Brunch

Another Sunday is upon us, this has been a relatively uneventful week.  I did have my second near-death experience on the roads, I suppose.  The first one happened a couple weeks ago as I was driving back from Ali-al-Salem.  A flatbed truck carrying some sort of metallic shed structure merged onto the highway the next lane over and up ahead of me a bit.  I guess the driver forgot to secure the shed or maybe he tied it down with floss, because as soon as he started coming up to speed that thing slid off the flatbed and on to the highway.  I had to swerve a little bit (good thing I took the Army’s defensive driving course – don’t brake, just swerve) and got around it safely but I don’t think a car a couple back from me was as fortunate.  Today as I was merging on to the highway (and flooring it because you need to get up to speed quickly here) I noticed something up at the end of the merge that you typically don’t see in the U.S.: a car backing slowly up the on-ramp.  I don’t know what he was thinking, but it was so out-of-the-ordinary that it took me a beat to react, as if someone was giving directions in non sequiturs, but we made it around him safely and proceeded on our way.  The remains of a horrific crash were right next to our exit, a reminder of how crazy the people are on the roads.

One of the great joys of Sunday is brunch (breakfast and lunch combined!).  A lot of us look forward to it all week long.  Sunday is typically our slow day; people sleep in, go to Church, take long showers (known as a holiday shower on ships) and take it easy.  By far the highlight is brunch at the Zone 2 dining facility.  It is the furthest one away from where we are, but it is soooo worth it.  They have the normal lunch meal - anything from Salisbury steak to spaghetti - plus there is usually a roast turkey (once there was prime rib!), then there is breakfast with eggs made to order, French toast sticks (or Freedom sticks) and waffles made right there on the waffle iron just like at home.  Once that is all consumed there is ice cream and cake, the one day where we all dive into dessert.  One of my enterprising sailors invented Waffles Garcia – take the waffle, walk over to the ice cream bar and get the guy to load up a scoop or two on top, put on toppings and voila! a gastronomic delight.  It is such a great meal I don’t eat anything else all day long.  When we finish up we usually head over to the Zone 1 exchange (military for store) to window shop or pick up odds and ends we may need, get a coffee at the Green Beans and then head home.  Speaking of Green Beans http://www.greenbeanscoffee.com/ I am going to put in a plug for them over Starbucks.  They are major supporters of the military and have locations in many of the major overseas bases and FOBs (forward operating bases), in fact they pioneered the use of 20- and 40-foot containers with plug-and-play coffee shops inside, which is what you need at a lot of these remote places.  Tracy sent me a video of the two founders discussing some of their principles and difficulties they overcame: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuK1uX4KDmE

We spent a bunch of time starting to plan for our replacements.  Three separate groups of sailors will come in and relieve us.  There are two for Customs and then one for the Headquarters group, the staff that is in charge and runs training, logistics, intel, that sort of thing.  The first Customs wave hits Norfolk on Monday, heads to Ft Dix after that and then comes to Kuwait to relieve about half of my company as well as others.  As they are on their way here, the second Customs wave starts through the meat grinder and they arrive at about the same time as the Headquarters replacements.  There is a whole intricate series of things that needs to be thought about and planned for ranging from where these folks will stay to how long it will take to train them and get them ready to replace existing sailors.  Then we have to figure out how to get the group that is replaced out of here efficiently.  In the past the Warrior Transition Program, the interim step for troops leaving Iraq and Afghanistan, was located right here in Kuwait so the logistics of getting sailors out was pretty straightforward.  It shifted to Germany in December, which could have been a pain in the neck as there is all this equipment we have to turn in before we go home, but the HQ folks have figured out a way for everyone to turn in the equipment HERE and not Germany, which is terrific.

We are in a pretty neat transitional weather period now.  The “winter” season is just about over and we are entering what the locals call the sarayat season as the weather starts to heat up.  For the next couple months there will be an occasional massive thunderstorm, something we had last night.  I was already asleep when I heard the Giant Voice system (the same one that plays reveille and Patton’s theme every freaking morning) warn about lightning strikes, and then I could hear the booming of thunder and pounding of rain on the roof.  After a storm passes it is often followed by winds and dust, and that is what we have now.  On the bright side this random weather makes for some very cool skies, below is a picture I took this week one afternoon.  If you look closely over the pipe sticking up over the right corner of the white building you may see a very small rainbow.

Patrick got his palate extender out and braces put on his top teeth, this is how he feels about it.

Champions of Kuwait

Sorry for the lengthy delay in posting.  My typical routine is to draft and edit these posts on Sundays, last Sunday I was up at Ali al Salem and didn’t get back until late and this whole week was quite busy.  But, that means I have some interesting things to relate.

I have mentioned that I started playing softball again while here in Kuwait.  We started out a little rough, losing our first game 18-2, but since then we have been on a bit of a roll.  Last weekend we drove up to Ali (some of the team was in what we lovingly call a Scooby Bus, see below) to play in a softball tournament up there.  It is an airbase, so the teams we faced were primarily Air Force, although a couple Army teams from Arifjan came up and the Navy Customs group up there also fielded a team.  We played 4 games over 2 days and just ran right through everyone, winning the whole thing.  That is why I didn’t post, we got back on Sunday afternoon and I just crashed as this old body got beat up a bit, including getting involved in a Pete Rose-like play at the plate (I was safe).  As you can see, these fields are just flat places in the desert with a fence around them.

