Weird Days and Getting Used to The Suck

Hello All,

  I think I had my "capstone" convoy two days ago.  We had to go down Route xxxxx to get to a little-bitty outpost with a really huge attitude.  We don't go down this route often (I've done this once before during my first month here and it was kinda squirrelly) so we all pored over the maps.  It basically looked like a straight shot, no issues. 

 

  Yeah, well that is probably true on every day but Friday, which is the day we were convoying.  This route is chock FULL of mosques and, apparently, a really huge bazaar on Friday.  We hit our first roadblock (this was an honest-to-god roadblock put up by the police, more makeshift ones come later).  If I had seen this four months ago, we'd have called it quits and headed home.  There was no danger, just a big, people-laden roadblock.

 

  I had the convoy vector off one block, I figure we could drive around the block that had the roads blocked.  That didn't work out.  We ended up on a divided boulevard (going down the wrong side at first, Americans making a great first impression).  We got onto the correct side of the boulevard and kept travelling.  I figured, hey, as long as I can see xxxxxx Hill and that big Mosque with an-easily-identifiable dome, and keep in between them, I'm okay.

 

  The smoggy, nasty, Kabul air screwed that up for us.  As we kept zigzagging south and east to get back to our route, we couldn't see the towers in the middle of the roundabouts, much less xxxxxx Hill or our "special" mosque.  Four months ago, I'd have turned around at this point, too.

 

  It is better to be lucky than good.  We eventually zigzagged onto our route, after inadvertantly driving THROUGH the back corner of the bazaar (no roadblock back there) and suh-low-lee weaving through about 10,000 people.  Thank gawd the door locks were working.

 

  We got to our destination.  Conducted our official business, make a short detour on the way out to re-enlist SrA B at the Queens Palace (pictures to follow -- I never thought I'd do a re-enlistment in Battle Rattle, but now I have.)  Then we waded through all those roadblocks, crowds, and FRIDAY PRAYER TIME (mosques overflowed into the street).  We could have driven down the streets where they were praying, but we're not P.O.'ing the locals like that on my watch.  We have to do the same zigzag song-and-dance we did on the way down  times two on the way back up.  We dodge big crowds whether or not roadblocks were in place.  The visibility was even worse due to smog than on the way down.

 

  Anyhoo -- we got home safely.  I've now seen more of Kabul than I ever really wanted to.  There are some really nice houses out there and some promising construction sites away from our base.  I'd like to say that "Capstone Convoy" was my last one, but we just did another trip to Bagram yesterday for parts and repair jobs.

 

  It's amazing what you can get "used to" over here.

 

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

Letter of Appreciation

Hey, cool things do happen.  BG Wolters, the Deputy Commanding General for Political Military Affairs (US Embassy) presented SSG Commisso, IT1(SW/AW) Jurek, and I with Letters of Appreciation for completing the installation of ISAF-Secret in the US Embassy.  An LOA will help IT1 Jurek with promotion points and on her Chief's Board.  It will also help SSG Commisso on his SFC board.

 

This was a PAINFUL installation (rhetorically and physically, I managed to get my hand stuck in a cooling fan -- there wasn't a lot of blood, but when that little fan flung it on the wal...... yick).  The political and material hurdles were hor-ree-bull.

 

Anyhoo, it's nice to get kudos.  The general said the LOAs were for perserverance.  Apparently, we're the third group to try this install.  Others tried and quit.  The general said we had faced several hurdles that would have made most people quit, but we perservered.

 

He did relay a story that he came down to check on us and heard my looooooooooong string of four letter words after I cut my hand on the cooling fan.  He peeked in and saw SSG and I in our t-shirts, covered in ductwork dirt, and looking pretty sleep deprived.  As soon as we saw him, we briefed him that everything was under control, and we were making progress.  He said that kind of attitude wins wars.  While I appreciate the sentiment a bunch, from SSG, IT1, and my perspective, it just keeps us from getting clobbered by birds (colonels) and stars (generals).

 

Anyhoo, here's a couple of pix.

 

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

You can't make this stuff up....

