To Whom It May Concern

Arrival

The flight over was so long, but to be honest, it wasn’t all that bad. They had several movies for us. That’s good, because 22 hours on a plane and you can start to lose your mind if you have nothing to focus your thoughts on other than the back of the seat right in front of you. Mr and Mrs Smith, The Fantastic 4, Batman Begins, and some awful Herbie movie with Lindsay Lohan in it. I slept through a little bit of each move except Fantastic 4, and slept through all of Herbie. I’m certain I didn’t miss much.

When we got into New York, we had a 2 hour layover at JFK International, so we all hung out inside of the terminal, but we weren’t allowed to leave the gate we were at. It was sort of funny, we were like zoo animals behind one of those belted gates like you see at the movie theater. People would walk over and ask us who we were, where we are going, etc, most of which we can’t really answer other than vaguely. After that it was an 8 hour flight from New York to Frankfurt, Germany. We spent about an hour off the plane there, hanging out at the USO building. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but there I was in the land of my forefather’s. We were back on the plane then.

The food on the plane was pretty good. I’d say they were serving a meal about every 2 hours, at least, it seemed like that fast. I actually slept through the last 2 meal, which had me feeling pretty hungry, but thankfully they did bring out ice cream bars from time to time, good ones, those Haagan Daas or however that is spelled. It’s hard to believe I slept as much as I did, it was so uncomfortable, every seat had a bag or two underneath, some spilling into the hallways.

Over northern Africa we went, then east into Kuwait. I was surprised at just how busy and lit up Kuwait really is, it’s a truly modern country. Even at 10 at night, there were thousands of cars all over the streets. We went in a convoy for a little trip to the base we are at now, had a couple of briefings, a late night chow, then off to bed for some, others of us walked all over the place, just checking things out. Surprisingly, some of the facilities are open for 24 hours a day. That comes in pretty convenient. I went back to our tent after breakfast to catch a little sleep that morning.

There is one set of lights in the tent. Either the lights are on or they are off. At about one in the afternoon, one SSG decides he wants to turn on the damn lights, and he wouldn’t turn them off, that got everyone pretty irritated. Oh well, we are only going to be here for about 10 days, so this shouldn’t be a big issue. With the lights off, it’s pitch black, if you walk outside from inside the tent after sleeping, without sunglasses, it’s like staring right at the sun. My eyes were watering, even with my eyes shut it was blinding thru my eyelids. After about 5 minutes of having my hands shielding my eyes as tears ran down my face, I was finally able to open my eyes enough while standing in the shade to see where I was at. Needless to say, I went back into the tent to get my sunglasses after that.

If you walk inside from outside, and you don’t have a flashlight, you are going to be one blinded son of a bitch. You can’t see shit, even with a flashlight it’s tough for about the first 30 seconds, as you stumble around feeling your way to your bunk. We have no shelves or dressers or lockers to put our shit into right now, so we are living out of our bags, which really blows. It leaves your entire area a real mess.

Outside of the tents, when you walk around the base, there’s a constant smell of dusty air and diesel fumes. The dusty air is obviously because of the sandy environment, a lack of moisture means that any wind stirs up the fine, gritty sand into a cloud of dirty air. The smell of diesel fumes comes from the countless generators, that are located outside of every building, to run the electricity for the air conditioning, lights, personal electronics, etc.

So far I’ve seen a Pizza Hut, Burger King, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins, some goofy coffee shop, a Chinese food place, among other places to eat. The PX is sort of a joke, but what do you expect when you are 12000 miles from CONUS? The line to get out of the PX was about 30 people long, seems like that’s a typical expectation when you are trying to do just about anything here, you are going to end up waiting for quite a while.

The uniforms here are about an even mix of the older desert BDU’s and the newer digital camouflage uniforms. I was pretty surprised about that, I figured there would be a lot fewer DCU’s than there were. I still wonder if we are going to end up wearing them at some point, as in, we all get them here, but I’m not too concerned about it, if anything I would rather stick with the old uniforms because I’m not too keen on having another thing to learn about while I’m here, there is plenty to worry about without having to deal with something as pointless as how to wear a new uniform.

Thus far, the weather is around 95 at it’s highest during the day, drops to about 65 at night. That 65 degrees actually feels quite cool, really too cool for me at night to wear PT gear around. So far we are authorized to wear either PT gear or our desert camouflage, civilian clothes are a big time no go. We were told that was the way it was for everyone, but I’ve seen quite a few soldiers wearing civilian clothes, so who knows what the story is. You follow what your chain of command wants and that’s that.

As far as the weather, I enjoy the heat, so it’s not a big issue to me. For me, if it’s below 70 degrees, that falls under the classification of ‘cold’. 100 degrees to me can be uncomfortable, but it’s certainly not painful. The cold to me is painful. If you give me a canteen and a shade tree on a 100 degree day, and I’m in my underwear, I’m going to do just fine, lay back, drink water, and enjoy myself. You give someone a canteen and a shade tree on a 30 degree day, and that person is in their underwear, they are going to DIE. So show me how the cold can be better than the heat? I don’t think so!!

A lot of the guys are buying things they feel they’ll need while they are here. I haven’t spent one penny on anything in the last 20 hours I’ve been here. Damn, 20 hours and it feels like it’s been two days. I suppose that’s what happens when you get this damn jet lag. This is the first time I’ve been out of the continental united states. It’s sort of surreal, this first day, walking around on the opposite side of the earth. When I try to sleep at night, it’s sort of like cat naps. When I try sleeping during the day, it’s very heavy REM sleep, where I have crazy dreams and wake up all groggy wondering where the fuck I’m at. I guess that means I’m not quite where I need to be in terms of my body adjusting to the time change. It hasn’t even been one full day since touching down here though, so that’s understandable. We have one more day before we begin actually doing something, so we all have to really try to get ourselves adjusted, or it’s going to be forced on us.

The Kuwaiti nationals that work here on the base are very polite, but also very reserved. Because of this they are very quiet. It’s difficult to see if that’s because they are just being polite, if they are afraid of us, or if they really dislike us. Or perhaps it’s a mixture of the three. Whenever I deal with them, I smile and give them a slow nod, but almost always they end up breaking eye contact and looking away.

I wouldn’t mind at all getting to know a lot more about the Arabic culture, but I don’t want to insult anyone here in any way. If the mere idea of conversing with me is insulting to them, then I will cut short any attempts to get to know more about them and the way they live. If it’s because they feel they are insulting me in some way, I’ll have to work harder to show that I will welcome any opportunity to converse with them. As you can see, trying to decide which is which could be pretty tough. I’m still going to attempt to do so though.

I haven’t yet purchased a converter for the electrical outlets here. My computer and my digital camera are compatible with either the 110 or European outlets, but I imagine I have a few things with me that are not, so I’ll be buying the converter. Right now I’m leeching off someone else’s converter, but that’s alright, he’s working out and I’m watching his and his buddy’s weapon for them.

The chow here is a lot better than it was at Ft. Riley. I guess that’s why I haven’t really felt the need to spend any money as of yet. I hope to continue that trend, we’ll need all the money we can save to maybe get a house when I get back. When I get back… one million days from now? Heh, that’s one hell of a countdown. Let’s just say I ignore that until we are about 90 days away, because, the thought of 300+ days to go is a little overwhelming. If I start doing a countdown with about three months to go, I can deal with that a lot better. Once I’m to “89 days and a wakeup” I’m really going to be chomping at the bit to come home, I can only imagine haha. Tonite, Drowning Pool will be here playing a little music, hence the current lyrical ramblings!!

Current Lyrical Ramblings

LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR!!

Drowning Pool