Further Up, Further In

A funny thing happened on the way to Frankfurt. I think anyone that travels a lot gets into patterns. Mine as it relates to flying consist of sitting down, checking out the safety card, looking to see where the life vest is (even when flying in Afghanistan and they'd just about have to aim for a body of water to hit it), seeing where the oxygen masks would come from (real hard in a C-17), checking out the exits, and reading the flight magazine. I was dozing off while reading the magazine after boarding in Kuwait, so I put it away and waited. The seat next to mine was empty and I was hoping it'd stay that way. Not sure how long I was out, but I "woke up" and thought we were still on the ground. Felt like we were, nothing out the window. Then I noticed the beverage cart going down the aisle. I've never slept through takeoff before, but I can't say that any more. So, I stretched out and went back to sleep. A couple of times. Frankfurt is a neat looking city from the air and I love the layout of the airport. The terminal's all right, but the airport layout is neat. Later I would realize that it isn't incredibly functional from a "get into the air" point of view, but this was my opinion on landing.

Once inside I got racially profiled. The Polizei were at the end of the ramp, but they only wanted to see the passports of the Kuwaiti and Arabic-appearanced passengers from what I could see.

While standing at the Departures screens I saw a black man walk by and another Polizei stopped him and pulled him over to the side for some questions. Who would have guessed this was a good country to be a WASP in? Yeah, that's sarcasm and a half.

As an American who's only second language is to be able to talk like a Yankee I love that most of these people speak English here. I know it's a related tongue. I had a lady ask me if I speak German or English in German. But between that and saying I'm a jelly doughnut (thanks JFK!) I was out of German phrases I knew.

She asked me, in perfect unaccented English, to watch her stuff while she went to the restroom. When she came back we started talking. She lived in Wisconsin for twenty years before moving back to Frankfurt and is on her way to Seattle to help her son and daughter-in-law determine what course of action to take with her grandson who is ten and needs an aortic valve replacement. I just learned a lot about valve replacements.

At this point my coffee cup is long since empty, the shop is filling up, and I don't have anywhere to better to go. So I'll just look like a weird bearded dude typing on a MacBook in a coffee shop at the Frankfurt Airport. Go with what you're good at.

So eventually I was able to bored the plane. Where we sat. And sat. Then taxied, and taxied. Yeah, I meant to type bored.

I started watching a movie with Elaine Benes and Tony Soprano and in addition to watching half of it before we took off, it was kind of boring. I could see where the plot was going, it was like watching people on a first date, a real train wreck I couldn't take my eyes away from. Because there was nothing else to do. Lufthansa doesn't have the most up to date movies on their Airbuses. Among my choices were Amadeus, Cool Runnings, and Elysium. All movies I've seen, just different periods of time since I'd seem them.

Needless to say, the flight took off late because of the taxing issue, but we didn't land too far after we were supposed to. I was beginning to panic a little though because I had to get from the back of the plane to the front, through customs, get a new ticket, and find the right plane. And as Darth Stewie said in It's a Trap, ". . . we’re in a galaxy far, far away, and we still have to change in Atlanta."

If home is where the wifi automatically connects, I'm still not sure what that makes Hartsfield-Jackson Airport.

So, I ran. I wove through people, I paused, sprinted, squirted in between, and took stairs three and four at a time. I was doing good when I got ahead of almost everyone from my plane, but then I hit Customs.

Customs is huge, as it should be, and there was already a crowd. Not a big one, but I was about the 20th person in line. So I caught the lady controlling the line's eye and asked if she could help me make my next flight. She went to get someone else who escorted me through the lines and over to another agent. On the way he asked me how much time I had. It was then I realized, I actually had another hour because my clock, much like myself, was on an incorrect time zone still. I bought the watch because it has the ability to show 2 different time zones simultaneously, so that means, biologic, actual, and two different time zones are all out of sync. An impressively easy task.

Regardless, the agent still helped me break in the line, I got through, got the new ticket, and made it in time to buy an overpriced bottle of water and get to the gate about five minutes before they started seating people.

Here's the funny thing though. The guy I was sitting next to on this plane knew the people across the aisle from me and before we took off was talking with them. He revealed that their boss was two rows up from him and had a habit of running late even though this time he didn't. Had he been running late, the guy next to me was supposed to fake an illness to delay the plane taking off so the boss would get there. So I had coverage if I'd mistimed anything along the way.

From there it was all downhill sailing, I hoped off the plane and walked straight out the door, across the parking lot, into and across the field, and waited for my bride and youngest daughter at the end of the entrance to the Mobile Airport. American soil beneath my toes, green grass of Alabama all around and traffic that moved at faster than 20 kph everywhere.

