My Initial Travels

As all of you probably know by now, I safely arrived in Afghanistan about 1 week ago.  My trip to get here took about a week as well, which like many things in the military, was long and convoluted.  And, while clearly I did get from point A to point B, it mostly seems like it was a week of my life I will never get back.  After leaving San Antonio, I went to Norfolk, VA where I spent the night and next day at the Fentons (friends from residency).  This seems to have become a tradition for many of us heading overseas.  

My military conveyance then commenced in Norfolk on Miami Air International.  (This is the contractor for the military whose fleet consists of an entire 9 airplanes.)  From Norfolk we made 4 stops before arriving at Manas, Kyrgystan.

The first stop was in at the Pease Airport in Portsmouth, NH.  In Pease, we were able to get off the plane and we were met by the Pease Greeters.  There were between 50 and 100 volunteers (mostly veterans) who formed a line and shook the hands of every service member on the plane.  They had coffee, donuts, ice cream, and phones we could make calls from.  They sent us off with chocolates, candies, knitted hats, and warms socks among many other things.  Needless to say, it was very moving.  After taking off from Pease, we returned to Pease because the cabin door wasn't sealed and the cabin wouldn't pressurize.  Fortunately that was the only mechanical glitch in the flight - at least it was the only one we knew about.  We then stopped

in Iceland, Romania, and Georgia before finally making it to Kyrgystan, and while Miami Air is based in Miami, our pilots sounded more like they might be from any one of the latter three countries.  All in all, it was about 24 hours.

My stay in Manas was characterized mostly by jet-lag and painfully slow internet.  There is really not much to the base there, and I am ever thankful that my possible deployment to there fell through.  After about 3 days, I donned my body armor and got on a C-130 to go to Afghanistan.  We first went to Kabul and for that part of the flight we were packed in like sardines.  The landing there was relatively smooth.  Some folks got off the plane there and I pulled rank to get a seat with some more leg room which inadvertently gave me a seat with a view out of one of the very tiny side hole windows of the plane.  While I couldn't see very much, I could tell that we weren't very far off the ground as we went over the mountains.  We did a "combat" landing into Bagram which means it felt like we were on some crazy big amusement park roller coaster.  Since I could see out the window, I had a sense of what was going on and was fairly confident we weren't about to auger in, so that was 

somewhat reassuring.

The base here is really kind of a dump, but I have to admit, it's beginning to grow on me, kind of like a fungus.  And, we are surrounded by some really spectacular views of the mountains.  So far work has not been too busy, the food's not bad, my room is okay, and I'm enjoying the people I work with.