Happy Thanksgiving!

Hello friends,

Hey, it's Thanksgiving! As much as I hate being away, it means I'm that much closer to coming home. We've decided to take the day off. Last night was relaxing and fun. We were paid a visit by the "Lt Dan Band", a group pulled together by Gary Sinise, Lt Dan of "Forrest Gump" fame. It was a nice respite from all the harried days. Lucky me, I actually had an opportunity to meet Mr. Sinise and Mykelti Williamson (Bubba from "Forrest Gump"). Check out the pictures below.

I also wanted to take this time to say thanks to each of you for your generous support and encouragement. The funny e-mails, the care packages and the kind thoughts have helped to make this time away more bearable. I’ve come to be a lot more appreciative of the family and friends in my life. I urge each of you to take a moment to consider everything you have to be thankful for. Don’t take your time with family and loved ones for granted.

I hope this Thanksgiving finds you all healthy and happy and is a warm kick-off to a wonderful holiday season. Enjoy the family time and fellowship and – by all means – enjoy the home-made turkey dinner!

Take care,

-Dave

Bizarre Bazaar

Hello friends,

I hope this post finds you all well. If all goes as planned, I should be heading home in about eight weeks. Hopefully, the Eagles will turn it around and still be playing then. A home playoff game would be perfect.

I haven’t posted in a while because I really don’t know what to talk about. However, it struck me that I have yet to talk about the bazaar. On Saturdays, local merchants come to KAF and set up a bazaar in a small fenced-in area on base. There are lots of items on display: rugs/carpets, black market DVDs, brass vases and other brass sculptures, watches, and other bric-a-brac. I’ve been to the bazaar only three times, but I know folks that never miss it. Some of the more serious shoppers go for the rugs, which can run from $25 to $2500 depending on the size and quality of the workmanship. I have no idea what I am looking at, but you can see some differences. I took the pictures below this past weekend.

The trick to the bazaar, aside from knowing what you are looking for quality-wise, is the haggling. As with most bazaars, the merchants are always calling to you to come see their wares. “Hey, American, you come look, eh? I have some nice things for your wife, eh?” (The shill is universal.) There are kids walking up and down the aisles hawking bracelets and other small items. “Sir! Sir! Look! Only one dollar. You buy two?” Hard to turn away the kids, but the stuff they’re trying to sell is just junk. Anyway, the haggling is just not natural to me; I have a hard time with it. Like back home, I want to walk up, ask what the price is, make a decision and either buy it or not. But these guys expect you to haggle. If I try to walk away, they’ll follow you asking “how much do you pay?” I just keep walking. Some other soldiers really get into it; back and forth, trying to get that last dollar reduction. It can be fun to watch. I have not bought a thing yet, but probably will just to have a souvenir. So, that’s the bazaar.

All else is going as well as can be expected. The weather is getting colder and it actually drizzled today for a few minutes. But, the dust and dirt are always present. Eight more weeks, then I’m outta here.

Take care,

-Dave

Acronyms and Military Lingo

Hey there friends!

As many of you know, the military takes great pains to develop and use a system of acronyms to describe just about anything. I thought I’d spell out a few that we use on a regular basis around here. Also, it may serve to act as an interpretation guide once I get home so you know what the heck I am saying. A few of the more common acronyms:
DFAC – dining facility (pronounced dee-fak);
SITREP – situational report;
SA – situational awareness (information about a topic);
RLB – re-locatable building (an 8’ x 20’ unit the same size as a shipping container that can be stacked and configured as housing);
CHU – containerized housing unit (same as an RLB);
OEF- Operation Enduring Freedom;
GWOT – global war on terror;
ISAF – international security augmentation force;
JFUB – joint facility utilization board (the folks who have the power to approve or deny a construction project);
IED – improvised explosive device;
HME – home made explosive;
MHE – material handling equipment;
ANA – Afghan National Army;
NTV – non-tactical vehicle;
FOB – Forward Operating Base;
CSO – Chief of Staff Officer;
NCR - Naval Construction Regiment;

