Who Fights This War? Math Teacher and Drill Sergeant

"I'd rather be digging a damn ditch than sitting on my ass in an air-conditioned office pushing FRAGOs (Fragmentary Orders)." That was one of the first things Staff Sergeant Pamela Allen Bleuel said to me when I met her walking across on open area in a sandstorm. She is a cheerful, imposing, funny woman of 43 who joined the Army Reserves on a whim just before 9/11 and now has an intense love-hate relationship with life in camouflage.

Until last month SSG Bleuel was the sergeant in charge of the convoy training school here on Camp Adder. She taught troops how to drive and fight in convoys and how to best use the ungainly MRAP fighting vehicles that are now the standard troop carrier across Iraq. She loved convoy training and did not mind when her tour was extended. When she did the unit she went to decided her training as a military police officer would be best used processing FRAGOs--the daily changes to orders that bubble through the military system day and night.

Bleuel loves being outside, moving troops, and has no desire to sit in air conditioning, but she will do the job as well as she can until the end of her extended tour.

She joined the reserves in 2000 at age 35 with no prior military experience at all, because she saw two soldiers hanging up a sign in the small town in Kentucky where she lives. The sign said the Army would repay student loans for reserve soldiers. She had three daughters between 8 and 13 years old at the time, taught math at the local high school and had $30,000 in student loans. She signed up. She went off to basic at the end of the school year, trying to fit basic and advanced training into the summer break. Training did not quite fit her school schedule and she was just about done with training when the 9-11 attacks hit.

At that point she just wanted to serve and was jealous of the regular Army soldiers who were whisked away to airborne schools and other assignments. She served as an MP until 2004 when she trained to be a drill sergeant. Every summer after that she would "push troops" through Fort Knox, Kentucky, during the 11-week summer break at her school district. Her experience as a drill sergeant and an MP lead her to convoy training here in Iraq.

Now she is ready to go back to being a drill sergeant part time and a full time teacher. "Each year it gets easier to go back to pushing troops and harder to teach school," she said. "It's not the kids. It's the damn parents." She then gave her version of the teacher's lament that parents call her, email her, come to school to say their little child is special. "In the Army you don't deal with that. Mom doesn't call basic training," she said.

She also likes the structure and clarity of Army life, at least in training. "We have a goal; get the trainees ready to be soldiers." She also likes the deference of soldiers when compared to civilians. "When I get back from Knox and I am in a crowd at Wal-Mart, I wish I could yell 'Make a hole' and have everybody get out of my way."

Bleuel's wall is covered with pictures of her three children. She is very proud of them--even the one who, "Is a liberal and wants to save the whole damn world. She voted for Obama. We don't talk about politics." Bleuel is somewhere to the right of Oliver North politically and hates everything about France, which is a double layer of irony given her name.

At age 43 she has eight years of service and will have to decide soon whether she will make the Army a career or not. I'm guessing she will. The look she has in her eyes when she talks about basic training and convoy ops is not there when she talks about Algebra 2.

I am "At War" at Least for Today

If you follow the link here to today's entry in the "At War" blog in the New York Times and then read all the way down to the 2nd to last paragraph, you will see three links, conveniently labeled here, here, and here. The first link is to my blog, the 2nd is to a Navy Medic and the third is to a combat Marine in Afghanistan. So I am in very good company. The blog post is about social media and blogs and the new Department of Defense policy restricting them.

Which could mean I would not be able to post on my blog. I actually doubt that would happen. I have informed everyone in my chain of command about the blog and, as regular readers know, I never us soldier's names or mention any troop movements (which is easy because I never go anywhere!). But just in case I have a backup plan. My colleague Sarah Reisert at Chemical Heritage Foundation is taking my place while I am on deployment. We make jokes about here being Neil 2009. Although she is a very pretty 26-year-old woman, so we really don't look very much alike. Anyway, if the Army shuts down blogs, Sarah really will be Neil 2009 and post my blog entries until I get home.

September 11 Ceremony

On Friday afternoon the garrison is holding a memorial ceremony for the victims of 9-11. I offered to be one of the speakers if they wanted the perspective of someone who was a civilian and more than 18 years old on that day. There are not a lot of people who fit that description here. Anyway, when I volunteered, I was invited to a coordination meeting for the event last Friday. I found out at that event that I am to be the emcee for the ceremony. One of the people who had been in meetings with said, "Sergeant Gussman can do that no problem." And no one else wanted the job.

