Flying by the Seat of My Pants…In a CH-46

Holy Moki!!! Does this look comfortable to you?? This picture was actually taken in Balad, around 0400 waiting for a flight home. But, the point I want to make is that lying on these rocks is about a jillion times more comfortable than riding in a CH-46 last night.
First of all, traveling around here is tiring enough because it is hot and you are wearing about 40 extra pounds of gear when you walk out to the plane/helo/truck/HMMWV—this is not comfortable. But, no one ever said the Marines let comfort enter into their decision-making processes. In some ways this is good—mission first is an admirable trait. Safety is important too—which is why flying at night is a good thing. It is just that nothing that is inherently uncomfortable gets any better at 0300 when you should be racked out somewhere!!

So, it is 0100 and I am getting on this helicopter—it is body-thumping loud, even with hearing protection. The seats are these relatively simple things made of an aluminum frame with some fabric stretched over it—just like you might see on a nice lawn chair or pool lounger, only those things are actually comfortable. I actually don’t think the seat itself is uncomfortable—it is the vibration. This seat is actually a Vibration Transmission and Amplifying System (VTAS).

Have you ever played with those gelatin kid’s toys that are oozy and gooey one minute, and then, when you press hard on them, they become much less elastic—very stiff and hard?? This is what the VTAS does to your body. It starts right in the gluteus—feels like you are sitting on concrete; sitting on concrete that is directly attached to your spine. I think the vibration sets up a standing wave of “hardness” a la the gelatin that spreads through your body. Not only that, the frequency of the vibration seems to be just that necessary to cause all the sensory nerve endings to misfire—causing all sorts of odd and possibly painful paresthesias. Then the vibration works its way up to your face where it isn’t so much that your cheeks are vibrating, but it feels like your entire face is vibrating off of your skull—cool! Except then the face feels like you just went to the dentist. And when you finally step off of this wonderful airborne conveyance, it feels like you have had a whole body Novocain shot. Funky…

No wonder traveling in Iraq makes you tired…

Unstuck...

Well, I don’t know when this post will reach the net—we have been without network access for almost 48 hours now.  And, we were without phones for most of the day yesterday.  Funny, how without these modern communication devices I found it near impossible to get any work done…  I guess that is not true--I got work done, but if you cannot e-mail off a report or call someone to tell them a lab result—is the work really done??  The old tree falling in the forest question…

 

But, this posting is supposed to be about getting unstuck, in more ways than one.  First of all, you may have guessed that we made it safely back from Balad.  There was a small break in the sandstorm that happened to coincide with a flight to Al Asad—thank goodness.  This particular flight is on a C-23 Sherpa.  If you look this plane up on the internet (which someone here did) it says it flies high and slow.  Maybe that is how they normally fly, but nothing is totally normal here.  After a 4 hour show time wait (sitting on rocks—did they do that in Viet Nam!), we hopped on the bird and flew low (150-200 ft) and fast (about 200mph) along the nape of the earth—very exciting.  In fact, as you get on the plane they encourage you to get your emesis bag ready for action as they can be hard to open sometimes and passengers are subject to extremely sudden bursts of motion sickness with all that that entails…  I read on the flight because that was better than watching the ground speed by sideways (the passenger seating is sideways on the plane) followed by a nice view of the sky followed by the ground speeding by sideways…  In any case, I am unstuck from Balad!

 

Unstuck number two:  diarrhea.  This is a problem.  Luckily, it is not a personal problem for me.  However, we have started doing some diarrheal pathogen surveillance here at Al Asad.  When you ask a question, you have to be prepared for the answer.  Likewise, when you ask for poop, you have to be prepared for poop; and, when you are deployed you should be prepared for a lot of poop.  Dusty is literally up to his eyeballs in crap!  This makes him as happy as a pig in…  Anywho, we are now investigating several unique aspects of the diarrhea here on base—another excellent reason to be in Al Asad in the summer!

 

Unstuck C.  The wedding ring.  Having been married for almost 15 years now, to my first wife, I can tell you that my wedding ring rarely comes off of my finger.  It barely fits over the knuckle, it is damn hard to take off.  The only times I have taken it off in the last 15 years is to scrub for surgery (med school, internship, and those wonderful, formative years in Iwakuni as a GMO—thanks to Cary and Lil!!).  Anyway, I am walking to the chowhall yesterday and, imagine this, it is hot and windy.  But my ring finger feels weird out in the wind.  So, I look down and am astonished to see that there is no ring there, and I have NO memory of having taken the ring off.  Inconceivable!!  Yet, the fact remained…  I pondered the situation over lunch—better to think and search on a full stomache…  No idea where the damn thing had gone!

 

When I got back to the office/bedroom/bat cave I had a lowdown, sneaking suspicion that the ring was under my pillow—no idea where this came from, but it was true!  So, despite the ring becoming unstuck, it is now firmly re-stuck on my finger—too bad Peg doesn’t know because the network is still down….

Stuck...

Well, the sandstorm has hit here in Balad. No flights in or out all day yesterday. Just in case, we got up this morning to report for a 3:30am showtime. But, alas, the flight this morning was cancelled also.

