Alright, here we are now back in Al Udeid, and I can give a little more specifics on what happened on our fine road trip to nowhere. Let me break it down for you.
Thursday, July 29th- Fly from Al Udeid in a c130 for about an hour and turn around and come back. There was something wrong with the plane. Great. Anyhow we were heading to Bagram, in Afghanistan, to then catch a flight to Kabul.
Friday, July 30th at about 2:00 am we return to Al Udeid, and board a C117, which is to take us to Bagram, but with a short pit stop in Al Dhafra, which is a base in the United Arab Emirates. We arrive there at about 7:00 am or so- board a bus and take it for a spin around the base. We proceed to load back on the plane a few hours later, and wait. This plane, too, is broke. We deboard, hop in a bus, and are inprocessed to Al Dhafra, given rooms and food. Our estimated departure is Saturday at about 5:00 am.
C117. Bigger with jets. Didn’t help us much though.
Saturdy, July 31 We rally at the base theater at about 2:00 am Saturday Morning, and turn in keys and collect our weapons from the armory. Load into another bus- by the way, something is going on with the bus drivers in Ole Al Dhafra. None of them could drive a standard. The boys in transprortation must be doing a bang up job in clutches. Anyway, we are brought to the PAX terminal to wait for our plane- yeah about that. At about 7:00 am we are told that the first problem is fixed, but they found that a tire needed replacing, which has to be flown in from- you guessed it, Al Udeid. Back to the base, keys reissued and weapons checked in again.
Later that day we are told that we will rally at 0400 the next morning and give it another shot. You can probably see where this is going. I think its called foreshadowing. Another day spent at Al Dhafra- which is a tiny Air Base. There is beer there though, which I promptly took advantage of. I mean really what else is there to do.
Sunday, August 1 at 0400 we rally at the base theater, and are once again transported to the PAX terminal. Tire looks good they say, but wheels up has been pushed back to 1200. No problem we say. At about 2:00pm we are told that the flight is a no go again. This is Sunday- we started this crap on a Thursday. See where I’m going here. Alright, back to the base, but this time we are going to play a gig. Might as well since we are already here.
They drop our pallet off, and at about 5:00 pm and Justin, Kevin, and I start pulling the pallet apart to set up sound. As others of the band drift in we all bust our humps moving speakers, pulling cable, setting up percussion, keyboards, and bass amps. We are excited to finally play, and we want to give back something to Al Dhafra. I am approached by several of the Senior NCO’s of the base to ask what we need for power, and if there is anything they can do to help. Everyone is cool. Brace yourself, there are no happy endings here. At about 6:00 pm, when we are basically all set up and getting ready to check mics, we are then informed that we are now on a special flight, special being the operative word here, back to Al Udeid! And we need to be ready at 1945. Sounds Awesome. Now we look like real jerks, as we were telling all the people coming up to us that, hey man we are playing tonight. We rip gear down, and quickly repalletize the load to go back on the plane.
This time our plane does take off. We are stuck in the C130 style aircraft again- I swear I saw Audie Murphy’s initials scrawled on the inside of the fuselage. And now we are back in Al Udeid. Yeah- it took four days to get us where we started from.
Back of the c130. We walked from the back while the props were spun up. Basically like walking into a super heated hurricane. Its called an EROS - Engine Running On Load. Pretty cool- or hot if you prefer. The back of the plane is open in this pic- they had just loaded our pallet on.
Justin and Pat on the C130. Justin had put his crayons away. Pat looks to be programming some kind of explosive device. Pictures on the plane are a little fuzzy due to me not using a flash. Nice seats- NOT!
Fuzzy shot of the back, but I dig the flag. That’s our repalletized pallet. Everything stayed together for the ride.
Now we wait to go to our next destination, which I can’t put in the blog. Needless to say the band is disheartened by the fact we couldn’t make it to Afghanistan to play for the troops there. That’s where some bad things are happening, and those guys deserve any kind of break we could have given them.
I know this was kind of rehash of events, but if I don’t write this shit down, I’ll never remember the chain of events.
Some quick observations about life in Al Udeid while I am at it.
One, most people refer to this base as the ‘Deid. You will not see me use this phrase. If I have to explain it to you, it wouldn’t make sense.
Two- if you have a barbed wire tattoo around your bicep, say hi to the other 10 million or so tools that have the same exact tattoo. And, oh yeah, if you think getting all tatted up while you are 18- think again, in twenty years you may have some differing opinions of the 18 year old you. Now I am not against tattoo’s, in fact I have one, but I am thirty nine, and I also didn’t pick mine off some wall.
Three- life without kids, animals, trees, family, is an unnatural state. God bless the people that go on these long deployments. We are not even scratching the surface of that type of deployment.
See I have good things to say too.
If any of my comments bother you, well go ahead and comment. Membership appears to be at a stall. I need more buzz, so I might start making really outrageous statements to get things going again. All for now. I really hope I can show you more pics of us performing soon. James OUT!
PS- To the guys at the PD- hi, and I am keeping my day pick.
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