Guitar

It snowed again today, looks like it might be a regular occurance for a little while. Oh well, I should be leaving in about 2 weeks for leave. There have been rumors that our leave will be pushed back a little bit because there guys in December that are still waiting to go. We'll see what happens.

I'm still practicing the guitar, with little improvement. We'll see how that goes. I also invested some money into some of the banks that took a nose dive this year. I heard they probably will start going up, so maybe I'll be making some money.

Snow Day

Today has been our first real snow that stuck. Hopefully it doesn't melt anytime soon, otherwise there will be a ton of mud. Everything else seems to have really slowed down due to weather. We have to conserve most everything because flights are rare or non-existant. I like the snow, but it seems to cause a lot of problems.

Not much else going on, I just hope our leave won't get delayed. I talked to one guy who also went Australia, and he said he had a good time. I'll try and post some pictures of the snow when I get the chance. The mountains around us look pretty cool.

Bad Weather

The weather has been pretty bad the last couple of days. It's been raining, hailing and windy, but no snow. It makes it hard for anyone to leave or come in or mail to get here. If winter stays like this, it's going to be really slow.

Not much else going on here. Waiting for January to get here. Also, if any of you have any requests for authentic Afghanistan stuff, let me know. I'll try and buy it soon and ship it out.

Snow

It finally snowed here. It was just a little bit, and it didn't even stick. But the mountains around us still have a little snow on them. It's going to be a mess here when it does start. Just a little rain makes this place a mud bath.

I got my visa for Australia, so I should be good to go. It'll be good to get out of the freezing cold and go to the warm beach. Although I'm thinking about opening a ski lodge here. I think there's definitely a market for it... somewhere.

Winter

It looks like winter is officially here, because it's really cold. It's been pretty busy because a lot of people have gone on leave. Not too much longer for me, and I'll be hanging out in Australia. Actually there's not a whole lot of time left on this deployment either, maybe four or five months. It should go by pretty quick. Other than that, it's been really quiet. It should stay that way for a while too.

Swine Flu

We recently receieved the swine flu vaccination. We'll see what happens. It seems like this is how zombie outbreaks start though. A vaccination is swiftly approved, the long term effects are unknown, and a massive vaccination policy happens. Who knows, but recently I've been feeling this... hunger...

Anyway, we never solved the mystery of the shower stall. Whoever was doing it, stopped. It'll probably be on unsolved mysteries on A&E because it was such a big deal. That's pretty cool at least.

Mystery

Something horrible and wrong has been happening the last few days here. Something so savage, so barbaric, that normal people won't even believe it.

Three days ago, a discovery was made in one of the showers stalls. Not just any shower stall, but the cleanest one with the hottest water. It was a... human turd. Why would a turd be in the shower? Who did this? Most people believed it was a local national, someone not familiar with what one is supposed to actually do in a shower versus in a bathroom. However, the plot thickens the next day...

The next morning, there's another one! How could it be? Is it a joke? No one knows...

And finally today, another one!! My personal theory is that it's a soldier. There's some really dirty people here, and it wouldn't surprise me if they were just lazy. It could be a local national, but they're the ones that have to clean it. So why would they do it? Hopefully, we'll solve this unsavory mystery soon. To be continued...

Really Cold

It's getting really cold now. I could see it snowing pretty soon. Otherwise not much new. We're having another mass exodus of people going on leave again so it probably will be busy this month. Which is good because after this month there's only December left before I go on leave.
The food here has been pretty bad lately, not sure why. Maybe I'm just getting tired of it. Although they did have breakfast served for all three meals the other day. I don't like eggs all that much, and after the third time having it I had enough eggs for the rest of the year.

Pictures

Here's some pictures:

November

It's already November! I think that's our halfway point. If it's not, oh well, I'll still say it is because it sounds good. I keep forgetting to bring my camera, but I'll post pictures soon. Not much else going on, just looking forward to January. One of the units here is leaving, and other just flew in to take their place. So it's pretty crowded.