Another successful trip home.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

The Overly Sensitive Stoic

So last week I began again traveling back to the states. The last few months have been an absolute blur. So much has happened, and yet, so little has been written. If it wasn't written down, did it happen? Some would argue it did not. The system to travel home on Rest and Recuperation leave is broken. There are ideal signs up that say from the time you land in Kuwait you'll be at the airport waiting on your flight in 6 hours. The reality is that six hours after landing we had only gotten to the second step of the process. But I've skipped ahead.

Before you can leave Kandahar, you have to show up for a 0900 brief. Except this happens at 0930, not that it was late, just that I had the time wrong. So I started trying at 9 on Saturday morning (about 7:30 pm Friday night in Alabama). By the time the 0930 brief rolled around I had done everything I needed to do before I left and was present with my bags in hand. You have to start at the Inbound Terminal, then travel to the Outbound, where you wait. Kind of like when you go to turn off your Windows based computer by clicking on Start. I waited about two hours before we got called in to be screened, after which we were told to go upstairs to the holding area until 1515.

At 1510 we were told to go back down to the check in point. This can't be good news, and it wasn't. The flight was canceled, but the show time for the next one was 5 minutes. So, we shuffled back upstairs and waited. Another 2 hours. Finally, we boarded, and waited. At 1815 we took off headed to Bagram. Flight crew said it was a 45 minute flight, so promptly at 1920, we landed. And waited.

There was a tanker truck on board with us which they unloaded, then proceeded to reload pallets for two hours. Promptly at 2130 we took off, twelve hours in and I'm finally off Afghanistan soil, still in the air space, but off the ground.

We leanded in Kuwait at straight up midnight.By this point I realize I haven't had anything to eat or drink since breakfast about 0700. After checking in at Ali Al Saleem, we headed for the dining facility. I've managed to run into a fellow travelling to just north of Eglin Air Force Base, practically LA like me. At 0530, only a half hour late, we start off for Camp Arifjan, an hour away. There they proceed to check us in and give us a brief that basically says come back at 1400.

So, browse the PX, get a great big cup of caramel macchiato from Starbucks, read the Stars and Stripes, peruse the makeshift bazaar set up, and then took a shower. Returning to the place we'd get our tickets, we've now killed 4 hours with 5 left to kill. A success.

So, at 1400 we get our itineraries and are told to show up at 1915 to sign up for a bus ride to the airport. Not sure why we couldn't sign up right then, but oh well. With nothing else to do, we went back to the PX. One of the Kuwaitis at the bazaar complemented my facial hair, "Nice beard," he said, "Now, show me the money!"

Finally, 1915 rolls around and we go through a quick briefing then a customs check. Not sure why, because we're an hour from the airport and this is US Customs. Promptly at 2040 they call us to load the bus that leaves at 2030 headed to the airport. Another hour away and finally we're done with Americans who just ask to check our CAC. The Common Access Card replaced the simple ID card and serves many purposes. One of which is to aggravate the stew out of me when people call it a CAC Card. This is made worse when they tell me to use my PIN Number for my CAC Card. From this point on, someone other than an American will look at my CAC, but it's a lot less frequent.

I'm not sure what it is about this airport, and I'm pretty sure it's a different kid, but every time I've been here there has been a five-year old kid wearing a skull costume.

On a different note, the security here is just plain weird. We walked in, passed a few stores, wove through a crowd then walked back outside to enter the first Screening Zone. Our bags go through a scanner and we a metal detector. A few bags get examined, but very few. Then on the other side we exit--into the crowd and stores we walked by at first. Turns out I was in the wrong zone, so I had to go through another screening. My bags went on the conveyor and I went through the scanner. It went off, I forgot to take out my cell phones. No one stops me. At the belt, the guy who's running it is on his cell phone loudly. I pick up my bags, no problem, so I leave  after setting off the alarm for bags and personal detection, and went to get a bite to eat.

Next comes the Departure screening, where the guy looks at your Boarding Pass and ID. This seems right, then I go to the next fellow who's giving some lady a hard time with her baby bags. While he weighs her bags and talks to her in an aggravated tone, his buddy waves me through with my oversized backpack and laptop bag. No weighing, no reviewing of my ticket, nothing. On to Passport Control.

At Passport Control I show a Kuwaiti lady my CAC and boarding pass and she stamps it and waves me on. So I do some duty-free shopping without buying anything. Mostly because I have no idea what a Kuwaiti Dollar fetches against American, but I know I paid 1.65 for a burger and fries. Must be strong. The first time I went to a foreign country (what am I talking aboot? I'm calling our 51st State a foreign country, a bit of a stretch, eh?) they gave me some Monopoly money for change. They even thought it was Monopoly money because they called the big coins Loonies. Now, in the age of electronic everything it's even stranger because they just run your debit card and you have no idea what you paid unless you know the exchange rate and are good with math.

