Some Random Sandbox Pics

It's been pretty quite around here the last week.  Though I throw in some random pictures I took while I was wondering around looking for ways to fill my day up.  You can only build so many sandcastles in a day before you get all sandcastled out.

So a few days ago I volunteered to be a driver and part of that was dong a familiarization drive to figure out how it all works over here.  In other words:  Road Trip!!  We went over to visit a near by army installation because the army gets all the cool stuff.  They have a Chilis, a Taco Bell and a Bazaar open every day.  Meanwhile the Air Force is slumming it with a Subway, Pizza John's, and only a monthly Bazaar.  It was kind of a hassle all in all, and the trip took all day and I was exhausted when we got back, but all the $8 virgin Margaritas I could drink!

So this is what everything looks like in every single direction:

Occasionally there are some tents:

And there are quite a few mosques:

There's a pink one!

They really are very nice, and you can hear the calls to prayer for miles

They really like these kinds of water towers.  I don't know why they don't put a big round thing up top to hold more water but whatever

They're all over the place

This is the entrance to the local private shooting club.  You'd think it was some UN HQ with all the flags out front.  I guess they really love shooting stuff here.

They also have their own Taj Mahal

More Taj

Gas city out there.  Stretches on forever

Took a wrong turn somewhere

You'd think each of those buildings are like apartments or condos or something, but no they are all giant houses.  They stick their whole extended families in there so they can get huge.

Look a blue one!

More water towers and families living on top of each there.  Also a playground off to the left.

And of course, Camels!

Also the Harlem Globetrotters came to town!  It's their 90th year of taking on the Washington Generals!


So good they had to add a 4pt shot

The Globetrotters know the importance of stretching

They can dunk like crazy, it's insane.  They are seriously like at least twice as good at dunking than I am

And of course being the flat dry desert you get some really nice sunsets

I was Warned

So I just finished up a mission a little while ago.  Everything went really well for the most part and we were back a little early, which was a nice surprise.  So, after we land we go to the flight equipment shop and turn our stuff back into them.  I am really horribly forgetful; every time I go and visit family I manage to leave something behind.  Sometimes it’s something small like a coffee cup or 1 pair of socks.  Other times its big stuff, like a chest of drawers or a popcorn maker.  It’s gotten to the point that any time I visit my family in San Diego I have to pile my stuff up and stick my wallet and keys on top so that it is literally impossible to leave without at least seeing the stuff before I leave it behind.

So that’s why in AFE (airborne flight equipment) I like to pat myself down to make sure I didn’t hide something in one of my many pockets that I need to turn back in.  It was during this pat down when I got to my left thigh pocket that I felt something soft, wet and squishy.  It was then that I realized that my leg had been….moist and rather sticky for a couple hours now.  It’s sort of like when you finally feel that rock in your shoe and you realize that you’ve been walking with it all day.

Earlier in the morning at breakfast, I was packing up a lunch in the dfac.  I made a sandwich and grabbed some chips and other stuff and stuffed it all in a to-go box.  Except it didn’t all fit so I shoved some things in my pockets to save space.  That’s when one of our grizzled old linguists was reminded of his last deployment when he went and put a banana in his ankle pocket and then proceeded to forget about it.  6 hours later he goes to sit on his foot, because after 6 hours a foot becomes more comfortable than a chair.  He squished that banana up real good without even thinking of it.  He had to run to the back and start scooping gross nasty mashed banana out of his leg pocket, like really deep down in there of some seriously messed up fruit.  Then had to sit there with it for the rest of the flight, let it really dry up and harden into his flight suit.

It was one those it-funny-when-it-happens-to-them stories that had me rolling.  I told myself I was going to learn from his mistake and take the moral of the story to hear, ‘Never forget about the banana in your pocket’.  Well we got on the plane and I instantly forgot about the banana in my pocket.  I put it in my thigh pocket so that way it would be super difficult to sit on it.  Well I found a way.  So there I was, in AFE, scooping gross, disgusting, smashed banana out of my pocket and into the trash.  Take it from me, you don’t ever want to forget about the banana in your pocket.