I got it in that polite, thoughtful Army way: A dozen of us were seated around the table, the sergeant major convened the meeting and said, "Sergeant Gussman will be the emcee for the ceremony." Next item. . .

Now I may or may not actually talk about my reaction to 9-11 and joining the Army years later, because they may shorten the program or my talk may not pass review. I'll post it after the event whether I give the talk or not.

Today at 1800 was the first rehersal. The same sergeant major made major revisions to the program after the practice already started. His staff was upset. I told them they were in training to be civilian event managers. In my civilian world, the boss can make (and has made) major changes the day of the event. Three days ahead won't be a problem. My Army world keeps getting closer to my civilian world, but with boring clothes.

Just before the ceremony I was in our battalion headquarters and a few guys started talking about the reasons they voted for Sarah Palin--which did not include her education or foreign policy experience. One of the guys said he was an independent who didn't like any of them (meaning recent presidents or candidates) especially Bush, because Bush and Cheney were behind the conspiracy that took down the World Trade Center towers.

Just when I forget that 30% of America believes 9-11 was an inside job, someone pops out his view that there was indeed a conspiracy. As I was leaving I asked if he ever wondered how two guys who botched the current war so badly could have pulled off such a flawless, undetected (except by him) conspiracy. He had a mass of evidence which he was winding up to deliver, but luckily I had to go.

There is no shortage of weird in my world.

Labor Day

So how does a motor pool sergeant in Iraq spend the Labor Day holiday?

0442--alarm goes off. I was up late, almost midnight, and had trouble sleeping because I slept late Sunday morning (10am). I hit the snooze button and got up at 0447.
Stumble to the latrine, shave, stumble back (150 yards each way on gravel), get dressed.

0530--ride to chow hall. Get breakfast to go so I can put it in my backpack and eat at the motor pool: bacon, biscuit, french toast, cinnamon roll. I ride with a large coffee mug.

0600--motor sergeant opens the gate. he is usually at the motor pool at o540, he splet late.

0610--my team gets its jobs for the morning. I have three mechanics today. Two replace the starter on a bus. One replaces the tire on a trailer. I pump 30 gallons of diesel into our generator. It is a hand-operated pump. It takes 7 minutes, so I listen to a New Yorker podcast on my iPod while I pump the handle.

0700--I fill out paperwork while my team works. I check on them. I do the weekly maintenance checks on a 2 1/2 ton truck. I also spend 15 minutes listening to another sergeant complain about some recent bad work assignments and getting caught between competing bosses. We commiserate.

0800--more maintenance checks. One of the clerks is back from leave so I tell her a couple of pirate jokes she missed.

0900--I ride to the south side of the base for a 0930 meeting. It's three miles, the wind is calm. I have 15 minutes ot check email--since we moved the motor pool two weeks ago, there are no network lines in the motor pool. I have to ride 1 to 3 miles rto check email

0930--Meeting with brigade about stories I am working on and about coordinating stories.

1030--back to email and calendar update.

1100--ride the rest of the way around the base back to my CHU

1130--talk to the couple in the Saturday post.

1200--fill out time sheets for me and my crew.

1230--go to lunch, meet my crew as they are coming back from lunch, give them afternoon jobs.

1315--back to motor pool. check on work assignments. Put away tool boexes and supplies that have come back from Camp Normandy fueling operation that closed last month.

1400--move trucks to get work ready for tomorrow

1445--go to CHU, change, check emails, revise speech for Friday

1600--go to battalion headquarters to check email.

1630--read CS Lewis essay, drink latte

1715--more email

1730--go to laundry

1745--nap for 30 minutes

1815--ride 15 minutes

1830--more email revise article

1900--go to dinner with a sgt who missed last Aeneid meeting, catch up on intro to Aeneid

2000--CS Lewis book group

2130--back to CHU, check email

2200--call Marc Abrahams, I wish out loud I was coming home soon. He reminds me whose idea this trip was (guilty as charged)

2230--shower and write this post

2330--sleep (up again at 0442)

Happy Holiday!!

Married in South East Asia During Viet Nam

From my Uncle Jack who served in all over South East Asia between 1965 and the end of that ill-fated conflict, is the rocky beginnings of military cohabitation:

The tale of the married sergeants is inspiring. My experience with married subordinates differs.

