Awesome freaking times

Hello all and welcome back.

       Well we just spent the last five days working on convoy operations.  A very useful skill set for Afghanistan, since we must move throughout the country via our Humvees, and for some reason the “bad guys” like to target our automobiles.  I think it’s a jealousy thing, as the Humvee is an awesome vehicle, and they can’t have them.  J  The more I drive a Humvee, and when I say drive I mean I drive it like a rental, the more I absolutely adore them.  It has incredible power, is well balanced, and simply looks mean cruising down the road.  Well in addition to driving the Humvee, which like I said before is awesome, then we add my second new favorite hobby, and that’s firing the big guns, but now it’s through the top of the automobile.  For everyone who knows me, you all know I’m not really a “gun guy”, but man there has to be something said for driving down the road at about thirty miles an hour.  I’m standing out of the top of a hard-topped Humvee, dust and road grit burying itself in my face.  I’m grasping the handles of a fifty caliber machine gun firing away at will into the tree line, making sure that no “enemies” decide we are their easy target.  Now that’s pretty sweet!!!  The picture above says it all.  Overall the training was excellent.

         Of course with everything good there has to be something “bad”.  Here’s the bad part of the last five days.  Our accommodations were less than stellar.  We stayed in … well to put it simply … in a gravel parking lot.  When we live out in the field we usually live in built up bases called FOB’s (Forward Operating Bases).  Now these bases are usually equipped quite nicely with creature comforts such as electricity, dining halls, and shower structures.  The parking lot had none of these amenities; in fact it didn’t even have electricity, just two tents and a building without walls on the sides.  Like I said it was a gravel parking lot, and decided to call it the FOPL (Forward Operating Parking Lot).  It was one of those reminder things of how I take so many things for granted.  Simple things like electricity and running water.  When I have to try and figure out how to live without them, it makes for challenging days.  My favorite was trying to conserve my cell phone power to make sure we could call home though the whole exercise.  From what I understand some of these conditions may exist when I get to my final destination, and so I guess it goes along with General Honeray’s (I’m a can of whoop ass) plan, to immerse us in everything we may face in the future.  Uncle Russ is really thinking these things through, and to think I thought he might have been a little on the madman side.

Looking Pretty Sweet

       Stash Update:  The stashes we’re growing are looking quite nice as you can see in the picture.  In fact mine is getting to the point where I’ll have to do some trimming to meet the Army standards.  Our big moustache move - when ever someone makes a profound statement, we all stop and rub our moustaches and mumble in agreement.  It’s pretty funny.  We also all have agreed that our significant others may not agree with our stash growing, or they way the moustaches look on us, and so consequently when we return home from our leave no one will return with their moustaches.  It’s okay … we’ll just have to start over.  J 

 

PSA - I also want to put a shout out to all the taxpayers out there who paid their taxes that allowed us to get cool army gear such as the “Sleep System”, which is a fancy army term for warm ass sleeping bag.  A couple of nights out at the FOPL got kinda cold, and if it weren’t for the sleep system we would have frozen our asses off.