Muddy, Minus the Waters

It rained not too long ago. This normally would seem like a pretty trivial event, but it throws a few wrenches into things here.
I'm not too sure about you, but when I think of the desert, I tend to think of one of two things. First, I think of the obvious: something like the Sahara, the Kuwaiti desert or the Anbar desert to the west of here. Secondly, I think of the high desert, like the Chihuahuan or Sonoran deserts in New Mexico, Arizona and Mexico. Baghdad, on the other hand is neither of those. We have trees, and some vegetation, but mainly we have dust. Nothing but dust. We call it moon dust, due to its resemblance to the fine powder that coats the surface of the moon. It gets everywhere, and it's not even the hot and dry season yet. Back to my story, however. It rained here.

proof of life

When a fine powder gets wet, several things can happen. You can get too much water, and a slurry is formed, which is what happens when there is a lot of rain. You also can get lucky, and there will be so much water that all of the powder will dissolve and run off. Not likely, but ti could happen. lastly, which seems to be the occurence here, is you get a very dry mud. Sticky, gloopy, smelly mud. Now the military, in their infinite wisdom, decided that it would be a good idea to put gravel down everywhere. Seems sensible enough, until your boots get muddy. You might as well put on five pound ankle weights at that point, because the mud causes the gravel to stick to your boots and then you walk funny. It kind of helps get a little bit of the mud off, though.
You all have seen a picture of the CRSP yard, where we work. It is all dust and dirt. When it rains there, it gets gross. Mud gets everywhere, and we just don't care. It's kind of cool, actually, to just be able to stomp your feet as you walk in the door, knowing that you're making a huge mess, like this one:

only part of it is mine

It's neat! I've also got a few pictures of the muddy CRSP yard:

it's kind of soupy sometimes, too

this thing is worthless

In other news, we went back to twelve hour shifts, because people can't follow simple instructions and relay messages between the three shifts. Hopefully it's just temporary until we get some standards set. It's not as though we're working hard, it's just that twelve hours takes a lot of time out of the day, for things like PT and getting stuff done. So, speaking of work, I have a few pictures of where I work:

my desk

what i see each night

this is what the customer sees

the view from our "chariot"

And lastly, since Kristen was chiding me for not having more pictures of me here, here's a shot of me "hard" at work:

workin hard, hardly workin, hey man, you know me

Well, I think that's about it for now. Oh yeah, I am at a critical low on hot sauce. I like the more flavorful sauces, not the vinegary ones, like Tabasco and Crystal. Send sauces like Cholula or Melinda's, ok? Bye!

AFN doesn't stand for Awesome Fun Network

Yeah, I know I said that I wouldn't wait a week to post, but I'm in a conflict zone, and I can do what I want. Anyway, there have been a few new developments here. We've gotten some "assistance" at the CRSP yard, so now we are down to eight hour shifts. I say "assistance" because most of the people are lazy bums. We still do most of the work, but it's getting better. I don't think that active duty army likes getting bossed around by reservists. Especially not when they outrank me, and I'm doing the bossing! Ha!
So we went down to eight hour shifts, which is nice. I now have time to work out, which I have been doing more of, and time to do absolutely nothing, which is even nicer. My main sources of entertainment are my PSP (the best investment I've made in a while), books (obviously), and the pitiful Armed Forces Network. We get something like eight channels, but they're not very predictable. Imagine having all the channels currently available on TV, selecting one show at random from each channel, and placing it somewhere in a lineup on a small variety of networks. We get Bill O'Reilly back to back with Wolf Blitzer, Katie Couric next to Sportscenter, and AFN Movies has the worst selection ever. They played The Big Chill the other day. Most of the people here weren't even born when that movie came out, I think. Anyway, at least we have some variety, but it's still a propaganda machine. You should see some of the commercials.
Well, I digress. I was talking about work, which is going ok. We seem to be having one technical glitch right after the other. About two weeks ago, our database crashed. As soon as it seemed as though we were going to get things running like normal again, some yahoo goes and runs into a telephone pole, thus knocking out all internet to a better part of the Seitz Annex part of Camp Liberty. This wouldn't be too problematic, except for the fact that our database is hosted on a network drive, and all of our phones are VoIP. Hence, no internet=no working CRSP yard. But, the show must go on, so we've been doing everything on paper until the lines are repaired and we get service back. It should happen soon. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that pretty soon I will have a phone number here, so if you want to call me, I am usually around between 1:30 and 3:00 am eastern time, or 10:00 am to 2:30 pm eastern. My number is (513)407-9295. I'll let you know when it's working. It's Vonage, so I get local calling anywhere in the world that there's an internet connection. You people had better call me, because the internet here is $65 per month!!
Last but not least, I have a few pics of the lunar eclipse that happened about a week and a half ago. They're not great, but then again, my digital camera's not too hot about taking nighttime pictures of something that's 230,000 miles away. My lens only gets 3x optical zoom.