All,

  I know this sounds weird being in a warzone and all, but here it is:

 

I'm fortunate enough to be allowed to be the sound guy for the local band CSTC-IT-2-YA (pronounce see-stick-it-to-ya -- it's a takeoff on our command name, CSTC-A pronounced see-stick-uh).  Any-hoo, normally the band just plays on base.  We got invited to play the British Embassy Christmas party.  That was going OFF!  There was 250 people crammed into a room for 150.  The band played really well.  The intoxicated Brit females in tight party dresses were dancing their butts off (rhetorically speaking).  We Americans aren't allowed to drink in the

 

The acoustics in there were awesome.  The decorating committee put sheets on the celing with Christmas tree lights for "mood lighting", but the sheets turned out to be the world's greatest dampers for the drums, which let us open up the mids on vocals.  BAM!  People could understand the band.

 

The band was out in the crowd playing, especially during (I know, these were Brits) Sweet Home Alabama.  Whodathunk that Brits dug Skynyrd?

 

Anyway, the other strange phenomenon was the crowd starting to sing along to "Far Away" which is a song that Al, the lead guitarist, wrote.  It's a catchy tune, but to get a crowd to sing along to the chorus of an original tune is pretty huge.

 

Since I'm the mixing board guy, I got to see the whole thing.

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

Happy Thanksgiving from Kabul, Afghanistan!

Happy Thanksgiving!

 

I hope everyone has a great day.  If we get a pic of the CJ6 folks and Navy folks here, I'll get that out to everyone.  We have the day off today -- not low battle rhythm, the day OFF!  THe Force Protection guys and Operations Cell folks are still cranking along, but I'm sitting on my duff looking at all the bazillion pix KL took in Manassas and San Diego.

 

Everybody be safe travelling -- cuz I'm NOT travelling anywhere today.  I'll be damned if I put my battle rattle on today.

 

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

We made it to Qatar!

Cost to me of a trip to Qatar from Afghanistan: $0
Cost to the US Government:$ A lot I'm sure$
Time to get to Qatar:
  - 30 hours at Bagram waiting for muster time
  - 2 hours of waiting in air terminal
  - 5 hours in a C130 (now I know why everyone scrambles to get on C17s instead of C130s.  Jumpseats suck!)
  - 1 hour in Qatari Customs
  - 1 hour of waiting IN THE BUS with IBA on (no place to store them) for our security escort to show up
  - 1 hour of briefs, sheets issue, and associated crap
  - 0300 get to bed after starting the checks for flying 20 hours earlier.

Sleeping on a brand new mattress (8 guys to a room, but we each got our own locker) with clean sheets and total silence in a country where my cell phone doesn't work/ring: Priceless.

Cheers!
Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

4 Day Pass

Hello All,

  Sitting at Bagram Air Field awaiting transportation to Qatar for our 4 day pass.  We've watched some movies, walked around the PX, and played some FreeCiv.  It is SO time to get on that plane tomorrow.  There's tons to do at the 4 day pass site in Qatar.  I'm looking forward to getting there.

 

  Now if I can just find somewhere to watch news since this is election day.....

 

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

Some Pix, yeah that's just about it

Hello All,

  Nothing really cool to chat about.  Here's some pix from a recent Kabul to Bagram and back convoy.  We're usually pretty groggy on the return from Bagram.  The one pic of the Chief pretty much captures the post convoy plunk.  The goofy shots of everybody else is what we look like after we all suck down Red Bulls or massive coffee to get "up" for the return convoy.

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

Big Techie Ohmigod

Hello All,

  We've rounded two REALLY painful technological bends here recently.  Our first victory was moving to a different voice collaboration system and getting the Commander's Update Brief to use headphones.  Doesn't sound like much, but it's a pretty big feat with the microwave and satellite links here.

 

  The second one has been HORRIBLE.  Here's the deal:

   - A General, his Aide, and his Exec could not send encrypted or signed emails. They also could not upload their Public Encryption certs to the Global Address List (GAL)  We worked on this problem for the last two months.

 

Techie Alert:  If you're not a techie, this will bore you to tears.  Just know that this really, really sucked.

