News Updates

Tomorrow I go to the second meeting for my newest additional duty job. My new job is to be the public affairs sergeant for the battalion I am in--that's the group of 600 soldiers. I am already doing the same thing for my company--100 soldiers. I do not know what level of work it will mean beyond what I am doing already.

Sometime this month I will be going to some of the remote sites where our fuelers work. Best case is I will be flying in a Blackhawk. It should be fun however it works out and I will get to see the folks who I haven't seen for nearly two months.

My roommate returns soon. Nice guy, but it has been fun to have a room to myself. I have three seasons of The Wire on DVD which he wanted to watch. I have seasons 1, 3 and 4. I might ask Santa Claus for seasons 2 and 5. It's an HBO original if you have never seen it.

My daughters are back from summer vacation. In Switzerland Lisa ran up a six-mile mountain road in Grindelwald. She wrote: "A lot of people were string at me and someone actually said something along the lines of 'you must be a tourist cause locals aren't dumb enough to run up the mountain...we take the bus'." The local folks are just the same in the Alps or Arkansas. From the first part of the trip: "We saw 3 'don't have to ask and very easy to tell cross dressed men in Paris.' So, they won't be flying over and joining the American Army any time soon. They were actually quite impressive, like platform shoes, short tu-tus with fishnets, blonde wigs and all. One actually had a floral dress and hot pink leather jacket on...."

If you read my very first posts from when I came back to the Army, I was in charge of the $250,000 tool box called the Forward Recovery System (FRS). It's my baby again. On Saturday, I will sign for all 42 pages of inventory of more than 1,000 tools. So keeping the FRS in working order will be my actual day job. That means I am Sergeant Tool Bitch again.

The new GT single-speed mountain bike is much better on the roads and rocks here, but it is tiring to push those 29-inch wide wheels.

Vote Early and Often

While I was waiting for a plane to take be back to Iraq I wrote a four-line verse for a contest by Robin Abrahams, the Boston Globe's Miss Conduct. Voting is now open. If you want to see what kind of verse I write in a tent in Kuwait, and better yet if you want to make me a the only poetry contest winner in my unit here in Iraq, please follow the link and vote.

By the end of the 2nd week in America I was beginning to think my bone spur problem was improving. All day today I worked in the motor pool walking on rocks. The improvement was because I was away from the rocks. I am back to limping now. So I will return to sick call and continue whatever procedure I have to go through to get the bone spur removed.

We are already planning the next issue of the Echo Company Newsletter. I can't post PDFs on the blog because of restrictions on blogger.com, but if you want a copy, let me know and I will email it to you. ngussman@gmail.com.

Back to Tallil

At 0730 this morning we were told to return at 0820 with our bags. We would be flying by 1130! I packed up and told the guy on the top bunk I had packed up before and would be reclaiming my bottom bunk if the flight was cancelled. He promised to be ready to move and I was off to the next formation. We waited in a tent for a couple of hours and then we loaded our gear, loaded on the bus and we were off to load up on a jet for a very short flight.

On the bus I sat with a 23-year-old regular Army soldier returning to duty after R&R leave like me. Unlike me, he is on his second deployment and is planning on being deployed to Afghanistan. His current job is body guard for a colonel. Last deployment he was on convoy duty. Five times he had a vehicle blown out from under him by an IED. He has been temporarily blinded by concussion and has shrapnel lodged in a couple of places, but, at least by his own standards, he is OK. After his next deployment, probably ground combat if he gets the assignment he is looking for, he plans to get out of the Army and go to college to work on computer networks.

"I figure three deployments will be enough," he said. He will finish his third tour at the ripe old age of 25.

Back at Tallil, my new bike was waiting in the post office. I signed for it, put it together but because of a sandstorm, I decided not to ride around the base and cleaned up my dust-filled room instead. My roommate is still away at another base, so the CHU was unoccupied for a month and got very dusty. More tomorrow.

Day After Day

One of the truly delightful things about the Army is that I am not important as an individual. I am on my 4th day stuck in Kuwait. What overcommitted American worker could get paid for sitting and doing nothing for four days. And it looks like I will be here at least till Monday. I get paid the same for working or for doing nothing if my orders tell me to do nothing. And they do.

So I am sitting in a coffee shop writing about doing nothing and trying to decide what to do next. Should I read in my tent and then go to dinner? Should I go to dinner? Should I shoot a game of pool at the recreation tent before or after dinner? Decisions, decisions. I am going to bed early because I am going to get up at 3am and work out at the cardio gym. It's open 24 hours and beginning at 3am will have a live broadcast of the Daytona NASCAR race. My iPod is in Tallil so if I work out at any other time I will have to watch baseball, golf, or tennis. So I can watch the Daytona night race then clean up for Church, then come back at 11am and watch the Tour de France while I cross train on the elliptical.

Pack Up, Report for Flight, Go Back

This morning at 0730 my fellow travelers and I were told to report back at 0945 with our gear--there would be a flight later today. We packed up, dragged our gear to the meeting point, had a roll call, then were told to return to the tents. Next formation would be roll call at 1930 (730pm). No more flight information. Maybe there will be a flight one the 4th of July.

It is strange to be 100 miles from the end of a 6000 mile trip and no closer than I was three days ago, but there is nothing to do but wait for the flight. Maybe there will be a flight tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, this is a great way to get over jet lag. Fly across seven time zones then eat, sleep, and read for three days.

Last Race Update

Passing on the first descent


Climbing uphill at the back of a disappearing pack

Thanks to Jan Felice for pointing out these photos on www.cyclingcaptured.com, photos are by Anthony Skorochod. The race was fun while it lasted for me (two of four 8-mile laps, with the pack only on the first lap). After the race I rode for a while with Jan, Jim Pomeroy and Linford Weaver.

Where is Neil?
No flights out of Kuwait for me yesterday. So I spent another night here, which is actually better in some ways than going straight home. I slept a lot yesterday but was tired enough that I could go to bed by ten and get up at five this morning. I overate for breakfast and then read email and waited for the 0730 roll call when we will find out if there are any flights today.

There were no flights. So we won't hear anything until the 730pm roll call, but the sky is somewhat clear this morning so maybe the sandstorm has calmed down enough that we will fly out tonight. I called my unit this morning to let them know how the trip is progressing. I'll go to the gym soon and ride the exercise bike while I wait for news on night flights. More soon.

Good Advice

Sarah Reisert, my replacement at work for this year, suggested I could volunteer for something in Shannon and fly business class for the rest of the trip. I did not exactly do that, but I went to the WH Smith bookstore and bought a copy of Le Monde to see what the French were saying about the return of Lance Armstrong. By the way, in French Lance is one form of the verb Lancer with 34 dictionary meanings including throw, hit, launch, and race. I am sure French sportswriters have been making puns on Armstrong's name for the last decade.

Anyway, one of the senior sergeants on the flight bought a bicycling magazine from the UK. We started talking about the tour. When the flight reboarded, the bicycle-riding sergeant first class had an open seat next to him in business class, so I got to ride in the front of the plane from Shannon to Kuwait. And as Sarah said, the exit row in a DC-10 had lots of leg room. So I am now three-for-three in the front of the plane to and from Iraq with just one more flight to go. And that flight--the flight home next Janaury--I won't care where I am on the flight!!!