Finally, after eating and finding my gate, which has another security checkpoint in it, I take off my shoes and get comfortable. I still have two hours until I can go through the gate.

One thing you may have missed in all of this, when did I sleep? There's a good reason I didn't mention it--I didn't do much of it.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Safety

On the morning of 13 Sep I posted this to my Facebook account:

in case anyone wondered, despite the fact that I've been there twice, to include an in depth tour and videotaping the view from atop the building, I was NOT anywhere near the consulate in Herat this morning. I did wake up about 0530 hearing a loud explosion, louder than the normal controlled detonations. I'm still not sure what that was because I'm too far from the consulate for that to have been what I heard, but I am safe! — at Camp Stone.

When you live in a war zone conflict would seem to be inevitable. Yet living on the Afghanistan Riviera has been very low-keyed and laid back. The morning of 13 Sep changed that. I woke up wondering if I would go back to sleep or start worrying about work.

An unfortunate consequence of living 50 feet from your desk is that sometimes it's real hard to stay in bed. Within a minute of waking I heard a loud rumble. It sounded like a detonation.

For those that haven't been to a Forward Operating Base (FOB) in Afghanistan, there is an interruption we call The Voice, or sometimes The Big Voice. Now, this isn't a reality show with cute swiveling chairs and out of work singers, this Voice tells us sometimes important things. Such as, "The range is now hot." This lets us know that someone is on the range qualifying or just target practicing. Otherwise we may get concerned that the enemy was at the gates. Whenever there is a cache of stuff found, there are controlled detonations. Again, The Voice warns us so we don't crap our shorts thinking the end is near. The timing of the warning is often off, such as coming hours before or minutes after, but the warning is there.

There was no such warning on the morning of 13 Sep. I woke up and shortly after heard an explosion. Low, muffled, and far away.

If you want to know how lonely feels, wake up in a building where there are no people moving around. No sounds from the room next door, no flushing toilets, only the sound of air conditioning units, generators, and the low rumble of diesel engines. No movements, no human sounds. But a detonation. No one to ask, "What's that sound?" Not even someone to ask, "Are you okay?" Just the background noises that will be present after the rapture.

It is much more lonely to wake up at midnight, same situation, no human movement or noises, no one to call because it's midnight, but you hear the heightened pitch of helicopters for 45 minutes. Peeking carefully around the door you see rotor washed dirt streaming up in a huge plume behind the buildings in the next compound over. But that is a different story.

About an hour later I was told about the Consulate bombing in Herat. That was the sound I heard. From over 20 miles away. A place that I've been to and by multiple times. I toured the facility and recognized the angle of the pictures on new websites showing the aftermath. It was a reminder that I am in a war zone.

A lot of people who I talk with by phone, email, or Facebook comment about my safety. I constantly feel safe, Consulate bombing included.

On the way home from the Consulate I used my Roshan to call a guy in the other vehicle. Roshan is Dari for AT&T I think based on the quality (or lack of) cell service. The first time messed up, but I got through the second time. It was only when we stopped that I heard the security team being told to fix the cell phone jammers that are supposed to keep any remote detonated devices from exploding as we pass by. What's more important, safety? Or just feeling safe?

Fast forward to the night of 23 Sep. The Voice came on to tell us there was an exercise. This is where we train/act/whatever as if there were an actual event happening. So far, this is the only reason I have had to spend time in the bunkers at Camp Stone.So, about 2230 we all shuffled out to the bunker. We laughed, we joked, we complained about being in a bunker. And then I fell asleep.

I took a nap for an hour, during an exercise of what to do when the enemy crosses the wall. Safety? Or feeling safe? Which is more important?

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Rolexes, Carpets, and Scarves; Oh My!

So in my last post I mentioned a story about how Super Watch cost less than a Rolex. An odd statement (unless you know me I suppose). Lots of things cost less than a Rolex. I've bought many cars that were less than the cost of a Rolex. In fact, I've bought many cars for the price of a Rolex. Super Watch cost 20 bucks.

My first trip to the Bazaar in Camp Stone was an informational jaunt. My second trip was a fact gathering mission. The third time I bought a bunch of stuff to send home for when I arrived to give as gifts--among them Rolexes.

On trip two, I was perusing the wares. While our bazaar is a bit of an open-air mall, it is also closed in. Weird that it has a gravel floor, but it is Afghanistan. The vendors hang out on the "exterior" of their stores until a customer comes up, then they follow you inside and start haggling over quality and prices. Even in that exterior area, there are other vendor's wares. It is an experience all on its own.