The following are common terms used in general conversation:
JTAM – jump through your ass mission;
Haji – anything pertaining to Afghan or Middle Eastern ownership (technically a term of respect towards any Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca)
Poopy pants – humorous term used to describe an unknown and unwanted food item in the DFAC line
Inshalla – “if it is Allah’s will” – used the same as when your dad would say “maybe”, actually meaning “no way”
Oxygen thief – used to describe someone who is basically worthless
Embrace the suck – just deal with it

Examples:
“Hey, Sgt Jones, I need some SA on that JFUB package for RLBa at FOB X-ray so I can send a SITREP to the CSO over at the NCR.”

“What the heck is that?” “Some haji vegetable dish.” “Poopy pants?” “Oh, definitely poopy pants.”

Two pics for your viewing pleasure. First is one of (from L to R) LtCol Todd Hirneisen, Maj Nick Lynch and me enjoying a take-out lunch. We are sitting in a little gathering area right outside my office can. The weather has been a lot nicer lately, and we wanted to get away fromthe crouds in the DFAC. The second pic is of a little science experiment we are running. It started back in the summer. One of our Navy brethren was mailed some grass seed for whatever reason. So he planted it and watered it every day. It was slow going at first, but it is taking off now. He went back home in September and we just kept it going.




Take care!
-Dave

Whirl Winds

Hey there followers! I’ve been having connectivity issues lately, so this blog may be late. I’ve been scratching my head what to write about. Every day is basically the same here. I was looking over some pictures the other day and ran across some of dust devils. You’ve likely seen little ones around home. Like little tornados that kick up dirt and loose paper. Well, over here, it’s a whole different phenomenon. They are huge and really pick up a lot of dust. If you are interested in the science behind them, check out http://www.weatherquestions.com/What_are_dust_devils.htm. The video and picture are of two different whirlwinds I saw at Camp Dwyer back in September. The still shot was taken by someone else on my team when we were waiting for a ride. The video I shot while waiting for a plane. If you look real close at the tent you see in front of me at the beginning has the video, you will see the shadows of the guys I was traveling with. I was walking around stretching my legs when I saw this dust devil forming and heading right for us. While you can’t really get hurt, you will get stung by the flying dust and get dust in every orifice you can imagine. So I grabbed my camera and shouted to the guys to look out. Luckily, the whirlwind skirted around the concrete barriers you can see in the background, so we didn’t get caught up in it. Cool sight, though. You don’t see that very often in Oley! If anyone has any ideas or questions I can answer in this blog, let me know. I’m running out of ideas! Take care and keep in touch! Later, -Dave

Hey there followers!
Sorry for the long gap since the last blog. As I tell everyone, we’re pretty busy over here. Still going strong working 14+ hour days, seven days a week for the past 14 weeks. But, we’re over the hump; just around 12 weeks to go. Several things have happened since I last wrote:
- On October 9, I celebrated my 21st anniversary to my beloved wife, Karen. Can’t really say we celebrated – it’s hard to do that when you’re half a world away. But, I still enjoy the fact that she has been my best friend all these years. Without her support and encouragement, this deployment would have been so much more difficult. Being able to call home every so often and sharing e-mails has done so much for my piece of mind. I truly look forward to the next 21 years.
- My son Craig turned 11 on October 21. I can’t believe how fast he is growing up. He is the joy of my life and so much fun to be around. During my semi-weekly phone calls home, he keeps me up to speed on sports. I so enjoy his viewpoints and analysis (he doesn’t think the Phillies stand a chance against the Yankees). He is also a great student. I can’t imagine being more proud.
- The Eagles started the season looking like the team people thought they could be. Then, they lost to the Raiders. Enough said.

Around here, there have been some changes. My team has been folded into a larger unit, now known as the 777 Expeditionary Prime BEEF Squadron (EPBS). Prime BEEF is a pseudo-acronym for Primary Base Expedient Engineering Force. We’re a larger unit and I have been tasked as the Engineering Flight Chief. So I head up the efforts of the engineers, designers, surveyors, planners and construction managers. Accordingly, I have that much more to do.

