Yesterday morning I got up about 5:30am. IT was already quite bright. I think the time zone is off by almost two hours from what we are used to. I headed to the pool and swam some laps for exercise and to stay cool. After that I got some breakfast, killed some time, mailed my work BlackBerry back to the office, killed some more time, then packed up, turned in my bed linens and started forward movement processing at 1:30 pm. We loaded up on a C-130 and head to Iraq at 6pm. It was crazy hot and the wearing the body armor and helmet and dragging about 125 lbs of luggage had me sweating profusely. Water was coming out of me as fast as I could put it in. It would have saved time to just dump the water over my head instead of bothering to drink it and have it dump out my pore and into my eyes and everywhere else. My core temperature was getting very high. Once airborne I ripped open my body armor to ventilate – whew! I thought I was going to meltdown.
So a few hours later, flying w/o lights we landed at Balad, north of Baghdad. We were on the ground about an hour there and then headed to Baghdad. We arrived at BIAP/Victory Base/Sather Air Base a little before midnight. I eventually got a bed in transient tent, where I was the only occupant, for the evening. I then got up around 5 am, got a shower in the show trailer down the road, turned in my linens, found the chow hall, and checked in at helo operations for a ride to the IZ in downtown Baghdad. However, due to the dust storms, the helos are not flying right now. The air is thick with a talcum-like dust. My eyes are getting caked with it and my lungs can feel it down deep. Lovely, eh? At least the temperature is not brutally hot yet. So, here I sit at helo ops with little likelihood of getting a flight until late tonight. So, I finally got a hold of someone in the office I’ll be working in and they put in a request for me to travel by Rhino (an armored bus). It doesn’t leave until about 8pm but that is not the real problem. The problem is the Rhino departure point is about ½ hr from here, I have a ton of gear to wear and drag (dog tags are now on and sidearm strapped to my leg) and I have yet to figure out how to get from here to there. The third party national that I spoke with on a phone that apparently schedules a bus that could get me from here to there did not seem toknow where I was nor where I was going. Other than helo ops and the Rhino yard, I do not know either as a newbie here stuck in a dusty haze. Fun, fun. While I ponder the possibilities and look for a way forward I realize why they say the hardest part is just getting to your final destination (and then getting back out to go home). By being persistent and tenacious and I will find a way to get to the IZ by tonight. I could easily see how I could get lost for a day or two really easy before anyone started to look for me. Weird huh?
It is 10 am now. I have ½ a day to figure out how to get to the other side of the Victory Base Complex and past all the Ugandan manned checkpoints. In the mean time the chow hall (or DFAC for Dining Facility) is not far away and they have all the food I could possibly eat. I had some banana milk and white cantaloupe with my breakfast. They were both good. The scrambled eggs may not have been powdered and the turkey bacon was also good. Jealous?
More later….if I don’t run out of battery power which is always a problem.
Love,
Gary/Dad
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