As I looked over some carpets and scarves I asked the proprietor where they were made. When he told me India I asked if he had anything made in Herat. He did not.

Walking on around to the next shop, the owner, who had heard my question followed me in and said, "Here's something made in Herat." Excited I looked to see what he had grabbed and handed to me. It was a beautiful Rolex.

It looked like a Rolex, felt like a Rolex, it even moved like a Rolex. It has scratch-resistant glass, hefty weight, gaudy size, nice band, it is a pretty nice watch all on its own. I didn't have any money this time, but the guy kept coming down on his price anyway as we haggled. It didn't feel right to say I was Jewing him down, but that ethnically insensitive term was exactly what I was thinking.

Fast forward to Trip Three. I went to Tawab, the guy Marlon-jon told me I needed to see. I picked out a nice Rolex for my mother-in-law and one similar to the one I had looked at before. Then Tawab threw in one for free. Who wouldn't want to say they bought 2 Rolexes and got one for free? The quality of these was not quite the quality of the one I saw on Trip Two, but the price was less than that one as well. Still, all things considered, I factored the price three ways and paid about 30 bucks per watch.

Not a Super Watch, but a Super Priced Watch.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Long Night's Journey into Day

Upon arrival in Kuwait I began the first time zone correction on my watch, but it was far from the last. Many years ago I decided that I would not update my watch unless I was spending an entire week in the new time zone, however, before deploying to Afghanistan I bought a Super Watch.

This Super Watch has the ability to display two different time zones simultaneously. The real advantage is the ease with which you can change one of those two-time zones. The disadvantage is the ease with which you can change one of those two-time zones. Super Watch also has a function which will show me when the high or low tide is (not very useful in Afghanistan), what phase the moon is in, and what the azimuth to the sun is. Of the five alarms available, I have only used one and it was confusing as all get out. Confusing because I have Central Daylight Time set as my main time zone so if I want to wake up in Kabul Time I have to adjust it 9.5 hours. Then, once it was set, I have not been able to figure out how to turn it off.

All this for less than the price of a Rolex, but I don't think I shared that story yet.

So, my $20 watch allows me to change time zones quite easily, which I did before checking out Ali Al Saleem. Flying in to Kuwait, this is where you land. I'm not real sure what else goes on there, but you have your CAC (the Common Access Card that is used for identification purposes and commonly called the redundant CAC Card) reviewed, then you're put onto a plane that flies to a point where they will take you off and review your CAC. Once everyone's CAC has been confirmed, we are put onto a bus where no one else can get on or off and taken to a tent. Where our CACs are reviewed.

After confirming that we are us we are told not to go anywhere. Except the mess hall a half mile away. Eventually we are all herded back into a tent where our names are called out (by our CAC) to get onto another controlled bus which takes us to a place where they review our CAC as they put us into another controlled area. This new area is on Camp Arifjan, about an hour away, and this is where we do get some freedom.

What no one wants here is freedom. We all want to get on with the trip, even though by the time we get there it is about 1500 and we have been traveling since midnight in and out of heat and air conditioning, on and off planes, buses, and controlled areas full of cattle-like people.

I mentioned the temperature, I think I've compared temps before. Herat is a wonderful place climate wise to live. It gets into the 100s, but it also gets down into the 70s all throughout my time there. And the breeze is almost always blowing, at times very stiffly. It isn't the 120 Days they have in Shindand, but it is the start of that breeze. Kandahar on the other hand is a much more warm area. Walking out at 1800 at times feels like walking into a convection oven (but only when the wind's blowing). Camp Arifjan makes Kandahar feel cool. The temperature reached 120 and I suspect that's when the thermometer broke. Don't give me crap about "it's a dry heat" because I've never seen a turkey come out of the oven with a smile on its face and that's dry heat, too. Wow, Kuwait is hot!

So after finally getting a bed, dinner at Hardee's (because Carl's Jr is known as Hardee's east of the Mississippi and the river is still at least 7,000 miles to the west), and a shower I got onto my bed for a sleep. I say onto because I didn't get any sheets. There was a pillowcase-free pillow and I snagged a blanket from the used laundry box outside (because it was about 60 inside the building). The next morning after a trip to the PX to buy souvenirs, stuffed camels and a Kuwait Camel Racing Club (Get Outta My Way) shirt for my daughters the guy I had been travelling with since Kandahar and I went to check to see if we had an itinerary yet.

The building with our itinerary also has free WiFi, so we brought our computers to waste some time. The guy behind the counter told us that we would be leaving for the airport at 1400. When we sat down and fired up the laptops the guy told me that he had misspelled my name and that when he fixed it there was one earlier flight so I needed to be there at 1100 (about an hour) to leave.