Halloween

Almost time for Halloween. Not much is going on here, although KBR shipped some pumpkins over and carved them. It's getting pretty cold, especially at night. I keep hearing this winter is going to be worse then last years. I don't know how last year's winter was, so I don't know how bad this winter will be.



It's been really quiet here. Hopefully I'll have some more pictures to put up soon.

Big City

I got back from Bagram. It's weird going there after a few months. That place is like Juarez. There are tons of people and everything is crowded. It was nice to drive an actual car on paved roads though. On the way back from Bagram to Sharana we flew in a stol aircraft. It was just a small airplane that was run by contractors. It was nice because it wasn't a C-130 and had actual seats and a flight attendent. Compared to the chinooks and other helicopters I was living it up.

Earthquake

Last night while I was about to go to bed, we had an earthquake. It was pretty long and definitely shook the building, but that was about it. It was kind of weird to have one here. I thought I'd only feel them in California or Washington.

Anyway, I should be back to the home FOB pretty soon. This was kind of of a wasted trip since we didn't even get to deliver any mail. Oh well, that's Afghanistan.

Vacation Time

I get to leave our FOB to go to some of the FOB's and to Bagram to give out mail. It will be good to get out of here for a few days at least. I'm also supposed to take some customs class about what we can and can't have when we leave out of here.

It's getting pretty cold now, it looks like it's going to stay this way for a while. It's gonna be bad when it starts snowing though. Oh well, I have a warm coat at least.

Uh Oh

Looks like the unit is experiencing deployment drama. This seems to happen halfway or a three fourths way through a deployment, but is happening early for this one. People getting mad, telling crazy stories back home, doing stupid stuff here is all part of it. Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come, but you never know.

I heard that Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize. Seems kind of strange, because I haven't seen much progress in that area. They give that prize out for just hoping for peace? They better start handing out a bunch more next year if that's how you get it.

AK47

I wanted to share this picture of me holding an AK47. This is weapon used in Afghanistan. Well, pretty much the entire third world. It's actually pretty light, even though it has a lot of metal and wood in it. They say you can bury it and come back to it a year later and it will still fire. I don't know about that, but it's a cool weapon anyway.

Another Day in Afghanistan

It was a long day today. We had about a billion jingle trucks that had to be either be unloaded, sent somewhere else, or just sent away. Not to mention getting fuel, straps, and oil. Talking to these guys is like talking to kindergartners with ADD. Luckily we have a really good interpreter. He's worked here four years and probably could do all of our jobs. He says he's getting his LAPR card soon and will be moving to San Antonio. Hopefully he does cause he deserves it.

Not much else going on besides this. A bunch of people are coming back from leave so we should be getting some 'days off.' We'll see what happens

Weather

It's still pretty hot here. I thought it was going to mirror New Mexico weather and start getting colder. I guess not. One of the interpreters here said that it can snow almost 3 ft around here. It doesn't look like there will be any snow here anytime soon.
There hasn't been much else new, but I'll try and update the blog more often.

Nothing New

Not much going on here to report. Back to working 8 hours, going to the gym, and eating. That's about it.

Ramadan or Ramazan (however they spell it) is finally over. Pretty much all that means is that I might get my laundry quicker. I guess they have another holiday right after Ramadan called Eids or something. I guess it's their Christmas but lasts 3 or 4 days.

Here's a picture of me at the project site saving a puppy. I single handedly stopped the backhoe from crushing it... Right...

Office time

We finished our project and now I'm back at the office. Not much else going on, just counting down the days. I guess we have 150 or something close. Not too bad I guess. They say if you sleep a lot, you'll cut your deployment in half. I might have to try that...

Cool Project

We're almost done with the culvert project. It's actually pretty cool, we had to lay some pipes under some hescos and under a road. Hescos are these wire and cloth barriers that surrounds pretty much all U.S. bases. They're easy to put up, and all you do is fill them with dirt and you're done.

