(no subject)
The past few days have been interesting.
I was awoken the other morning by an unfamiliar sound. Keep in mind that the past five months I have been in this accursed country has been without incident and damnably quiet. With that in mind, it's not odd to think that I'd never heard the 'incoming!' alarm before. I figured it out in short order when two seconds later there was the unmistakable sound of a nearby explosion. Apparently the Iraqi felt like reminding us we're in their country, or that they're annoyed about the results of the elections, or their fireworks really, really suck. One of the CHUs in my area got hit. One of our mekaniks was inside. Due to the nature of budget terrorism and the high price of good ordinance these days, said mekanik made it out with some shrapnel in his butt, and was at work today in the motorpool, helping me fix my truck (which we broke thoroughly).
Less than 24 hours later, while me and my crew were out breaking my truck (I'll get to it) the FOB got mortared, everyone sat in the bunkers for an hour or so and from what I hear, they didn't even hit anything this time. Now anyone who's been paying attention knows that getting mortared in Iraq is like getting AIDS in Africa, it just happens. But after five months of nothing, twice in one day? And here I was just starting to get acclimated to the idea of nothing happening.
We head out soon to play response force in case people don't like election results. The results come out tomorrow, as you may, or may not, know. We've been given the stipulation that El Presidente's party has all but threatened a military coup if they lose and the Prime Minister's party wins. Lost word was the PM was winning. Oh joy.
Apparently teaching these people about democracy isn't sticking, because their response to 'the people's choice' is blowing up Walmart. Are they just bored and need another civil war to draw the attention back from Afghanistan again?
So, political mumbling aside, my steed, beloved noble Caiman, found quicksand. Our CO, who we are thinking of buying a Dora the Explorer hat, felt like we needed to explore routes we've never taken before. This man is known for scanning the horizon, picking a landmark, and making the dismounted element hoof it there. Quite often, those of us in the mounted element reach said landmark first. Isn't that the point of being mechanized? So we can drive? Getting off track. So Dora the Explorer says we need to find new roads. So us in the lead truck get the lovely duty of finding said road. As a general rule, if there are tire tracks, it's a road. Because sometimes that's all there are. But keep in mind, most everyone who drives on these 'roads' drives some Toyota pickup (lets be generous and call it 3 tons loaded with corn) and here we go in our Caiman (lets say 20 tons, depending on how much my driver eats) trying to follow.
This failed.
Perfectly flat, dry terrain, driving at maybe 20-25 mph and then suddenly our right side just sinks and we're at a 45 degree angle. We climb out and look around, and the tires have dug a furrow nice enough for us to see that under a good foot and a half of hard pack clay is what feels like thick silt. Like when you push down with a foot, a spot three feet away pushes up.
In the process of digging us out, we got another truck stuck, broke several of our shiny toys mounted to our Caiman and then finally got out of the mudhole. I'd like to point out that the first reactions of my crew to almost rolling our truck were as follows: My driver asked if everyone was okay, I snickered, and my dismount cussed. Our Sergeant just took it all calmly, like he'd done it before, because he had.
So we annihilated the front end alignment and crammed clay into our radiator, by the time we got home we'd eaten the tires to being bald and were spraying coolant from a red-lined engine. I will point that riding in a 20 ton vehicle with almost no steering on rural roads at night... kind of like a budget carnival ride. We may have decided to name our Caiman 'Shani'qua', or not, I dunno. It was late, we were all tired and giggly. And we missed the Mortar attack. I think there was another alert last night, but I slept through it. I ran out of rip its while we were digging the truck out, and so probably crashed hard. I took a few pictures, they should make it to facebook.
As far as the previous issue of the Army trying to force happy decisions, it was a lovely moment or two of enlightenment. The past came up to bite me, in that much of this situation was caused by my previous sojourn in the Army back long ago. Human Resources had me logged as a midcareer soldier, rather than initial term. Midcareer soldiers have to sign paperwork like I was being pushed to, being they're already accustomed to giving the Army it's pound of flesh, initial term are allowed to turn down one set of orders, essentially a 'get out of jail free' card to let you not be forced to decide to reenlist or not.
So I got the paperwork sorted to where they realize I'm initial term, and bammo, I use my one freebie. An evil bastard could point out that this means the next set of orders I get would lead me back to square one. I'm just hoping that this next set of orders comes in November or January, rather than April.
College courses are insane and fun, something about balancing higher learning and preparing to apply controlled violence tickles me. Passed my last two classes with As and in a week I start the next two. In truth, monitoring the college progression of my old roommate probably tasks more of my time than my own studies. He drags me to the gym, I drag him through HS101. I'm not sure which of us has the harder task.
I'm halfway through watching BSG and find myself very delighted that I waited before the entire series was on DVD before showing any serious interest. Something gooey about just pressing 'next' when it says 'to be continued'.
