Back in Ghazni

Well today is my second day back here in Ghazni. Believe it or not I got back here rather quickly. I left my house Thursday morning at about 0330 in the morning. Micca and I drove to Bloomington for my flight at 0610. My flight from Bloomington took me to Chicago which then took me to Dallas. I got there at about 1230 and had to register for our flight to Kuwait. For some reason there were not enough seats on that flight so I spent the night in a hotel in Dallas. I couldn't really go anywhere or do anything so I just hung out and ended up watching the national championship. I got up the next day and headed back to the airport which was Friday. We left Dallas at about 1700 that evening. I was lucky and got the first row behind the first class seats so I had quite a bit of leg room. We landed in Bangor Maine at about 2200 or so and let the plane refuel and then were back off on the next leg which took us to Ireland. Same drill as in Maine as in Ireland more fuel and then off on the final leg to Kuwait. Well not the final leg but the final leg of that specific flight. I arrived in Kuwait some 20 hours later on Sunday morning and got settled into my tent about 0330. I had to get my bag and track down my Body armor from the warehouse before I could crash for a couple of hours. I had to be back up at 0630 for accountability and possibly to find out what time the next flight was. When I had arrived the night before I had thought that I wouldn't have any problems getting on the next flight that would leave. There was only about 20 people who needed to get back to Afghanistan from my flight. Well when I got there at 0700 there was about 350 people there and the 2 guys that I was traveling with back from Illinois were still there, they had left the day before me. Well they called about 60 names and barely made a dent in all of there. We were told to be back at 1900 for another manifest call. So with nothing to do and tired as hell I thought I should stay busy and try to fight off the jet lag and then I would just sleep normal that night after the next accountability and manifest call. I didn't think there was anyway in hell I would get out on the next flight.

Well Imagine that at 1900, and after managing to fight off sleep we were told to be back at 2230 (10:30 PM). Well we all know that if we are going to start the process at 2230 than that means we won't fly until probably 0230 or so. That happened to be just the case. By the time you get done with the manifest call and baggage prep it is 0230 before we take off for the 3 and half hour flight to Bagram. If you are keeping track this is the 6th leg of my journey. We arrive in Bagram at about 0730 ( add another 1.5 hours for time change). Our next task is to see if we can catch another flight to Ghazni. Now this isn't near as easy as it sounds. Luckily we talked to our polish contacts and they took care of us and put us on one of their helicopters. I was back in Ghazni by about 1700. Not until after we landed did we find out that all the other American flight had been canceled for the day. It's very lucky we made it back when we did because it started to snow soon after we got here. Tuesday morning had about 5 inches on the ground and this morning we got about another 7 inches. It is suppose to keep snowing until Thursday. So as long as it took to get back it could have been much longer. All in all I spent about 26 hours of actual time flying.

Believe it or not it's good to be back, that may sound odd but I'm back knowing that I have about 60-70 days before I'm back home again.

Later,

Brent