The Air Force in 1974 was dragged kicking and screaming to create accommodations for married service couples deployed together on remote tours. It was still policy that a civilian spouse living within a certain mile-radius of the sponsor's assigned remote station converted a remote tour into an accompanied tour--if it was discovered. The anecdotal evidence is that the Air Force was commanded by ascetic monks who preferred that all intersexual relations be conducted on a high non-physical plane. But there we were at Korat RTAFB, Thailand...

One fine day my office phone rang and a voice said, "Come to Personnel and pick up your new clerk." I sent my NCOIC. He called soon thereafter from there and told me, "This is gonna be trouble, sir!" He was so right!

The new clerk was a pert, cute, slim, pretty, honey blond girl of 19 or 20 with one stripe on a nicely filled out uniform and a lovely smile. Her husband was a grungy, redneck three-stripe flight-line grease monkey right out of a Jeff Foxworthy cartoon book. What they saw in each other is a mystery. He had been on station for several months, chasing Thai women the whole time. They moved into married quarters--a barracks room with GI bunk beds, no air conditioning--and a shared co-ed latrine down the hall. It didn't take long before she learned he had not been exactly faithful while he awaited her arrival to fill his supposedly lonely nights.

The stuff hit the fan. They screamed, hollered and fought all the time they were together. As her OIC, I had many late night opportunities to referee. It got so bad I was afraid to go to the O Club for a drink. She came to work bruised and battered. He resumed his tom-catting. She wanted a divorce, etc, etc. They separated, ie, moved out of married quarters. This all rose to the level of the Wing Commander for solution eventually. She was reassigned to the Chaplain's office and he was shuttled off to another base in-country lest she murder him. I was so relieved.