The air tastes of dust. The eyes are filled with dust when you go outside. Although it is daylight, all the streetlights are on, but visibility is limited to 10 or 20 yards... So, although we have been working pretty hard the last couple days (visiting, networking, brainstorming and the like--it's the brain storming that takes a lot of energy!)--today will be pretty mellow. After waiting for an hour to make sure the flight was cancelled, we went back to the office and checked e-mail and read the news until the chowhall opened at 6am. Actually, I got to IM with Peg and the kids (we are having a girl come January--excellent news that I got two days ago!!) for a bit. The connection is too slow to allow video or audio chat, but text chatting is nice too. Unfortunately, the Marines back at our base in Al Asad don't allow IM, among various other things! So, this was a welcome chance to hook the Mac up to the network and get my connection on...

Later today, another meal in a chowhall that is pretty damn good--better than at Al Asad anyway. But, nothing compares to what they have at Camp Victory where we spent the day on Saturday--that place had some seriously good eats. One entire section of local and Indian food--some outstanding curry over rice--heaven. Because I promised no more bathroom entries, I won't tell you about the bathroom in Sadam's Summer Palace--maybe I will just post a picture of it...

Time to go see what I can accomplish on this day of down time...

The Throne

Mysterious ways of the Chowhall

The chowhall… This is a fine tradition in the military and at many other institutions—oh, they might call it a cafeteria or even a bistro, but it is the same damn thing everywhere… Again, I don’t want to sound like I am complaining—I mean, after one of the posts about the port-a-potties here I received a comment about how in Viet Nam their port-a-potty didn’t even have a roof and bullets regularly zoomed through the top of the thing! On top of that, showers were taken with water stored in old Agent Orange 55 gallon drums. So, if anyone is concerned that some of those Prophets of Doom might be right in claiming that Iraq could turn into another Viet Nam; fear not, we have shitters with roofs and take showers in water that is free of Agent Orange—completely different from Viet Nam.

Hopefully, after this post, we will get some good comparisons to the food in Viet Nam—because I am sure ours is a damn sight better—better than what GIs ate during the Viet Nam conflict that is—probably not better than what I could get in a Phò Soup Noodle shop in Hanoi right now.

Anyway, here is the thing, or, rather, several things… The chowhall is a mysterious place where things happen in a strange, wondrous and often inexplicable ways.

Serving size: When you go through the line in the chowhall here, you can watch the guy in front of you ask for say, some pot roast. You can see him get three or four huge pieces on his plate—way too much for any normal human—even a Marine! So, when it is your turn you ask for “just one”—there is usually a bit of a communication issue , but “just one” seems pretty simple and direct, especially when used in conjunction with the universal sign for 1. But, sadly, it doesn’t work this way. Somehow the server interprets your begging for less food to mean “give me one more than the last guy through the line” or “just give me one plateful.” As he dishes you up he just smiles, nods his head and says, “Thank you, Sir!” I swear, I had about five pounds of pot roast on my plate the other day as a walked back to the table. Do you know how much hot sauce it takes to make 5 lbs of chow hall pot roast edible—me neither, I ran out… Funny thing is, there are signs all over the chow hall encouraging you to take as much food as you need, but no more; because if you take too much another Marine might not be able to eat… right…

Speaking of pot roast, AKA “Mystery Meat”, this is an actual conversation I overheard today:

Guy In Line: Is that turkey?

Serving Guy: No, ham.

Meanwhile the sign above the tray of meat says Salisbury Steak and the meat in the pan is clearly a roast pork loin… Inherently obvious to even the most casual observer…

Just before you enter the chowhall, there is a bulletin board outside that lists the day’s menu. I haven’t found it to be particularly accurate, and it is damn hot outside (don’t know if I mentioned that fact before), so standing outside in the sun reading the menu is not at the top of my list of things to do prior to eating. The standard operating procedure, for me at least, is to enter the chowhall and check out the “main” line that has your normal chowhall hot entrees and, if these are lacking, to cross over to the “quick” line that is basically the same everyday with hamburgers and sandwiches and such. Seems like a reasonable thing to do to me. Evidently it seemed like a reasonable thing to others also—which is exactly why the chowhall personnel must have decided it was a Bad Idea. Yesterday there was a rope (a nice velvet rope with gold colored posts—just like in an old-fashioned movie theater—bet they didn’t have those in Nam either!) blocking the way between the two lines and a big hand-written sign that proclaimed “this is not a shortcut. Make your decision outside!” Well, this was one of those days where the “main” line had proved completely unappetizing, and I had to get to the other side—what to do? By the way, there are two doors into the chowhall, each with a Marine sitting there making tally marks for everyone that comes in so that they can figure out how much food they are serving (do they know how big the portions are?? Actually, they do, but that is another story). I take a chance on actually talking to the young Marine manning the door I should have gone through and sitting closest to the rope that I want to cross.

Me: Hey, what’s up with this rope? If I go out the other door and come back in this one, then I will get two tick marks and screw up the bean-counting (or, head counting in this case)—what should I do?

Marine: Sir, I had no part in the decision to place this rope or sign here, and I cannot comment on the wisdom of that decision. I was only instructed to make sure no one crossed the rope.

Well, that was pretty clear. Don’t cross a Marine when he has been given an order. However, I could tell that he was sane and appreciated my predicament. Interestingly, 20 feet down the line, there is another walkway where one can cross from one side of the chowhall to the other. So, I walk down there, where there is no rope, and then back up to the line I want to be in, giving a Hang-Ten sign to the Marine as I get in line—he gives me the thumbs up back. He was probably glad he didn’t have to shoot me for crossing the rope, but really didn’t care which line I was in.

By the way, the chili cheese burger was awesome from the “quick” line, and the rope and sign were gone today…