A day in the life, inside the barbed wire.
No Alarm Red last night, that I know of. Sometimes, I'm so exhausted that I sleep through them. It sounds frightening, perhaps, but I view it as a mercy to not lie in the dark staring at the ceiling of the tent hoping this isn't the one.
I woke at 5:40 or so. I was refreshed, because I had a nice run before the Alarm Red last evening, then spent my time on the floor against the wall doing crunches and situps and stretching. I'd showered and hit the sack by 2100, then slept like something dead, there at the back of the tent right next to the delicious white noise of the air conditioner. I felt so refreshed this morning that I took that extra step in personal presentation that I usually forego: I wet my hair down under the faucet and brushed it to get rid of the bedhead effect.
It rarely matters what you do, anyway. You sweat and wear a hat and/or a helmet and have dust blowing at you and clinging to you everywhere, anyway. You can't escape it. There's really no point in "doing something" with your hair in the traditional sense, and rarely a point in doing anything with your hair in the literal sense.
Speaking of which, Jeff told me he was in line at the PX a few weeks ago behind a woman who picked up a makeup item, looked at it, then sighed and put it back. He thought it summed up the atmosphere here quite well.
So anyway, since I spent yesterday walking around with a huge hair horn sticking off the back of my head just to see if anybody noticed or cared (they didn't), I guess I just felt like dunking my head this morning. I came to work at 0600.
I don't have to be in until 0700, but...what else is there to do? I could have gone back to bed, but once you awake with a strained bladder, get into your gear and make a mad dash for le toilette, it requires more effort to get back to sleep than it does to just get dressed and go on to work.
It was a beautiful morning. It was like Colorado in the summer, midday, except with dust, heavy machinery and mortar fire in lieu of mountains, vegetation and friendly natives.
Jeff came in with his new Underarmor shirt on, which reminded me....
We have strict dress rules here: DCUs or PT* gear only. You wear only approved shirts and shorts for your PT gear (since the Air Force doesn't yet have any official PT gear), and you wear it the way the Air Force says to. If you so much as wear your shower shoes to the shower, the flip-flop police might catch you, give you a firm talking to, and send you back to your tent to change into "proper" shoes for the PT uniform.
* Desert Camoflage Utility and Physical Training, respectively.
So we went into the PX yesterday, and Jeff was admiring the new Underarmor shirts. These are specifically designed to wick sweat away from your skin, as well as keep you cool. They're a bit pricey, too. He was admiring them and complained that there were no changing rooms. I said, "I'll give you $20 if you try it on right here."
He froze and looked at me, then glanced around thoughtfully. He hates backing down from a challenge. The place was crawling with soldiers and airmen, as usual. After a bit, he sighed deeply and said, "You almost had me there." As he was hanging the shirt back up, I began to cluck like a chicken. That did it.
He piled his gear in my hands and stripped to the skin. It was even better than I expected it to be because his torso is covered with rather prominent tattoos. It was remarkably unofficerly all the way around, I thought. Most entertaining.
Do you remember that M*A*S*H episode where Hawkeye and Trapper are so bored that Hawkeye makes a bet that he can go into chow hall naked and no one will notice? It was kind of like that. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to Jeff stripping in the middle of the PX. That made it all the funnier for me.
Anyhow...I went over and tucked his $20 in his shirt this morning. Money well spent.
We're keeping up with the news of Hurricane Ivan, which made landfall today around the Mississippi-Alabama line. Jeff is stationed at Keesler and I'm stationed at Gunter. Oddly enough, my house is in more danger than his is.
I worked nonstop through the morning, except for breakfast, and was interrupted by an Alarm Red before lunch. It lasted only about 40 minutes or so. The lunch lines were long and slow as dirt, for some reason, so we picked up takeout (salisbury cardboard, with wax beans and mushy peas...mmmmm) and went back to the office.
I wandered through the main comm building after lunch looking for information, and happened across some guys who had some digital photos recently shot in Baghdad. The photos were incredibly graphic--the sort of thing you won't see in the news. They had charred bodies in mangled and burnt cars, charred limbs hanging out of destroyed HMMWVs* with a finger still in the trigger of an M-16, entrails dangling from tree limbs, and someone's head blown apart so it was spread across the pavement like a map of the world. I didn't stay to see all of them. That was already more than I wanted to see.
* In case you've ever wondered, High-Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, otherwise known as a "Hum-Vee" or a "Hummer."
I came back out to our trailer. SSgt Cook had dropped by to snag a near beer and was relaxing in the comfy chair. Then we went into Alarm Red. He was going to jet out the door to where his gear was, but I told him to stay and just get down. We were down for almost three hours. That was the record so far.
It wasn't nearly as frightening as Saturday, though. We didn't hear rockets exploding all around us. It just went on....and on....and on. We took a very long nap. When they declared Alarm Yellow ("Essential personnel are released to go about their duties and conduct UXO* checks. Non-essential personnel stay under cover"), I declared myself "essential" and sprinted for the Portapotty.
* Unexploded Ordnance.
Then it was dinnertime, but I wasn't hungry. We went to the gym around 6:30. He went to lift and I went to run. I just did two miles and quit. It was a light night. There's no point in pushing myself sometimes.
I showered and came back to the office, then called home to check the storm status. It was 8pm here, so 11am there. Montgomery, Alabama, is shut down for Ivan. I think it's still a Category 1 hurricane, even that far inland. The lights at my house have been out since this morning and the wind is whipping something awful, but the yard isn't under water more than normal, which is a good thing.
After my fifteen minutes, I hung up. From outside, over the Giant Voice system (loudspeakers that can be heard almost anywhere on post), I heard a warning that there would be a controlled detonation at...I didn't hear the time. This is common. When they find UXOs, they take them out between the runways and detonate them in a controlled manner. Most of the time, they warn us ahead of time that this will happen. Sometimes, they warn us after the fact, so we know we can get up off the floor.
I was working on my blog entry and, as anyone who knows me will attest, most heavily absorbed in what I was doing. I lose all touch with reality and all track of time when I'm writing. There was a BOOM that rattled the walls. I was instantly flat on my face.
This happened two days ago, too. Same scenario. Jeff was at his desk across the room, with headphones on. I heard a mind-numbing BOOM and hit the deck. He sliced his eyes over at me and said in a bored voice, "Controlled detonation."
Oh. But you must admire my reaction time. This evening, some kind soul from without the trailer must have heard me hit the floor. I heard somebody yell, "Controlled!"
Sigh.
Thus ends day 34, much as it began. I'm blessedly tired. Time to crash and hopefully slip into heavy, dreamless sleep.
d