Who Fights This War? Married Sergeants Who Really are Friends

I wrote the following for a military publication but wonder if these two are not interesting enough that I should try to send the story to People or something in that vein. Please email, comment, let me know what you think. ngussman@gmail.com The names are changed, but their real names, first and last, all begin with M. When a husband announces at lunch or a party, “My wife is my best friend” within the next 15 minutes he will prove beyond doubt, usually with other guests exchanging knowing smiles out of his view, that she is nothing of the sort. No definition of friend, let alone best friend, will cover the complete lack of shared interest and activities he will blithely go on to describe. [SIBEBAR: Our Amazon Adventure Tour] Nick and Nora Nordstrom never mentioned friend, best friend, or anything of the sort during the hours I spent with them. She is a sergeant first class, the maintenance platoon sergeant for Delta Company, 2-104 General Services Aviation Battalion. He is a staff sergeant, the sergeant in charge of quality control for the same company. Their offices are 30 feet apart in a row of containers outside the maintenance hangar she runs. On a 120-degree afternoon on Tallil Ali Air Base, Southern Iraq, I found the two of them sitting together in her office. The small space was cluttered with a half-dozen two-by-two-foot-square, one-foot high foam-filled cases that house sensitive, calibrated test equipment. The equipment had been used in a recent major service of a CH-47 “Chinook” helicopter. The tagged and color-coded wires and instruments were in the wrong spaces, some even the wrong cases. “The mechanics use them then put them back f#$ked up. Then I have to unf#$k them up. Sometimes I go and unf#$k the mechanic.” (In the article for publication, I used screw up and unscrew which doesn't have the emphasis her actual words have.) Nick and Nora are helicopter maintenance professionals. Sloppy work habits—even when their crews are pushed 24 hours a day support troop transport in a war zone—drive them crazy. They sat together in the office enjoying the newly acquired air conditioning in Nora’s office and carefully stowing the test instruments in the proper places in their cases. While they worked, they made jokes about who last used the instruments and if there were any hope that soldier would eventually develop good work habits. A week later I was talking to Nora in her office when Nick walked in to ask about which order two Chinooks and a UH-60 “Blackhawk” should be towed into the hangar. It would seem simple enough, but they had an increasingly arcane discussion of the actual versus scheduled time the major components would arrive, whether the best mechanics could work longer hours on the most critical jobs, would the component shops be able to support the jobs in the order they came in. They disagreed initially. They raised their voices in the middle of the argument. But as friends and experts, they reasoned with each other and came to an agreement based on the complex decision factors they carry around in their heads. Nick and Nora are one of the five couples in their 600-soldier battalion who are married and live with their spouse in Iraq. Like any two other sergeants, the Nordstroms live in a two-person room in a Containerized Housing Unit (CHU). The big difference in the Nordstrom CHU is the two single beds are pushed together in the middle of the room against the far wall and they share a large, leopard-pattern quilt. “My guys call this the porn quilt,” Nora said. Other than that, they each have a beige metal locker and matching end table. After working together from 7 am to 6pm and eating dinner together in the chow hall, they go back to the CHU, tramp over 100 yards of gravel to their respective shower CHUs, then spend the evening together watching TV and getting on line. They have one computer they pass back and forth in the bed for email and Skype calls. Ask other sergeants deployed here and many say, “I would like to have my spouse in country” because the five married couples are the only soldiers having Army-sanctioned sex in the battalion. But those same soldiers cannot imagine sharing a 180-square-foot space with their spouse, especially if they have to see their spouse all day at work. In their CHU as at work, the Nordstroms share interests and discuss them as friends do. They live in Jonestown, near Fort Indiantown Gap PA where they both have full-time technician jobs. The Nordstroms have two children currently staying with Nora’s older sister Valery Fuhrman on her farm in Iowa. Nick and Nora agreed before the deployment started they would not take a mid-tour leave to go home. They both feel it is easier for everyone involved, especially the Valery, if they are completely gone for the year. They talked about the disruption in control if they show up and disappear again. They will take a four-day rest and recreation pass to Qatar, but will be saving their leave to spend time with ten-year-old Anthony and eight-year-old Emalee when they get home. They should know. This is their second deployment together. In 2004 they went to Afghanistan—no “Honeymoon” CHU on that trip. Valery also cared for Anthony and Emalee during that deployment. “They like being on Valery’s farm,” Nora said. “But my daughter is having some trouble with this deployment.” Nora struggles with whether she and Nick have made the right choice, but she speaks resolutely about the dilemma she faced. “I decided I want to be there if something happens to Nick and he feels the same way. I come from close family. The kids love Valery and they get to live on a real working farm for a year.” Nick and Nora are aware that their choice is not the one every couple would make. “It works for us. We are more fortunate than most soldiers. During both deployments we had each other.” One evening I was in their CHU to review some pictures of Nora’s soldiers. While she looked at the pictures, she and Nick talked about whether or not to get a dog their mother offered them. They discussed the relative merits of the dog, the deal they were offered, the care involved and the other details. Nora admitted it made sense and she was being irrational, but she was not sure about the commitment to caring for the dog because they are both full time Army National Guard soldiers when they return to America. I waited in for one of them to argue using guilt, obligation or something else that would carry the discussion into an argument. It never happened. While she looked at pictures of her mechanics in, around, under and on top of helicopters, she decided Mom’s offer was too good to pass up and they would find a way to get proper care for the dog. “The kids will be no help after two months, but we already know that,” she said. Even though they live easily and happily together in the CHU, this is their second deployment together and they know the envy other soldiers have for their living arrangement. Nora thinks the envious soldiers should, “deal with it. We went through a lot to get deployed together and our family makes it possible, but it’s not easy.” The first time I asked Nick about the “Married CHU” he said, “I was hoping they would stick us all in GP mediums (20-man tents).” The man with any special privilege is a target in a military unit and as the deployment wears on there are few privileges more special than being one of ten soldiers out of 600 who have a love life. Nick knew coming into this deployment he would have to deal with the envy and on that day he would have been happy to opt out. Can lovers be friends? CS Lewis in his book The Four Loves says it is possible, in the same way that it is possible for two friends to become lovers. But in each case Lewis says, “shared activity is the soil in which friendship grows. When there is no shared activity, there can be no real friendship.” The tone of Lewis’ comments indicates there is a lot of wishful thinking when people discuss the subject. In certain circles it is almost required that two a couple say, “My spouse is my best friend” when they spend almost no time together, share no interests and disagree on money, kids, jobs, and in-laws. The Nordstroms both repair and maintain helicopters as a profession. They are both soldiers—they can move, shoot, communicate and pass all of the range, fitness, and leadership qualifications necessary to be a good soldier outside the maintenance hangar as well as in it. They deal with all the stresses of separation from their children and family together, not by trying to push their own agenda on the other. As far as I could tell, they seem to be in agreement as to how to raise their children and what is important for their family life. Nick says their relationship is “Nothing special.” Nora agreed saying she and Nick were just an ordinary couple. If the definition of ordinary includes working together in heat and sandstorms in an open-ended hangar on combat aircraft, leading troops in months of combat training, carrying an assault rifle to every meal and living in a 180-square-foot space together while their kids and home are 7000 miles and eight time zones away, then yes the Nordstroms are just like everybody else. SDIESBAR: Our Amazon Adventure Tour I sat down next to a soldier in the coffee shop next to the chapel. He was flipping through a National Geographic magazine looking at an article on the headwaters of the Amazon. I asked him if he had ever been there. “No” he said, “But as soon as the deployment is over my wife and I are going on a two-week adventure vacation. It’s $2,000 per person. You sleep in jungle camps. It’s amazing.” “Wow,” I said. “It’s great you and your wife will get to share an experience like that.” “She’ll f#$kin’ hate it,” he said smiling. “But I’ve been going shopping with her for years, now she has to do what I want.” “But wouldn’t it be more fun to go alone, or with a friend.” “My wife is my best friend,” he said without a trace of irony. “She’s going.”

