The Journey

The journey here was relatively uneventful, except for one small detail: My kindle decided to die on the first long flight. Literally the ONE item that I own that can entertain me endlessly decided to wipe every single book from it's memory. Not only has this never happened before, but I didn't know how to get it all back. After messing around with it for a while, I realized that I would just have to restore it to factory settings and reload all of my books from my laptop. While that was an extremely annoying process, I managed to get everything back within an hour's time span on the first plane ride. However, it did wipe my spot in all the books I was reading, which was a huge hassle. So I just found my place in the one book I was reading and will find my place in the others later. That will teach me to read more than one book at the same time.

So while this whole kindle debacle was going on, the guy next to me (actually he was a seat down because we had the middle seat open, THANK GOD) was nice enough to get my backpack down from the overhead compartment in order for me to get my laptop out. He was looking at me kind of funny though, as if he could not fathom why the demise of a silly little kindle would cause so much panic. He said that he didn't read much. Umm, I can tell. Anyways, so he took it upon himself to start talking to me, while I am frantically trying to fix the kindle. As it turns out, he is a semi-professional MMA fighter who was actually one of the stars of the MTV show Caged (I know. I had never heard of it either, but I looked it up. It's an actual thing, and he was on it). So he told me stories about his adventures with Jena Jamison and some other people when MTV flew him to Vegas for a weekend. It was super interesting. And pretty cool that the Air Force (he was an Air Force SGT) let him do that while still working. I guess any PR is good PR. So this is going to be his last tour, and then he is getting out to fight professionally. Pretty cool stuff. I usually don't like talking to strangers on planes, but he was actually really nice and interesting. The awkward part came when he asked me if I had any hobbies like fighting and I was like, "Um, I like to read...and gestured to my kindle." I felt like a loser. But he was cool about it and said his wife loved to read, but he just didn't have the patience for it. I told him I had also gotten into crossfit recently, and he said I would find plenty of that downrange.

So the entire journey to Kuwait took something upwards of 36 hours. Freaking insane. We left Fort Eustis at 830 am Sunday and arrived in Qatar at 100 am Tuesday (there's a 7 hour time difference in there). It was quite the emotional journey. Me being the smart Lieutenant I am, decided that I would not sleep the night before so I would be tired for the plane (like I did before we flew to India). This works well in theory, but doesn't work when you are so emotionally drained, excited, nervous, etc that your body refused to shut down. In fact, it just makes you a grumpy puss for the whole journey. We didn't leave the Norfolk Naval terminal until 3:45 pm. Then we flew to Maine where we got heroes greetings from the volunteers there. Apparently they greet every single Solider that deploys. It was really neat: there were dogs and free snacks and people taking pictures. However, this was the high point of the journey. It was all downhill from there. After an hour and a half layover in Maine, we flew six and a half hours to Germany (which I slept none of due to above Kindle issues). And not the nice part of Germany either. Some little shit air base that didn't even have a passenger terminal, so they put us in a warehouse with folding chairs and a single person bathroom- for all 300+ people on our flight. And this layover was even longer than the first: 3 hours in that shit hole. Although the weather in Germany was AMAZING. 65 and sunny with no humidity. Nice teaser before we went to hell. And onwards to hell did we go. We flew another 5.5 hours to Qatar. I got to sleep a little on that flight, but only when a movie came on that I wanted to watch. Then my body was like, "No Wizard of Oz for you. Sleep time." Stepping off the plane in Qatar was...uncomfortable to say the least. It was 115 and sunny. Can you say shock? And this time for the layover, we didn't even have a warehouse. Nope. They set up a tent for us on the runway. In the 115 degree heat. That 3 hours was fun. I slept a little more to pass the time. We then finally boarded the plane for the last time, a 55 minute flight to Kuwait. I think it was around 1000 Monday night when we landed in Kuwait. We then sat on buses for 2 hours, as they loaded our baggage and waited for our escort to Arifjan. We finally arrive on base around 1 am Tuesday morning. Fun fact about the bus ride from the airport to Arifjan: we had to draw the curtains of the windows as not to "advertise" the American Soldier presence to the Kuwaitis. A) How many people are on the road after midnight and B) Do you think they don't know what is inside of the large buses of people going from the airport towards the Army base? Silly people. Anyways, we got there, had a few briefings, got our bags and rooming assignments, etc. I was in bed by around 4 am, at which point I decided to get online. Needless to say I have not slept sufficiently in the past few days.

Luckily, we had all of Tuesday to recover. I slept from 6am until 330 pm. It was glorious. Then I went exploring in the heat, only to find my oasis: Starbucks. I promptly got a mocha light frappaccino, and yes it tasted just like home. However, I could not use my Starbucks card there, and I got a strange look from the Kuwaitis working the place. Oh well. The rest of the day was spend exploring the gym, PX, and dining facilities. All are small, but acceptable. There is even a gym dedicated to crossfit. I am excited about that.

Today we spent all morning in boring welcome briefs and orientations. I got to meet the LT I am replacing, and tomorrow we are going to start our 9 day transition before he leaves. Other than that, I took a nap and read a little. Melissa and I decided that we are giving ourselves a few days to acclimate to the heat and catch up on sleep before we start working out. We are going to start going to crossfit everyday at 630 am on Friday. I think 5 days is a good transition, and it is nice to be lazy for a little while we are getting settled in.