You travel to the ends of the earth and even here there are Tacomans. Ken Edele is manager of the weather office at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, and as it happens he was born in Tacoma, lived on Gravelly Lake Drive for a time and attended Fern Hill Elementary before his family moved elsewhere. He served 26 years in the Navy and first came to Antarctica in 1976, and has been hooked on the place ever since.

This season Edele is working at the U.S. Antarctic Program headquarters here in Christchurch, New Zealand. He gathers information from sources far and

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There are worse ways to spend 18 hours on an airplane than racked out on the floor of a C-17. Sleeping bag and pad, and a little bit of floor, made for a comfy ride from McChord to Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii and then on to Christchurch, New Zealand. With the time changes, the trip started Friday night Tacoma time; wheels down was 12:32 p.m. Sunday New Zealand time.

But we weren’t snoring the whole time. Note the in-flight movie. (Hey, it was either that or Eight

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We’ll be on and off the net the next several days as we head out to cover Operation Deep Freeze with folks from McChord.

I hope to encounter these guys while I’m down there.

There’s a deep lineup of events and ceremonies scheduled to commemorate the day this year. The Washington state Department of Veterans Affairs keeps a comprehensive list, but we’ll run one here that we’ll update as new info comes along.

The biggie, of course, is Auburn’s 41st annual Veterans Day parade down Main Street. They’ll have a C-17 flyover, 25 marching bands, drill teams, the works. It starts at 11 a.m. Get there early and bring a lawn chair.

Auburn is also hosting the Vietnam Veterans traveling wall Nov. 7-14 at Veterans Memorial Park, 411 Fourth St. N.E.

The City of Puyallup and VFW Post 2224 are teaming up for a ceremony 1 p.m. Nov. 12 at Pioneer Park, 330 S. Meridian St. Brig. Gen. Eric Crabtree, commander of the 446th Airlift Wing at McChord Air Force Base, will be the keynote speaker.

The Tahoma National Cemetery’s observance will be 11 a.m. The cemetery is located at 18600 S.E. 240th St. in Kent.

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Brig. Gen. William J. Troy, the deputy commanding general and chief of staff for I Corps and Fort Lewis, is on the long list of one-stars nominated Tuesday for promotion to major general.

Troy, who turns 54 later this month, arrived at Fort Lewis this past July from Fort Hood, where he was assistant division commander for support with the 1st Cavalry Division. He was chief of staff of the Multinational Corps-Iraq in 2004-05, previously worked as executive officer to then-Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Keane and is a

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The Army has a mess on its hands now that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has shut down all work on its program to base a Stryker brigade on Oahu. The court said the Army has to conduct a more extensive environmental review that includes a look at alternative locations for the brigade — a process that could take a couple years.

It’s hard to predict what happens next in court, but in the meantime the Army will likely have to figure out some other way of training the Hawaii brigade. William Cole in the Honolulu

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Nathan Hodge of Jane’s Defence Weekly says the Army has decided to send the Land Warrior System along to Iraq with the Fort Lewis soldiers who’ve been training with it when they go next summer.

Sources at the unit – the 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment Manchus – say this is true. “Yes, we are taking it to war, and yes we are making a few changes,” says our souce. Will have to stand by for more beyond that.

Now that their buddies in the 4th Airlift Squadron out of McChord have shipped out to replace them, more than 100 airmen from the 10th Airlift Squadron are due home Tuesday after four months in the war zone.

They worked out of Europe, the Middle East and Southwest Asia, according to a McChord press release that was careful not to name the names of countries where they were stationed. (Why is that, anyway? Not a huge secret that we’ve got folks in Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Turkey and points east.)

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