Excited, I ran to grab my stuff and hung out right there until the next briefing. At which time I found out he still misspelled my name.

The briefing started and I listened with one ear the conversation at the far side of the room while listening with the other ear to see if the guy fixed my name. In the nick of time he handed me my itinerary and I rushed out behind the last person to leave from the building to get onto a bus.

Where I waited an extra 20 minutes while they reviewed our CACs.

Finally we drove the hour plus to the Kuwait City International Airport. There we got our briefing (but not our CACs reviewed) and were released for the ride home. In six hours.

The new group I was traveling with went to a pizza joint and then we walked around some. Eventually it was time to split up and get our boarding passes. After which we had no idea that we would be reunited because KCIA doesn't run like the American airports we've grown to love.

Our bags were scanned, then we were led back into the same uncontrolled area we had just walked around in killing time so that we could cross to the other side where we hit Customs. At the first screen I was held back because I had a metal, folding shoehorn that showed up in the X-Ray. The security guy, who spoke little English, tried to ask me if I had a moussa (making motions like a razor). Do I look like I own a razor? Eventually it got cleared up and he said I was good. I was sweating like I was back outside in the 120 degree heat, but I was good.

Then as we got to Customs, our bags were scanned as were we, and we headed for the gate. At the gate we were stopped, because here the gates are right at the entrance to the plane. In many ways the inefficiency of Ali Al Saleem/Arifjan emulates the Kuwait model. There is another luggage scanner and metal detector at the gate just before we got onto the plane.

The indoor smoking areas were kind of neat to look at. One was a big fan that just sucked the smoke up, the one near the gate was a glass room with a sliding door and a big fan. Both worked about as inefficiently as you might imagine, though the smoke smells only penetrated about a 5 meter area around the smoking areas.

We took off from Kuwait headed to Bahrain, where we had another 5 hour wait. I think I exhausted every word of English the guy next to me knew, he was Baharaini, but it was interesting trying to talk.

As we deplaned we headed straight to our next gate and along the way ran into the part of our group that didn't get the call for 1100, we saw the 1400 group. They got to the airport about a half hour before our plane took off and got seated in First Class.

From there I flew on to Heathrow. My seat companion was an Englishman and we had a nice chat before takeoff and just before landing. From there I flew to Dallas and finally Mobile where I was met by my father and sister and rushed home to remember that people over here still worry about what day of the week it is and my family was at church.

After a ten minute search I found them all and was able to surprise them. All in all a difficult feat, and one I don't intend to repeat. It was wonderful having Doodlebug run to see me (the ladies in the nursery at church didn't realize I'd been gone nearly 3 months). It was very nice to kiss my wife again, listening to one of the ladies she was talking to when I showed up comment, "That's why he hasn't been answering your texts." Then when both my teenagers showed up they ran down the stairs and jumped on me nearly knocking me over. Worth every single second of the trouble of surprising someone from 7500 miles away.

Not including the trip from Herat to Kandahar, or from Kandahar to Bagram to Kuwait, or my time on the Rock, the travel time from KCIA to Mobile was 29 hours and 40 minutes. Three time zone adjustments on my watch, and 9.5 hours on my biological clock, but I was home. In Fairhope. With my family.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Back to Bagram

The purpose of my third trip to Kandahar was to make my first trip home. Little did I know that it also meant my third trip to Bagram. Like most steps on the way home it was a stuttering step. At my 2200 briefing I was told to come back at 0045 to sign in for the flight. Most of the people on these flights are in the military, not civilians, so the civilians are forced to comply with the military mantra of hurry up and wait.

To be honest, I don't even recall what time we left. The 0045 brief included walking down to the Outpassenger Terminal (why did I start my trip in the Inbound? Because it's what you do) for a 0115 brief. This was followed by a wait, then our names were called to go upstairs into the waiting rooms (as compared to the waiting tents we were in previously) where we were told anywhere from 2 to 3 hours later the plane would take off.

It wasn't that long, but whatever time it was we finally were able to get loaded onto a C-17 for the flight to Bagram and Kuwait. The C-17 is not the largest plane in the air, and not even the largest plane in the American fleet, but it is pretty damn big. This was my first flight on one and I was impressed with everything except the lack of windows, a point which foreshadowed all but the last leg of my journey.

Everyone finds a way to cope with airline travel. Some love it, some hate it, some take it as a necessary evil, some medicate, some sleep, but everyone who does it has to figure out how they feel most comfortable in a huge pressurized metal tube hurtling thousands of feet to several miles above the ever-present and waiting ground at hundreds of miles an hour. Never forget that in over 100 years of aviation history not one time have they ever left a plane up there (This is a part of the Trouble With Travel).

