TwoSpade’s Deck

All of our servers in theater were supposed replaced or upgraded.  September was the month to do it.  I had hidden quite a while on night shift without being chosen to go to one of the other bases to replace one, but finally, my turn came up, and I was going someplace new.

FOB Delta is right next to Al Kut, which I didn’t know anything about until I saw that Wikipedia entry either.  After being there, I still know about as much as I did.

It is notable that getting a flight out there required almost a weeks notice, and the only flight available coming back would be two days later.  This is not a very big or happening place.

I got my flight for Sunday, and got onto my good ol’ favorite: the C-130.  This particular one (which I couldn’t take a picture of, no photos allowed on the runway) was called Wyoming with the rodeo icon from the license plate decal on the side.  If any of you know me at all, you’ll know why I was laughing as I got on.

The flight was uncomfortable, but that was expected.  When I landed I was greeted with this great sign:

I made a list of phone numbers to call when I landed to get to the server.  My job was actually really easy, and would only require about an hours worth of work.  I just had to swap out hard drives and make sure they were recgonized in the new server.  We used imaging software for the upgrade, making the process a whole lot simpler.

Unfortunately, no one answered any of the four numbers I called.  So I sat in the terminal for a while.  Well, because this airport is so small and they only have about three flights a day, people started to get suspcious of why someone was sitting around the airport, so finally an employee asked me what I was doing.  I explained that I was looking for a MSgt Byron to get my server upgraded.  I quickly discovered the “small town” feel of the base when he knew exactly who I was talking about and offered to take me there.

Kayron was his name.  He drove me in a Gator to where his office was.  Of course, as expected, he wasn’t there, but one of his lackeys knew where the server was and pointed me in the right direction.  Right into this storage room for food and drink, where they stored our server.  Awesome!

Like I said, after about an hour of work, I was done, and now I needed a place to stay for two nights.  Byron ended up being in his office when I was finished, so he got me setup with the temp billeting folks, and they thankfully gave me a set of linens so I didn’t have to buy my own.  When I got to my tent, I discovered it was huge and empty.  I had my pick!  I picked the pink one.  Yeah, that’s right, it was the softest one, so what!?

The chow hall was right across from where I lived, but I needed a power converter for my laptop, so I looked for the store first.  The PX was right next to the same 3 fast food places that seem to be on every base (Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell), and since I was parched, I sat and drank a Gatorade staring at them.  Should I cheat my diet while I’m on this short trip?  Nah!

So I go to the chow hall and eat.  I caught the end of the Dallas Cowboys game and watched the press conference of Romo crying about letting his team down.  While that was satisfying, otherwise I was people watching.  I saw a big guy sit a row away from me, and just a few minutes later, a cute Army chick walked up behind him and started flirting with him.  I suddenly decided there may be such a thing as “too skinny,” so I grabbed 3 sugar cookies on my way out, and ended up cheating my diet anyway (albiet minorly ).

I watched some Three Sheets episodes on my laptop and fell to sleep.

The next day, I had the whole day to kill, so I thought I’d check out the MWR.  They wouldn’t let me take my bag in, so hooking my own computer to the Internet was out, plus there wasn’t much going on there anyway, however, I HAD to take pictures of the elementary school decorations they used all over the place:

Then I went home and tried to watch some more Three Sheets and Burn Notice on my laptop.  I say tried, because I started to feel ill.  I started sweating even though it was a nice cool temperature in the tent, I felt a little queezy, and my head was exploding!  WTF?

Well, when you flip your night schedule over on short notice and you use copious amounts of caffeine to accomplish your task, suddenly cutting off your supply completely because you forgot to bring any with you (and were unwilling to drink soda to get your fix), has adverse effects on you.  I have a love/hate relationship with caffeine I’ve learned.  Anyway, I slept off my withdrawal symptoms and got up for dinner.  ”Small Town-itis” continued, because I realized I began already recognizing the same people at the chow hall.

Sleep was easy to come by after dinner (with more cookies).  The next morning, I packed all my stuff up and walked to the bus stop to get a ride back to the mini-airport.  Just in case the worst happened (I got stuck there another few days) I put all my bedding into a garbage bag and stuffed it into a locker.  I guess it is someone else’s problem now!  I’m probably guilty of a little racial profiling here, but I was definitely surprised to find that the individual driving the bus was into female twangy country music.  Loud at that.  Saw some sights on the way:

The ride home was mostly fine, with a small delay on the runway at our first stop.  By which I mean a hellish hour in a metal oven on a hot Iraqi summer day with a huge pallet of supplies blocking the cargo door that was our circulation.  We had to wait for some VIP’s.  After everyone started to get really annoyed, conversation started up.  I had to put the smack down on the fatty old guy that smelled like 5 packs a day next to me, when he started talking smack about Colorado.  Once everyone but him agreed they preferred it to Montana, we were on our way again.  :)

Finally got back into the air and got home without incident and got right back onto the night schedule the next day.  Not the most exciting trip I’ve been on, but still notable in the otherwise unnotable repetive experience I’ve had out here.

To make up for the mostly boring story, here is a tribute to Three Sheets with my new hoodie and the “Good Burp” sign.  Cheers!

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 5:11 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.