The Gods of War

I just finished Book I of Aeneid (or chapter one if you count it as one book of 12 chapters). Anyway, it has been seven years since I last read it and I was very much a civilian at the time. I was working at a dot-com, we had just adopted Nigel two years before, I had been out for a long time, I was too old to go back in the Army and really didn't think about it much then. The Army was a source of stories and jokes and memories. (When the Bush administration raised the enlistment age by seven years in 2005 the Army became a present possibility.)

Which is certainly why I missed how the jealous, indulgent, nasty, competing gods with their own needs and wants that fill the Roman heavens seem just like the invisible generals, admirals and other high officials that move us with no purpose we can discern. The gods told Aeneas to found Rome after the fall of Troy. So Aeneas takes the survivors of the Trojan defeat and sets sail from the northeast corner of the Greek peninsula toward the west side of Italy. On the way his ships are wrecked and men scattered by the queen of Heaven who charms the god of the wind. But before the carnage is complete, Neptune, god of the sea, drives off the winds saying "this is my territory" and they have to go. Aeneas knows nothing except he is shipwrecked in Africa and many of his men are lost.

But he has to continue the mission. It's not like we face the danger Aeneas and his men face, but we do deal with crazy changes by people we will never know or meet--and to them we are numbers, not men and women.

In the last week our company and battalion commanders both talked to us in the motor pool about the latest changes in our mission--mostly to say nothing has happened yet. They both told us they would get word to us when something actually changes and the change is in writing. But nothing is for sure yet. Of course there are lots of rumors.

In the meantime, the gods who move us around are busy with what they do and we continue to turn wrenches, fill out paperwork, walk on rocks, and wait to go home.

Who Fights This War? Workaholics

Deployment is a great refuge for workaholics. I have watched the work habits of leaders here and they do fall into two very groups. One group tries to maintain a balance between work and relaxation time, whatever that relaxation is. The other group works themselves into the ground and, frankly, loves it.

When a soldier is deployed, especially a leader, that soldier can leave all of the striving for balance and complexity of modern life behind. No spouse, no kids, no social obligations, no choice really on working out--it's part of the job. So for the person who really prefers the monomaniac lifestyle, here it is with no guilt.

We show up at the motor pool at 0550 to get our work assignments. Most of us are eating breakfast outside out of plastic clamshell containers and joking around as the day begins. The mechanics work till 2pm or longer if the work dictates. The men who run the motor pool stay till 5pm, sometimes into the night. At home they would have to feel guilty about their families, friends, community, but not here. They can just keep working. Across Iraq the workaholics have the great relief of public praise for their out of balance lives. And when they get home they might even like to have some balance for a while.

Book Groups

My book groups have been together long enough to show some consistency. They also are very different groups with different people attending.

The Monday night CS Lewis group is in its 5th week reading "The Weight of Glory." The CS Lewis group is an older crowd than the Tuesday Night Dead Poets Society. In fact this week's CSL group was five people: three Army, two Air Force. Four men, one woman. And by rank, two captains and three lieutenant colonels.

Tuesday night was the intro to Aeneid by Virgil. That meeting was a dozen soldiers and airmen with three officers and nine enlisted. Most of the enlisted are in their 20s. There are a two sergeants in their 30s. So the 800-year-old and 2100-year-old books attract the young people and the older people read CSL.

Five of the soldiers go to both groups, but the only person never to miss a meeting is one of the chaplains in our brigade. He also asks the best questions and makes some very good comments. For instance, when we read CSL's "Why I am not a Pacifist" he brought up the people in dictatorships who have no option but passive resistance. It was outside the scope of CSL's essay, but an important way to look at non-violent resistance.

