Greece? Really?

I was talking to Annette Parsons about a week ago about the Greek Fires I've been mapping. She indicated that they'd be going back to do the field verification / final mapping effort for a few weeks in October. I -- nearly in jest -- mentioned that I'd love to go because she'd need some help with the processing and the image interpretation. She asked, "Are you available" and I said, "Of course. It's Greece."

These kinds of things just don't happen. For one thing, I'm a private contractor with the FS and these kinds of international disaster assistance programs are run and filled by federal employees. There are a lot of hoops to jump through if they want to send someone from outside the federal employment circle.

Annette called me yesterday and her first question was "Do you have a valid passport?" I thought, "Hmmm...I know where this is going..." I said I did and then she asked if I was available Oct. 5 - 20, 2007, for a possible GIS assignment in Greece with her. I said, "Of course, it's Greece." She was going to make a formal request with her D.C. contacts to have me come with her instead of the GIS person they assigned to her. I guess she'd spoken with him about his background / abilities and decided she'd be a lot more comfortable with me coming along to help.

She sent the email, but no word has come back either way. She did mention this morning on the phone that one of the guys in the group was pushing to get the originally-assigned GIS person to go to get the experience. However, Annette said she's pushing back because "getting experience" isn't the goal here; rather, she wants to hit the ground running and could do that with my help.

In the past few days, my odds of going to Greece have gone from 1 million to 1, to 1,000 to 1, to 50 to 1, and now back up to 75 to 1.

Needless to say, I'm not making any plans to go. If the chance arises, how cool. If not, I'll get to celebrate my 6th anniversary with my wife in person instead of via email.