 

  - First, we checked their certs.  The certs are valid.  The email addresses on the certs do NOT match the email addresses here.

  - We used their certs on our accounts.  The certs sent just fine, both encrypted and signed.

  - We used our certificates on their accounts, no one's accounts could send.

  - We checked Active Directory for any Sesame Streets ("which one of these is not like the other.....")  No joy there.

  - We manually published their encryption certs THROUGH THE SERVER to AD.  Suddenly, they could receive encrypted emails.  Still couldn't send signed or encrypted.

 - We got DISA and the TNOSC involved.  DISA branched this problem out to Oklahoma City, Columbus Ohio, and a NCES help site.  They had a lot of great ideas.

- They had us manually put SupressNameChecks DWORD = 1 in the registry under HKEY_Current_User/Software/Microsoft/Office/11.0/Outlook/Security  --  still no joy (GPOs are supposed to push this anyway).  Notice that 'Supress' is misspelled.  We didn't catch that the first time (Thanks Microsoft).  Also, there are two Outlook subkeys under Office.  Use the 11.0 one, not the plain Outlook one.  We missed that, too (Thanks again, Microsoft).

 

We ended up nuking LTC Z's account while keeping her mailbox.  No joy.  We then nuked her account AND mailbox.  WORKED!! Except now she gets lot's of bounced emails.

 

We went to CPT F's mailbox.  We nuked his account and mailbox, waited two hours for replication, them made him an identical account and mailbox.  He worked AFTER we put SupressNameChecks in.

 

We haven't gotten to fix the general, yet.  Nuking his mailbox causes him to not be able to receive email for six hours.  He gets email 24X7, even late night on US weekends.  Lot's of fun.

 

Even better, we found that all three of these folks were receiving NO GPOs.  No idea how that is happening.  The NOC, RNOSC, and TNOSC are working on that one.  Crazy, crazy stuff when Active Directory gets this big and dispersed.

 

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

Fwd: FW: LCDR JODY HOWARD GRADY TIS

It is rare that Navy paperwork can appear......beautfiul, but, somehow, this paperwork is.

(TIS = Transfer Information Sheet: it's the first step in transferring out of ECRC -- my GSA assignment to Afghanistan -- and back to the States.)

Cheers,

Jody

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: xxxxxxxx PSC ECRC, N1 <xxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 3:41 AM
Subject: FW: LCDR JODY HOWARD GRADY TIS
To: Jody Grady <xxxxxxxx>
Cc: "xxxxxxxx LCDR ECRC, N1" <xxxxxxxx>, "xxxxxxxx PS1 ECRC, N1" <xxxxxxxx>, "xxxxxxxx PS2 ECRC, N1" <xxxxxxxx>


CDR,
Attached is your transfer package, if you can please print, and have
your paperwork completed as soon as you can, and return it to PS2
xxxxxxxx.
Please email PS2 xxxxxxxx your transfer clerk should you have any
questions.


v/r
PSC (AW) xxxxxxxx
ADMIN SUPPORT/COUNTRY LEAD AFGHAN
ECRC LITTLE CREEK

Surreal Things to Say on Convoy

It's not that I never thought I'd say this, I just never thought of this topic at all.  It sounded pretty surreal coming out of my mouth at the time, but it's even more surreal when I ponder on it.  Last week on the way to Bagram we had some issues, I actually had to say:

 

"Sergeant, stop flipping off the guy pointing the MK19 Automatic Grenade Launcher at us!!"

 

To be fair, his flipping was probably more effective than my frantic waving motions.

 

Good times.

 

Cheers,

Jody

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
  -- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

Geek fun

Special projects are usually short bus special, not "very special episode of Blossom" special.  Over the last two days, we were living the short bus variety....

 

We got a call that SECDEF was coming and a bunch of media were coming with him.  Reporters need "dirty Internet" to move their video and other sundry junk.  We have a dirty Internet connection on base for the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) who also has to move video and junk. So.........

