, the Thunderbirds. His staff assignments include Chief of the Standardization and Evaluation Branch and Division Chief, Operational Support at Headquarters Pacific Air Forces.
Prior to his current position, he was the Operational Support Division Chief at Headquarters Pacific Air Forces. He is a command pilot with more than 4,400 flying hours, including more than 100 combat sorties in the F-4, F-15E and F-16.
We really enjoyed talking with the air force personnel who came out for the show and we hope some of them keep in touch with us. It seems we've met a lot of folks who lived near Ann Arbor Michigan at one time or another. It is a very small world, really.