It's two hours of very good conversation every week.

Cold Wave--Poop Ovens

Today the temp at 0500 was 77 degrees!! Winter is almost here. It was 118 by lunch, way down from highs over 130, and the wind was howling out of the northwest at 25mph which was bad riding west on the bike, but good in the motor pool because the wind blows the sweat away.

Last week we moved into a different motor pool. It is a much better place to fix trucks than the last place with maintenance tents on concrete pads instead of working on rocks. We still walk on rocks between the tents and the offices, but work in something resembling a canvas garage open on both ends.

But the other place was next to an office building so it had an air-conditioned latrine CHU right next to our rock-strewn maintenance area. The new place only has Porta Potties. Until yesterday, the Porta Potties were located in another area in the large field of motor pools we are in. We had to walk more than 400 meters to get to the tan-colored-plastic latrines. No it is a 150-meter walk to the Porta Potties.

The plastic latrines have air vents at the top, but they are hot inside. On a 130-degree day they could get to 140 degrees on more. No more air-conditioned break from the heat. Get in--get out is the best plan for the poop ovens. We work in t-shirts. When I know I am going to be in the "oven" for more than a 30 seconds, I take off my t-shirts. I get so hot inside the oven that walking out without a shirt actually feels cool.

I am learning so many things I hope I will never use again once we leave here.

More Brits

Tomorrow I ride with the British contractors assuming they don't have a mission. A few nights ago sat with a couple of contractors near my age. They were from the United Kingdom. One from England, the other from Northern Ireland. The Irish guy was from out in the country, but near Belfast. He has been a contractor since 2004 and doing consulting work he could not talk about.

What he could talk about was the work arrangements. He has been flying back and forth from home every six to eight weeks withe six weeks off in between work stints. He said they "work our asses right into the ground every day we are here, then give us time to recover at home. So we have a real family life." The English guy echoed his comments saying the American contractor system means a lot of guys fatten up their wallets and ruin their marriages. American contractors tend to work six months or more then take a few weeks off and come back again. If it is just a year, it's OK. But these guys had been here since 2004 and felt very connected with their families.

They said their companies don't allow the perpetual working that Americans do because they don't want their workers distracted by deteriorating families and everything that goes with it. Made sense to me.

My 500th Post--Meet Arab Singles??

On August 22 last year I logged onto a site called geekadelphia that has a very favorable article about a new museum at the place where I work. It also has big ads next to the actual content of the site. The first time I logged onto geekadelphia.com the ad headline said, "Meet Arab Singles." Which lead to a site called Arab Lounge.
The woman in the ad was definitely not wearing a burqa--actually not much of anything but a leopard bikini top and a smile. But my first reaction was "I really don't want to meet Arab singles!!" Who decides what ads go on these sites?
So I was going back through the 506 posts and my sites and cleaning out the ones I started and never finished.

Except this one. I have wondered once in a while how Google decides what ads to put on a site. I logged onto Geekadelphia just now and got an ad for geek t-shirts. So why do I get an ad for American t-shirts in southern Iraq and "Meet Arab Singles!" in Philadelphia? I would expect the reverse. I am not responding to either ad. My wife is very frugal and would be horrified at paying retail for t-shirts when yard sales are full of them. And I am sure she does not want me meeting Arab singles.

So with other posts cleaned out, this musing on web ads is officially number 500. In related numerical updates, my blog has had more than 31,000 visits since last June. And since today is August 30, I should be a civilian in 153 days (January 30) or less if things go well with the demobilization process. That means I should have 650 blog posts before the site takes a sabbatical--I post every day I am on duty so hopefully my post rate will drop to twice a month plus 15 days in the summer.

Actually, I do plan to keep blogging about my return to being a real civilian. It's really going to happen. I can smell the bakery bread and the lattes already.

Bike Dudes

This morning my bike buddy and I went out for the morning loop around the perimeter and saw two civilians riding past on the main east-west road on the north side. I chased and towed my riding buddy up to what turned out to be two Brits. They are part of a team that flies outside the wire and no one knows what they do--at least none of us mechanics. Anyway, one of the guys is really strong. They were both riding 24-speed mountain bikes with front suspensions and disc brakes.