 

Now this single computer connection needs to get spread out to over a dozen news agencies in a tiny room located over 100 ft from the satellite dish and modem.  Back in the US, you'd just buy a wireless router and run with it.  Not so much here.

 

First off, we don't have a government credit card to buy stuff because we don't have a Title 10 (Defense) budget -- we only have a Title 22 (Dept of State) budget since we do the training, equipping, advising, and mentoring of Afghanistan, not the kinetic mission with NATO.  So we can't go to the PX and buy a wireless router.  We have some really old routers and switches that we use for emergencies, but what can those old IOS's do?  Since we don't usually NAT (network address translation) in the military, who knows how to configure the router to do it? (All the NAT'ing I've ever seen has been through a firewall vice a router -- no spare Raptor firewall appliance laying around).

 

TECHIE ALERT: the fol discussion will be interesting to the geeks in the group, everybody else can just accept that the press has Internet, and it was very painful to get them to it.  Non-geeks can feel more than comfortable not reading any further)

 

We confgured a Cisco 3650 switch with only a default VLAN and no layer 3 functions (dumb switch. 

 

We had a 3U high Cisco 2600 (that's right, not even the 1U version that came out in 2004) router.

 

We set up DHCP on the router.  I'm used to setting up a scope in Linux or on Windows 2000, but this was a little different.  I could not exclusively set up a range, I had to define a subnet range, then exclude vital addresses from the scope like the identity (192.168.13.0) and the gateway (192.168.13.1).  We limited the scope to half a class C (255.255.255.128).  That went okay once I realized that you have to issue conf t -- service dhcp to start the damn thing.

 

Next up we moved to NAT.  That is where life got ugly.  (I'm not a fan of NAT since it limits your network management in a lot of scenarios, but I digress).

 

We downloaded the Cisco guidance on NAT.  Really good general guidance, but the wording is REALLY subtle about some key issues.

1) Your NAT Pool is a set of global addresses, not local.

2) Your access list is a set of local addresses, but don't use the "any" option, no translation table will generate if you do, but the IOS WILL let you make that mistake.

3) if you uber-focus on NAT, you will likely forget to create a default-gateway

4) even after you create a default-gateway, NAT is ignoring it.  You must make a manual (and ip-classless) 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx entry for NAT to build its translation table.

 

Okay, so all that evil is over.  From the console port on the router, you can ping www.google.com.  Yay!  You finally have Internet access on your router.  Let's check the laptop.  No joy.  The laptop can't even ping your modem.  That's bad.

 

Spend six hours reading every Cisco NAT article ever written (routergeek.com simply ROCKS!)  That guide taught us some valuable little details:

 

Static NAT is easy.

Dynamic one-to-one NAT is easy.

Dynamic one-to-many NAT is not so easy.

 

If you have many global IPs, make a NAT pool like in the Cisco article.  If you don't ignore the Cisco guidance.

 

If you have TWO gloabl IPS, make a NATO pool of ONE IP.  It looks pretty stupid when you configure it, but it can work.

 

If, like in most situations, you have one IP and one IP only, then DO NOT MAKE A NAT POOL.  DO NOT ASSIGN YOUR ONLY GLOBAL IP TO THE NAT STATEMENT.

 

You give your global IP address to your outside interface.  You then write your NAT statement to use the outside interface.

 

Okay, even then, we weren't working.  No NAT Translation table being generated.  NAT debug gave us an error only addressed in the CCIE manual.  Yep, not the CCNA, CCNP, CCDP, or CCDA manuals, the CCIE manual.  That's WAY over my head.

 

So, getting tired and frustrated, we enlisted the NOC's help.  They did the same stuff I did for a long while.  Then we collectively decided to build a static NAT to see if I f'd up the NATing or the routing.  BOOM!  The NAT table populated.  NAT debug gave us tons of positive info.  WFT?

 

We rebuilt the access list to include a whole class C vice just half the class C.  BOOM! the NAT kept working.

 

Here's what I did wrong: for my access-list statement, I used the wildcard filter of 0.0.0.128.  Looks nice, but if you do the math, it should have been 0.0.0.127 b/c the filter is a ones-complement 255-128.  My bad.