It's nice since I've been able to get out of the office, mostly. I learned to drive a backhoe, bobcat, and a roller. Most of the equipment is pretty easy to learn, but hard to master. I doubt I'll be getting a construction job when I get back though. I'll put some pictures on after we're done.

New Projects

It has been a little while since I updated, but it's because I've actually been busy. We've had a bunch of people go on leave so I've had to take over there jobs. One job I do is loading jingle trucks with stuff that needs to go to different FOBs in Afghanistan. It's pretty easy, but if you don't have a translator it can be a little confusing. Using hand gestures only goes so far.

I've also been in charge of a construction project. There's some government agencies here (they won't tell us which ones) that needed a culvert put in. When it rains here, it usually pours and ends up flooding areas of the base. So we've been making a big ditch and laying down some pipes. It's a nice change from staring at a computer and getting carpal tunnel. We've also made some friends as you can see in this picture.

Also our cellphone service has been down for a few days. Service here is still better though then what I get in New Mexico.

Here it is

It's getting much colder here at night. I still need to post a picture of that last hailstorm we had, it was pretty amazing. The other day some paratroopers jumped near our FOB, that was pretty cool to watch. I guess they were practicing, if you're on jump status you need to do so many jumps a year to stay current.

I've been investing more into some mutual funds, hopefully the stock market keeps going up. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll have enough money saved that I can just retire and live on a beach after I get back... haha.

I'm trying to get our translator to find a cheap motorcycle for me to buy. A lot of the hadjis here have one and I'd think it would be pretty easy to get one. I'd like to just take it a part and put it back together again, since our maintainance is right here and have all the tools I'd ever need. Maybe I could lower it and put a giant aluminum spoiler on it too, just so I'd have the coolest motorcycle in the Paktika province. We'll see...

Address

Not much new to report; we had a huge hailstorm the other day. I'll post a picture of it later. Some people wanted my address in Afghanistan, so here it is:

My name (hopefully you know what it is)
920th EN CO
FOB Orgun-E
APO AE 09311

That's all there is to it. I don't want to post my whole name on here for security reasons, but I have full confidence that you can fill in the blank.

Getting Cold

The weather here has been getting more rainy and a little more cold lately. There's been some pretty good storms here.
I helped put a dozer on a jingle truck today. The guy driving it on the jingle almost destroyed the truck. I guess he couldn't find the brake on the dozer and flew up the ramp onto the flatbed and just smashed the entire dozer down. The hadji eyes were huge when he saw that happen. After he inspected it though, he gave us the 'no problem mister, good good'. So I guess we didn't damage it too much. Not much else new besides that.

I heard that NASA sent up a treadmill names after Stephen Colbert. That's pretty interesting.

Vehicles

Pretty much these vehicles have completely replaced Humvees. It's weird, only like three years ago all there was in Iraq were Humvees. Now, you can't even go outside the wire with one.

Anway these are called MRAPs, and they weigh a ton. They are specially built to withstand pretty much any IED. They were actually invented in South Africa, where they needed a vehicle to take kids to school that could withstand a mine going off. So some guy down there decided that if you put armor and make the bottom a V shape, it can withstand a mine.

And now you know...

Afghanistan Transportation

Here's a video of our primary transportation, the chinook. Most of the bases are pretty high up, so there aren't too many helicopters that can fly at such a high altitude. Riding in a chinook is like riding in a really long rollercoaster.

I prefer my chinooks to look like this:

Ramadan

The elections are over and I'm still not sure who was elected. Not that it really effects us here. We started the month of Ramadan for all the Muslims here. I don't really know too much about the holiday other than they work even less than usual and they can't eat during the day. Apparently they're supposed to be fasting in order to feel like starving people, but they just eat a lot of food at night.

