Off to the Races!

It has certainly been a busy, somewhat exciting week for me.  I spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Kabul preparing for my onward movement to Kandahar Airfield (KAF).  On Tuesday morning, I flew to KAF and since stepping foot here, I’ve been out straight with work.

Let me back up and discuss my stay in Kabul.  While there, I was housed in a room with two other gentlemen.  These guys were on 6-month tours and they came from Cambodia and Armenia!  Anyway, while I was only in there room a few days, they were completely moved into the room and had occupied every drawer, hanging closet and towel rack in the room and adjoining bathroom which left me with zero space to put my stuff.  They were kind enough to clear out a couple of cabinet shelves for me and I had to stack the rest of my bags in a corner behind the door.  It is no wonder why I wanted to get out of there and down to KAF as soon as possible.  I had two major highlights to my stay there.  The first was a surprise surf and turf dinner in the dining facility (DFAC) on Saturday night.  To my amazement, they had rib eye steaks to order, crab legs, and LOBSTER tails!  I suspected that the lobster tails were flown in frozen and would not taste very good but they were delicious.  Then, on Monday evening, I was invited to participate in a beach volleyball game by some of my friends from my orientation class back in 2006.  These guys live and work there in Kabul and they have a team that plays in a league on Monday nights.  So, that was a lot of fun.  My friends and I are also members of the same fantasy football league.

Okay, so I flew down here early Tuesday morning.  After an uneventful 90 minute flight, I arrived at my new home for the next year. KAF is one of the busiest single runway airports in the world!  I constantly hear the roar of fighter jets taking off with afterburners on and think to myself, there’s the sound of freedom!

The base here is enormous.   I am told that we have over 30,000 folks here: American military, civilian, and contracted employees from other countries.  The place is a hot, dry, dusty maze of buildings and tents surrounded by hardened protective walls of concrete and or bins of earth called Hesco bastions.  There is a constant buzz of airfield sounds; helicopters, jets, and generators.  The most dangerous aspect around here may be the vehicular traffic.  The base is also a swarm of Toyota pick-ups and tactical military vehicles.  I have personally been assigned a Toyota Helix pick-up truck with a crew-cab.  I promise that soon I will start posting photographs; I have just not been able to get my personal laptop computer hooked up.

I am temporarily housed in a “wet hooch” about a mile from where I work.  A wet hooch is a modular unit that has a bathroom in it.  As soon as a permanent room becomes available, I will be able to move in and get settled.  In the mean time, the hooch I am in is plenty comfortable.  It has a bunk bed, wardrobe, desk w/chair, and a television hooked up to the base’s cable TV system.  My permanent residence will be a single room in a dormitory-style building with shared washroom facilities.  Even though the room will be “dry,” it will be right next to where I work making the commute much easier.

As for my running and exercise, I was able to run in Kabul on treadmills in their small gym three of the five days I was there.  Here on the air base, I have been able to run outside early in the mornings.  I was too tired to get up early on Wednesday, but I was able to get in a 4-miler yesterday and ran 3.1 miles (5km) this morning.  I have also been able to stick to my plan to do push-ups and crunches every day while I am in Afghanistan.  I was sore for a few days in the beginning but am rapidly getting adjusted to the new routine and I think my body will thank me for it in the future.  For those of you who do not know, I will hopefully be running the Honolulu Marathon with Chris and Marissa on December 8^th during my first R&R, so I really need to get on the training bandwagon to begin preparing for that.

To quote Porky Pig: Th, th, th thaatts all folks!  More next week!