As we catch up to them we are just passing the last motor pool on the north side and turning south toward the mostly nothing area. It is the smoothest, fastest pavement of the whole perimeter. The big guy and I took turns at the front. At the end of the 1.5 mile straight saection we looked back and our buddies were riding together 150 meters behind. We slowed up for the dirt stretch and rode 18 the rest of the way around post. It turns out they ride 30 to 40 km every morning at 6am when they don't have a mission. Thy run in gym if the dust is too bad, but said they usually get out five days a week.

They said they most likely have a mission tomorrow, but I am going to ride at 6am anyway, just in case they are on the road. I can only ride at 0600 three days at the most. Otherwise I have to be in the motor pool at 0600. It's great to have more people to ride with.

Sergeant Hamster

By tomorrow evening I will have ridden around the 10-mile perimeter of Tallil Ali Air Base more than 130 times.
With a varied ten-mile loop, some traffic, the wind, the dust and the other difficulties of my repetitive ride, I hardly think of it as a hamster wheel when I am riding, but when I think about circling the same loop every day and adding up how many times I have ridden this circle--then I start to feel like a rodent way down the food chain. Or a man imitating the rodent.
On the north side of the base where I live and work there are buildings, huge generators, sometimes heavy traffic, pedestrians on sidewalks and the road, and flags snapping in the breeze.
On the east, west and south side of the base, there is mostly nothing. Here are a few views of my daily ride across the south and turning north on the east end of post:

Issue 3, Dark Horse Post Newsletter

I finally figured out how to post the newsletter on the blog. Here it is. If you actually want to read it, send me an email and I will forward a copy.

Thank You to Several (actually 22) People

To Sarah Reisert for Propel Packets and razors (not to be used together) and for sending me a weird web site every Thursday.

To 2LT West's Dad for sending copies of Inferno, we just finished reading it in the Tallil Dead Poet's Society.

To Brigitte Van Tiggelen for sending copies of Aeneid which we are starting next Tuesday as well as for the copies of The Weight of Glory we are reading now in the CS Lewis book group.

To Larry Wise for putting hand grips on the 29er bike so I won't burn my hands on the 130+ degree days and the other bike repairs.

To my Uncle Jack for connecting Viet Nam to the current war and reminding me how much I would have loved to tell my Dad about all of this over a cup of coffee.

To my sister who was upset when I enlisted in 1972 and no happier this time but is very brave.

To Matt Clark who spent the worst hour of this year with me--he drove me to the airport for the return trip to Iraq.

To my roommate for putting up with "livin' in a friggin' library."

To Kristine Chin for editing all three issues of the Dark Horse Post. The current issue will go out tomorrow.

To Amy Albert who wrote me a few days ago asking if she could help by sending us stuff and will be sending some of the future books for the book group.

To Meredith Gould for various reality checks she has given me about life, the universe and posting.

To Robin Abrahams for the Clerihew contest and for sending the her book Mind Over Manners (available on amazon.com!) and to Marc Abrahams for asking (bemused) questions no one else asks.

To Jan Felice and Scott Haverstick for laughing at me as well as with me about this whole Iraq thing.

To Abel Lopez and Brother Timotheus who have been my friends so long they take this whole Iraq thing in stride.

To Lauren, Lisa, Iolanthe and Nigel for being proud of me even though having their Dad gone for a year was not in their plans.

To Annalisa for dealing with everything back home, taking care of Nigel and letting me know when the blog posts go too far.

And now the bad joke. . .

Envy Again

So I went to the guy I wrote about a few days ago and told him I envied his job--he has no responsibilities except public affairs for a unit of 600 soldiers, which is one of my jobs. He also has the use of an SUV which would be nice to have in the middle of a day or to go to meetings without being drenched in sweat from a bike ride. But having told him, my envy is more properly jealousy. I wish I had what he has but I do not want to take what he has. Envy has that dimension of wanting to take from its object.

Anyway, he said he negotiated his deal before the deployment started--somehting that would be difficult for me at this point.

And speaking of sin, I was up larte last night writing a post about two soldiers who are in different ways unable to do their jobs, but are covered up by the Army system that wants the numbers to look good on paper. I took the post down again because looking at it in the morning it was uncharitable and it violated my OPSEC rule about identifying soldiers. There were enough specifics to identify people and that is not what I should be doing.

And then another friend pointed out last night that my year in the desert is hardly the spiritual experience I hoped for. She is right. When I return to America, I will be deliriously happy to resume whatever I can of my life as it was--family, friends, work, racing, pub night. My spiritual life will need as much cleaning up as my dust filled lungs after my year here in the desert.

