OK OK OK OK...

Maybe it will be TWO quotes a day....


What we love to do we find time to do. --John L. Spalding

Quote of the day...

This is a new thing I am starting....

Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get - only with what you are expecting to give - which is everything. --Katherine Hepburn

If you don't like it...then let me know and I will not do it again...

My journey to Qalat...

Well I know that I have been slacking on this blog but it was all for good reason. I have been busy. Really I have. Setting up communications in the middle of no where is not that easy. Anyway, back to the story of my trip out here.....

btw, I am not a great story teller so this might suck....

A couple of weeks ago we finally completely stood up our communications package at Kandahar Air Field. At that point we knew we were ready to deploy from one shit hole to another one. Just joking. Actually Kandahar was a great place to stay at for a couple of weeks. The people in Kandahar were great. There was Joe "Euro Trip", Todd, Tony, John, Tim, Dave, Mitch, Rodney, Mike, and everyone else at the KAF TCF. Great bunch of guys. So that week we pushed out on out convoy to Qalat. Before we left we acquired some "beds" from the tents that were around the area of our departure and stuffed them into our trailer that we were towing to Qalat. We knew that Qalat was going to be hellish but we wanted to be prepared.
So that super cold morning that we left we staged ourselves at the vehicles early in the AM like any other military movement it was delayed for a couple of hours. To our surprise we were going to ride in the back of 2 1/2 ton trucks. As if it wasn't freaky enough to CONVOY over 90 miles to our site we had to do it in the back of a 2 1.2 ton truck. In the back of the truck there were soldiers with us and one of them happen to have a spare weapon so of course instinctively we asked if we could use it for the convoy. When Tom heard that we could use it for the convoy he was all over the Squad Automatic Weapon. So off we were...Out the gates of Kandahar and into the country side. One quarter mile into the trip we are stopped. Before we even hit the main road to Qalat. Apparently there was a stoppage in traffic because there was a mine clearing vehicle that had closed off the road for 30 mins. So we sat in the middle of the road with about 10 trucks waiting for the road to be opened back up. Meanwhile there are all sorts of taxis, cars and trucks piling up around us and behind us. Could it be anymore uncomfortable. You are driving across a country that is not stable and then you are caught in some sort of weird traffic jam caused by your own forces. What a start!!!! At this point I decided to go ahead and relax myself and listen to my MP3 player that was given to me by one of the most gracious girls I know. Of course I only had ONE song on there. Luckily for me it was a live session by van Dyke in Ibiza. It is 3 hours of nothing but pure trance. Perfect for the trip. Anyway, on with the trip...We finally got to leave the traffic jam and now were driving on hard paved road that was apparently donated by the Japanese. It was a nicely paved road. There are signs on the side of the roads that told me that it was donated by the Japanese. I couldn't get a picture of it cause we were going to fast for me to snap away. Once we really started to move on this road I began to sort of "zone" out on my music and take in the scenery. WOW, nothing but brown crap. The mountains are a sight to see, the little villages, the people, the makeshift cemeteries, the straw hut houses, and of course the kids. All this in a place that reminds me of the birth place of Luke Skywalker. I believe the name of that planet was Tatooine. The small straw huts that most people live in remind me of how I remember the Tuskan Raiders of Star Wars living. Looking around I can totally understand that these people have no other sense of life except farming in a desert with hardly any water. That was one thing that was like a miracle. If you saw a "farm" with a killer irrigation system that is pulling water out of no where. There is desert for miles, no river anywhere, no lake, no nothing...but all of a sudden this farmer is directing water from "somewhere" and has a bright green patch of something growing. I was really impressed. Now that I am writing about it, I think I might be crazy to be impressed by that. Continuing on with the convoy....There were quite a few towns between Kandahar and Qalat. Everything we would drive passed people stopped and stared and just had this look on their face like, "What are they up to now?" OH, especially the Afghan men that we would run across in the middle of nowhere. These guys would be sitting on top of a small hill overlooking the highway or sitting on the side of the road but in the oddest of place. There will be nothing, ABSOLUTELY nothing around for miles, but there is this guy sitting out there "looking out" for whatever. That was my theory. They were just lookouts and probably had some sort of radio with them. There could be no other explanation. As we got closer to the town of Qalat the people seemed more and more receptive to United States forces coming by. Especially the children. Children would run from down the street to just wave and smile and put a thumbs up. Made you feel sorta good to see that. Then you would see little girls in colorful dresses with, what I assume was, their mothers dressed in dark garments. Little things like that, are the difference. During the Taliban era, girls were not allowed to wear garments of color. Just dark depressing dress. One more thing on that subject, KITES. The kids here love to fly kites. They are small and nothing like you would see at Mission Bay Park in SD but they have color. This was another outlawed item that no one could own or use during the Taliban era. Apparently, flying kites was one of the first things that people brought back from Pakistan when the Taliban was ousted of its control. Anyway, the exciting and scary part of the convoy? There really wasn't many. A few towns the weapons were raised and aimed but nothing happened. Pretty uneventful. Thank god...or whoever you pray to.

OH WAIT, one last thing. On this trip I was wearing my trademark, Rage Against The Machine, black hat with red star. Well, about half way into the trip the wind picked up and my hat flew off. MY RATM HAT WAS LOST!!! I started to get angry with myself for not really knowing that that could happen but then I thought, "Some little Afghan child is going to find it, wear it, and grow up wondering what RATM is." When he grows up and does the research, he will find out that RATM were preachers of freedom haters of conformity. That eased my mind. I reached into my bag and pulled out another hat with a smile on my face.

All pics to follow this story are of the convoy...preparing, during, and after....