Still the same here, only 5 more months until I go to Australia. I found out today that the Army split the time we've been in Iraq into campaigns. When I was there I was apparently involved in two campaigns, so I get to put on two campaign stars on my Iraq ribbon. They really don't matter except for promotion points. Which really doesn't matter to me because I'm not reenlisting. I'm not even sure why I put this in, other than I don't have much else to say.

Grim

I want to devote this blog entry to the unsung hero of Afghanistan, Grim. It is said that his father was a the Gengis Khan's dog and his mother was Alexander the Great's dog. Why couldn't the British occupy Afghanistan? Grim. Why did the Russians leave Afghanistan? Grim.

I have personally seen Grim run off cats and hadjis alike. During mortar attacks, while all the humans run to the bunkers, Grim stays outside the headquarters and defends it from intruders. A mortar landed not 20 feet from him, and he didn't flinch. In fact, some witnesses said the mortar was actually headed for Grim, but got scared at the last minute and veered off course. When rockets come, he simply yawns and waits patiently, for rockets are just a source of iron for his diet.

There is talk that the Army is hoping of cloning this legendary creature. Unfortunately, attempts to extract his DNA have failed, because the needles break upon impact of his skin. For now, everyone here at Orgun-E simply hope he stays on our side...

Elections

I'm definitely ready for the elections to be over. Our little FOB as been a little crazy for the past couple of days. Everything is fine, but hopefully everything will settle down after the elections.

Anyway, I finished a book called State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. It's his usual storyline, this time a group of environmentalists try to create catastrophies. They want to make this catastrophies look like global warming so they can further their agenda. Even though it is fiction, Chrichton has some good info about the whole idea.

Not much else happening; I'll try and put up some pictures later.

Camel Spider

Here is the infamous camel spider. Not that exciting, right? There seem be many legends and myths that surround this creature.

In both Iraq and here in Afghanistan I've never seen any that are much bigger than this. No, I've never seen one eat a person. Yes, they do "follow" you, because they like shade and for most of the day people have a shadow. They're actually not a spider, but closely related to a scorpion. They don't have the tail or the pinchers, though. But they do have these really large claw things in front. Camel spiders aren't poisonous, but they're pretty aggressive and will bite you.

Hopefully that clears up some of the myths. I know there's been a picture circulating around the internet forever of a guy holding up a camel spider as big as he is. I'm pretty sure it was photoshop'd. At least I hope so...

Same Old Stuff

Not much new going on. Pretty much just counting down the days, although there are still a lot left. I was able to see a little bit of the meteor shower the other day. Since we're a blackout FOB, there's really no lights on at all, so you can see the sky really well. It's about as dark as it is on the border in New Mexico.

The elections are coming up in a few days, so it's really going to be slow for us. Apparently they don't need very many engineers guarding the polling sites. I doubt too much will change with these elections, it seems like the current president Karzai will probably be elected again. Not too much else going on, I'll try and post some more pictures later.

Afghan?

All I need is a flying carpet and I'll be good to go. By the way, I hear they are thinking of making this the new Army uniform.

Recession

It looks like I'll be at O/E for a while. It's nice to be in one place instead of being a gypsy. Of all the FOB's in Afghanistan I've been to, this is probably the best one. Baghram is cool because it has a bunch of stuff, like Pizza Hut, Burger King, and a big PX. But everyone that I know there spends way too much money. You can't really spend too much here at O/E.

Speaking of money, everytime I check Yahoo news, there's something about the recession. I posted this picture because I think the recession hit harder here. I think more people should come here and see how the hadjis live, and maybe they'd appreciate what they have. Just because you have to order off the dollar menu at McDonalds doesn't mean it's that bad.

Town

Here's a picture of a typical town in Afghanistan. There are a ton of kids that go right up to the vehicle asking for stuff. They also use water bottles to put fuel and oil in them. That's about it for now. It looks a lot like Iraq, except much more poor, if that's possible.