One of the most common ways to cope with flight is to drown it out with earphones. A most recent development I have seen in the past few months is a trend towards wearing Beats by Dre headphones. I don't know if it's a Asian thing or if these headphones are big everywhere. For this reason the next observation shouldn't strike me as oddly as it did. Typically one would expect the younger generation to be the one most affected by the desire to drown the outside world out with headphones, particularly a set designed by a pop music name such as Dr. Dre (admittedly he's more Hip Hop than Pop, but he's also not the most in the forefront of the industry either anymore). So it really shouldn't strike me as odd when I saw a platinum haired gentleman who appeared old enough to be my father's contemporary wearing a pair of red Beats on his head.

I suppose it is just a matter of the pulse of the theater.

The Fully Catered Rocket Attack

Immediately following my trip to Chaghcharan I flew on to Kandahar. Along the way I was able to see both the Kajaki and Dahla Dams albeit from 10,000 feet rather than the up close and personal manner in which I had seen the Salma. This was in preparation for my trip back to America for a vacation of sorts. On Sunday the 18^th I was given an opportunity to attempt to depart early for my rest and relaxation trip. Jumping on that I went to three different briefings and was told somewhere in the middle to be at the Inbound Terminal at 1430.

When I landed on Saturday I scratched out a list of things I needed to complete before I could leave the country. As you may expect, it grew before it shrank. In between tasks and briefings I had no time to complete the second most important and most time-consuming part of the list--two personnel evaluations. One I had started, but one I hadn't even begun to work on. With 1400 looming I had 75 minutes and these two evals left to complete. Both of them are on stellar performers, including the guy who is filling in for me while I'm on R&R, so they need to reflect the job they do.

In typical form, I was able to complete and send both evals. Less than 5 minutes after I sent them out the power went off. Disaster averted.

I rushed to my room and packed the few things that had been scattered about and made it to the van for a ride just in time to find out that the  flight was canceled because of technical difficulties. I'm a big fan of letting them discover technical problems with large military planes on the ground rather than the alternative, so that wasn't the real problem. The problem was I would have to start all over again at 2200. Now I had not only completed my work for the day but I have plenty of day left to not do it in.

I returned to the Executive Office where my boss and the Area Officer In Charge are and discussed the state of things with them. We made a few more calls and went over the goings on. We have had a regular soap opera with one of our projects that I will miss the next episode of. Currently the state it is in is one without the Contractor on site, abandoned. As you might imagine, that begins some calls with everyone's bosses. A pleasant side effect of the conversation was that my boss's boss's boss told me that since missing a day in Afghanistan was like missing a month I should just delete all the emails I miss while I'm gone for 3 weeks. How often do you get such a pleasant instruction?

Since I couldn't go anywhere until after my next briefing, I received the news that a surprise party was planned for that evening in the Moral Welfare and Recreation Room. Unlike the MWR Rooms on Camp Stone, the MWR in the Castle Compound (soon to be re-named) of Kandahar is a hardened structure. What that means is that it is its own bunker. Instead of hanging out in a sandbag covered concrete culvert, during attacks the staff hangs out in the room with overstuffed couches, tables, chairs, ping-pong, puzzles, a full-fledged kitchen and many more amenities. This is the room that is supposed to take our mind off the fact that we are in a war zone. I love the irony.

Right as dinner was finished being cooked, the alarm started going off signaling a rocket attack. Being in the bunker already meant no further action taken to protect ourselves.

It turns out the birthday boy knew about the surprise after all. Someone almost always leaks when they try to do this type activity but all was not lost as some members of the team that weren't privy to the dinner arrived to the bunker for a rocket attack that was timed nicely with the presentation of plates. A fully catered rocket attack.

Whizbang Bag of Shit

Today started like any other Monday in Afghanistan. The sun rose, the mullahs called, Ramazan is wrapping up and we're headed toward Eid (described by some Muslims as "just like your Christmas"), and I skipped breakfast to go meet a guy and see a project site. The guy I met is a guy I met back in the spring at a class training up to come over here. Small world again. But the project site is a site like none I've ever been to.

The helicopters were late. This is probably Karma for me blowing off our helicopter pilots last time they told me I was not only an hour late but that the Corps SOP is for me to show up on time. The only reason I won't be an hour late again is because we pay them too much money an hour. Thirty minutes late it is. But the helicopters were 2 Blackhawks and a Chinook. I had never been on a CH-47 Chinook before, but man what a ride.