 

It all works now.  We lost power twice after gettign the thing to work due to the PAO's camera lights blowing fuses.  Each time before I could reload the config to NVRAM, so we got to rebuild the damn changes two more times.

 

Lot's of fun, below is the config file for your personal amusement....

 

Cheers,

Jody

PAO-Router#sh run                
Building configuration...                        

Current configuration : 1377 bytes                                 
!
! Standard stuff that came up after the mgr wiz
!
version 12.3           
service timestamps debug datetime msec                                     
service timestamps log datetime msec                                   
no service password-encryption                             
!
hostname PAO-Router                  
!
boot-start-marker                
boot-end-marker              
!
! Yes, I know the pw is in the open.  It's going away
!
enable secret 5 $1$Vtb4$Kb2vYuvJ9Kud22YI/PBME.                                             
enable password root                   
!
no network-clock-participate aim 0                                 
no network-clock-participate aim 1                                 
no aaa new-model               
ip subnet-zero             
ip cef     
!
! Set up DHCP services
! Pass gateway, one DNS (can't seem to enter another)
!
ip dhcp excluded-address 192.168.13.0 192.168.13.1                                                 
!
ip dhcp pool PAO-DHCP-POOL                         
   network 192.168.13.0 255.255.255.0                                    
   default-router 192.168.13.1                             
   dns-server 203.196.128.48                           
!
! Name server for the router, not to pass to DHCP
! I don't know what the ip ips.. is - more standard stuff
!
ip name-server 58.147.128.7                          
ip name-server 203.196.128.48                            
ip ips po max-events 100                       
! don't allow ftp
no ftp-server write-enable                         
!
! Outside interface to satellite modem
! IP taken from PAO computer
!
interface FastEthernet0/0                        
 ip address 58.147.150.178 255.255.255.240                                         
 ip nat outside              
 ip virtual-reassembly                     
 duplex auto           
 speed auto          
!
! Inside interface to switch
!
interface FastEthernet0/1                        
 ip address 192.168.13.1 255.255.255.0                                     
 ip nat inside             
 ip virtual-reassembly                     
 speed auto          
 half-duplex           
 no mop enabled              
!
! I know, you expect a default-gateway statement here
! I tried it, it didn't work
!
ip classless           
ip route 0.0.0.0 0.0.0.0 58.147.150.177                                      
!
! web servers turned off for security
! Yes, telnet is still on
!
no ip http server                
no ip http secure-server                       
!
!
! Since we have only one global IP, we designate fa0/0 as the global ip
! vice having an IP pool - THIS IS A KEY POINT TO REMEMBER
! Also, I know that "overload" is implied in the statement, but it
! is explicity written here for clarity
!
ip nat inside source list 13 interface FastEthernet0/0 overload                                                              
!
!This is the access list that cuased all the problems
! notice 0.0.0.127 vice 0.0.0.128
!
access-list 13 permit 192.168.13.0 0.0.0.127
!
!control-plane
!
line con 0
line aux 0
line vty 0 4
 password toor
 login
!
end

--
"...wrap your arms around your body armor, give it a big embrace, and LEARN TO LOVE THE SUCK!"
-- Sergeant First Class Jenkins, 13 JUL 08

...they tortured the monkey?!?!

Okay, people do dumb things, even in a warzone. The great thing about the military, is the story gets so twisted as it winds around that you can totally lose what really happened.

FACT: Two contractors got caught by the MPs smoking weed on the roof of their barrakcs (dumb).
FACT: After apprehension, their room was searched by the MPs. The MPs found that these two had a pet monkey in their room (bizarre).

So, just to make this tasty little tidbit kinda fun, two of my guys were relaying to the story to...... let's call him R.

"Hey R, did you hear that the MPs found a monkey in a couple of guys' room? Yeah, they waterboarded the monkey and he talked. He gave away that his owners were smoking weed on the roof. Man, when it comes to monkeys, the MPs aren't messing around!"