Back at OE

Well, in a turn of events I returned to Orgun-E. It was a lot quicker than getting there that's for sure. We took a chinook helicopter from Warrior to Sharana, then some civilian helicopter (centurion?) from Sharana to OE. It was over a 30 hour convoy to get to Warrior. It took maybe 45 minutes total to fly from Warrior to OE. Crazy.

I learned that I hate flying in a chinook. It was almost like a rollercoaster that kept going for like half an hour. They also kept the back open so I could see exactly how far we were from the ground and how much we kept swinging. Glad they did that....

Anyway, it's going pretty good here, I'll be back to my old job tomorrow. Food is a lot better here, but there's a lot more people too.

I posted a picture of some of the many camels that are in Afghanistan.

Lady Gaga

I thought I'd try and post a little video that I shot on my buddies camera. The Polish have a piece of artillery they call Lady Gaga. It's like a 152mm shell they get from the Russians or something. Whatever it is, it makes a huge boom. Apparently the Polish really like Lady Gaga. If you don't know who she is, she's a pop star who makes a lot of songs.

When you watch the video, look to the left area of the screen after they shoot it.

Made it

We finally made it to FOB Warrior after a marathon long convoy. I wasn't even sure we were going to convoy, but we ended up needing some equipment. We stopped at a Polish FOB called Ghazni, which was pretty much a dump. We saw a lot of the countryside and some different cities. Afghanistan looks pretty much like a poor New Mexico. Other things I saw:

At Ghazni a Polish soldier doing gate guard in nothing but his underwear and flipflops.
Jingle buses with Corollas on top of them. The car wasn't that much smaller than the bus!
The only paved road/highway in Afghanistan.
A lot of camels.
A lot of sheep.
I got to ride on the back of an Afghan Police pickup for a little ways.
A Polish Prince.
A 400 year old British fort that I'm now living about 50 ft from.

Anyway, Warrior is still pretty primitive but it's not too bad. We have tents with A/C and my cell phone internet works. There's Polish and ANA here as well. That's about it for now, laters.

TCN's

For anyone that doesn't know, many of the contract companies in Afghanistan (like KBR), hire a ton of TCN's (third country nationals), to do everything from food prep to FOB construction. In Afghanistan it seems unique to me because they actually hire mostly local labor from surrounding towns, which they didn't really do in Iraq. So we have all this Afghans running around the FOB doing stuff like making my food. Some of these guys look at the military like we're the terrorists.

Why does KBR hire locally? And I thought there was a recession going on, so why not up the wages a little bit and import Americans? I'd say even Mexicans too, because we'd have good meals 24/7. With all the unemployed in the U.S., they hire these crazy looking guys with beard nets. Not too mention the Eastern European dudes, who run the computer labs and phones. You better have your ID card with you, or they WILL CRUSH YOU!!

Anyway, not much has changed, hopefully we'll be leaving soon from Sharana.

Australia

Well I'm still waiting to leave, and it looks like we might be here in Sharana for a little longer. So I guess I'll talk about what I'm going to do for leave...

Everytime you're deployed, you get 15 days of leave. The military will actually fly you anywhere in the world on their dime. And they don't count travel time toward your leave.

So I think I'm going to head to Australia and New Zealand. I'll probably go to Sydney first, and then see a few more cities in Australia. Flights to New Zealand aren't too expensive, so I'll head down to Auckland and see what Kiwiland is like. I don't know how hard it is to get around in New Zealand, but I'd like to visit both the Northern Island and the Southern Island. We'll see what happens.

Phone Problems

I'm still waiting to get to the next FOB. We've been at the transient tents for two nights now, and the matresses (if you can call them that) are basically just cloth and springs. I guess it could be worse, we could be sleeping on cots.

I found out that my bank had put a block on my credit card. I think it was because I bought that cell phone a few weeks back. On the transacation it said something like "Yar Mohammad, Kabul Phone Inc." I guess I would be a little suspicious too if a charge from Mr. Yar popped up on my credit card statement too. It's all taken care of now, so I can continue my purchases with Mr. Yar.

