Well, it is almost Christmas Eve; my how time is flying! It is Friday afternoon here (Thursday in the U.S.), and I am actually bored. Can anyone believe it? Well, there is one “good” reason for that – we have not had any mail come in for three days. That has brought the entire sorting operations to a standstill, relatively speaking. There was still a little work to be done on the yard, dealing with retrograde mail, that is items heading back to the states, but otherwise…yawn! Evidently there was bad weather upstream from us, so a LOT of mail is sitting around. I heard somewhere in the 100K pound range. That is a lot of mail. I heard this morning that the weather broke, so we can expect to be REAL busy through the end of the year, and probably beyond. Time to roll up the sleeves.
Finally went “outside the wire” yesterday, with a trip to FOB Stone. The helicopter flight was fine, and actually pretty short. I had not ridden that far in a helicopter before. The only other time was when I attended SERE school in Washington State. During our “escape” phase, we trainees were hoisted into a helicopter, and we went for a short ride, maybe a couple of minutes. This time around I got a better feel for it. Even took a few pictures. The reason for the trip was to visit a couple of my troops before Christmas, while taking a look at the operations. They have a small APO there with just four personnel. I was in something of a rush (more on that in the next paragraph), so just received a cursory overview. I plan on another, longer, visit next time.
Can’t get into flight details here, but suffice to say, I was told to be back at the flight-line about 45 minutes after I landed. I thought that was a little ridiculous, but if I wanted to get back “home” the same day, I’d better make my visit count. I did arrive on time, and waited for some time, then waited some more. Did I mention I waited for my ride home? Anyways, some activity occurred on the flight-line while I WAITED, and when it was over, I was still, you guessed it, waiting. Almost three hours pass. You must understand that the offices for the flights is not actually located on the tarmac, so I would have to leave my “post” to figure out what was happening. As it happens, I finally got tired of sitting around and went to the office (about a minute’s walk). As I was inquiring to the status of my flight, what doeth my ears hear, but inbound helicopters! I had to rush back to the tarmac, and just barely made it there to get someone’s attention that I needed a ride. I could have spent some quality time with my troops, but instead ended up upset. Needless to say, the set-up there leaves something to be desired.
The weather has taken a turn for the cooler. It hasn’t gotten sub-zero or anything, but for a “southern” boy like me, it is plenty uncomfortable. My understanding is that it will be getting much colder, and I can only hope the heat, that is generators with fuel, continues to run. Otherwise I will be a cooked goose, or rather whatever the opposite of that would be.
I managed to get released from my weekly conference call this week. I guess the Commander wanted to resolve some issues at KAF first, and since I am more or less self-sufficient here, I was not needed. I was kind of dreading it, and not for the reason you might think. I do not actually dislike the actual meeting, but there have been a lot of changes to reports and such, that I am not sure I have the most current revision. I sometimes am not kept in the loop with the happenings at KAF, which still affect me, and things are sprung on me last minute, or even later.
Well, gotta go. Until next time...
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