Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Years to all, I hope that you have a wonderful and safe time. Here we rang in the new year with some Coors...



Now many of you know that I am not a huge fan of Coors, but I will report that Coors NA tastes a lot like Coors Light. Now this of course translates to me not being a huge fan, but at least they seem to be fairly consistent. ( Those of you who can, please enjoy a nice scotch for me)

Fortunately, I have mostly settled into a routine that includes working out. I plan to try and increase both my cardiovascular and muscle fitness. Only having one year till I turn 30, I am starting to notice a little extra weight around the middle and a lot less speed when I run. I hope to change that while I am here and be in great shape to ski when I get back if there is still snow. This is especially important because of the quantity and types of food we tend to eat over here, it would be very easy to come back home and weigh 10-15 pounds more than I do now.

My New CHU

So several days ago I moved into my new CHU that is located near the rest of my program. The new room is smaller, but has a nicer interior. The reason for the size difference is that the old room was designed for two people whereas this one is designed for one and therefore half the size. The biggest downside is that this room does not have a desk. The lack of a desk makes browsing the internet, typing, and chatting on skype all very interesting (see photo later for how I manage). I plan to go the college route and make a desk from some plastic drawers and plywood but haven't gotten around to it yet. I am sure that I will probably procrastinate until I have just a short time left. Another option is to get a desk from the PX area, but that option is a little more costly.

Here is the interior of my CHU before I got settled. Notice the nicer walls and furniture.



A door that seals much better than the last CHU. This one doesn't swing open when it is unlocked.




And then again once I had arranged this as best I could. I don't know what will be more welcome, a place to type or more drawers for my clothing.


The commputer on the night stand. Fortunately, I have a small computer so it fits rather well.



The area looks about the same as my last location, dirt, dirt, and you guessed it more dirt. The other area did have more boardwalks connecting rooms which was nice. When it rains the walk here can be a bit messy, or at night the gravel will make more noise than is ideal. All in all, when you are complaining about the lack of boardwalks between rooms, it is a sign that you aren't roughing it too badly.

Merry Christmas

So I haven't posted in several days, but I wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. Life has gotten busier recently, I am assuming more duties in the ground station. The two biggest changes that have occured are one, I moved to a new CHU. That move left me without internet for a few days. Originally I thought the problem was with the wiring,m but in the end it was my computer. Oh well, I was able to fix things. The new CHU is smaller, but nicer inside. Now all I need to do is find a desk. The PX has a desk for $350, but I don't think that cherry veneer is appropriate for a small room (more details on the room in a later post).

The second big change is that I am no longer the newest member of the team in Iraq. One of the guys I went through training with arrived about 24 hours ago. Today was spent helping him through the in process for the most part.

Future installments will describe my new room in more detail and describe the multitude of vehicles I have seen since my arrival.

Transportation

As I alluded to in the last post, there was a plan to remove the requirement that I be picked up in order to go anywhere. The program has several vehicles, so one was provided to me after mid rats on my first night in the ground station. Until I move over with the rest of the people, I will have a Toyota Hilux truck dedicated to my useage. Of course there are about 500 of these trucks on base, so finding the right truck can prove to be a bit of a challenge sometimes. Without further adu, my truck:









(These pictures were taken the next day)

Now some of you just fell off your chair and onto the floor in a fit of laughter. For those of you who aren't in on the joke, I have (had) never driven a vehicle with a manual transmission. Word of advice to everyone, learn to drive a manual transmission ASAP so that you do not find yourself in a foreign country, at night, alone, and on dirt/gravel/asphalt roads learning. Fortunately, the process didn't take more than about ten minutes to get proficient enough that I was willing to drive to the DFAC the next day.

Heading into the Office

So today (16 December, yes I know that isn't really today but I will pretend) I went into the office to get to know what is going on and complete some of the paperwork. Upon waking, I arranged some of my stuff and took pictures of the area. You will now get to see my desk.


Me after getting settled in my CHU


The Desk, it reminds me of college.


My CHU from the outside


Other CHUs in my area


Do you get the feeling they don't want you to swim?


A close up so you can get an idea just how serious they are about not swimming.

At lunchtime I got picked up and went over to the DFAC for my first meal at a DFAC in Speicher. I have now eaten at DFAC's in three different locations, Ft. Benning, BIAP and now Speicher. After eating, I was off to our office for paperwork. After that, it was back to the CHU to wait for dinner.

One of the guys picked me up for dinner and it was back over to the DFAC. The food is generally very good, with some exceptions that are to be expected. Things can get a little dry if has to be kept hot (think pizza), but other things have been very impressive. Options include Ribs, Stir Fry, Lasagna, ... Overall, it is easy to see why it would be possible to gain a significant amount of weight.