It's been getting to about 1oo degrees here. I think my home FOB isn't as hot because it's at about 7500 ft. Not too bad though.

Moving Again

Well, some of us are going to be help setting up a Polish base, so I'm moving from lovely OE. I'm actually in transition now at another FOB, but I'll probably be at my next FOB in a few days to a week. Gotta love Afghanistan transportation. Anyway, it's been interesting so far.

So far I've been to three different FOBs in Afghanistan, and they are all pretty shoddy. I'm comparing them to Iraq though, so maybe that's not fair. We'll see what is in store for us next, but I'm not getting my hopes up. We should be returning to our home FOB in a couple months or so; maybe thats a good thing or not. It's shaping up to be a quick deployment with all moving around, so that's good. I'll upload some more pictures as soon as I get settled in again.

Guardians of Freedom

I wanted to show a picture of some of the true defenders of freedom. These guys are really friendly toward anyone who isn't a hadji, AKA Afghan. It's kinda weird, but they bark anytime a hadji is nearby. Maybe they just smell the body odor that flows from all of the Afghan workers, and don't like it. They aren't the only ones, that's for sure.

I think the entire country of Afghanistan could use some of this.

Associates in Afghanistan

I saw this guy the other day with his truck. These are the Border Patrol Agents in Afghanistan... sort of. They're more closer to the Afghanistan National Army (ANA) than police. They help patrol the Pakistan/Afghanistan border. Apparently these guys are like goats; they will run up mountains to chase after the Taliban.

They obviously need to get some lessons on the correct way to spell "Boarder."

Here's a picture of the famous Afghan jingle truck. The military actually uses these to move goods across the country of Afghanistan and up through Pakistan as well. I guess they're called jingle trucks cause they have so many little decorations on them that they jingle when they move. I asked one of the guys why they put all that stuff on but he didn't have an answer. He also didn't speak english so that didn't help either...

Internet

Well, I finally got internet back on my phone. It's actually pretty fast and now I can upload some pictures.

This picture is from Baghram. That fence is the only thing seperating the base from the barbarians. What's weird is that people actually live in that mud hut thing. I thought they were ruins or something.

Back On

Well, I'm sort of settling into my new area. I've been trying to get into a routine; hopefully my schedule will stay somewhat the same so I will be able to.

I recently bought a cellphone that will soon be able to be used as an internet modem as well. It's still amazing to me that I get full bars on my phone here in Afghanistan, when the tower is on. In Deming, New Mexico, I not only had to switch cell phone providers, the current one I'm with has a ton of dead zones in the area. I'm living in one of the most corrupt, poorest countries in the world, and get better cell phone service than in the United States. Something is definitely wrong...

No spanish word of the day, I'm still trying to get Rosetta Stone to work.

Waiting

So training is over and we're just waiting on getting out of here. It seems that anything to do with logistics in Afghanistan is always slow. It's not like Iraq where they can convoy stuff in all the time. Here, they have to schedule a chopper to transport any goods or people for the most part. Oh well, still getting paid to sit here.

Anyway, I think I've decided that I'm going to Australia and New Zealand. I'm hoping to go in winter here so it's summer there. So we'll see what happens.

Bored

Still doing training, it's the standard death-by-powerpoint Army training. Should be done pretty soon though. I met a KBR dude from Bellingham, Washington... small world. The food here isn't that good anymore. They had ice cream the other day but I think that was because some high ranking officers were in the area. It seems like whoever runs the base tries to make things better when the brass shows up, it's like that army wide though. They see a general coming, suddenly people start getting promoted and get their pay problems solved. Interesting how things work...

Here's the spanish word of the day, it's deber. It's a verb that means should or ought to. ¿Que carro debo comprar?

Hey Casey, you should keep putting a Japanese word in.