I was awoken the other morning by an unfamiliar sound. Keep in mind that the past five months I have been in this accursed country has been without incident and damnably quiet. With that in mind, it's not odd to think that I'd never heard the 'incoming!' alarm before. I figured it out in short order when two seconds later there was the unmistakable sound of a nearby explosion. Apparently the Iraqi felt like reminding us we're in their country, or that they're annoyed about the results of the elections, or their fireworks really, really suck. One of the CHUs in my area got hit. One of our mekaniks was inside. Due to the nature of budget terrorism and the high price of good ordinance these days, said mekanik made it out with some shrapnel in his butt, and was at work today in the motorpool, helping me fix my truck (which we broke thoroughly).
Less than 24 hours later, while me and my crew were out breaking my truck (I'll get to it) the FOB got mortared, everyone sat in the bunkers for an hour or so and from what I hear, they didn't even hit anything this time. Now anyone who's been paying attention knows that getting mortared in Iraq is like getting AIDS in Africa, it just happens. But after five months of nothing, twice in one day? And here I was just starting to get acclimated to the idea of nothing happening.
We head out soon to play response force in case people don't like election results. The results come out tomorrow, as you may, or may not, know. We've been given the stipulation that El Presidente's party has all but threatened a military coup if they lose and the Prime Minister's party wins. Lost word was the PM was winning. Oh joy.
Apparently teaching these people about democracy isn't sticking, because their response to 'the people's choice' is blowing up Walmart. Are they just bored and need another civil war to draw the attention back from Afghanistan again?
So, political mumbling aside, my steed, beloved noble Caiman, found quicksand. Our CO, who we are thinking of buying a Dora the Explorer hat, felt like we needed to explore routes we've never taken before. This man is known for scanning the horizon, picking a landmark, and making the dismounted element hoof it there. Quite often, those of us in the mounted element reach said landmark first. Isn't that the point of being mechanized? So we can drive? Getting off track. So Dora the Explorer says we need to find new roads. So us in the lead truck get the lovely duty of finding said road. As a general rule, if there are tire tracks, it's a road. Because sometimes that's all there are. But keep in mind, most everyone who drives on these 'roads' drives some Toyota pickup (lets be generous and call it 3 tons loaded with corn) and here we go in our Caiman (lets say 20 tons, depending on how much my driver eats) trying to follow.
This failed.
Perfectly flat, dry terrain, driving at maybe 20-25 mph and then suddenly our right side just sinks and we're at a 45 degree angle. We climb out and look around, and the tires have dug a furrow nice enough for us to see that under a good foot and a half of hard pack clay is what feels like thick silt. Like when you push down with a foot, a spot three feet away pushes up.
In the process of digging us out, we got another truck stuck, broke several of our shiny toys mounted to our Caiman and then finally got out of the mudhole. I'd like to point out that the first reactions of my crew to almost rolling our truck were as follows: My driver asked if everyone was okay, I snickered, and my dismount cussed. Our Sergeant just took it all calmly, like he'd done it before, because he had.
So we annihilated the front end alignment and crammed clay into our radiator, by the time we got home we'd eaten the tires to being bald and were spraying coolant from a red-lined engine. I will point that riding in a 20 ton vehicle with almost no steering on rural roads at night... kind of like a budget carnival ride. We may have decided to name our Caiman 'Shani'qua', or not, I dunno. It was late, we were all tired and giggly. And we missed the Mortar attack. I think there was another alert last night, but I slept through it. I ran out of rip its while we were digging the truck out, and so probably crashed hard. I took a few pictures, they should make it to facebook.
As far as the previous issue of the Army trying to force happy decisions, it was a lovely moment or two of enlightenment. The past came up to bite me, in that much of this situation was caused by my previous sojourn in the Army back long ago. Human Resources had me logged as a midcareer soldier, rather than initial term. Midcareer soldiers have to sign paperwork like I was being pushed to, being they're already accustomed to giving the Army it's pound of flesh, initial term are allowed to turn down one set of orders, essentially a 'get out of jail free' card to let you not be forced to decide to reenlist or not.
So I got the paperwork sorted to where they realize I'm initial term, and bammo, I use my one freebie. An evil bastard could point out that this means the next set of orders I get would lead me back to square one. I'm just hoping that this next set of orders comes in November or January, rather than April.
College courses are insane and fun, something about balancing higher learning and preparing to apply controlled violence tickles me. Passed my last two classes with As and in a week I start the next two. In truth, monitoring the college progression of my old roommate probably tasks more of my time than my own studies. He drags me to the gym, I drag him through HS101. I'm not sure which of us has the harder task.
I'm halfway through watching BSG and find myself very delighted that I waited before the entire series was on DVD before showing any serious interest. Something gooey about just pressing 'next' when it says 'to be continued'.