Highway to Hell....

If I could put theme music to this, then AC/DC would be a good choice. I write this at 1 Am on april fool's....how appropriate! Just trying to get caught up, cuz what a week it has been!

25 March – Some people call it fate, others speak of destiny. I get the feeling from time to time that there is a galactic network in which we are all connected and/or ensnared. When things are going bad, you feel trapped and caught, and Mr. Murphy tends to have his way with you. When things are going well however, we see the nets. Like grouper, or schools of fish, we learn to live with the great nets, and sometimes even to ride them for a while. It is amazing that I am at 32,000 feet above the Atlantic ocean, on my way to Iraq, via Kuwait, via a 28 hour layover at Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily. I am listening to Jimmy Buffet sing about Changes in Latitude, while reading his book, “A Salty Piece of Land”, which happens to be about a displaced cowboy from Heartache, Wyoming who has fled to the Gulf of Mexico in search of adventure, in love with the sea from the first sight, and is not really sure of where he is being led on a big adventure.
Leaving never gets easy. As a matter of fact, it gets harder because as time goes by we only become more aware of the ravages of time and how short our time on this ball of mud may be, or more importantly, the time left for our loved ones. I can’t imagine how hard this must have been for my Great Uncle Jeff. For those reading this who aren’t familiar with the story, he was my Grandma’s little brother. They had a big family – six or eight kids I think. Anyway, he left to go fight the Japanese in the South Pacific, while everyone else stayed back to manage the ranch. He would write with stories and scant details, but when he put the date in the upper right corner of the letter, if he closed the top of the number four in the date (i.e. 1943) then they were to go to every tenth word and write down the first letter to spell out secret codes as to where they were. By the end of his hitch, he had become quite the codemaster, I am sure. He always claimed that McArthur was an idiot. “Every time we landed on an island, there were two ways to attack – up the smooth beach, or up a cliff, and that bastard always had us go up the cliff”. In this age of cell phones, computers, MP3 players and the like, I wonder how they ever got by being away from family. Hopefully, Uncle Jeff has had the opportunity to make amends with the General, and is now enjoying his ranch in a better place… (albeit with unlimited water rights, huh?)
We landed for about an hour in St. John’s Newfoundland – the easternmost point in North America. I got a brief chance to talk with Shannon before we took off – not sure how much I will be charged for roaming, but it was worth it. Although now she says that Derek’s job will be to make sure that she is never out of arm’s reach of her cell phone for the next year!!! There were snow drifts on the tarmac, and a very light snow dusting was falling as we got back on the plane. It is an interesting way to travel – 64 of us all in the same uniform. To a limited extent, we loaded our own bags. There are two MP dog handlers with us, so while we waited in the terminal, the dogs were out exploring their surroundings. Get this – they took up a collection while in flight, and had the pilots call ahead for pizza delivery. It wasn’t dominoes, (and that is probably a good thing) but it reinforces that network concept – while we may all be different and run to our own set of internal songs, some things like pizza are universal.
I was going to say that we all run on our own internal clocks, but in Jimmy’s book, Tully Mars (the cowboy) speaks of a conch shell that his dad gave him when he was eight years old. His dad and a war buddy (a medicine man from Montana) taught him that if he held it to his ear, he would hear the songs of the ocean. It wasn’t that the music was in the conch shell however, that it was that the music was already inside of him – the shell just brought it out. I first heard that song riding a laser sailboat in the Arabian Sea, while staying with a Brit family on a band trip back in 1984 or so. On and off again, I have heard it, and its unmistakable call. Maybe that is what this is all about. On the surface it has to do with saving lives, and fighting terrorists. What it really is about however is the networks, wanderlust, the call of the ocean, and the occasional conch shell. Whatever it may be, the journey of a thousand miles has begun.