Same Old Stuff

I'm still at the same FOB doing training. The way things are going it looks like all I'll be doing this deployment is training. I guess it could be worse.

The weather is getting hotter here, it's probably topped out around 100 degrees. Still not as hot as Iraq, but it's getting there. I'm sitting here in the MWR (moral, welfare, and recreation), which if you don't know is the place you go to use the phone, computer, or watch TV. It pisses me off because everything is run by satellite, so there's really a limit on bandwidth. But, of course, you have these guys that want to video chat, Skype and other programs that suck up the bandwidth. All I want to do is go on Gmail and it takes like 10 minutes to load the page. And you only have 30 minutes at a time...

I'm going to start doing a spanish word of the day so I can start learning a little faster... today it is alquilar, which is to rent or hire, as in a car.

The Green Bean

I just wanted to give a shout out to the Green Bean. For anyone that doesn't know, it's like a Starbucks for the military. They pretty much have every coffee drink that you would want, except maybe for the more exotic stuff. In Manas, Kyrgyzstan, they even had wireless internet. Green Beans seem to be in more locations than they were since my last deployment. On Camp Stryker Iraq, they just built one like three quarters into my deployment there. Now they have them on small FOBs, like the one I'm at now.

Fighting the Global War on Terror, one latte at a time...

Sharana, Afghanistan

I arrived here not too long ago for additional training. It's a pretty large FOB somewhere in Afghanistan. I don't even know where because I haven't seen a map of the country in a long time.

We have some pretty nice rooms. They're kind of like dorm rooms at college, except a little more primitive. The base itself is kind of like Baghram in the way that it is kind of thrown together. If anyone one has played Fallout, it kind of reminds me of some of the towns on that game. It's the kind of the place I imagine a town would look like after huge disaster or something.

Once I get the pictures off my camera, I'll have some pictures of Baghram and stuff.

Baghram, Afghanistan

I finally made it here, after that crazy long flight halfway across the world. Baghram I believe is one of the biggest bases in Afghanistan. I can't believe how run-down this place looks. Connexes, buildings, and tents are just put together in random areas; it looks a lot like some of the border towns in Mexico. I never thought I'd say this, but the bases in Iraq were much, much nicer and more organized.

When we got here, they just stuck us in the transient tents in the some corner of this base. I guess they're getting a lot of people here, but we really have to live in a tent with cots and a swamp cooler?? The recession must have hit hard here. I hope the FOB that we'll actually be living on is better.

The weather is not too bad, it's probably in the high 90's. There's mountains surrounding us and it kind of looks like the Sandias in New Mexico. Too bad the base itself is so bad, otherwise this place could have some potential.

That's it for now, hopefully my next post will be at our FOB we'll be living in for the rest of the tour.

Kyrgyzstan

Just got to Kyrgyzstan, on the way to Afghanistan. It's like when you go to Kuwait on the way to Iraq. It seems a little nicer though, Kuwait was crazy crowded last time. Too bad we're transients and can't really go anywhere.

I got a picture of the sign at least.

Leaving on a jet plane

Well it's finally here. We're leaving out to head to Afghanistan. The training felt like it went by quick, but it didn't. We've been at it for almost three months. In my opinion it has been mostly a waste of time, and could have done it much quicker. It was disorganized and chaotic, with no one knowing where to be or at what time.

I have found out a lot about the people I'm going with, and for the most part feel pretty confident. We've had quite a few people drop out for various reasons. Let's just say it's a good thing they are going, I think we'll all be a little safer.

Anyway, it looks like we'll have a pretty good internet connection, so hopefully I'll be able to update this a lot more. It's kinda funny that I'll have more access to internet in Afghanistan than I do in Wisconsin. Hopefully this is the last time I ever come to this base. Why couldn't we have MOB'd in Hawaii??

Still on Pass

Well, here I am sitting at a hotel relaxing. I'll try and do a summary of the past month that I spent at Ft. McCoy.

