12 Hours Aloft

Thanks to an antihistamine which Brook was thoughtful enough to bring and generous enough to share, I slept through most of the flight. I got something close to eight hours of sleep, which is funny when you consider the fact that I was averaging less than five over the last week at Ft. Benning. I guess it took sitting in an elaborately upholstered seat which refused to recline all the way to really get some good sleep.

That and drugs.

We barely made it in time for the flight. Because we were flying Business Class, we got an invitation to the Oasis Lounge in JFK's Terminal 4. It seemed pretty posh: free drinks, halal-friendly buffet food, and they would make an announcement when it was time to board your flight. This made us a little nervous as were still on the open side of security, but these people are professionals, they know what they're doing.

So we got the last alcohol we were going to see for a while (red wine for me, and something really fruity for Brook... Vodka and cranberry, I think), and settled in to use the free wifi for a bit. I took that time to download a few episodes of The Office for the road and charge my iPhone off my laptop battery.

Side note: I've got two phones on me at all times (because my company refuses to pay for my iPhone) and they can both be charged from USB. My laptop has a big, honkin' battery hanging off the back which is great for charging my other devices when they're more important than my laptop.

So with a 10:00 pm (2200) flight, and the clock eeking past 9:20, the lounge staff announced Kuwait Airlines Flight 118 was boarding. Like, already boarding. And we're on the wrong side of the security checkpoint. So we grab our stuff and head downstairs and are greeted with what can only be described as Little Bangladesh in front of us in line for security. We went back to the lounge to ask if there was some sort of First Class pass-through which would allow us to bypass the cluster-f**k/soft target that was the security line, but the lady behind the desk just shrugged her shoulders and we went downstairs to wait in line. As we got closer to the front, the status of our flight on overhead screens went from "Boarding" to "Last Call" and we started to worry. Would they hold an international flight because two Americans were too dumb to watch a clock?

Luckily, we didn't have to find out. We made it through security with enough time to powerwalk our way to the gate and make it on in time for tea.

Trying on my Body Armor

Smallpox Vaccine Sucks as an Adult

21 days. That's how long I have to continue changing the band-aid on my upper left arm. It takes three weeks for the vaccination shot to go through its various stages and provide me with the much-touted immunity the Army so desires me to have.

This slide-set from the CDC shows the progress I should expect my site to go through over the next three weeks. So far, mine doesn't look like anything, so I've got a lot to look forward to. Like the pustule that will form and fill smallpox-laden pus. The awful scab that will daily tempt me to mess with it before finally falling off of its own accord. And finally, the scar that will forever identify me as someone who received the vaccine.

If only it were good for more than 10 years, I'd never have to worry about it again. And really: do I need to worry about it? The last reported case EVER was in 1978 in England, and that was the result of mishandled samples in a biology lab. According to wikipedia, the guy in charge of smallpox research killed himself over, which sounds like a very compelling movie plot.

So what's all the hubbub? Why are all of our service men and women in the Middle East required to be vaccinated against a disease that has been successfully eradicated in the human population? Well, apparently the Soviets developed a particularly virulent strain of the already lethal virus, produced 20 tons of it, and to this day it has not been entirely accounted for in the rest of the world.

So yeah, maybe it's reasonable in principle, but do I have to keep changing this band-aid daily? Look how much hair it took off on the first day! And they suggest that you rotate it a little bit every day so that your skin doesn't get too irritated. I'm going to have a 3" bald circle on my upper arm when this is all over...

Waiting for Even More Shots

I'm sitting on a bus, in the rain, waiting for a van to take me off-post for a measles, mumps, rubella shot. I'm sure I received one as an infant, otherwise I would never have attended public school or college. I guess an air of erudition doesn't substitute for a shot record.

Today we clear medical. So far I've had my physical, vision, dental and immunization records scrutinized, I've received two of my most painful shots to date, and I've waited on this stupid BlueBird bus for two hours.

The smallpox vaccine is basically a small tattoo on my upper left arm. A very nice LPN stabbed me a few dozen times with a smallpox-infected needle. This was far from plesant and will produce a truly disgusting pustule before scarring over. All that for a disease that only exists in a few labs around the world. I guess we do that because some of those labs don't belong to us.

