I kind of suck at this blogging thing don't I?

So…it’s bee a while hasn’t it? Well sit back and get ready for story time.

Ever since my last post here, I’ve pretty much settled into a humdrum daily existence. Work like a rented mule all morning, walk ¼ mile to get lunch, walk back to my room, kick off my boots and blouse and cool the hell down. It’s funny I say that though, because up until about Apr 20 we had stayed below 100 F. And as with so many things, as soon as I heard on the radio that “Every day from here on out that is below 100 F is a gift”, it returned to 100+ daily. Back on the first day of spring it was 111 F, but then we got another month of tolerable weather. 4 days ago it was 122 F.

One nice thing happened in that time frame as well. The guys from Annapolis that are down in AJ had bought me a cigar as a congratulations after Joyce’s birth and just never had an opportunity to get it to me. So once we met up they gave it to me, a Gurkha Estate Churchill which is infused with Luis XIII cognac. Talk about YUMMY! So that re-sparked my interest in cigars, and since I didn’t have to worry about stinking up a house, I visited my favorite cigar web sites and started shopping! In a matter of 3 weeks or so, I’m set for cigars for the rest of my deployment. :-)

About 3 weeks ago, we had a thunder storm! With rain and everything! The first hour and a half or so there was only lightning, then we got the thunder and rain, then it went back to lightning only again. The whole thing lasted over 3 hrs and the storm had quite an audience. The bunch of us out watching it were like kids on the 4th of July.

“OOOOooooo!”

“Ahhhhhhhhh!”

“Ohhhhhhhhh!”

As for fun, I had my first trip out into Kuwait City in the early part of April. The city was fine, nothing special. I ate Lebanesefood for lunch and it was ok. The Science Center that wewent to was more like an elementary school field trip destinationwith only a hand full of fish, reptiles and othercritters along with an IMAX show. Unfortunately theIMAX was sold out for all the morning showswith...school field trips! But it was nice seeing theGulf, the water, trees, grass... The second half of the tour was to a shopping place. It was a giant partially open partially notconglomerate of a shopping mall kind of place. Wefound out one interesting thing; over here there are no name brands. You want a yellow shirt, you get a yellow shirt, not aPolo or a Chaps or an Underarmor etc. Everything'sgeneric. The only things I got were a couple energy drinks(each sucked) and I tried an eclair and a weirdchocolate pudding....thing.... The eclair was reallygood!
On the ride back to base a cold/virus hit me like a truck. Two days later I felt crappy enough to get some drugs totry and dry me out and stop the coughing. I ended upin bed by lunch, didn't feel any better the next dayso ended up back in bed. I could manage tofunction some the following day, so since I only work 1/2 day onSat I stuck it out while I still felt like crap. In the mean time, partly due to the coughing that keptme awake and partly due to general stress I'm sure, Istarted back with my insomnia that weekend. I went3 nights with less than an hr of sleep each night,then asked for drugs to make me sleep. The docthat's here with me who was also with me way back whenI was in Bethesda doesn’t like using Ambien (thebestest go to sleep drug there is) because it canbe addictive. So she put me on Trazadone. Thefirst night I took it at 8PM and didn't fall asleepuntil 2AM. Next day I took it at 6PM and was asleepby midnight. The 3rd night I took it at 5PM butwe had a huge hicup here on our little piece of thisbase...a power line was cut accidentally and we lostpower to our barracks. No AC. So I started settingup my bunk in my office where we still had power, andby 1230, as I was sorta dozing/almost asleep, I waswoken up with news the power was restored. So, up andback to my cool comfy bed and asleep around 130. The next night I got to double my dose and hoped that I’d fall asleep twice as fast. So I planned for falling asleep in 3 hrs, but alas I was up until 2AM again. I didn’t take any the next 2 nights due to duty and my day in AJ. Check that story below!

Just this past weekend, I was really in a bad mood. The previous Sunday I had had duty which means I got to spend my one day off a week in the clinic from 7 AM until 10 PM. Follow that with a full week of work followed by a Saturday duty (we normally have Sat afternoon off) lead to a long week. In the middle of the week I found out that my Sunday was again being taken away from me in that I had to attend a defensive driver course so I could drive normal cars/vans while here in Kuwait.

I was soooooooo overjoyed…. Not.

Luckily, I was going with 2 other people who are at least fun to hang out with. At least that was something. Once we got there, we got an overview of the day; 10 min video then 2+ hrs of driving on the obstacle course.

Well that didn’t sound so bad after all!

During the video, some Army guy was telling us what we were going to do and why we were learning how to negotiate each obstacle. In the background, there were 2 cars; some generic Pontiac looking car and…….a Mustang GT! Well the video wasn’t over by more than 1 second before I stood up and declared “The Mustang is mine!”

