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.