I left off in my last blog with the nap midafternoon. I failed to go further because th app I use to blog with starts crashing with long posts.... so this will be shorter and cover a couple days since not much has changed.
Halfway through the afternoon I awoke to the loud rumbling of thunder outside. Almost everyone slept through it but I did manage to take some pictures before the rain started coming down. I will upload them here later when I have the ability to.
Later that night I was able to call my girl Lala on her cell phone since we changed her number to a local one and the call quality was amazing. I love the DSN switchboard we have in place for us to call and be forwarded to other local numbers. She sounded as if she was in the next room. We were able to talk for a little over 20 minutes and it made me realize just how much I miss the sound of her voice.
After the call I had to go back and pack since we were slated to muster at 0230 so we could leave a few hours after that. We boarded the plane at 0715ish and left Ali Al Salem for Balad, Iraq (nope, still not Al Asad). The transit plane was packed like sardines with troops from all different branches as the plane took to the air and was shaken about throughout the. We deplaned and made our way through the sunny weather to the terminal to find out when we would be leaving Balad for Al Asad but after picking up the baggage and then lugging it around from place to place before finally settling in the outbound transit area we found ourselves extremely exhausted. After checking to see if anyone else wanted to come with, a few of us decided to go get a room, some sleep and a shower. We walked outside and found that the sky was starting to cloud over and smelled like wet sand (but not quite mud). This further motivated us to find some shelter so we hopped on a bus and headed over to the transit housing (which is basically a building of the same size as the huts from Ali Al Salem but lower to the ground with cement flooring and a roof that leaks and is about to cave in on us... it also had twice the number of beds which meant a lot less space to to place our stuff and move around in).
My eyes closed somewhere around 1000 and I didn't wake up until 1800ish. The building may have been standard issue crap but the mattresses had been worn down over the years of use and softened up like a comfortable pillow (at least that's how I viewed it compared to the hard metal bar braced mattresses of Ali Al Salem). DFAC and I had had enough of the grime that covered us from a couple days of travelling in the sweat and sand of the desert so we decided to huff it over to the showers. After opening the door, our eyes adjusted to the darkness at the same time the pitter-patter noises outside started making sense... rain had found it's way to us and caused all the smaller puddles on the base to turn into mini, muddy lakes that just barely didn't make it up to the level of the floors in the surrounding buildings.
We swamped our way over to the showers and enjoyed the feeling of clean water washing away the dirt and then the softness of clean clothes.
After showering and changing, we made our way back outside and over to the transit housing once more finding that it was raining harder than it was previously. It would vary from the heavy light rain to the hard sloppy rain that "plops" on you and makes you think someone is throwing pebbles at you. What little gear we brought with us got soaked as we walked the 25 meters (listen to me conforming to metric) back to check out and then board a bus to take us back to the air terminal. The ride back was filled with swerving to avoid the even-larger mini lakes forming everywhere from the rain to avoid getting stuck. At least they have paved roads here in Balad; back in Ali Al Salem it was all either hard-edged rocks or really fine sand, which made walking around a dirtifying (I know it's not a word, I just invented it and am going to get full use of it here before Webster comes along and steals it) experience.
The air terminal was just as packed (if not, more) as we walked through the door and we had to find everyone else. The latest news on us leaving was that there were two flights, each with limited room, to take us and we would be flying space-A (or space available) which meant that other troops higher on a priority list got to go first. We made ourselves as comfortable as we could and waited for each flight to be called.
I say it like that because the first flight (with a 2200 muster for a 0200 launch) was canceled due to a lightning strike to the aircraft and the second one (with a 0245 muster with a 0530 launch) was too full to accommodate all 11 of us still waiting to get there... meaning, since they read off the list in alphabetical order, myself and one other in our group were left behind to catch the next one.
A few highlights through this whole ordeal were that I was able to call Lala via a DSN switchboard again (twice actually, but the first went to her voicemail since she was at Body Flow with a squadron-mate's wife... so I called back later) and the wifi connection at the terminal was fast enought to support an iChat connection (which, for those of you without a Mac, is basically a Skype video chat) with her as well. It was AWESOME to be able to see her. It feels a lot longer since I've left but I attribute that to the many sleepless nights and messed up sleep schedule that I've tried to get out of but keep getting sucked back into.
At 0800 another muster was taken to the next flight out to Al Asad and myself and PR3 White gathered up our stuff and ensures we were on the list. Our bags were paletized and we donned our Kevlar and made our way out to the plane around 1000. The plane ended up not taking off until almost 1100 and I slept for some of it, although sleeping in body armor is not always the easiest thing in the world to do when you are bouncing around in the back of an Air Force cargo plane.
The plane touched down a little after 1215 and we made our way off after all the cargo had been unloaded. With our carry-on bags in tow, we walked to our transport bus to wait 15 minutes for us to travel less than a click away... not at all a good use of resources in my opinion, but no one asked me. As we got off the bus with the other troops, we could see the XO and DASH standing off in the distance next to the check-in building. The air was dry yet the ground showed some of the same signs of rain as Balad had except there was no standing water save for a few murky puddles. The XO and DASH helped us carry our gear to the truck and we drove off to get some food at the DFAC close to our cans. They explained to us where things were as we drove by them and where we would be working from while we were there as well as where we would move to once the FA-18s had left.
We finally arrived at the DFAC and a hearty meal was gathered up and I sat in a satisfied stupor as I wolfed down a cheeseburger, onion rings, fries, and (just to be a little healthy) a salad. After we had all had our fill, we drove over to the cans where I dropped my stuff off at and made my bed and proceeded to take a much-needed nap.
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