“Sorry sir, we don’t have any Mustangs here. Only mid sized 4 door sedans and SUVs.”

Damn. Oh well.

Well actually, SUVs? Well that could prove to be fun too. :-)

I got placed in a car with Jeorge the instructor and a Navy LT. Cool, no significant wait time between obstacles.

We started with the rapid lane change. It’s a slalom course that mimics weaving in and out of 5 cars in adjacent lanes. Jeorge would tell us how fast to do it, tell us when we were up to speed (I wasn’t wasting any time by looking down at the speedo so that was good) and it was our job to maintain that speed through the course. We were doing this in a Yukon by the way. So I got to go through about 4 times at faster and faster speeds each time with max speed being about 50 kph.

Next was…..drum roll please….backing up in a straight line! We had to go once while looking over our shoulder (easy), once while using one side mirror (also easy) all while accelerating in reverse. The last method was…different; backing up without looking at all! This didn’t seem like a very good idea to me. The technique is called ‘tactical backing’ and you’re supposed to line up some part of your dashboard with an object in the distance in front of you and just keep those points lined up as you go backward.

Well I didn’t exactly follow directions and lined up a point between two radio antenna. It was like lining up a gun site and I figured it’d work. Nope, too much room for error. I killed the last cone on the drivers side 3 times in a row. Poor cone……… Then I did it as instructed and lined up with just one of the antenna and did it just fine. Frankly, I ain’t never doing that again.

Next we had off roading. Get up to 50 kph, drive 2 wheels off the pavement onto the dirt (about a 4 inch drop), straighten out, check the mirrors then turn the wheel just right so that the tread of the tire hits the side of the pavement instead of the side wall. Apparently its easy to get a blow out when the side wall hits first. After the 2 wheels off scenario we did all 4 wheels off in the same way.

4th evolution was backing into a parking place in VERY tight quarters. We’d pull up next to the spot perpendicularly, cut the wheel hard to get as much of an angle as possible, aiming the back of the truck toward the space and pull up as far as you could without running into the ‘wall’ marked by cones. Then you crank the wheel in the opposite direction and pray you’re in position to only have to make minor adjustments to get into the spot. I did it first try and was glad we only had to do it once because quite frankly, that was boring and I saw a vehicle on the other side of the range with smoke coming off the tires so I wanted to get over to that one!

And sure enough, that’s where we went next! :-)

So how do you make smoke come from the tires? Well I figured we weren’t going to learn how to do brake stands, so the other option is locking up brakes. And that’s just what we did. Jorge would give us a target speed and when we got into the cone chute, which ended in a lane-ending cone wall with a right and left lane approx 1.5 to 2 car lengths from the end of the chute, at just the right point, he’d yell ‘brake right’ or ‘break left’ and it’d be our job to lock up the wheels and then let up just enough to regain steering control and drive through the lane he indicated. This was pretty fun, especially since it took the Yukon nearly all of our running start room to reach max speed which was very quickly followed by severe braking, so that made it even more fun.

The 6th event was the one I was looking forward to most, the regular slalom course. For this, we traded in the Yukon for a GM made Kuwaiti POS. And do make it even more fun, we did it forward AND backward AT SPEED! So we started out by doing about 40 kph, no big deal and only so-so fun. Once through the course we’d stop about 40 feet from the last cone so that the line of cones was about 3 feet away from the side of the car if you drew a line from the end of the cones toward the car. Now the challenge really began. We were supposed to keep our hands at 9 and 3 and just turn the wheel smoothly through the course while looking from side view mirror to side view mirror negotiating the cones. Try number one went perfectly except my hands didn’t stay put on the wheel very well…at all. No problem, I had quite a few more runs to make! So once we were through in reverse, it was onward in D once again…a little faster. :-O

Now the routine was this; forward through slalom, backward through slalom, forward through slalom then evasive steering. So once back at the end of the slalom it was over to the same course we did the brake locking drill on except there was no braking involved! Same speeds as with the braking drill (up to 75) only it was swerving into the lanes adjacent to the cone wall instead of braking and driving gently into the lanes.

First time through the evasive steering, no big deal, only doing about 50. The next round through the slalom was noticeably more fun and quite frankly it got more and more fun as the rounds proceeded. See, while you’re supposed to maintain the given speed, I kinda failed that part…my speed seeeeeeemed to increase. Was it just my imagination or was it the fact that by the end of the course the weight of the car was gaining sideways momentum with each turn and it just felt like I was going faster. We’ll see……. ;-)

Backward on try two went better as far as hands staying on the wheel went, but the final cone in the line failed to move out of my way and it died in a crumpled heap under my tires. Oops! I had my arms twisted around as far as they could go, but it wasn’t far enough and I never got turned far enough to see, and thus avoid, the final cone. Oh well.

