Getting Chased by Wild Geese

What a last couple of weeks for me! I lapsed into a typical period of malaise where I seldom write, call, or communicate in any way - mostly to stay afloat amidst the many plates I had spinning. Sorry for the lean posting, but here's what has happened to me recently:

• 3 big projects at work, with 3 different sets of people. It's the old high school/college situation of all your professors assigning you huge assignments all at once because they don't know the other is doing it. For the last month, my three-man section was down to two people (one went on his two week vacation, which turns into 3+ weeks with travel), and for the last week it was down to one: me (The other guy went on vacation too). I inherited their projects :)

• I was studying for the CISSP exam (Certified Information Systems Security Professional) - it is a certification that helps both in the civilian world and in the military, as it is an industry standard Information Security certification. Unfortunately, the test is fairly comprehensive, though reasonably deep that you can attempt it with a fair shot of studying.

• I am applying to stay on Active Duty with the Army, stationed with Autumn. I have been debating doing this for years, but our situation in Maryland with my contracting job, house, etc was better than I would have gotten in the area with the Army. In El Paso, it's a different story - I'm not sure I can find a job when I get back! Besides that, I have other reasons which could make a post of their own, the most important of which is that with a civilian job I will be split three ways (job, Army, home - four if you count school). I am stuck in the Army no matter what for three more years, minimum, which is the amount of time they require you to serve if you apply for Active Duty like I am. I'm not leaving my wife, son, and Tita for some job or the Army, so the job's pretty much the only thing that can go. Anyway, the application process is insane - I had to get a physical, take a Physical Fitness Test in 110 degree heat, produce every shred of documentation on myself in the Army, and I had to do it all ASAP! Bastards.

• I've been harassed by semi-domesticated geese on the way to work. Actually, this wasn't that bad ...
  

Yeah, so the title wasn't for nothing; I saved the best for last:



These guys are seasonal guests of the lakes that surround the Al Faw Palace and its satellite buildings, in one of which I work. They were here for a couple weeks when I first arrived, along with some other fowl, but they left when it got cold. It more than warmed up by the time they came back.

On my way into work from the chow hall, I pass by the path in the pictures, and the geese demand their "toll". That many geese usually chow down three or four pieces of bread or a couple croissants in only a few seconds, and they are pretty aggressive about collecting; I wonder if the Port Authority of NY & NJ knows about this technique. When one spots you coming, it makes a distinct sound that alerts the others to get up and surround you. Once you are surrounded, they cock their heads to the side a little, mainly to get a good view from the eyes on the sides of their heads, and the caucauphony of honks begins. If you cough up enough bread, they leave you alone on their own, but if you don't have anything, prepare to wade through the mass of geese ... and don't fall down!

Chasing the Jackal

I can Skype.

I've actually waited about four months to say that! I finally got an antenna rig for the one ISP on Camp Victory, "Jackal", that allows you to use programs like Skype, BitTorrent, online gaming, and some other less savory yet high-demand online services. The one that I had been using, "Magic Island" or "MIT" (Magic Island Technologies), worked much like you might use a hotspot in a Starbucks - they have wireless access points all over the place, and if you are close enough to one, you connect, pay, and surf. The trouble is, MIT is in bed with the military, and it polices what you do on the network. In the case of the less savory things you can do online, it is to be expected, but they also cut off Skype, gaming, and other fairly benign things in the name of security and conservation of bandwidth. Despite this odious policy, since you don't need a crazy antenna to get their service, they get a lot of users who aren't willing to go on an epic quest to connect.

The antennas are available as they come into country, and you have to sign up with Jackal before they will order one. For $150 ($75 deposit, $75 for the antenna to keep as long as you need), you get on a waiting list that is at least a month long. When it comes in, you have to find some kind of mast, pole, or long piece of wood to mount it on, then set it up to point to one of several Jackal motherships. I was able to get one secondhand for $100 (but it's not eligible to be returned for its deposit ...), complete with a sturdy metal mast and a fairly long cable. I thought the guy who sold it to me lived only a couple housing units down from mine, so I asked my roommate Bob to pick it up for me on his day off - the guy selling it was trying to get out of Dodge quick (no pun intended - I live in a housing area called "Dodge City North"). It turned out he lived more like 20 housing units away. It'll take a few more weeks to live that one down.