We started the training off by doing another SRP. Surprisingly, it went very quickly. The SRP I did at Ft. Lewis took forever; almost three days and everyone was angry. The Ft. McCoy one took about half a day and was much more organized. We then started training that was pretty much the same as Sante Fe. There was a few days of convoy ops, about an hour of MOUT training, and a day of detainee ops. Most of it was a waste of time. I really couldn't believe that this was our Mob training. We had better training in Sante Fe.

Most of the instructors just wanted us to get through the training, we were just an obstacle to their weekend. Not saying all of them were, but there was many.

About a week into the Mob, they sent us to a COL, which is contigency operatign location. I guess they don't call them a FOB anymore. So we ended up staying in a tent for like 19 days.

Why are they going to make us even more unconfortable before we leave for Afghanistan? At least they had showers, but chow was horrible. We could have just stayed on the barracks at Ft. McCoy, and been shuttled to our training locations.

Pass

Well we've finally finished our moblization training. Unfortunately, there was very little internet accesss because they had us in the field for most of the training. Who knows why they did that, did we really need to practice sleeping in a tent?

Anyway, I'm on a pass now, so hopefully in the next few days I will be able to update this blog and write about what has happened in the past month or so.

Strangely enoughk, I can't wait till I get to Afghanistan.

Yellow Ribbon Ceremonies

The unit put on going away ceremonies, or yellow ribbon ceremonies, for each detachment and then a main one.

The one at my town was good, it was short. They had some of the higher ranking people there, and it was crazy not to see one combat patch on any of them. I know in my previous unit most of the higher ranking leadership would have had been deployed. Kinda makes you think...

The yellw ribbon ceremony today was good, I was surprised to see so many people turn out. They had the deputy governor, congressman, and a state senator attend, along with a few of the generals.

That's it for now.

Ryan

First Blog

My name is Ryan, I'm currently in the Army National Guard. My unit will be soon heading over to Afghanistan to help build roads and other infrastructure.

I am starting a blog because I would like to keep a record of events that occur during this deployment. I was deployed to Iraq in 2005 and 2006, and noticed that many memories, dates, and people I went with have already started to fade.

I semi-volunteered for this mission, which was probably a mistake. If I had kept a blog of my last deployment, I probably would have reminded myself why I never wanted to go on deployment again and would not have volunteered for this deployment.

Enough with the intro, here's what has happened so far...

We first spent 2 weeks in Roswell, which was pretty much a waste of time for me. When I first went to basic and AIT (job training), I was trained as a Chemical Operations Specialist, or Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) guy. I did not want to do this job again, so when I tranferred to the NM National Guard, I went to school as a Heavy Equipment Operator (Engineer). Of course, once the unit started training and getting mobilized, my fearless leaders put me in the NBC slot, which is supply/headquarters in this unit. Exactly what I didn't want to do. I'm also the First Sergeants driver. The First Sergeant is probably the only person I would not want to drive for. I love the National Guard...

After Roswell, we had a pass then went to Sante Fe and White Sands Missile Range for our basic army skills tasks. Pretty much more wasted time and wasted taxpayers dollars. Some of the instructors were alright, but most of them thought we were all idiots and had no experience whatsoever. The training was different then what I had my last mobilization, and was different then what we did in Iraq last time. I thought the Army had standards, but apparently they change every couple years. I also loved how the really 'highspeed' instructors would begin each class with "When I was in Afghanistan I saved seven people, an orphanage and went to the moon blablabla..." like they are sent from God to help us stupid people out.

I don't know how anyone made it through a deployment without some of those instructors' training.

There's other stuff that pissed me off as well, like going to the firing range and waiting for almost a day to shoot. The Army wastes so much time, it's crazy. 'Hurry up and wait' is alive and well in this unit.

That's probably enough negativity for this post, I'll keep updating as much as I can.

Ryan