Forward through the course again, faster and faster! By this point, Jeorge stopped telling me how fast to go and just told me to ‘keep it at this speed’ when he felt I was going fast enough. Silly Jeorge! :-D

I think I went through the whole series of slalom/backward/slalom/evasive steering once more before the REAL fun started.

The next to last lap, during the evasive maneuver part, I anticipated the lane just before he told me which lane to go into, and of course I anticipated WRONG! So what did I do? Well I did as I was told of course! Within the 1.5-2 car length gap we had to switch lanes, I swerved left just enough so that when I snapped it back right I went into a perfect fish tail! While Jorge and the LT in the back seat were thrown somewhat violently to the left I managed to still steer through into the right lane without even nudging one cone. Damn I’m good! Before Jeorge got ‘if you aim for the wrong lane, just keep going into that lane….that’ll be fine’ out of his mouth, through quite a large smile, a good solid “YEHA!” escaped mine! And luckily, LT was laughing his ass off in the back seat. J Good to know some people still like getting a little rowdy now and then.

The last time through the evasive steering went fine at 75, but was nowhere near as fun as the slower 70 kph run a minute earlier. :-D

So the last times through the slalom were bound to be the grand finale of the day, right? Oh yeah! When I cleared the last cone damn near sideways, I looked down and was doing 60. 60 was fun! Backward one more time as fast as I could manage before the last slalom run. It wasn’t as fun as I was hoping, it was actually pretty hard at whatever speed I was going at (I’m guessing 30ish). But when it was time for the last forward run….well you’ve heard of ‘letting it all hang out’ right? :-)

Jeorge, by the way, had stopped telling me what speed to maintain. Apparently I wasn’t doing it anyway, so he gave in and let me fly.

I wish there was a video of my last run. ½ way through the course, I wasn’t ‘slaloming’ anymore and was straight up drifting through the cones getting very close to completely sideways through each cone, snapping it around the next cone in line only to traverse 170 or so degrees as I drifted through the next slot. And what did the speedo say before I applied the brake to end my day? Just shy of 70. :-D If only they had had the Mustang!

So we were done for the day, and not surprisingly, we were the first car done. I went up to the safety officer’s tower to watch my friends and struck up a conversation with him. He started it with “I almost radioed Jeroge twice to tell him to make you slow down, but it looked like you were under control even at those speeds, so I let you go.” My response?

“Good choice!”

So my lost day off turned out to be not so bad after all.

For the last of this forever long entry, I’ve got to tell you about my first full-on sand storm. I left my second job at quarter to 1 this afternoon for the 15 min drive back to VA. As we reached the end of the base road, off to our right was a visibly darkening roiling cloud of sand. It stretched for about 500 yds across and more than 150 yds high and it was moving toward us, in the direction of the road we were about to turn left onto. Not long after we were on the main road, the sand storm was next to us, on the driver’s side, about 400 yds away. It was moving faster than we were. Uh-oh.

As soon as I realized that, I told the guy driving he’d better punch it. I didn’t have any intention of getting trapped out on the road where who knows what damn fool Kuwaiti driver might be cruising along like it was nothing, only to end up imbedded in out vehicular arse.

We got up to speed and started getting past the lead edge of the storm. We weren’t going Mustang Cobra fast, but we were challenging all 4 cylinders to be sure.

We made it off the main road and onto the base road by turning left toward the storm. That’s the way the road goes don’t’cha know! But after 150 feet it turns back right so we are again along side the wall of billowing sand. We have to drive ridiculously slowly on this road because it’s full of potholes and rocks and dirt speed bumps. By the time we get to the gate, the lead edge is on us and everything goes orange as the sun is blotted out. We creep forward as visibility drops from about 50 feet to 30 to 20 to 15 and turn further left yet again to get onto base proper. So were does that put us? Why right in the middle of it all of course! By this time, the orange tint to the world is a dirt brown tint. And what do you have to do before getting onto base proper? Get out of the vehicle!!!! Before you get onto base you have to check your weapons. This was going to be fun. Yeah, fun like getting sand in your everywhere at the beach except it’s getting into your everywhere by 40-50 MPH wind. How’s that picture for you?

We get back into the vehicle coughing and sputtering and are allowed through. The road through this point is a winding one with Jersey barriers jumping out in front of you every 30 feet to ensure no one can get past the guards in any haste.

Well maybe they could if they went to the Scott drifting school, but I digress! ;-)

We had to stop twice because visibility dropped to ½ the hood of the car! We felt like we were in a Stephen King movie let me tell you! It was trying to eat us, I’m sure of it!

We made the 3 min drive back to the clinic in 12, arriving safe and sound.

I wonder what’s in store for me tomorrow?