That plus anthrax = bad day.

All that and I was up for a 3:30 meeting this morning.

Welcome to the army lifestyle.

I Should Be Asleep

First off, a big thank you to everyone that I saw or spoke to while I was in Birmingham this weekend! It was a pleasure to see an early Thanks-birth-mas with everyone. For folks that couldn't make it by the house on Friday, I understand and you owe me a beer when I get back. ;)

I just posted the pictures on PicasaWeb, so everyone check those out if you get a chance.

So I'm down here at CRC, and have been since Saturday morning. I left my parents' house at around 3:15 am to drive down to Columbus in order to be there for registration at 8:00. It turns out that nothing important happened until around 0900 (it was at this point that I converted to 24 hour time), so I felt like I threw away several more hours of sleep, but is one to do?

Saturday was spent waiting in lines for different things. At first we waited in line to get copies made of our passports so that we could wait in line to be issued badges. With our stinking badges in hand we all formed up with our fellow deployees and headed up the hill to be educated a (very) little bit on what is to happen to us this week. Apparently, it's a lot of paperwork and waiting for things to happen. At least that's my impression after two full days.

Today we got in around 0630 (it gets earlier every day, so far) and were fitted for our kevlar body armor. This took all of a half hour at which point we broke until 1230. I must say that this is where the big difference between us and the Army lies--if we were enlisted we'd have to spend the intervening four hours on our hands and knees organizing gravel or something. As it was, we headed back to the hotel to relax and catch up on lost sleep.

Speaking of which, I have to be back there in just a few hours, so I think I'll cut this one short. Thanks again to everyone for coming to the party on Friday!

Cab's Coming in Two Hours

I'd like to think that I'm packed up. I'd like to think that I've got all of the high points covered, that I'm prepared for every eventuality, but I'm probably not. For one thing, I think I over-packed in a lot of areas. I've got somewhere between 16 and 20 pairs of boxer shorts in my bag. Almost 3 weeks worth of underwear. That might make more sense if there wasn't a laundry room right in our hooch. I suppose that gives me most of a month's worth of wiggle room in the event of a maintenance issue, but I'm sure it's just adding weight and volume.

I also may have overdone things in the clever t-shirt department. I packed the dragon t-shirt from last week, along with my other--more introspective--dragon t-shirt. While it is a fire-breathing dragon (bad-ass), it's also a lonely dragon with no friends to wish it a happy birthday, attempting to blow out candles which he can never extinguish. Surely the Joe Army can appreciate the unfortunate irony here. I'm sure I'll be lauded for my sense of style, and ultimately for my sensitivity.

I may have packed too many socks as well, though everyone who's been there tells me there's no such thing as too many socks. I believe I have 15 pairs that'll do for my boots, along with 6 pairs of ankle socks (for all of the running I've convinced myself I'm going to do over there).

All in all, my belongings have added up to one giant duffel bag, a much smaller shoulder bag, the aforementioned Pelican case, and my backpack.

Now I just have to wait.

After spending all day packing I don't know what to do with myself for this next little period. I don't have a car here, and the bike is packed in the back of the garage. I suppose Icould blog about the endless minutia of my life--that might kill some time.

Party at Lux and Racing the Snow

First off: thank you to everyone who made it out to Lux on Saturday night. I had a great time seeing everyone and only had to pay for one drink myself. A special kudos to Michelle who encouraged me not to wear my awesome dragon vs. eagle t-shirt (who will win in the epic battle??? You'd think flames would be a problem for a bird, but he seems to have it handled). Instead I wore a pretty spiffy black button-up number. That, combined with my wool overcoat, spiked hair and new glasses made me irresistible to at least one fellow who was bear-trawling at Lux on Saturday. I was certainly flattered, and he seemed like a very nice fellow, but ultimately not my type.

So I'm trying to beat the winter out of town. I spent most of the weekend trying to come up with good similes for winter arriving in Rochester:

• "Winter in Rochester falls like a guillotine."
• "Winter in Rochester descends like a flaming air liner."
• "Winter in Rochester arrives with the suddenness of a bullet."
• etc., etc.