BUT, that is no excuse for not writing more. I will venture to share more funny stories and other odd things from this deployment. So, stay tuned!

Best wishes,

-Dave

(P.S. – pic below is of me opening a care package from Karen and Craig. Home made cookies!)

FOB Hopping

Hello friends!

Long time, no post. Sorry about that. Time flies when you’re having fun or working your butt off in Afghanistan. Actually, I didn’t have much to write about until recently. Last week I went FOB-hopping, which is to say I went to another FOB (forward operating base) to perform an electrical inspection on some shower and latrine containerized units. Sounds sort of trivial, I know, but with the issues we had in Iraq with shower units, it is necessary that any modifications be inspected. I will tell that story some other time. In order to get to the FOB, we had to fly there. We travelled on a C-130, which is a turbo-prop cargo plane. We were in a time crunch and had to catch the next flight available, so we ended up on a re-fueling mission. It was a Marine owned/flown aircraft and we were to re-fuel Harriers in flight. This is a rare opportunity because the Marines do not like to carry passengers on a re-fueling mission. Safety reasons (at least that is what they say.) So my team (me and my four other airmen) was the only “cargo” on the flight. The only down side was that the flight was 2-hours long, which is at least an hour longer than a direct trip would have taken.

Now many of you may be familiar with the concept of re-fueling aircraft in flight. On large re-fuelers, there is a boom that extends from the tail of the plane and mates up with a fuel port on the trailing aircraft. No big deal. C-130 re-fuelers use drogue shoot fuel lines, which are flexible hoses that are deployed from each wing. Each hose has a small drag chute at the end that pulls the line out and keeps it relatively stable in the air. The aircraft to be fueled have to fly up to the chute and basically stab a re-fueling line into the end of the hose. A bit trickier than the boom method. The other cool thing is that they can re-fuel two planes at a time, which is what we did.

The pictures tell the rest of the story. They were taken out of windows on each side of the plane towards the back. The load masters sit in seats by these windows to monitor the re-fueling and track the gallons transferred. The Harriers were no further that 35-40 feet away. I could easily see inside the cockpit. Kind of cool, don’t you think?

Next blog, I’ll have to write about the dust devils over here. Quite a phenomenon.

Take care,

-Dave

Hello friends,

Well, it’s Labor Day weekend. Summer is (un)officially over, football season is about to begin and I’ve been over here for 50 days (as of Sep 6). Everything is heading in the right direction. As much as I would like to be nursing a beer by my pool watching Craig and his friends swim while Karen slaves over the grill, I will be, well, laboring tomorrow. No rest for the weary; we’re working tomorrow as if it is any other Monday. We did have a cook-out tonight, however. Someone organized it and got rolling around 5:00. We decided to call it a day at 5:30 (I called home, so I was in the office until around 6:00) and join the party. Strange having a picnic without any beer in sight, but everyone seemed to have a good time anyway. At one point while standing in line, I overheard a young Army soldier asked “What’s the occasion?” One of his more astute friends replied, “Duh, dude, tomorrow’s Labor Day!” (Far more explicit language was used, but I try to keep this blog at least PG-13). First soldier says “Really!? Wow, I am completely out of sink.” (I know it is “synch”, but I am sure he would have spelled it that way.) So there you have it, another example of how this deployment is like that movie “Groundhog Day”.
Picture is of (L to R) me, Chief Larry Alt and Lt DeJaun Saunders. LtCol Todd Hirneisen took the picture. You can see the smoke from the grills in the background. (No, that is not Tinkerbell on my shirt. Our PT shirts and shorts have reflective decals so we can be seen in the dark. Good thing the Taliban don't carry flashlights.)

I hope everyone enjoyed their summer. Thanks again for all the kind thoughts and, more importantly, all the support. It makes the time away from home bearable.

Until next time,

-Dave