Deployed Life...

Some days are tougher than others.  Today was not one of those days.

Keeping up International Relations

It’s pretty cool seeing all the different nations out there doing their thing.  There are a bunch of Canadians with their own Camp Canada, which just sounds delightful.  You also have some Italians, Aussies, and Kiwis hanging about.   The Kiwis were having a whole discussion about giraffes and hobbits while we waited in line for popcorn before a movie. They found the very idea of getting a picture of those two things standing next to each other absolutely hysterical.  Must be a Southern Hemisphere thing.  Also they call fresh popcorn ‘freshies’ which of course they do.

It really does brighten your day seeing all the different countries and cultures come together for a common goal.  We obviously never talk to each other or sit together in the dfac because we all stay in our cliques like high school, but still, it’s cool to see them all here. 

Actually just today I saw my first Danish troops.  Hard to miss, they are all 8 feet tall and allowed to have beards and freaky haircuts.  So you see the giant bearded guy with the Mohawk and instantly know, he’s a Dane.

Day 0, 0.1, 0.2? 0.3 – The Longest Day (AKA The Germans are a bunch of lying, imprecise jerks)

So I know I’m pretty far behind already, but I finally got a breather today so maybe I can write some stuff out.

After finally making our way out of Baltimore we stopped off in Germany before heading on.  The system there makes no sense whatsoever.  Especially if you are proceeding on they let you off the place and as you exit they hand you this little plastic pass that acts as your boarding pass for the next leg.  Then as soon as you make it to the end to the skyway and into the terminal they take it back from you immediately.  So you only hold onto it for about 50 yards and then give it back again.  Then they tell you that you have one hour before they will 100% leave you behind if you’re not there.  It’s so strange, it’s like they make it their goal to leave you behind and not get you where you need to go. 

Before I left I was warned not to believe any time estimates that they give you, and I was totally ready to just ignore them and go explore around the airport and the base a little and see what Germany was all about.  Maybe drink one of their famous boots and have a little verylongsausagenamethatmakesnosence before I left.  But once there being told in an hour I would be ditched and forced to wait around for the next flight out; I disregarded all the advice given to me and decided to believe them.  They are German after all and there’s no way they could ever be late/not punctual.  I mean they weren’t literally German, still Airman, but you’d think they would have had some of that culture rub off on them.

Well two hours later, after a couple of the braver members of the crew got back for the outside world and said it was amazing we tried to go get our plastic passes back.  Well they would not give them to us.  Their reasoning was that once the crew showed they’d start boarding and we would get left behind.  They really love that threat and it is very effective.  So I asked when they expected the crew to show.  Some guy goes back to check, comes back about 15 minutes later and says he has no idea when they are going to show.  Reiterates again that we will get left the hell behind if we aren’t there for boarding.  Plus they make a huge deal of how hard it would be to go through security and all that stuff.  Which we are the only flight out so the security lines are totally empty, but whatever.  

So thinking that the crew is going to show any time now we go back defeated.  And wait for two more hours.  So our 1 hour delay turned into a 4 hour delay.  If I had known that from the beginning I would have been fine with it.  But being a sneaky deceitful German about it really sucked.  And I realized too late when we got to our next stop and the pilot announced that we were an hour early I could have just asked about our scheduled take off time and figured out when the crew would show.  On top of that how the hell do they not know when the crew is going to show??  That should be sometime they keep track of.  It felt like they were acting like this was the first time there’s ever been a plane passing through there, even though it probably happens 4 times a day.  Anyway, I learned my lesson and will not be listening to them on the way back if we pass through there again.

 

We eventually made it where we were going and got there around 0300 on Wednesday.  Keep in mind we left on Monday.  I have no clue where the hell Tuesday went, but it just up and disappeared.  Maybe we’ll find it again on the way back.  But then we had to go right into briefings and in processing and turning in paperwork.  And on zero sleep I’ll tell you I had no clue what the hell was going on.  We were all a bit delirious by the end of it, shouting things out at inappropriate times during briefings and finding the most mundane things absolutely hilarious for no reason.  So that day that started Monday evening didn’t end until Wednesday afternoon.  That’s about the longest day I’ll probably ever have.

