Afghanistan ’08- Day Three
This being my third overseas tour, I’m quite familiar with the military’s “Hurry up and wait” operating procedure. I really think they need to change that slogan from “We do more before 9 am than most people do all day” to “We do more waiting before 9 am than most people do all day.”
Today we checked in at 5:30 am for our 7 am flight and I was quite pleased that it was actually on time. We took off in an eight seater plane for a ride I was told would take about 10 minutes. Twenty minutes later we landed- at the same place we’d just left. Apparently there were some mechanical problems so we were told we’d have to wait until 1 pm to depart. At 1 pm it started raining and the flights were cancelled, meaning we’ll have to spend another night at Bagram and miss our first scheduled show. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that we were able to return to the base without incident, unlike Senators John Kerry, Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel whose helicopters had to make emergency landings in the mountains then travel by motor convoy back to Bagram.
I only took one picture all day (of this Coke can) partly because all I’ve seen today is the waiting room at the PAX terminal and partly because it’s so dry here I’m just a shriveled up mess and far from camera ready. I swear my hands look like those of an 80-year-old woman and my face isn’t faring much better. I’m starting to think those burkas aren’t a bad idea…as long as they’re brown. There’s really no point in wearing any other color since everything ends up brown at the end of the day. Even with the rain this place is just one big dustbowl.
What IS that yummy-looking concoction there in the right foreground? Is it supposed to look fuzzy like that?