I think you can get the point. Fall lasted for all of two weeks, this year. I remember thinking to myself how pretty the changing leaves were and the pleasant briskness in the air (good fire pit weather) for just a few days before freezing rain started falling from the sky and sunrise was pushed back to 9:00 am. Getting out of bed even at a reasonably late time in the morning already feels like the middle of the night. So I'm trying to race the snow to get out of Rochester, and I think I'll probably make it just in time.

There are actually some updates as of this morning on my schedule to get out of Dodge. I will be flying to Birmingham on Wednesday, and driving from there to Ft. Benning for training on Saturday. This is actually a bit of sticky point as in-processing starts at 0800 in Benning and I'm planning to have another going-away party Friday night in Birmingham. I think I'll just have to roll out of bed at 0400 and make my way down there--at least traffic will be light on 280.

So after training, I've already got my flight to Kuwait booked. After that, I'm dependent on the military to get where I'm going, so we'll be holed up there for a little while. I'm looking at a map right now, and you'll notice that conspicuously lodged between Kuwait and Afghanistan is a very large expanse labeled "Iran." Hmm... I guess we take the long 'round.

Packing Equipment

A couple of months ago I was at a party where a friend showed me his Canon XSi, digital SLR. Now I've owned an SLR in the past, but to be honest I never learned how to use it. It took pretty good pictures on the automatic settings, so I never felt the pressure to learn about aperture, shutter-speed, film speeds, etc. While it was in my possession, it was reduced to a very expensive point-and-shoot camera. But after seeing what John was able to coax out of his XSi, I decided I needed to get one, and more specifically that I needed to take one to Afghanistan. So I started saving a few bucks from every paycheck until I was able to buy one from Amazon.

However, taking a reasonably expensive DSLR to the desert creates a host of problems. Like: how am I going to keep it from getting pulverized by sand, snow, ice and soldiers? Well in my job, I have to ship fragile and expensive items all over the world all of the time, and I've been introduced to the magic of Pelican cases. Pelican makes all kinds of cool hardened cases in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors for any application imaginable. And they also come with foam which can be plucked out and molded into any shape... Well, so long as that shape can be made up of tiny squares.

I picked up a Pelican 1400. I guessed on the size, but it seemed like it wouldn't be so small as to be useless, and not so big as to be a giant pain to lug around. It greeted me when I got home from work tonight, and I set about customizing it to fit all of my various, fragile electronics.

The foam that comes with the case is essentially a bunch of 1 cm² columns of foam which are loosely attached to one another. This allows you to pluck out entire columns all the way to the bottom (which is a separate piece of foam, incidentally) and mold your case to fit its intended contents.

I grabbed my camera bag and started looking through it to find the items that I absolutely had to have with me, and separate them from the items that would just take up space. Once I had it narrowed down to my still camera, my video camera, assorted power and data cables, I laid them all out on top of the foam and tried to arrange them so they would all fit. Taking a tip from the Pelican Quick Start Guide, I used toothpicks to mark the corners of all the items I planned to shove in there.

After that it was pretty easy to mark the spots and start plucking out the foam. If ever you find yourself with a pocket that's too deep (for instance, my video camera is not as thick as the case is deep, so I feared it might rattle around in there), you've got all of the foam you already plucked out to fill in the gaps and give support to smaller items.

I puzzled over how to take a picture of my camera case with my camera inside of it, so I had to resort to my phone which has no flash and doesn't take the best of pictures even in adequate light. But, here's the finished product, along with all of the items that have been squeezed securely into it.

Notice that I still have some space left in the front right part of the case. Originally I was going to store a portable hard drive in there to archive images, but I've already got a reasonably hardened case for that. Maybe I can put some of the small, rewritable DVDs that my video camera takes in there.

Now I just have to worry about someone walking off with it... Maybe I can label it "MEDICAL WASTE."

More Shots and Ruminations on the Day-to-Day

My arms and I are getting sick of this topic. I went back into the nurse today to get inoculated against hepatitis A & B and typhoid. So I guess I've got that covered.

Tomorrow is my physical and my dental exam.

