Flying and Boating

OK so the war must be over. Yesterday I did something that I never thought I would ever do in Iraq, I went for a “local training” flight. Yea I guess the last 5 deployments that I have had to Iraq didn’t count so they had me go fly to a bunch of places (that I have already been) to make sure that I was comfortable. The air force doesn’t do things like this but I am working for the army now and they believe in the crawl, walk run program. So we flew around the countryside getting familiar with Iraq.

The flight was actually more useful then I thought it would be, my copilot and nav got to see the places we will be going into and got to see how busy the radios are. They also got a feel for the “different” types of approaches that we do here. So in all it was effective just very different from what I am used too.

Yesterday it was raining and I guess it kept raining all night as we now have a lake outside our rooms. I am glad that I have done this before as I got my crew to put pallets in front of their doors just in case. I am glad we did because we needed them! Our rooms are not the worst but not the best either, some people have over a foot of water to wade through to get out of their rooms. The sad thing is that more rain is in the forecast and I am afraid that our pallets might not be enough, only time will tell.

I will add some pictures as my roomy wakes up so I can open the door a few times without waking him. Other than the lake and few ponds that we need to cross to get to the bathroom, life is good. We now have spent 1 week in country, only 7 more, yea it’s hard to complain when the army guys next to us are here for 15 months and we are only here for 60 days… I better not say that too loud.

Oh I guess Cheyenne has a lot of snow and ice, I don’t know what is better, icy roads or flooded walk ways… I’d take the icy roads, that way we could just stay at home and drink hot chocolate by the fire place instead of getting my feet wet trying to go to the bathroom. So next time you think it’s a pain to get out of bed to go she-she, just think of wading through water and walking 50 yards in the rain and mud… yea a master bath never sounded so nice. Aloha!