No, I'm not dead

Still alive and kicking, but man does this place drain you. I'm not going to the gym as much anymore or running as much. After the first week I realized that I simply don't have enough energy to do that. The little time I get off I try to spend skyping with my astounding girlfriend. She is the source of my motivation. She supplies the drive I need to get through every day. What a blessing she is.

Anyways (sorry for the mush), it's not too bad here. It's definitely starting to get colder. We're talking sweatshirt weather in the mornings. It still get's into the mid to high 80s during the day, but at 6 in the morning when you're going too and from taking a shower it is FREEZING. From what I hear, it gets down to below freezing out here during the winter months. Good thing I packed accordingly. I got issued all sorts of cold weather goodies before I came here. Fleece tops, nightcaps, gloves, coats, windbreakers, long-johns... You name it, I got it.

So I ordered a set of throwing knives a few weeks ago. Yesterday they got here, and they're freaking AWESOME. I'll probably end up ditching my M16 and just carrying around these things instead. No, I'm not that good with them yet. I'm learning that you have to memorize the distance per rotations of the blade. That's tough though because you have to be consistent with your release.

So today over at one of the tents the AC went down, and AC is important for a couple reasons. First and foremost, for my own personal comfort. Secondly, the tent it's connected to houses several switches and routers that push network services to half the base. If they overheat, they'll shutdown and half the base wont have communications. Anyways, I called to have the AC repaired, but they weren't in any hurry. After spending a good half an hour to forty-five minutes in the unbearable heat, I decided to take matters into my own hands...

Okay well I was going to attach a video, but the internet here is so morbidly slow that I'd have to wait 3000 days for it to upload. I'll just tell you what happened and try to incorporate some pictures...

So I went outside to take a look at the AC unit. It wasn't running so I went to go look at the panel on the side. I reset the breaker and turned it off and then back on. Bam, it started back up. Easy fix, right? Wrong. I went inside and there was no air flow. Weird. So I went back to the AC unit and opened the side panel to find the fan belt snapped in half. Freaking great. I knew I needed to get it back up as soon as possible, so that's when the Marine Corps saying "adapt and overcome" came into play. I took off my belt, hooked it on the fan and motor pulleys, straightened it out, and crossed my fingers. I turned the AC unit back on and to my surprise, it worked!

 

It actually held up for a surprising 3 hours, until the maintenance guys showed up. Pretty impressive for a $4 MCMAP belt. No damage to the belt either. Just some streaks from the pulleys. Out-freaking-standing.

So that was the highlight of my day today. It will probably end up being the highlight of my month. Nothing ever happens here. Every freaking day is the same here. That's starting to be the hardest part. I gotta get going though. I would like to start updating this blogs more often. I wish I could upload videos. I have a few good videos I would like to post up. Oh well. Until next time...

Deuces.

the daily grind has begun...

First of all, I want to apologize for for the lack of posts lately. I started this blog with the thought that I would have enough down time here to actually post a couple times a week. Unfortunately, that is not the case. Now that I've started my job, the only time I have to blog is time that I have to cut out of my sleep, and I need my beauty sleep. Seriously. Especially out here. I get back to the cans (what we call our rooms out here) at 2000, or 8pm. I usually go straight to sleep, but tonight I got off a little early so I thought I'd post an update.

I wish I had some pictures to post, but I lost my SD card to my camera, along with all the recent pictures I've taken. At least I didn't lose my camera. Not that there's much scenery out here anyways. I can imagine that's why the taliban is as pissed off as they are. I'd be pissed too if I had to live my whole life in this craphole. Unless your favorite hobby is building sand castles in 120 degree heat, I can promise you that nobody on this earth enjoys this place. Speaking of heat, from what I've heard, it has cooled down since June and July. I heard that in July mid to high 130s weren't uncommon. So I'm thankful I got here when I did. It's still unbearably hot, but I suppose that's better than more unbearably hot. If you want to know what it's like, take a blow dryer, put it on its hottest setting, and blow it in your face. Now imagine that feeling except all over. That's what it's like every day.