Hopefully I can start getting into the weekly Skype routine everyone has been running for several months now!

Of course, pictures always help ... here are some of the install:

This is the antenna itself, known as a "Subscriber Unit" (it's WiMax technology). The guy who sold it to me gave me the metal pipe it is attached to as well.

We set it up to lean against the 12-foot concrete walls that surround our housing unit (bottom right). I used nylon cord to attach it to the concrete wall; there are a couple of rebar loops built into the wall to allow forklifts to manipulate it.

There wasn't much room between the wall and the housing unit for me, let alone the ladder ... oh well, war is hell.

Bob, watching me risk my life on the ladder from the ground, still not amused about having to carry the immense metal pole a quarter mile (or more)!

That's it! We ran the cord from the wall (in the background) to our window, and we got unrestricted Internet!

Dodge City North

Quick quiz: What is "Dodge City North"?

A) The name of a town from the Wild West where a famous shootout occurred.

B) The title of a second-rate action movie starring Arnold Schwartzenegger.

C) A Chrysler plant that makes the new Dodge Ram 1500 pickup.

D) The aptly named living area in Iraq where James currently lives.

E) This is an April Fool's joke; why would anyone name something Dodge City North?

If you guessed "E", then you are probably thinking the same thing the people who lived in this place thought when it was officially called something else, but affectionately called Dodge City. So the story goes, this used to be the living area that got hit the hardest and most often by mortars and over-the-wall attacks. It's not particularly close to the wall anymore (the wall has been moved out over the years), and there have been almost no attacks since I arrived. At some point, though, it was bad enough that the residents nicknamed it, and the military let the name stick.

Despite the relative calm, the living areas are pretty heavily fortified with concrete barriers, and it is a lot like cabin camping in a post-apocalyptic wasteland:

Bottled water is available everywhere - you just help yourself to however many bottles you want. Of course, you are encouraged to conserve, but not at the expense of hydration. Even in the winter and spring, I usually go through two or three of the 1-liter bottles a day. All the water is purified out of the Tigris River, which is diverted to Victory Base Complex via canal, and the bottles are produced, filled, and distributed from the Oasis Bottling Plant about a 20 minute walk from my room.

This is one of the massive generators that provide power to the living areas. All of the power here is generated using fuel that is trucked in. All of the water and raw materials used on base are trucked in, and the wastewater and trash are trucked out. It's almost like we are living on the moon.

The tall concrete walls are known as "T-walls", since they roughly form the shape of an upside-down T. They are everywhere. In the beginning, there were sandbags, but as our presence grew more permanent, they were replaced by the Jersey barriers (like on the freeway), then 5-foot tall barriers, then a year or two ago, these 12-foot T-walls. As going-away gifts, units will often get miniature replicas of the T-walls and engrave something in them or mount a coin in them. The signature mark of the company that makes the T-walls is the number "77" at the top - it is even on the miniature ones they make!

Dodge City just goes on and on ... and it's one of several living areas on Camp Victory (one of 6 camps that make up Victory Base Complex)!

The structure to the right of this picture is a bunker. These are not as frequently occurring as I would think for a place called Dodge City, but they are close enough to you if you are between T-walls that you can dive into one in a pinch.

Gate River Run 15k Pictures

At long last, pictures of the 15k. First, a team picture of the folks from my unit who ran:

Top (Left to Right): CPT Beau Biden, MAJ Steve Willey, SPC Gully, CW2 James Richards, CPT Kim Lindgren, CPT Brian Nichols, SFC Charles Kosiek, CH (LTC) Ken Brandt, CW3 Porfirio Alequine. Bottom (Left to Right): SPC Nathan Siebach, LTC Robert Fink, CPT Tim Drake, 1LT Michael Olsen, MAJ John Herholdt.

Most of the pictures looked like the ones below, just without me in them. Notice the sludge on the road (it's also caked on the backs of our legs):

Gotta smile if you notice the camera!

Pizza Quest

This is me, a couple of days ago, standing in front of what is widely considered to be the best joint for Calzones and Strombolis on Victory Base Complex: North End Pizza.