We went about 45 minutes north and east to the Salma Dam. Once we landed, Tom ('cause first names are for officers) had the interpreter call the Colonel in charge of protecting the dam site. I only know his last name so I can't use it ('cause first names are for officers). He was expecting us, though he didn't know when we'd be there. And by when, I mean what day. He wasn't in his uniform but rather in a manjama shirt that wasn't buttoned, like he threw it on quickly and ran out to meet us.

He brought us to a shady porch and brought out chairs for us to sit and we started talking. This was the "man-love and chai tea" jirga I had heard about. The Indian contractors came up quickly and we began talking with them about where they were from and how long they'd been on the project. Sure enough, about that time a boy came around with the chai.

It was a surprise to see tea during Ramadan (can anyone tell me why it's pronounce RamaZan?) but I was further surprised by the fact that I love it. It was phenomenal tea. I've been drinking Spiced Chai Espresso Lattes from the Green Bean on Camp Stone, but that's different, that's tea, coffee and milk thrown into a cup with a sprinkle of cinnamon. Tastes as good as it smells. The Chai just plain tastes good.

The project managers were happy to see us. The main mission of the day was to assess the security of the dam, but I was there for the secondary mission. I was the only unarmed guy in the crowd trying to see how far along they are with the construction. This project is very important for the people of Western Afghanistan. It will supply power to cities like Obeh and on to Herat. It will reduce their independence on Iran for power and be a major step forward towards getting an Afghan power grid.

There are several super cool factors about this site. One is it is a dam. Dams are just plain fascinating civil engineering projects. Dams are a civil engineers bread and butter. We may not all get to work on one, but we are all fascinated by them. Second, it's a dam. Every dam I've ever been to is a fully built, functioning dam. Impounded water, hydroelectric plant, buzzing switchyard, cool stuff. This one is not. I stood on a point where there will be 40 meters of water. I touched the outside of the penstock tubing that will be installed, concreted in, and never touched by humans again. I witnessed the construction of a modern marvel.

Well, modern could be a stretch since it is a rock dam, but still, it's a dam.

I got to see the dam, drive over the dam, walk on the dam, cross the spillway on a rickety ladder, see the diversion tunnel including the mechanism that when the dam is finished they will close and never reopen to impound the water, I got to see the switchyard, the powerhouse, the penstock tunnel, where the penstock piping is being installed, and much more.

In all, we probably spent about 4 hours on the ground and with the exception of the jirga, I was wearing my body armor and a backpack the whole time. After the jirga I put my Kevlar in the backpack, but while my head was lighter the pack wasn't. I had food to last for a day and 3 liters of water. Of course, over the course of the next 10 hours I drank no less than 4 liters of water, but I had 3 with me. There was a great deal of walking, though they drove us some. There wasn't much vehicle time. We walked lower, and lower, and lower, until we reached the point that will be 40 meters below the level of the reservoir. Then we rode up. No one was more thankful than I.

From the get-go I knew that I was the weak link in the bunch. I'm an out of shape civilian keeping up with members of the military both American and Afghan. They didn't laugh too loudly at me except when I self-deprecatingly did.

On the way up from the bottom of the soon to be reservoir Tom suggested sneaking some water. It is offensive to eat or drink in front of Muslims during Ramadan and since they didn't have to let us onto the site. I slurped down a half liter. Inside the penstock tunnel I was handed a semi-cool soft drink unlike any I've ever seen before. I didn't drink it, but did sneak some more water after that.

The helicopters were late again picking us up. This time it wasn't Karma. But I had a tickle in my throat and needed some water. We were away from the group we had visited but I was still mostly surrounded by Afghans. I watched a guy about 5 meters away, an Afghan, sip from his CamelBack. He took several pulls, then would spit out some. So, I opened a bottle, drank 4 gulps and spit out a half a sip. When I looked at the Afghan he smiled.

Did I mention another cool fact about the dam visit? This mission was with a team other than my normal security team. At any point up to stepping onto the CH-47 I could have called no joy and canceled my involvement. The thing is, I didn't think it could be a bad idea until I stepped off the ramp onto the first piece of unprotected Afghanistan soil. We did not land in a secured landing zone. We literally flew out there, landed in a field and called up to say, "Hey, we're in the neighborhood. Mind if we poke around a bit?"

This was the closest I have ever come to being on an actual military mission in combat. Closest because my years of service were between the Gulf Wars, they didn't take me anytime someone from my unit deployed and even when the whole unit deployed they didn't take our Battery. I still didn't have a weapon, but everything else about it was spot on. I was a part of an actual combat mission. My job was to be the middle of it all, sit in the most protected position, and take notes, but I was there.

On the way back to Camp Stone I videotaped from the guy next to me, around the cabin, to the guy on the other side of me. I was in an actual flying can of whoop ass with a whizbang bag of shit at my feet. The whizbang bag was in case they needed to operate in the helicopter on the way to a hospital.