Simultaneously the team was playing a season here at Arifjan; we entered the playoffs as the #1 seed and the finals were this past week.  Thursday night we won the league here, making us the champions of all of Kuwait (as far as we can tell, anyway).  Our team would just go on these streaks where we were unstoppable – in the final game we put up 13 runs in the first inning and we did similar things in other games.  Early in the year our defense won our games, as the games piled up we slowed down a bit and made some errors, but not enough to hurt us too bad.  So that is what I have been doing the past two weeks I have been deployed – playing softball and beating up on my body.  My legs are all cut up and my joints ache, so I took the past week of workouts off.

It isn’t all softball, naturally, this week we moved our tent.  Our little compound of three tents has to move, as I have mentioned before.  I usually prefer to just take the bull by the horns and go do things, so that is what we did this week with our tent, leaving the HQ element in the old location.  It also makes us the guinea pigs, we get to figure out the problems as it is easier for us to have a backup plan than the HQ folks.  All they have are those two tents while we have offices in multiple locations throughout Kuwait that we can use if we really have to.  If you have moved before you know that moving the big stuff is easy but the little leftover unclassifiable stuff kills you.  That is pretty much how it went, the internal walls (think Office Space in a tent) came down, the desks and computers and file cabinets all went into a large conex box (those 20 and 40 foot long containers that China uses to ship virtually everything you use), trucked over to the new place and we started setting up.  All that is left is that last little bit of random stuff that needs to be put away, the guys really did an amazing job when you consider they all have to do their regular jobs on top of helping with the move.  I have a great company.

Overall it went very well, I included some pictures of the progress.  As guinea pigs we did uncover some issues, our biggest one is phones.  We had old phones with wires like you have in your house, our new tent uses Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP), basically using the bandwidth of the internet connection, which means our old phones can’t plug into the wall.  This is a bigger hurdle than you might think, as these phones are not just lying around so we still have a skeleton crew in the old tent manning a couple phones. 

On the bright side we have lots of new neighbors.  Our old location was pretty isolated as they are shutting it down.  Now we are in a neighborhood with about 16 or so other Army tents and more going up around us.  Lots of folks stopped by this week to say hello and welcome us, just like you might do to a new neighbor.  There hasn’t been a pie or an invite to dinner yet, but they do have a tent with four of those massage chairs in it and I can’t wait to try them out.

I appreciate all the kind notes and e-mails I get.  I can’t always respond right away, but I do read them all!  And now for your moment of zen...

Blowing stuff up

This has been a pretty cool week as far as the work goes.  The military in general has a huge budget, but at the lower levels there really isn't a whole lot of money flowing; it is very much a barter economy.  The stock in trade is the hook-up.  I have something or a service that you need, so you give me something to get it or to make it easier.  Since we are the gateway to get home we often have Army and Marine units that ask for hook-ups, and the smarter ones offer something in return.

There is an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit rotating back to the US in the near future that did just that this week.  These are the guys that clear IEDs and blow up weapons that are taken away from bad guys, so they have a pretty interesting collection of stuff they want to take back to the US.  Because of the risk they don't like to bring back all of their explosives, so they blow up what they have left before it is time to leave.  These folks are smart, they invited some of us to go way out in the desert with them and blow up some stuff.  I got to take things apart, stack explosives in a pit and press the button to make it all go up in a glorious explosion.  Fun for me, and now these guys will sail right through Customs because we are helping them with all the waivers they need and mark special items to make sure they are 100% compliant and can enter the US with no problem.  It just shows the relationships my sailors build with everyone else, I have some real talented folks here.  On the way back we ran into the biggest sandstorm I have seen so far, there is a road somewhere in front of us in that picture.

The Customs job doesn't just happen here at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, we also have a company north of here at Ali-al-Salim in Kuwait and at multiple locations throughout Afghanistan.  This week the three company commanders (me, the one at Ali and the one responsible for Afghanistan) were all together here at AJ for the very first time.  It was a great get-together, I see the one from Ali all the time but I had never actually met the one in Afghanistan although we talk on the phone and send e-mails and have several common acquaintances in the Navy.  They came through the training pipeline together about a month ahead of me, so we had some fun comparing notes and bragging about who is the best.  Since they were my guests I figure I win out.

There is some chatter that this is the week we hit 100 days since we left home way back before Halloween.  There are lots of people here that focus on numbers - days since we left, days in country, days remaining until we leave Kuwait, days remaining until we get home.  I have a theory on this - the brain has trouble interpreting large numbers and it creates this feeling of helplessness.  When I ran long distances I wouldn't count minutes or miles, I would count sitcoms.  A marathon is 8 sitcoms (or 10 if you bet someone you can do it without training), it just seems easier to bite off and chew than 26.2 miles or 4 hours or 240 minutes.  We have something like 130 or so days left here (I just had to count because I refuse to track it) and that seems like a lot.  If you break it down into something easier, like 4 full moons, then it doesn't seem so bad.  The sailors try to humor me on this, but counting is an age-old Navy tradition that I don't think I will be able to overcome.

Many of us will be up watching the Super Bowl early Monday morning.  It is such a uniquely important American event that the vast majority of the base will be very, very quiet during working hours Monday morning because everyone will be in bed.  What is interesting is that no other country really cares about this spectacle.  Baseball and basketball have caught on around the world, why not the biggest sport of all?  Patrick, Melanie and Shannon don't much care to watch a game (they'll watch the Super Bowl to see commercials and dad go crazy if the Pats are in it), is it because the rules are too complex?  Is it too violent?  All I know is that most of Camp Arifjan will be watching.