Work went somewhat smoothly, I will be in the ground station for the next few weeks so I got my first practice last night. For the most part, I just observed, but I did spend some time on the radio with our aircraft, and helping set up the computers.

If you have been reading the previous posts, you will notice a common trend. < Insert Name Here > stops by and picks me up. Well, that problem is solved in the next blog post.

The Journey Part II

Great news, I was able to get on the flight Space "A". I should be headed to my quarters tonight. More promises of details and pictures to follow. I will update this post once I am at my final destination.

Added 17 December:

Ok, so updating things when I arrived was a little optimistic. I caught the Space "A" flight with no problems. It was a C-130 carrying six passnegers. All of us were in our body armor and helmets since they are required when flying on a military aircraft. The cabin was the standard cloth web seating that is oh so unfomfortable but at least we could spread out. Once again, the cabin was darkened, but this time there was a little more light in the form of several green bulbs of low intensity. Having very few windows, there was nothing to do but sit back, and relax as best possible.

Upon arriving at Speicher, I was met by two of the people from my program and given a ride to my temporary living quarters.





The Containerized Housing Unit (CHU, pronounced chew) is pretty spartan at this time. I have a wooden plywood desk (not pictured), a bed, some amriores, and a couple of night stand like pieces. Additionally there is an HVAC unit and some carpet. Since I am flight crew, there is a nice sign on the door saying, don't bother me until 1500. As said, this is a temporary location until one of the other folks leaves at which point I will move over with the rest of the team. All in all, the accomidations will be about the same, just located in a different area. The big problem with updating the blog however was that the internet was down. Doh!

Jeff

Welcome to Iraq

So it is official, I am in Iraq. I have not made it to my final destination yet, but I am in country. I plan to post about things I see but can't promise that it will happen all that often. For now, I am off to find transportation.

Added 17 December:

The flight on United was wonderful, I slept through most of it and woke up in time for a small snack (turckey sandwich with roasted potatoes was the snack, don't get that on travel inside the USA). After arriving in Kuwait, we were met by the Gryphon Airline representatives and taken to our next gate. A few minutes later we boarded the aircraft and pulled away from the gate. The flight was very comfortable and highly unusual. The approach to Baghdad International AirPort (BIAP) is done in blackout conditions. Imagine sitting in a leather seat on an airliner, flying at night, and the only lighting is from the emergency pathway lights. No anti-collision lights, no landing lights, no overhead lights, no reading lights, just the small green lights on the carpet that guide you to an exit in an emergency. The landing was smooth and the flight attendents were great, it just made for a wierd feeling.

After arriving at BIAP, you walk over to the airbase and collect your luggage. Once there, I checked in with the Helo/Sherpa folks to see if there were any flights to Speicher. No luck, so I was off to explore a bit and find my way around the base. I took very few pictures, but did take this one of the Christmas tree.



After a little looking, I managed to start doing the things I really needed to and talked to the Assistant Site Lead who pointed out the e-mail I had seen earlier and ignored the content while reading the powerpoint attachment. It provided several important details that got me back on track. Unfortunately I had barely missed the fixed wing flight for the evening and had to bed down at BIAP. I was however able to get my name ont he Space "A" roster for the next evening. All in all it was a good night, I grabbed some food from the Grab n Go at the passenger terminal and relaxed.

Jeff

ETA: For those not interested in Iraq, we made our first ski trip of the season just over a week ago and the ski blog should be starting up again shortly.

Pretty Flowers

Our rosebushes outdid themselves this year. Here are a few pictures.



The pink ones always come out first. They are about halfway opened up when the yellow ones start coming out.



I got a pretty good up-close view of a pink one.



The wine-colored ones, dark red, start coming out after the pink and yellow pretty much expend themselves. So we get twice as long to enjoy them!



Here is a late evening photo. I love these bushes! It is sad that they only hang around for three or four weeks before going away. We will prune them to see if we can get another showing this year.

Space Age

So for work, I got to go to an Atlas V rocket launch. We were actually supposed to see the Shuttle launch also, but it was scrubbed until July 11. So we had to "settle" for the Atlas.

Before the launch day, we got to tour Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS). These facilities do a lot of work behind the scenes.



The first places we got to go were the old sites for the Mercury and Apollo launches. This is the place where the Apollo I explosion occurred. It doesn't look like much but it holds a place of honor.



These small plaques appear on the concrete pillars holding up the structure in the picture above. The second one is pithier and perhaps captures the "spirit" better, but the first provides more details.