R lost his freakin' noodle that he just heard that the MPs waterboarded the monkey. He started going on and on about that poor monkey. My guys kept empahasizing, "Yeah, they got the monkey to TALK, R TALK." R was not hearing it.

They finally had to explain to him that:
1) They were joking, and here were the real facts of what happened
2) Monkeys don't talk, no matter if you waterboard them or not.

All in all, that makes for a fairly bizarre afternoon.

Pictures from the Flat Tire Day

Some blurry pix from our lovely day changing a blowout (last week).  Four pix of me sweating my butt off.  There's a pic of the tire and the gas station we were at while changing the tire.

9/11 in Kabul

We had a 9/11 Commemoration this morning at 0745. MG Cone laid a wreath at the base of the US flagpole, which stood at halfmast. The wreath was for the 89 American, NATO, and Coalition service members that CSTC-A has lost since the war here began. Pretty somber stuff.

The last 9/11 Commemoration I took part in was at sea. The NIMITZ Strike Group had dropped 18 bombs in Afghanistan and 18 bombs in Iraq. Our surface guys had interdicted untold numbers of ships & dhows and some destroyers got to do high speed, low drag ops in direct support of troops on the ground and in protection of Kaabot and Aabot. The NIMITZ CO came over the 1MC (announcing system for you civilian types) and said that there would be no traditional memorial service for us. There had been a time for mourning, but that time was over. Now was the time for killing. Our Strike Group had done its part to help with the killing, we wouldn't be mourning that day.

Two different approaches to the same day, interesting perspective. We were lucky during that deployment and didn't lose a single Sailor or Marine. CSTC-A hasn't been that fortunate. I think that colors things a lot.

I still have a goal to make sure I fly on a commercial airliner on 9/11. I havent' gotten that chance, yet. I hope to someday soon.

Aggressive Drivers Make Me Twitchy

Today I had a couple of more firsts. Today was my first time in lead vehicle without anyone else in the vehicle who knew the route. There were other people in the car, but they were riders/security, not drivers. That was pretty sporty for me. I didn't mess up any routes, but I did hit some potholes while I was nogginizing about where to turn next. That was on the way up to our destintation.

On the way back, we had a different flavor of sporty. A vehicle with a stubby antenna on his hood (not normal) came in directly behind my #3 vehicle and was staying 2-3 feet off #3's tail. The guy kept trying to get into the middle of our formation (it seemed). He had a couple of chances to use a side road to get around us, but he didn't act like he was passing. If he had wanted to pass, he could have used the side road and we'd have let him by. He kept this up until one of our major checkpoints.

I don't know if he was trying to pass us and being dumb about it, was an angry Afghan wanting to play road-rage with the Americans, trying to hurt us (his car wasn't low to the ground, he wasn't wearing bulky clothes), he thought he'd be safer by traveling in the American group, or he was probing us to determine our tactics. I'm personally going for angry Afghan in a road rage mood. He messed with us for almost 40 minutes. If I had known he was going to be around us, I wouldn't have drunk that coffee at our destination to help stay awake -- he kept us awake just fine.

Good times, hopefully just a snarky dude with a fairly fast car -- that IS the most likely scenario.

Earthquake

Earthquake --- schweet! More fun.

First Convoy as Convoy Commander

Convoy sucked.  Blew out a tire, had to set up a security perimeter.  Someone let a guy with an airhose into the perimeter to help me.  Should have told me he was doing that.  An Afghan taps me on the shoulder when I'm not looking --- I started pulling my weapon before I figured out what was going on.  Luckily, I had my pistol strapped so I didn't complete the draw. 

He was trying to help.  We used his air hose.  I paid him $10.

We had some other equipmet issues along the way, not a happy time.  I'm tired, sweaty (ever changed a tire on an up-armored truck while wearing body armor and a helmet?), and flustered.

I'm SO going to sleep well tonight.

And....some more pics

More about the weird day

A few more pix from my Weird Day. Notice the burned out Russian Armored Personnel Carrier. There were several out there today. A destroyed Russian tank (okay, just a turret and a lot of scrap metal), and a hulk of a leftover Russian helicopter. These guys killed a lot of Russian with the weapons we bought for them in the 80's.And yes, that is a ferris wheel in the last shot. There's a fair going in south Kabul. By gawd, we'll beat those Taliban bastards, yet.