early on

a little further on

it's eating all the moon cheese!

totality, the coolest part

CRSP-y Critters

Hello, everyone! As I'm sure you can see and have heard, we've made it safely to lovely Camp Striker, Iraq. It is part of a compound called VBC, which stands for Victory-BIAP Complex. It's nothing more than a fancy name for all the camps that surround the Baghdad International Airport (BIAP). We are in Striker, which is the more remote of the three major camps here. The other two are Camp Victory and Camp Liberty. I got to see them in my quest for a Playstation Portable, and are they nice.
I understand that it's been a week since my last post, but trust me, things have been busy. We had a little "incident" regarding the database at work and that's had me working like mad to get it caught back up. Now, back to the story...
Liberty is where the biggest PX and Bazaar are, so it's more of a shopping destination than anything else. (I got the PSP, by the way, but I had to order it from Amazon, stupid PX.) Either way, both of the posts have trees and vegetation, where we have concrete and rocks. I guess that's because we, at Striker, live about 300 meters away from "the wire," or the external boundary of the Complex. Apparently, the last unit that was here said that mortars used to get shot over their heads towards the airport, but fortunately no live rounds landed here. They had one dud hit the ground, though. All in all, I guess it isn't too bad.
We work at what is called a CRSP (pronounced crisp) which stands for Central Receiving and Shipping Point. My platoon also runs a Class I (sustenance items) warehouse. I work at the CRSP. We deal mainly in containers, large loads and Class VII (major end-items) stuff. I work in the office. I practically run the place on many occasions, being the principal data clerk for night shift. Since we work with class VII, we usually get in new vehicles that are going somewhere in this general area. Alot of what we get are up-armored Humvees, but occasionally we get really cool stuff, like this Bradley Fighting Vehicle that I drove around a bit:

grrrrr!

It was neat. Oh yeah, this is what the CRSP looks like:

that's cargo section. guess what goes there?

It's not too much to look at, but it's something to do.
The other day we had to go to Victory for a short class on CMST (it's a container management system... more work stuff) and the class was held inside of one of the buildings of the Al Faw palace complex. The entire complex was built as a hunting and relaxation retreat for Sadaam to commemorate the Iraqi victory over Iran in the Al Faw peninsula. That's down south, where Basrah and Umm Qasr are, on the water. In order to "faithfully" recreate the feel of being coastal, there are several man made lakes here, and the palace is sitting smack in the middle of one of them. Here are some pictures:

the water smells

i think that's a mosque

yes, that mural's of their entire army

al faw palace, it's on a small island

hey honey, i bought us a house!

Anyway, that's about all I've got for the moment. We had a pretty cool total lunar eclipse here the other night, and I got some ok pictures of it, but I really could've used my 35mm to capture it perfectly. Oh well, I'll still put up the pics that I have.
Oh yeah, I promise that I won't wait a week to post anything new, ok? Check back soon!

Night Flight

THE MIDDLE EAST, AP- Today, in world news, a shocking new piece of evidence has come forward in the United States' supposed "prisoner flights," moving detainees and other prisoners resulting from the war in Iraq. An unknown insider has come forward with pictures and some seriously incriminating evidence regarding the treatment and eventual living quarters of these fated souls.
It has been well known that for some time the US government has been using stops in Europe and the Middle East to shuttle detainees to "secret" camps all around the world. What isn't known is the abuse and neglect that these people face in these horrid situations. They are taken to strange and unknown places and put onto planes like cattle, forced to stay in the cargo hold. They are intimidated by the presence of live ammunition, though most of them are too tired and weak to fight. Furthermore, on their arrival, they are placed in cold, hard camps, reminiscent of old German stalags. See for yourself:

middle of the night... perhaps Ali al Salem?

cattle live better than this

eek!

my "street"

our house

send me stuff!!

Address!!

Hey everyone, I'm currently working on getting a whole bunch of pictures posted, but in the meantime, I finally received my address in Iraq. Here it is:

Michael Muntifering
68th CSSB
192 QM Co
APO AE 09344

I'll get all those pics up as soon as possible!

Valen...Valentino?

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!! It's a lovely February day here, especially if you've witnessed it since 3:30 in the morning! You can see below how happy PV2 Witt was with the situation.

