FOOD SAVED MY LIFE

You always read about stories of how food causes heart problems, cholesterol issues, high blood pressure, cancer, and other bad things. This is a true story that explains how food actually saved my life.

I spent six years in the United States Air Force. The first three years I was an Air-Launched Missile Systems technician. In civilians terms: I tested the electronics and mechanics of air-launched nuclear delivery vehicles. I was stationed at Griffiss AFB in upstate New York and never had any temporary duty assignments to other places (TDYs) - so it was pretty boring stuff.

Then I cross-trained to a new career field - Satellite and Wideband Communications technician. After graduating from my technical training school (Honor Graduate) , I was assigned to a Combat Communications unit based at Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City, OK. This meant I was TDY eligible and I received my share of world-wide travel. Half of the time I was at my base in Oklahoma and the other half I was out of the country. I traveled to Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain, and Columbia on various communications assignments.

While spending 3 months in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia during Operation Desert Shield in 1995, my life was spared thanks to my love for food. One day we had some trouble with a Troposphere-Scatter Support Radio (TSSR) communications link. The distant end of the link was the problem. The distant end of the radio link was at the Saudi National Guard building. It was nearing lunch time and our team leader wanted to pack up our tools and drive to the building to look at the radio transmitter/receiver. I and another fellow technician wanted to stay and eat our lunch first at the cafeteria at our base before we left. Our sergeant wanted to go fix the radio and grab lunch at the snack bar there at the Guard building - as it was right next to where we had to go to repair the radio. We pleaded to stay and eat at the cafeteria because they had a better variety of hot meals and the food was much better than what was available at the snack bar over there at the Guard building. Luckily, we won and we stayed to eat at the cafeteria on Riyadh Air Base.

After we finished our lunch and started packing up the vehicle to drive over to the Guard building we heard and felt something strange. It sounded very loud- like one of the KC-135 tanker aircraft engines in afterburner mode (those things are freaking loud.) But we also felt the earth rumbling beneath us. We looked at each other and tried to figure out what happened. Shortly thereafter, we received a call on the walkie-talkie radio asking our whereabouts and if we were all accounted for. We went through the procedure and we knew something bad had happened. We were then informed that a bomb had exploded at the National Guard building, just outside the snack bar area. You can read the actual story here. If we had driven to the Guard building to work on our radio (which was in the room next to the snack bar), I feel we would have been killed by the blast - as it exploded just outside the room where we were going.

Now I never pass up a meal (and you can tell by looking at me.) It is my way of giving praise to food - and my stomach - for saving my life.