regroupex09badgeIt's Tuesday night - 72 hours from now about 30 of us shipmates will be trying to figure out who's who, after 25 years. Seems hard to believe that we are down to the wire on this one. It was only the first week of last December when I heard from Bill Byers, who said, "are you the Brad Williamson that used to be in RC division on the William H. Bates?"

We felt that we were way too optimistic thinking we could pull off a get-together this year. Next year seemed like a much more conservative guess, but after a few phone calls, and a dozen emails, we had a core group from E and RC divisions in the early eighties, and the next thing you know, we were talking about a reunion - nothing major, mind you, just a 'let's all get together in the same place for a day or two and catch up' kind of reunion.

I volunteered to put together a little web page to help us coordinate, and the next thing you know, www.ssn-680.org is taking over the planet - at least the SSN-680 planet, anyway. Last week we had 47,000 page views from 2400 unique visits.

Bill kept pushing on the reunion thread, and Friday night we kick off REGROUPEX 09. Still hard to believe.

Bill is already checked into the Town and Country in San Diego, and other shipmates start arriving tomorrow night. I'll arrive Friday afternoon, and be there through Wednesday morning.

So, it's not too late. If you haven't registered, you're dink. Get hot, sign up, and show up. There is no trophy for second place.

I'll post here periodically when I get a few minutes so all you non-quals that couldn't make it can see what you're missing.

But don't take it too hard - I do hope to see you there.

And there is always next year.