We spent the night in the field again last night, much to our chagrin, only this time we were practicing snap TCP's, which are nothing more than really quickly assembled traffic control points. They are mainly used in a combat patrol situation, where a small group of vehicles can block traffic and possibly interdict enemy movement. We began training for this yesterday afternoon with some classes and such. This morning we got up nice and early and went out to do them for real. I was the medic in the bunch, and also the patrol leader's driver. This meant that all I had to do was sit in the Humvee and be ready to move.

rollin' and tumblin'

Since it was the leader's vehicle, we also had the interpreter with us. He was a nice chap, from Egypt. We chatted all about soccer and stuff, and we told him about Valentine's Day, which he had no previous knowledge of. After struggling through the proper pronunciation, we finally hit the nail on the head: a day where guys spend alot of money to impress women that otherwise may pay them no heed whatsoever. He seemed pretty impressed, and maybe was even a bit eager to come to America to woo a few ladies for himself! He kept taking our rifles, pointing them into the air and shouting, "I'm a tourist, I'm a tourist!" It was quite funny.

me, Van and the translator

We saw some neat sights on the road, mainly these dirt mounds:

The big ones are all old Iraqi tank emplacements from Desert Storm back in '91. What's funny is that we're in northern Kuwait, not far from the Udairi Range, and the emplacements all face northwest, which is back towards the Iraqi border. We invaded from Saudi, which from this point is more due south than anything else. No wonder they lost the war.

Here's a few more good pictures from the day:

not what you want to run into

you'd want to run into this even less

beef ravioli MRE...hmmmm

I have one last complaint to speak of. Notice in the MRE above, there are two boxes. One is the main dish, and the other is usually some kind of side or dessert. In this case it is really bad mixed fruit in syrup. Now, after eating this, would I really want to fill out the postcard on the back and send it to someone? Plus, MRE's are meant to be eaten in a field environment, and the last time I checked, the field doesn't include any post offices to speak of. Especially not in places like Iraqistan. Funny, that's all.

Field of Dreams

We just got back from three days in the field. This wasn't all bad, except for the fact that we practically are already living in the field, and this was more of an inconvenience than anything else. Plus, all that they're training us to do is herd these guys:

Here we are in action:

Just kidding! We left midday Saturday, went to a classroom about 16km away from camp and had convoy operations classes until about 6:00pm. We had risen early that morning to go to a briefing on how not to shoot your friends, which was given by a very thickly accented Briton. Did you know that the Mongolian Army has a presence in Iraq? I think that it's somewhere in the teens. From what I've gathered, all that they do is sleep and eat, and then sleep some more. Every once in a while, they try to storm a camp or two, but I think the Great Wall truly broke their collective spirit many, many years ago.
Anyway, back to our field expedition. We got out there at about four in the afternoon, and had some convoy classes. After that, we didn't get any decent food, because we were down to only MRE's, which are a bad last resort. I, needless to say, skipped dinner.
After removing all the chairs from the classroom, we laid out our sleeping bags and were made to sleep on the floor. Keep in mind that this is a very small classroom, measuring only about thirty feet by fifteen, and we slept forty-six people on the floor. Not cool.

can't move... must turn over!

Upon waking the next morning at 4:45, we went to the close quarters marksmanship range, which is just a series of targets placed 25m away. This is the kind of stuff we do to help prepare us to kick down some doors if needed. We practiced turning and firing, walking and shooting, and several other movements. I shot pretty well, as you can see here:

dude talked some smack to me

Here's a far away shot of the range itself:





After firing, which is cool and fun, they remind us that we are still in the Army, and still have to do menial tasks by making us pick up all the expended brass on the range. That's alot of little shells to pick up.

can you see them?

close up on the brass

Did I mention that they forgot to go and pick up our hot breakfast? They did, in fact, leave to get our breakfast around ten or so, by which point we were off of the range, and primed for a good brunch. Dinner was also a fiasco, but more on that later.
After lunch, we returned to our classroom/sleeping quarters for another class on convoy ops. We did that, and then pciked up our trucks and went out to practice the route for the next day's training lane. Upon returning, we had learned that our food had once again been forgotten about, and when we tried to eat some MRE's, we were chided and told that hot food was on its way. We ate at ten o'clock that night, and it was dissappointing to say the least.
Angry and tired, I once again made my home on the floor, and bedded down for the second worse night's sleep I have ever had. The single worse was the preceeding night.
Anyway, the next day we awoke and rolled out on our convoy. It went well, and the sunrise was neat. There's absolutely nothing out here, it kind of makes me wonder why anyone would want to live here, much less try and survive on a nomadic lifestyle, like the bedouins.

if there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from

After the convoy was done, we returned our trucks and boarded the buses to come back to Buehring, but again we were fooled. We waited on a cramped, hot bus that smelled of Juarez for over two hours. Not cool. But once we did get home, we had a nice lukewarm shower and decent hot food. I felt as though I hadn't eaten in days, which I guess I hadn't really eaten in days, to be honest. I also uttered one of the most vile and heinous sentences of my life:

"man, it's good to be back at the DFAC, where we can at least get good food..."

noooooooooo!

I was nearly hanged for that one, and I would have tied the noose.
I think I'll be off now, but check back soon, ok?