26 March – Oh what an adventure. Once again on the plane, winging our way past Mt. Aetna away from Sicily to uncertain adventure in Kuwait. By way of note, we “misplaced” two of our fellow adventurers – four were late, unshaven, and slightly under the weather, two were MIA, one of which was Raj. I sure hope that he is OK… or that it was worth it!
Sigonella was a good reprieve. We left the BOQ tired, but determined to fight jet lag at about 1130. The bus service was poor to non existent, but there is an interesting trick to the area – we were on NAS Sigonella, Base #2. The newer and better equipped base is Base#1. So you walk out to the front gate, and hold up one finger to the string of cars, and a fellow shipmate offers a ride! NAS #1 was nice, but like any base, a little boring. 50 euros later (split amongst the seven of us) and we found ourselves in the old city of Catania. An ancient roman costal outpost, a newer Italian port of call, it is a mixture of old an new. We spent about six hours, walked at least five miles and took a ton of pictures from the old town square with it’s brown gothic stone reliefs to the ancient roman ampitheater in the center of town, to the old opera house where Maria Callas once performed. We visited a Greek Orthodox church, the Catania Catholic cathedral where the composer Bellini is laying in state, ate sinful chocolate filled treats, drank real espresso, and took in the atmosphere of Italian culture. I took pictures like a Japanese tourist on crack, but if this were to be my last cultural experience for the next year, I wanted to make it count. My only regret was that thanks to timing, commutes back to base, and the fact that we were all dog tired, I never got my authentic Italian dinner – instead a fair calzone, and two beers back on base. Ah well, maybe while on my next visit.
So here I sit once again, winging my way towards an uncertain future. What Iraq holds for me, and how much my immediate and for that matter long term future will be affected by these next few months should be significant. Once again, Jimmy Buffet seems to be guiding my thoughts and playing the soundtrack to my life. From his book “A Salty Piece of Land” – “there will always be those who feel more comfortable not venturing from the warmth of the hearth, but there are those who prefer to look out the window and wonder what is beyond the horizon. There is no beauty like that which overtakes us by accident.” Or more succinctly put, “Just remember that contentment is a quality best suited for cows – not cowboys.” This cowboy’s pony is headed east, for better or worse. Strangely enough, my MP3 player on shuffle just started playing Toby Keith and Willie Nelson’s “Beer for my Horses”. Funny how the galactic fishing nets just seem to move you along….

27 March - Arrival in Kuwait, or Adventures in Army Bureacracy!!! They have a "grid" of tents here ordered by letter and number, neatly assigned to rows. We show up, and have all our bags loaded into a truck, where we smartly proceed to the air base. As we pass concrete bunkers that look like (and later confirmed) that they had been punched clean through by Tomahawks from 15 years ago (my god, has it been that long???) and never fixed. Not sure what to be more impressed with, the accuracy of the weapons, their penetrating capability, or the steadfast and determined Kuwaiti spirit to never have them repaired!!!! Once in the compound, we offload and claim our bags into nice neat little piles until we are told that we can wait around for an hour until the Gator trucks can come pick them up and take them to our tents, or we can hump them there ourselves....45 minutes later, drenched in sweat, I finally assemble my bags in a tent with eight others.

28 - 31 March - Change.....whatever..to the schedule. Today, we were told that we would be processing pay data, and turning in our travel claims.....only to be told that we have four hours to pack our campout gear for three days, because we are training in the desert!!! Can you say Fun? Last time I checked, I was a submariner for a reason - hot coffee, hot showers, and Air condamnditioning!!!!. Yeah, I know I whine, but if I didn't then this blog would be pretty boring. So we pack up and head out to the desert, where a company made of ex Army types are teaching us everything we ever wanted to know about convoy operations, but were afraid to ask. We get classroom training on types of IED's (improvised Explosive Devices), convoy tactics, close quarter marksmanship (shooting, while walking, running, and all sorts of interesting stuff), and communications. All in all, pretty good training. It was all the MRE's, living in a tent with fourty of my closest buddies, not showering, not shaving, and having the constant river of sweat run down my back that I can do without. On a serious note, God Bless the Army for taking that off of our hands - there are actually those that enjoy this crap and want to do it. It is because they like to sweat and stink, that the rest of us can shower and remain cool in peace!

1 April - 0139 hours. Lots of stuff going on, and I am just wrapping this week up. I would love to post pictures, but for some reason, the website (or my computer) is slow today. I am still looking into a means of sharing pictures, and I might have found it, I just need time to work out the bugs. When I do, you should enjoy the pictures of Sigonella, etc. In the meantime, I may be winging it to Baghdad tomorrow or Sunday. More to follow of course, but until further news, I will be seeing you!