I just want this thing to get started. Brook is likely leaving sometime this week, I'm two weeks after that, and maybe a month after we've been on the ground we get four more guys. Hopefully by then we're already up and running and supporting our customer. I'm also hopeful that by that point I'm relatively comfortable.

Which reminds me, I really don't know what I'm in for in terms of living conditions. I've heard stories and gotten ideas from folks about just what that's going to be like, but I won't really know until my (brand new water-proof, Belleville, flight-rated desert) boots are on the ground.

Food
The food should actually be pretty good! It's provided by civilian contractors, so not just Army cooks, and they're in it to satisfy their customer and profit mightily off of them. Not to unnecessarily denigrate Army cooks, I'm sure some really good chefs of the WWII generation learned their craft by cooking for thousands of soldiers, but give me a capitalist cafeteria any day. I've heard rumors of steak and lobster Fridays, but they could just be saying that to entice us over.

Shelter
I've heard that I'm going to be in a tent. I'm not sure if that's on the ground, or if there's a cot implied, but I know I'm bringing a sleeping bag and a bed roll just in case. I actually just got worried about the sleeping bag--how often are you supposed to wash it? Similar to sheets on a bed? I don't want to end up wrapping myself in a super-funky sleeping bag after month two. Have to think about that.

Creature Comforts
I figure the bathrooms are going to be porta-potties and shower trailers. I heard a while back that the insurgents figured out the importance of the sh*t truck, which comes every once in a while to service the portalets. Targeting those is a great idea for a variety of reasons:

1. Total morale killer. Imagine having to continue to use a sh*tter longer after it needed to be emptied and cleaned--bad news.
2. The smell. When you blow up a truck full of chemical-laced excrement, it leaves more unhappy people than just the driver.

So, I'm betting on the fact that the base I'm going to has been built up sufficiently that the poop-guy can get in and out without a lot of trouble.

Laundry is handled by locals. You just put all of your stuff in a labeled laundry bag, pay the guy a couple of bucks and you get clean clothes on the other end. I suppose that's the benefit of being an occupying force.

Hitting the Big Time

It turns out when my company sends people to war zones with no military experience, it sets off all kinds of alarm bells in upper management. Right now my boss is in a meeting with a VP and representatives from most of the major departments about whether or not I should even go and how best to prepare me. I must say, I'm a bit flattered, if annoyed. The same VP recently called my cohort who's accompanying me and insisted that I stay safely ensconced in Brigade headquarters and not travel anywhere in country without express permission from him first.

I certainly understand their concern. I am definitely a civilian, and not used to the rigors of life in a combat zone. I've attempted to glean as much information as I can from the people I know who've been over there already and a couple of themes continue to come up.

• There is a LOT of spare time over there, which will be used to work out and beef up. It's a lot like prison in that respect, the only difference being the rifles in the guard towers are pointed the other way.
• "You'll have the time of your life!" I've heard that from at least three people without a lot of context or explanation. I'm sure I'll have a better time than the guys who are getting shot at all the time.
• If a mortar comes into the compound don't bother hitting the dirt. It's like playing the lottery in reverse. If lots of mortars start coming in, know where the nearest bunker is.
• Clear alcohol can be dyed the color of Listerine.
• Dress warm. Snow will be on the ground by the time I get there.
• Bring cash. The dollar is accepted everywhere, but your ATM card may not be.
  

So those are just a few of the tips and tricks these guys have been able to share. I'm sure I'll know a lot more once I step off the aircraft. And I'm sure when I get there I'll be able to relay information much more succinctly by collecting even more useful acronyms which appear to run the military.

Taking Care of Medical Business

The 24th is starting to rush at me. Just a little less than three weeks until this thing cranks up. To be honest, it's already started. Yesterday was spent getting me squared away medically. I spent the morning in the company nurse's office getting immunizations and making appointment for more medical and dental checkups. My arms are pretty sore from a dose of flu and tetanus vaccines, and getting 5 phials of blood drawn to test me for basically everything under the sun. I'm just happy she got a vein on the first try, a sign of a true pro.

Next Monday I get a dental X-Ray, a physical and get fitted for a respirator. Apparently I need the respirator if I'm doing vehicle installs so I don't breathe the seriously toxic CARC paint.