But at least there was coffee in the library when we got there:

Day 0, 0.1, 0.2? 0.3 - The Longest Trip

Where we were going was a looooong way away and would take a while to get there.  I knew that going in but I didn’t appreciate just how long it would be until going though with it.

We were originally planned to leave Sunday night but got told everything was broke and got pushed back 24 hours.  We were all ready to go and get started so it was a disappointment.  But the USO in Baltimore is amazing and they were walking around with ziplock bags of candy and snacks and little travel items.  Girl Scouts were running around giving out boxes of cookies because someone donated 200 to be given away.  It was actually too much stuff, my bags were full to the brim already and I didn’t have much room for extra stuff.  But how do you say no to an adorable scout who’s just trying to give you delicious cookies for free?  Like, ‘No!  I don’t have room for your free cookies, my bag is far too full of civilian gear!’

Anyway, everything is broke and we are at Baltimore and their plan is to have us check all our bags that night and give us our boarding passes and then they will bus us all to a hotel for the night.  That meant dragging our bags through the massive line, waiting in another massive line for the busses, and then waiting for the last massive line to check in at the hotel.  A few hours later we made it to the front and managed to resist their best efforts to lose out bags by not properly documenting where they are going.  I also found out that just because you are going to war doesn’t make you exempt from the TSA rules, shame on me for trying to get a mostly full tube of toothpaste onto the plane.

After putting up with one giant line that night we decided to be proactive and got an uber to the hotel.  It was way out in the Maryland woods far away from anything or anyone.  You could tell the moment we walked in that we were not the hotel’s typical cliental.  This was a 36-hole golf and spa resort that was obviously set up for business conferences.  There were air treatment sales conferences and the Southern Black Women’s Legal Annual Conference happening, and then there were 100+ disheveled, smelly, and exhausted uniformed military people there.

The Uber turned into one of the best ideas we ever had, we were at the hotel an hour before everyone else and didn’t have to wait in any lines to check in.  This was a huge deal because it gave us a head start on the hotel bar.  You see, that first night in Baltimore was a bit disappointing.  Crabcakes were both extremely good and extremely expensive, which is to be expected, but the downtown Saturday nightlife is basically dead which was disappointing.  We called it an early night and didn’t really get to spend any quality crew bonding time before leaving.

So the silver lining on the delay was we basically got a well rested do-over.  The challenge was that the hotel bar closes at 10 and it was 8:50.  So we had a critical choice to make.  They were serving dinner for us until 9:30 so we had to decide, do we eat and waste precious drinking time on nutrients? Or do we press and take full advantage of our delay?  Obviously we chose the latter. 

The mission now was to see how much ‘bonding’ we could do in the next 1hr10min.  We set a very brisk bonding pace and only picked up from there.  They had 4 beers on tap and a fair selection of rail drinks.  I want to give a huge thanks to Dennis the bartender there who managed to facilitate the bonding of our crew, and as the night pressed on the bonding of a few dozen other groups.  He also recommended his own concoction called a “Green tea”.  Not sure exactly what was in there, but I vaguely remember hearing Jameson’s, sprite, and peach schnapps.

Thanks to Dennis and his herculean efforts we managed to constantly have a beer in front of us while we waited on the next round of green teas to get delivered.  Now, what they failed to let us know was that this the influx of customers to the bar, they decided to extend their hours to midnight.  We never got that update and our bonding rate if anything picked up speed.  By the end of the night we were all nice and bonded….so I hear, I don’t remember very much of the bonding, but I hear it was good.

One of my well bonded crew member helped me upstairs and, after trying to open the door with a debit card and a driver’s license he managed to find my room key, figure out we were at the wrong door (no wonder the debit card didn’t work!) and get me home for the night.  Crew save is a good save!

All right, those were two very long posts that I never intended to be that long.  I don’t think they will all be this long, and I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to post updates, but I will do my best to keep you in the loop of how things are going and what I’m up to.  Maybe one of these times I’ll write a post that takes place outside the country!