Tom_Fields' VirtualTourist Home Page

My home is in the Mt Pleasant neighborhood, near Columbia Heights. It's a colorful place to live, close to the Metro Line, Rock Creek Park, and many of the city's attractions. Mt Pleasant is also incredibly diverse; it has a broad array of ethnic, social, and economic groups all living right next to each other. You can see a bit of everything here. It's also well known for social and political activism.

Until recently, I used slides. But my new digital camera can match the quality of slide photography. Besides, slide film is getting hard to find, and processing costs a lot. So any shots taken since August 2006 are digital, while the older ones are from slides.

After twenty years of service, I retired from the US Air Force in September, 2005, at Beale AFB, California. My home was in a small town called Marysville, near the Yuba-Sutter Buttes. The local area has little to offer (except for meth addicts), but within a few hours one could get to a lot of places.

Spending four and a half years in California, I visited most of the state's major attractions--Yosemite, the Sequoias, Big Sur, Death Valley, San Diego, San Francisco, Monterey, the Redwoods, Lake Tahoe, Lassen National Park, and many more. All in all, it was a good time. I'm glad that it was before gasoline prices began to soar.

Here's where I used to live in Orton Malborne, Peterborough, back in the UK. Stationed at RAF Molesworth, I had an excellent central location from which to tour England. It was along the boundary between East Anglia and the Midlands, and on the Great Northeastern Railway line from London to Glasgow (with stops at York and Edinburgh).

I also took the opportunity to travel continental Europe. With an enormous backlog of photos yet to be scanned into the PC and posted, it will take me a LONG time to catch up on this. My European travels took in France, Germany, the Low Countries, Italy, Poland, Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Greece, and Turkey. So my work is cut out for me.

By the way, I was renting this home. My former neighbors later told me that a fine couple had bought it and fixed it up very nicely. Good!

Before my assignment in the UK, I was stationed at Offutt AFB, Nebraska. The nearest major city is Omaha. It's a great place if you're a die-hard Cornhusker fan (University of Nebraska football is the main topic of conversation), and if you like sub-Arctic winters.

Otherwise, you have to make an effort to like it. Fortunately, I found an affordable apartment between downtown and midtown, with its own health club, and excellent security. This sturdy old building had once been a hospital. It was a pretty good place to live for three years.

This photo shows the health club's main entrance. My car is the red one in the lower right (a 1995 Toyota Corolla).

Columbia, South Carolina, has gained some national recognition. For years, the Confederate battle flag flew atop the state capitol here (it has since been moved).

I was stationed at Shaw AFB, about 30 miles to the east. It was a 45 minute commute (probably more now), but I enjoyed being near downtown, the University of South Carolina, and the parks. Columbia doesn't have the greatest nightlife in the world, but it did produce Hootie and the Blowfish. It's warm almost year-round, and offers some good entertainment. Not a bad place.

My home was a converted garage between Forest Acres and Shandon. It was a modest little place, good for a single person.

The Land of the Morning Calm, as it's called, often appears to be a powder keg. Actually, South Korea has gone from an impoverished "Third World" country to a modern industrial power. This is one of Asia's great success stories. My year in Korea, 1989, was one of adventure and good times. And the food is outstanding, if you're open-minded.

The air base where I was stationed is about an hour's bus ride from Seoul, with regular daily service. And there were guided coach tours around the country every weekend. So there were ample opportunities to travel. Too bad that most people there failed to take advantage of them.

My first posting was to Kelly AFB, Texas. Most of my fellow service members associated San Antonio with basic training, so they usually didn't care much for it. Unfortunately, most of them never really explored this wonderful city.

San Antonio is one of America's truly unique cities. And the climate is very agreeable. Besides, Austin is less than two hours away, and Houston about four. Anyone who can't find things to do there has something wrong with him.

My old hometown, where I was born and raised. is a medium-size city on the Ohio River. All of my family originally hailed from there, although many (like myself) have had to move on in search of employment.

Louisville is on the border between the South and the Midwest. We like to think that it's the best of both worlds.