Weird Day

Okay, we had a long convoy today. We went up a mountain to see a couple of antennas we pay for. We were in armored vehicles and other armored vehicles have gone up there before, but......

Up went fine. We did our 3 point turn to come down the mountain and suddenly we couldn't turn right. Took a look under the Toyota Land Cruiser and the right wheel tire rod was bent, bent a WHOLE lot.

We called for help (we were just above a special forces camp) and they sent a mechanic. He took the hydraulics loose from the tire rod. Then he and I (yay! I got to help) used the jack to try and straighten the tire rod. It sorta worked.

Then someone had to drive the damn thing down the mountain. Up was pretty challenging (I drove up). I decided since my driving may have been a contributing factor on the way up, I should drive it down. Earl took up shotgun as a 2nd set of eyes.

The trip down was pretty skeery. We could only get about 45 degrees of right turn. That made the trip down a "how close to the left of the road (where the mountain ends and "our friend gravity" takes over) we could safey get. Apparently, we were pretty close to the left because (Kerri, be sure to pass this along to your Dad) a Marine Major told me I had "balls of steel" to drive that vehicle that close to the edge of a mountain. I don't know about "balls of steel". That whole experience was pretty much out of body for me, see turn, take turn, don't fall off mountain.

Good times.

Around the madness, we got to go to the "Queens Palace" and get some great pix. I also have some lovely pix from the top of that mountain. You'll see a few of the pix of the outside and the inside of the Queens Palace and some outside fo the King's Palace (buiilt in 49, burnt sometime in the 60's -- accident)

Combat Life Saver Course

I did something today that I never thought I would do: I put an IV into someone's arm, for real. It was part of the Combat Life Saver course. My partner took two sticks to get in my vein, but he did well with the rest of the procedure after the stick. I got into his vein on the first try, but I kept putting pressure on the catheter when I was compleing the IV (which hurts). We called it even. Eileen got some great pics. One guy, Christian, had a Canadian partner. The Canuck was REALLY shaking. He basicaly massacred Christian's arms (both of them). There was a good deal of spurting blood, Nice.

We also put tourniquets on each other. We had to actually tighten them until the pulse below the tourniquet was gone. For the record, tourniquets really hurt. I had to put two different tourniquets on my arm (me putting on my arm). Then I had to puts tourniquets on my partner's legs. The tourniquet on the leg hurt, but not as bad as the pressure point stuff you do with your knee. A knee with full weight pressed into your inner thigh smarts really bad. Good training though.

Well, off to study for my CLS Exam tomorrow. I'll send pix when Eileen gets them downloaded.

First Time Driving and First Night Convoy

Last night I got to drive during a convoy for the first time. Just to throw me in the fire, the convoy was at night and with the protection guys that do convoying for a living. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling some stress. Taking barricades at a good clip with an up-armored F-350 truck is challenging. The acceleration is sluggish and the brakes aren't happy (b/c of weight of the armor, not lack of maintenance). Anyway, I managed to keep up with the pros in front of me, but juuuuuuuuuuuust barely. I was either foot on the brakes or accelerator to the floor the entire trip. I had to seasoned convoy guys with me in the truck (wouldn't have done this without them being there).

We didn't get in until nearly midnight. We had some distinguished visitors to meet this morning, so no sleeping in. I went ahead and PT'd at 0530 this morning. I'm pretty wiped now.

I'm starting to learn the lingo around here. I read a lot of powerpoints. I hope to be an actual productive member of the staff sometime in the next couple of days.

First Night in Kuwait

This doesn't quite capture that windstorm we had.............

Heading to Kuwait

I've attached some more pix of my IA adventure. The first few are from JFK airport. That's right, on the way to Kuwait we had to stop in JFK. Trying to shake down all the knives and stuff from our uniforms was challenging. The picture of my M16, M9, and leatherman on the floor of an airplane are sent to show just how bizarre it is to see honest to god weapons on a charter flight -- really strange.