So in case you don't know, I work 12 hour days, 7 days a week. One of the hardest things about that is that there's no looking forward to the weekend. That feeling you get on Friday of almost being done with the week is replaced with the dull depressing dismay that comes with Monday morning. It feels like every day here is Monday, because on Monday, you feel like it's forever until the weekend comes. Well, my weekend doesn't come for 7 months, so you can imagine what that's like. To combat the "Monday effect", I've come up with things that come once a week that I can look forward to. On Friday nights they have steak and lobster at the chow halls. That's one thing I look forward to. The other thing is Sunday Mornings. I get to go to Church at 11, and I also take the morning off for working out. I work out Tuesday Thursday Saturday mornings and run Monday Wednesday Friday. I might have to start running a lot more though because I might be doing a marathon here in October. That'll be tough, because I'm pretty sure for a marathon you're supposed to run 35 miles a week. I don't have time for that the way my schedule is set up now.

Just so you guys have an idea of what my average day looks like here, I'll give you the rundown.

0400 - Wake up, go to the gym or run (depending on the day)

0530 - Get back to my room to shower, shave, and brush my teeth

0615 - Go to the chow hall to eat breakfast

0715 to 1945 - Work

2000 - Get back to my room and sleep

So you can see that I dont really have any free time. I hardly have time to talk with anyone back home, that's been hard too. It sucks, but that's just the way it is. Complaining isn't going to make it any better. Everything about this place has opened my eyes to tons of stuff that I had taken for granted back in the states. We're so spoiled, yet we don't realize it simply because that's the way we were raised. That's the norm. That's all we know. I've learned to be thankful for the necessities. The little things...

arrival to the sandbox.

Yesterday I made it to my final destination. Afghanistan. Let me tell you, this place freaking sucks. Sandy, dusty, dirty, rocky, crappy, and hotter than a sauna on steroids. We're talking heat index of 120 every day. I didn't know it was physically possible to be this hot out all the time. It's like you're under a heat lamp. There's this real fine dust that's always in the air. It gets everywhere. EVERYWHERE. It coats your throat and clogs your nose. If you don't constantly drink water then you have the sensation of swallowing sand in the back of your throat.

Mostly everything on base is tents, with a few exceptions. My living quarters are these portable units (that can be moved with a crane or forklift or something). They're made of metal. They're very small, about 7'x18'. Three guys in a room that small is not my ideal living conditions, but at least they have AC. That's huge out here. They also have wifi here at the living quarters. It's free so that's nice, but it's not super fast. The chow hall is in a tent, the PX (store) is in a tent, where I work is a wooden structure. It's much more desolate than I had expected (with the exception of our living quarters). No paved roads. There's nothing here landscape wise but sand, dirt and rocks as far as the eye can see. No mountains, no hills, absolutely NOTHING green. Flat. Dirt. Rocky. The end. And I also just now learned that the ISP (internet service provider) blocks youtube. Really? Fanfreakingtastic.

But with all this suckiness in consideration, I can't go about our lives concentrating on the suck, even though it's so evident and so easy at times. Although I may be surrounded by crappy stuff like a climate like this, like a small room like this, like having to poop in porta-potties for the next 7 months, like sleeping on the worst mattress ever, like not being able to wear civilian attire, like working 12 hour shifts 7 days a week, it challenges me to concentrate on what I am thankful for. Good food at the chow hall, AC, free internet access, hot showers, friends. FRIENDS. Knowing that they're going through all the same stuff I'm going though really helps me cope with all this too. On top of all that, I try to keep in mind that someone somewhere has it worse. There are many Marines deployed to Afghanistan that sleep in a tent with no AC, or that sleep in nothing but a sleeping bag under the stars. That's sacrifice.

and so it begins...

Current local time in Kyrgyzstan is 0919 (9:19am for all you non-military folks). 72 degrees and sunny. So far deployment feels kinda like a vacation. We're here waiting for our connecting flight to Afghanistan. While we wait, we don't really have anything we need to be doing, so I'm spending most of my time getting this blog up and running. Today all I really have to do is show up to formation at 0800, 1400, and 2100. Besides that, I'm on my time.

I'll try to catch you guy's up. I don't remember all the details, but Thursday night is when it started. Everyone brought all there luggage down from their rooms and staged it and  prepped for a brief goodbye to family and friends.

The trucks rumbled up to the barracks and we loaded all of our luggage on to them. After we had all the gear loaded up on to the trucks we hopped on the bus and headed to the armory to pick up our rifles. After we got our rifles we headed over to the tarmac. 

That's all I have time for now. Lots more to come.