The pizza is reportedly not even as good as Pizza Hut (and Pizza Hut is a lot closer to where I am), but I had a couple slices and it was pretty good for the middle of Iraq. The interesting part isn't really the pizza though - it's how my friend and I got to North End Pizza after 45 minutes, a lost hat, good directions we didn't follow, and a sigh of relief the place took credit cards ...

It all began with Sergeant First Class Joshua Crews asking me if I had gone to eat around lunchtime. If I hadn't, he said, he reserved the Ford Explorer for our section (there's an online calendar where you can check it out) and was headed for the "famous" North End Pizza. I had only seen the place one time, and I didn't even eat that time; one of the guys I replaced took me on a tour of all the small bazaar shops and secret hajji shacks where you can buy iPhone clones, copied movies, Asian soft drinks, and knock-off Nike shoes all under the same roof. I thought it would be a welcome change from the dining facility, even one like we have (see Autumn's post on Surf 'n Turf ...). Sergeant Crews asked if I knew where it was two seconds before I was going to ask him the same thing. Ugh. It couldn't be that hard to find, not the "famous" North End Pizza, could it?

We got in the truck and started out for Camp Liberty, connected to Camp Victory by a short road, all within the main wall for Victory Base Complex (or VBC for short). VBC is a consolidated base made out of six smaller bases and the Baghdad airport, after they grew so much it was easier just to join up their outer walls and make it one huge wall. We stowed our weapons in the back seat, and I rolled up my Boonie hat on my lap. In the five minutes or so it takes to get there, we concurred that we should start by the PX (department store on Army bases) since we both recalled it not being too far from there. There would also be lots of people to ask, of course.

5 minutes in: When we got to the four-way intersection by the PX parking lot, we picked a direction and went for it. 200 yards later, we seemed to be headed out to a wasteland of gravel and parked armored vehicles - no pizza joints here. As we turned around, we came upon a soldier and thought it would be prudent to ask for directions - my window wasn't working, so it must have looked strange to see an SUV roll up with the door opening! The soldier had just gotten here himself, and had never heard of the place. We recommended it, I closed the door and we moved on.

10 minutes in: Back to the 4-way intersection, we took the opposite direction we took before and traveled a mile or two. This time, we were well within habitable areas, with offices and soldiers walking everywhere (surrounded by concrete barriers, but recognizable nonetheless). Still, no restaurants. After a few minutes, we went back to the intersection and entered the PX parking lot. There was one more possible way from the 4-way intersection, but we asked for directions again, this time from a civilian who looked like he'd spent a couple tours over here already.

"North End Pizza? Of course! It's right over there - go back the way you just came, veer right, look for Pad 12, turn right off the road after the MWR (*Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) facility, follow the wall of trailers around to the motor pool, keep left, and you'll see the sign ..."

Whew! We thanked him and he wished us luck. I asked Sergeant Crews if he knew whether North End took credit cards. He didn't know, but only had them to pay with himself. Cash over here is difficult to get, and the military would really rather you pay with a declining balance card you get when you first arrive. Everyone took the declining balance card, but you were rolling the dice with credit and even cash. If we finally managed to find this place but they didn't take credit, it would be a half-hour round trip to the finance office to get cash or recharge our cards at a kiosk, which we both knew meant we were just going to drive to the dining facility and eat sliced melon.

25 minutes in: Ok, we had the directions up to "veer right", and I say that because when we went back this second time, we didn't do that. After bouncing around some more off road, we asked a THIRD time for directions, to which we got a fairly accurate response ... just as I checked for my hat. It was gone! Not good! You need a specific hat when you are in uniform, and there are people who walk around with nothing to do but write asinine policy, parking tickets, and correct you on your uniform. I thought about where it could have been lost; I know I rolled it up on my lap when I got in. Then, we went to the 4-way, then I ... opened ... the ... door ... . Sergeant Crews asked me if I wanted to go back, and I thought about it until he asked again. Hat first, or pizza first? On the one hand, we were almost there, but on the other, anyone could pick up that hat and I would be without one until I got somewhere I could buy one, and we were already going to be late getting back from lunch.