The next few photos are home-sweet-Camp Virginia. Not much to look at, but it felt pretty lavish after Udairi Range. The next few pix are murals around the base done by different units as they passed through here. Some of them are memorials to folks who didn't come back through.

The last pic is me in my sweaty, unshaven, unshowered, MRE-bloated condition. Yeah, I wasn't exactly happy standing in our tent with no AC. Not funny at all.

I have some videos to send, but the wireless on base is too unreliable to connect my computer to. The call center computer I'm on has no software for reducing the size of the avi. Bummer.

I hope the pix are enjoyable. I'll have more when we get to Afghanistan very soon.

Back from Udairi Range

We're back from Udairi Range. Wow that was really freakin' hot up there.

We finished our convoy (we did a rehearsal before, but this was the one where the instructors don't help, but rather screw with you) in 2.5 hours. The average time is 3 hours. The worst ever was 6 hours. The best ever was 1.5 hours.

They had IEDs waiting for us almost immediately. We managed to not get blown up by the primary or the Christmas Tree secondaries they set up. Our 5/25s didn't step on any berm secondaries either (I was worried I'd do that since I was one of the 5/25 guys, but I never got even close to one). We then had a sniper scenario. That guy got waxed by at least two trucks' 50 cals in no time flat (imaginary 50 cals). Then we had an overpass scenario that's kind of like the kobiashi maru on Star Trek, no matter what you do, you're gonna get hit. It's just a matter of how badly we get hit that's in play. We had 2 of 7 trucks get nailed, but both did the right things to work getting clear, so they were recoverable. We towed them out of the kill zone, set up a wagon circle off the road, called in a chopper, and medevac'd the wounded (Virtual chopper, real smoke signal -- it's kinda fun to throw those).

After that, we had to deal with an Iraqi Police checkpoint gone bad. That was the suck. The vehicle that got caught in there got totally waxed. The people who did the waxing got tagged, then we secured the area, put down a on-road LZ, and medevac'd the wounded. We're getting a littly froggy at this point.

We had to divert to support another group and ended up in a roundabout. We locked the roundabout down just like during rehearsal, had some suspicious activity to report, and had to conduct escalation against some local drivers getting too impatient about getting to work that morning.

Next (and last, thank goodness), we had a fender bender in a village start turning into a mini-demonstration. We maintained standoff so we didn't piss off the populace, negotiated with local police to move the blocking vehicles and plowed through safely. No bad guys were in the crowd. We followed ROE and didn't shoot anybody.

After nearly three days of MREs, I'm bloated like a beached whale. After nearly three days of no showers, we all smell just lovely. The power (lights and air conditioning) in our tents is out (thanks, home base maintenance). The pumps that run the showers are out. We're all in the computer lab unshaven, unshowered, and fragrant. Everyone else in the lab can just deal with it........

Next stop: shower (when they turn back on) and travel brief to find out how we're getting to Afghanistan (Bagram) and then on the Kabul.

In Kuwait

We're at Camp Virginia in Kuwait. We're acclimating until later this week (at the buttcrack of dawn) when we head to the Udairi Range.

It was 120 today when we were unloading bags and the wind was kicking. The sand is about the consistency of talcolm powder -- lovely.

There's no humidity, we're all happy about that.

I'm attaching a photo on this send of me trying to lead a team out of an urban ops scenario. There's a reason the Army trains for urban ops for two months. We were in Keystone Kop mode for both this first house, the secure transit across the road, and taking down the second house. I think I'm safe enough to fall in with another group to get cover if I had to, but not to do house-to-house searches for a living.

The guys demo'ing are lighting quick and have a million pinches nudges, and pushes to signal stuff. That takes a lot of training.

I'm sending a second email with a pic of me as Truck Commander for H1 (vehicle in front). My battle-buddy was convoy commander and stuck me in the front humvee. I reminded him that buddy was only half a word. We had to see all the IEDs, put up blocking positions in roundabouts, and get ambushed. Good times (really good training, too).

My 30 minutes on this computer are up. Gotta go.