We were fortunate enough to be there while they were replacing tiles on one of the Shuttles. I kind of assumed that the Shuttle was painted black on the underside. It isn't paint at all. It's heat-resistant tile. They inspect and replace tiles that need it after every flight. You can see the markers where they expect to make a replacement. Each tile has a serial number.



Here are some people working on the Shuttle. While the Shuttle isn't in a clean room, they try to prevent as much FOD as possible from entering into the workspace.



Reminders of these three missions are everywhere. People have special reverence for these and the astronauts on them. It is also a motivator to do the job right, so we can minimize future risks. The monuments in Arlington National Cemetery aren't the only ones.



Here it is! YES! I really got that close!

(OK. I'm shooting the picture through a fence with a guard shack and barbed wire nearby. But it looks pretty good, doesn't it? No zoom!)



Here is the Atlas, from an ignominious little dirt road. Who knew you could get that great of a view? The Atlas V was carrying the LRO/LCROSS mission, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite. NASA wants to go back to the Moon. Here's the first step. Everyone made fun of George W. Bush when he proposed it, yet here we are, quietly developing the plans!



KSC had a visitor center with a big pavilion that had some history and rockets on display. Here is a fun sign.

I had so much fun. It was really an excellent trip and I know I'm fortunate to have gone.

Great Sand Dunes and Monte Vista

Our first part of the trip was from our house to Monte Vista. On the way, we stopped at the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve.



We passed by the YMCA of Boulder Valley Santa Maria Camp. The statue of Jesus is visible from the road, as is the lettering on the mountain. The statue's base contains a replica of Jesus's tomb.



The Great Sand Dunes National Park is home to the tallest sand dunes in North America. They are over 750 feet tall. The dunes are directly west of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, and the whole area is really geographically diverse.



These pictures are visible from the visitor's center. Once you get there, you can't do a whole lot more driving past it. There are plenty of hiking trails. The weather was rather poor, otherwise we might have climbed the dunes--just to see what it was like.



We stayed at the Best Western Movie Manor in Monte Vista. What a fun place! It was built next to a drive-in movie theater.



The owner of the drive-in built the place, thinking that it would be a great idea if his hotel guests could watch the movie, if they wanted to, in the comfort of their own rooms. The sound is piped directly in, and the rooms have large picture windows that look out onto the screen. Each room is named for an actor or actress. You can see whose room we had the good fortune to stay in...



The screen is pretty big but looks small from the rooms in the daytime. We watched Star Trek the night we were there, and the screen didn't look small with the picture and sound going. We had a great time watching it!

Lamar Trip

Before we got started on our big Colorado vacation, my parents and I went to visit my Grandma in the nursing home. Grandma looks exactly the same as she ever did... and she still refuses to wear her teeth.



Here is what was on the wall of the hotel room where we stayed. The Country Acres and RV Park in Lamar has eight themed rooms and a lot for RVs. It is far and away the best place in Lamar to stay, in my opinion. We stayed in the Space Room.



Here's more of the room. The shelves holding up such things as the alarm clock, the TV and the microwave, as well as the headboards, were all cut from an old satellite dish. Very cool. Now that is "retro."



Here I am with my Grandma. She is such a ham. She was blowing kisses at the camera.



We also found some time to visit my dear departed Grandpa. He would have been 95 this year. I think he could have lived that long, too. Getting sick when you're old just isn't easy, I guess. I miss Grandpa.

Nuggets Beat Mavs!

We got some tickets to Game 5 of the series between the Nuggets and the Dallas Mavericks. The tickets were on the club level, which was pretty nice. We got to see a little bit of how the other half lives! A waitress bringing food? I could get used to that.



Here's Dallas superstar Dirk Nowitzki taking a free throw. He never seems to miss!



The Nuggets are over on their side of the court. The Pepsi Center was totally packed. There were no seats available... not even single seats. I think there were 20,000 people there.



The Nuggets mascot, Rocky, had his hair done just like Birdman! Chris "Birdman" Andersen is not exactly a huge scorer, but he has a cult-like following here in Denver. He is called Birdman because he flaps his arms to celebrate when he makes one of his trademark stylistic dunks... and he has feathers tattooed on his arms. Anyway, Rocky put his hair in the mohawk-style hairdo that Birdman has become known for lately. He's shown here with a t-shirt gun to launch t-shirts out at whoever can catch them in the crowd. That thing has some range!



Nuggets win! The final score is at the top of the picture. "NUGGETS ADVANCE" was in lights all across the arena. The media is on the court to interview everyone they can get a hold on. The towel on the right belongs to the guy in front of me. He could not stay sitting down, and waved his towel all over the place. You can see that since the towels were a game freebie, almost everyone else had one too.



Confetti is fun! We were so excited that the NUGGETS WON!!