35 minutes in: We must have driven by 4 pads already, and woven through all of the possible streets, such as they were, looking for the phantom sign that we could use to navigate to the life-giving pizza. I regretted not going back for the hat a little, but I figured I risked losing it either way and there was no sense in getting yelled at for a stupid hat on an empty stomach. Besides, I'm a Chief Warrant Officer, and if you don't get yelled at for something like that at least once a week, you don't get promoted on time (or so our reputation would have you believe). We rounded a corner from one of the small side trails, looked up and saw it ... NORTH END PIZZA! There was a short moment of silence as we approached the sign, high enough above the concrete barriers to see from where we were, to check for the familiar Mastercard, Visa, or Amex logos ... and there they were, like three financial pepperoni squares on a delicious slice of victory (small V).

45 minutes in: "Sergeant Crews, would you mind taking my picture in front of the menu here? I want to post it on the blog ..."

We got it to go. A couple soldiers came and also placed an order, and we all stood around for another awkward silence as I got the "eye" from the senior sergeant in their group for standing around without a hat. The order came eventually, and when Sergeant Crews got his, we went back to the initial stop for directions to find a car where we pulled in. Ugh again. My hat was probably under a tire, if not halfway to Camp Victory, tumbling like a tumbleweed in Tombstone. I walked around to the front of the car to find the hat on the ground, against my expectations but making me feel pretty good about not detouring back and ending up being beaten by an obscure pizza joint!

1 hour in: We headed back and clocked in at around an hour and ten or an hour and fifteen minutes, still with uneaten food in hand. We got the "where the hell have you guys been??". I briefly considered telling the whole story, but we gave them a more believable one:

"We were bored of sitting in here, so we cruised around Camp Liberty, wasting gas and going to the hajji shops ..."

Impediments to going outside

Today I was allowed to leave work a little early, and after finishing up some paperwork, I went back to my room for a little time to myself. Since privacy is limited with three roommates, I figured I would take advantage of the quiet time in my room. I did some online surfing, some reading, and some napping, and awoke at around 7 pm when one of my roommates came back from work. I found myself nearly paralyzed in bed under my electric blanket, telling myself that I needed to get up and do something, but yet not able to do so. There were quite a few impediments to my getting out of bed and venturing outside:

(1) My bed is warm. The dorms are warm. Outside is often not.
(2) Leaving the dorm means getting into full uniform, which means no crocs or hair below the collar. It often means putting on boots, which irritate my skin and take a while to lace up.
(3) It's dusty and dirty outside all the time, no matter if you're near the road or flight line or not.
(4) My bed feels clean. Anywhere else does not.
(5) Whenever I leave the dorms, I have to take my weapon with me. It's like an extra appendage here, and must be attached to me except when performing physical training or personal hygiene.
(6) There's a lot of other stuff to remember to bring when venturing outside the dorms, to include ID tags, military ID, hospital ID, reflective belt, magazines and ammunition, etc. When lacking one of these items, someone is bound to stop me to review my transgressions. In the case of the reflective belt, the rumor is that the military police can either make and arrest or issue a $75 ticket!
(7) When not close to my room, I run the risk of an "amber alert" in which all personnel are required to report to their place of duty with their body armor, kevlar helmet, weapon, ammunition, and first aid kit for accountability. I was across base when this happened last week and had to rush back to the hospital, where I waited for a few hours before the "all clear" signal was given.
(8) There are few funny smells inside the dorm. Outside funny smells - latrines, old men, etc - are prevalent.

So is the answer to stay in my room - or at the very minimum in the dorm - during all non-work hours? I suppose this would be possible if I stocked my room with food and water (and since I don't have a frig, the food would have to be non-perishable). After all, my room is equipped with heat, electricity, internet (with skype), an electric blanket, and other niceties. But fact of the matter is that it would be difficult to spend half my day in the hospital and half my day in my room. It would be boring, not very physically active, and wouldn't contain much human contact. No, that shouldn't be my MO while here in Bagram. But I am learning that there will be some days when I don't feel like being social, don't feel like going to lunch with the clinic staff, don't feel like doing physical training. And that's OK, as long as the sloth doesn't last more than a day or two and doesn't affect my ability to treat patients.

Ultimately, I pulled myself out of bed this evening, got in the shower, and made the 5-min trek to the DFAC for dinner, getting there just before it closed. It might be difficult to sleep tonight, but at least I'm clean, full, and well-rested. :-)