Bedouin tents, Grand Theft Auto, and Haboob attacks

Sorry again for the delayed posting, this move has been something else. Our squadron is finally settled at our new base, and the transition has been quite interesting. Our new base is nice; quiet, open and relatively laid back (even if it does smell like a rotten sulfur pit most of the time), and our squadron all lives by each other, which kind of gives it the feeling of summer camp. At our last base, we were spread out through the main base housing complex, whereas here, you can’t walk outside of your room without seeing someone you work with. Our rooming situation is somewhat similar to the last base as well: One room for two people and a door that opens up to a wide gravel pit. The problem with the rooms is that if your roommate is trying to sleep during the day – which is the case for us since J-Flo and I are both flying nights – there’s no way to avoid letting in a blinding amount of sun and most likely waking your roommate up. J-Flo and I tried to rectify this situation by making canopies for our bed. These aren’t the frilly four post beds that you’d see in Southern Living. Our room looks like a MacGyvered Bedouin village: 550 cord tied onto bolts that we backed out of the ceiling to support the sheets we tied up. When we were done, I commented to J-Flo, “It looks like an opium den in here. All we need are some sitars playing and some belly dancers.” Here’s a picture of J-Flo’s tent:

 We made the canopies one afternoon in a blur of caffeine induced productivity. We had a big pile of sheets that J-Flo brought from our last base, and while we were fixing the room up we had this conversation:

Me: What sheets can I use?
J-Flo: You can use any of them, just not the pillow. That’s my ass pillow.
Me (Long awkward pause, just staring): Umm….ass pillow huh?
J-Flo: Well, yeah…It’s my – you know what, don’t worry about it.
Me: Well, you said ass pillow. Now I don’t feel like I can move past it.
J-Flo (exasperated with me): You know, it’s just a pillow that I sit on. It’s for my ass.
Me: You mean like when you make tea and sit on the floor?
J-Flo: Well, now you’re just being racist.

Honestly though, I got lucky with a pretty awesome roommate. We’ve started working out at the same time so he can teach me some Tae Kwon Do, and for the added benefit of having someone there to motivate you. Guys in the squadron have started noticing our workout routine is a real gut check and have started tagging along, and dubbed it FloFit. Let me say this about J-Flo: He’s a FREAK OF NATURE. I’m in pretty good shape, but every time I work out with him, I find myself having to dig deeper than I thought just to keep up. I swear he’s made out of corrugated steel. One of the other guys in the squadron was tagging along and after a particularly vicious ab workout had this question for me:

Rob (choking back vomit): Where the HELL did you find this guy?!
Me (face down, gasping for air): Found him on the black market. They captured him in Chernobyl’s melted reactor core. He’s illegal in 14 states and wanted in Alaska for Caribou genocide.
Rob (still not breathing): Wait…..what?

Besides working out like a beast and flying occasionally, we’ve been spending our time trying to figure out how to get around this base. Our squadron is about 80 people strong, but for whatever reason we only have 4 vehicles with which to get around. It’s weird, we’ll be walking down the street to chow, about a ¾ mile hike, and you’ll see a bunch of Army troops driving by in nice vehicles by themselves. Dan Bell put it best, “I wish I was an Army Sergeant so I could have my own Suburban.” Most of the time, we have to end up relying on the bus routes on base, although that’s wrought with peril as well. The base is really spread out and the bus drivers are both maniacal at considerate at the same time. Sometimes you’ll be sitting at a bus stop and the bus you’ll be trying to catch will just go screaming right past. Other times, you might be walking back from chow with only about 300 yards to go, and a bus will pull up and open the door and try and give you a lift for the last stretch. It’s weird.

One of the vehicles we had was loaned to us. I don’t think we were planning on giving it back at all, in fact. It was a van (a freaking sweet van, mind you) and we named it -- Phlupher….long story -- and treated it as our own for a couple days. It was like the van from Old School where Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn kidnap all of their pledges, except it was gold and had a body lift and off road suspension on it. It was AWESOME.  Well, we treated it great until one of the Iraqis filled the tank with diesel and completely wrecked the engine. I can’t even figure out how he put diesel in the tank, the nozzle doesn’t even fit. I’m actually a little impressed. So we were down one vehicle. Great. Well one day, there was a van that looked remarkably similar to Phlupher parked outside our housing. Someone in the squadron – we still don’t know who, and no, it wasn't me – saw it and thought, “Awesome! Phlupher is back!” So they jumped in and took it to the squadron, put a name back on the windshield and went about business as usual. This worked great for a couple of days until the van was REPORTED AS STOLEN. Uh oh. I walked into to talk to Juice – our scheduler – one day, trying to figure out when I’d be flying, and he asks me:

Juice: So do you know anything about Phlupher 2?
Me: No, what do you mean?
Juice: Well, apparently that van was stolen, and SSgt Schmidt just got pulled over and almost shot in the head.
Me (laughing so hard I’m about to swallow my tongue): HAHAHAHA!!!! You can’t be serious!
Juice: I am serious! Do you know who took that van? We have to figure out who just hijacked the van. They aren’t going to be in trouble, we just need to know who.
Me: Yeah, good luck with that. I’m sure you’ll have people lining up to confess.

In addition to trying to figure out how to get around, get the mission done, and get in beastly shape, we also have sand storms to deal with. We’re kind of in the middle of nowhere and these things can pop up with no notice or provocation. I had heard about Haboobs before, but I never thought they’d be as bad as they are. It's not so much that it's sand blowing around, it's more like atomized dust that swirls around, and gets EVERYWHERE. Yes, everywhere. Here’s a picture Juice took of one that rolled in quite suddenly:

Vicious looking, right? This normally isn’t a problem since we’re supposed to have all the gear we need. However, since I was one of the crews that delivered the aircraft, I had shipped most of my gear ahead so it would be there when I arrived.  This would’ve worked great if it wasn’t for the squadron losing track of my stuff, which found me in the middle of the sand storm with no goggles, no covering, nothing that I needed. It went from a clear day to looking like footage from the Mars landing outside in a matter of only 10 minutes. These storms are no joke. Thank God I wasn’t flying in it. So we’ve dealt with a couple of those, no thanks to the weather shop. You would think if your only job was to tell people about devastating weather phenomena that they would be able to catch these things rolling in. I finally found all of my gear buried in the back of a storage closet two days later. I loaded all my gear up into the back of our bread truck and had to deliver the DO to a jet to look at some avionics issues before I took my stuff back. He looks at all of the crap and asks, "What's all this shit back here?" I say, "It's the rest of my gear, sir. I finally found it." He replies, "you haven't had this stuff? Wow, that sucks, I'm sorry." It did suck, but I have it now, at least, despite the two pounds of sand I'm currently lugging about in my lungs.

Well, I hope this post suffices for you all. I promise to try and write more once my Masters classes calm down. Take care!

Wellen