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.