12-28-09

I woke up early and tried a couple of times to call my oldest kid, no luck this time. I called the wife and it really seems like she could use a break, I am glad she is going to spend some time with her family.

I went and talked to my new boss at 7:00 and he said that he was going to put me in a shop today to start turning wrenches. I thought I was just going to stay out of the way for a couple of days and wait for my bag, but this changes things. Now I might as well go and just have them ship it to me. So we had to drive down to the terminal to find out what flights are leaving because they can’t tell you the day before what the schedule is for the next day. There is only one flight today with a first call at 1:15, so we went back to the other side to pack up. I went to the shoppet to get a foot locker to move all the crap they have given me, they didn’t have one so I had to get a bus and go back to the other side, get a locker, get another bus back. Then I had to go to property to get another pair of boots, cold weather gear a sleeping bag and my body armor and helmet. You have to have body armor and a helmet to fly mil air. We came down to the terminal and made the list, so now we sit here and wait.

We landed in Kandahar at 6:00pm. The plane ride was a lot different than I expected, military air is absolutely no frills way to go. The pre boarding briefing was from one of the crew “Emergency on ground, follow crew. Emergency in air, hold on.” It was fold down bench seats but they were made with red netting, there was something like a seatbelt but it had a quick release and never actually latched. After sitting on the netting for 10 minutes my ass went numb and there was really no way to get comfortable because you are so close together and you are wearing body armor. Its four rows of seats, the outside rows have their backs to the hull and the inside rows have their backs to each other. And it is so noisy, I was wearing ear plugs and it was still deafening.

It took about an hour to get picked up at the terminal. Then a ride to the HR/Security/Billeting/Tire Shop, that’s where we got our meal cards.

Then they took us to our tent. I can’t describe the utter despair I felt when we walked in here. It is like living under an overpass, but in a tent. I have tried to take pictures, but I think the best way to describe it as a feeling of losing all hope. It smells in here of sewage, it isn’t so bad that it makes you gag, but it is always here. We found some empty bunks together and I got one that doesn’t have a top, which is nice but you kind of need the top in order to have any kind of privacy.