The Lost Day

Friday at CRC is travel day. No 0500 formation to attend so I got a great night's sleep. Still no TCS (temporary change of station) orders this morning so I'll either be going to Afghanistan or going home. This orders messup has been one frustrating fiasco.

Lo and behold, I was notified at 0930 that my correct orders had been e-mailed and I can fly to Kuwait. Imagine that!!

Later this morning we place all of our duffel bags under the big pavilion so the military working dogs can inspect them. We then filed onto buses and went to Ft. Benning's Lawson Airfield and "Freedom Hall". Pretty nice place to hang out for 4 hours prior to the flight. We had the mandatory briefings (did you know hijacking is illegal? Neither did I!) and then a hot meal prior to the flight. We then filed out the door, took congratulations and shook some hands and walked out onto the tarmac to the awaiting chartered MD11.

Higher ranking officers got 1st class seating so I was in the 1st row, window seat. Sure was nice during the long flight. We flew to Leipzig Germany and waited in a small terminal for the plane to refuel and then off to Kuwait. The flight to Germany was 12.5 hours and the flight to Kuwait was 4.5 hours. Got into Kuwait ~1600 local, bused to a parking lot and waited 2 hours to coordinate our 45 minute trip to Ali al Salem Air Base.

As a colonel, I got to in-process ahead of the others and was able to "swipe" into country, arrange my flight to Bagram Air Base and obtain billeting within 15 minutes. By swiping my military ID card, I've started the 90 day ticker! We then got in long lines to unload our duffel bags from the semi-tractor trailers. By now it's 2200 local time. I'm hot and sweaty from the baggage and laying on the top bunk cooling off.

Some assorted smell tidbits for the family...
The bus from Kuwait Airport smelled like Willie.
The latrines smelled like the LaBelle's cabin outhouse.