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.