Inspired to Ride, and NOT to Ride

In the last couple of weeks, my main riding buddy has pushed me to go faster in a couple of ways. He has his own bike here, a mountain bike with 21 speeds. He has full off-road tires, so the advantage of having gears is balanced by the rolling resistance of his tires. Last week he wanted to do sprints. We did several hundred-meter sprints on the back side of the ten-mile loop. I have a mild dust-induced throat infection, but had a great time. Yesterday he rode in the morning and was having trouble maintaining speed, so he suggested I take the half-mile-longer road near the IED training area and he would go straight past the air strip. The idea was I would catch up to him just before main post. Well he was feeling bad and I was feeling good so I caught him sooner, but that two miles gave me the exhilaration of the chase. He is going to be here toll April, so I should have someone to ride with three days a week for the rest of the tour.

Before the other story, a milestones update:
As of today I have ridden almost 4000 miles this year including 2100 miles here in Iraq.
I don't have an exact number here, but I am now over 150,000 miles since I started riding seriously in 1986, the year I quit smoking. Of those miles, 75,000 are since January 1, 2000. If I go back to racing there is a good chance I will increase my total miles to 200,000 miles within the next 7 years.

In our brigade is a young medical officer who rides an exercise bike incessantly. I asked her if she ever thought about riding on the road. She said she did, but that it is dangerous. I suggested riding here because bases are so much better than civilian life. She said she had thought about it, but then one day she was riding the bus and the bus pulled out in front of a bike and almost hit the bike.

At least that was the view from inside the bus. I was the rider on the bike. From my perspective, about half the bus drivers are South Asians who come from cultures with no tradition of chivalry. The traffic laws follow Darwin's rules. The bigger vehicle has the right of way. Bikes yield to everything. I dealt with this all over Asia. Here on base the bus drivers know if they hit a guy with ARMY across his chest they are gone and lose their job. But their instinct is to pull out in from of the little vehicle. So when they do it, I just keep pedaling. They back off, cursing me in whatever language they speak. But the more I do it, the less I have to do it. They get the idea that this is not Mumbai or Bangkok and buses do not have absolute right of way over bikes.

But from inside the bus looking down on the guy who is getting closer to the bus every second until the driver backs off, it looks scary. I did not try to explain anything to her or admit I was the guy. I just said that an exercise bike is fine for aerobic fitness.

A No-Wind Situation

For the last few days the wind died out almost completely here at Tallil Ali Air Base. The good news is I can ride the perimeter of the base faster than usual because I can ride a fairly steady speed slowing only for the across-the-road ditches, missing stretches of pavement and stop signs. Here as on every base it is AWESOME to ride where people can lose their jobs over their driving. But it means I have to obey the law also (Jan and Scott: No kidding. I stop for stop signs!!) So I circled the 10.2-mile perimeter road in 33:52 on the 29er and 31:40 on the Trek. I also did the 15k (9.3-mile) route in 29:11. These are as fast as I have ever gone around post. At first I was thinking 'Not even 20mph, I must be falling apart!' But with bad roads and single speed bikes I do have a disadvantage.

The bad news is that no wind causes two odd effects that have left me with a nasty sore throat and hacking cough. The first is that when there is no wind the dust rises from the ground near dust. It's weird. I was half-way around and going fast so I did not quit but sucked a lot of dust into my lungs. Now I am paying for it. The second problem is the burn pit. When the wind is out of the west, the toxic fumes from burning all of our throw-away utensils drifts away to the East on the usual West wind. Yesterday as I finished the lap a light breeze form the East blew the smoke from the raging fire in the burn pit across the base--and a across the road I ride on. Nothing like ending the day with polyethylene smoke!!

Even though the wind makes me struggle to ride 7mph when it howls out of the west at 30mph, I suppose it will be better to have the wind. It will also help with the temp. Today at lunch time it was 133 degrees (56 Celcius). And with no wind at night it is almost 90 degrees before dawn.

New Camera -- My Photos On Line

One of the benefits of the Public Affairs work I do for the battalion and brigade is they gave me a very cool camera. It's a Nikon D200 DSLR with a NIKKOR 18-200mm zoom lens. With this camera, I am shooting pictures of soldiers at work and writing 1-3 paragraph extended captions to go with the photos. The story/photo is then published on an armed forces web site so local newspapers can download photos/stories of soldiers in their area. It is a public access site, just click here. You will see a dozen photos with captions posted yesterday. There should be many more in the coming months.