The people I was with believe that Murphy was an optimist. One soldier weighed in at 397 pounds with all his equipment. In fact the OIC got on to him while we waited for our ride out for bringing too much stuff. They never got to use the mortars and none of the guys who wore belts of ammo crisscrossed around their chest got to fire a round. It was an extremely successful example of a well-oiled machine doing a mission with a rubbernecking, out of shape, me at the middle of it all.

All in all, a very fun day of combat tourism.

American Soil

On the last of July I went to the American Consulate on the far side of Herat. It was nice to touch American soil if only briefly, but along the way I enjoyed the sights of life that passed by.

At one point along the way I noticed a motorcycle parked on the side of the road. There were some small trees that made for a nice landscaping job along the road. As is normally the case there was a ditch beside the road and since the trees were watered recently by a truck (I'm sure it was tasked specifically to water the landscaping) there was water in the ditch. Two passengers of the motorcycle were sitting in the shade and one was using the water of the ditch to refresh himself, splashing it over his head. Being that this is still in the middle of Ramadan he probably wasn't drinking it, but he was using it.

When we crossed the Hari Rud River it is over a long bridge but there isn't much water. The river flows weakly throughout the year with a three-month spurt of real water. Normally there is only one spot with any water in it. I suspected it was shallow but on the way up I saw a motorcycle driving across it. Not the bridge, the bike went through the water. On the way back I saw a family stopped on the flat portion that serves as a bank during the 9 months of decreased flow. I'm not sure if they had made an excursion there just to see the water or if they were on their way to somewhere else, but there are lots of vehicles doing the same thing every time I cross the bridge.

The majority of the aid stations I see on the bases I've been on have had red crescent moons on them. Some have had the cross we all expect in the States, but the Red Crescent is much bigger here than the Red Cross. This is part of the reason it surprised me to see a giant cadeuses on each of the main gates leading in to the hospital. The history of the cadeuses as a Jewish event of healing startled me. Of course there is also a history of some of Saul's descendants settling in the Herat area. I was told they abandoned the town in the late 40s early 50s not long after Israel was founded but there is still a place referred to as Jew's Field somewhere in Herat.

Now I've mentioned the vehicles on the streets before. Cars, vans, trucks, zarangs, motorcycles, and bicycles. Zarangs are interesting three-wheeled vehicles. They are to the motorcycle what an El Camino is to the car. Sort of a conglomerate motorcycle, trailer, taxicab, vendor cart vehicle. They are all over. Most vans I see have the rear seats removed and have benches on the side walls because there are people crammed into the back. One guy always has the important job of holding on to the gate because they open the back gate when stopped and sometimes while driving to allow air flow in the back of the loaded vans. The trucks often have seats in the back, but even if they don't they tend to either be loaded down with cargo or people. Even some of the motorcycles and zarangs have from time to time a trailer overloaded with wood or metal or any other supply of things that are being transported from place to place, typically at a very slow speed.

There do not appear to be many rules of the road. Most of the roads in the town either have a concrete curb in the middle or a spot not quite the width of a vehicle where the pavement is not placed. On some streets there are cars parked over this non-paved portion of the road. Intersections are an amazing mass of things going in opposite directions. There are no stop signs, yield signs, traffic lights, and normally not even a police officer directing traffic. People just go where they want when they want. The truly amazing part is that I have not seen a single accident. Plenty of scraped, dented, and dinged vehicles, but not one accident. One car cut in front of us, in between the two vehicles to our right, then proceeded to go into a parking lot where one car was pulling out (in a similar fashion) all while a pedestrian crossed the lot opening. No one sped up or slowed down, even the pedestrian. But not one single bumper kissed.

Everyone seems to disobey the non-existent rules, but unlike in the States, everyone helps everyone breaking the rules. When we cross into the oncoming traffic lane to pass a slow-moving vehicle piled high with cargo, the oncoming traffic just slides a little to their right to get on the shoulder so we have the room to pass. Even still, it was a bit unnerving when we crossed the unpaved part of the road to pass the two "lanes" of traffic we couldn't get around. The chaos of traffic is simply amazing to watch.

The Consulate is by definition American soil, so I was able to briefly be at home. And on the day I returned briefly home I realized my greatest lesson of the Afghanistan trip yet. On our way out of the city we passed three boys on the side of the road wrestling. Again it hammered home the point. No matter that this country has been in a constant state of turmoil throughout its multi-thousand year existence. No matter that there has been almost constant war for the last thirty years. No matter where you go, it is someone's home. Someone laughs, plays, grows up, and knows of no life beside this one. And life is never all bad.