Into The Fire, July 18, 2010

I got to leave Afghanistan a little earlier than I thought. There is a conference in Kabul on the day that I planned to leave, and the roads were rumored to be going “black”, meaning no travel. Rather than risk getting delayed, I left early.

Being in the Air Force means you get to know pilots. There are a number of pilots working for CDDOC, and these pilots happen to know the schedulers for airlift for distinguished visitors (DVs). So, not only did I get to leave early, I left in a C-20, which is what the Air Force calls a Gulfstream 3. What a sweet ass ride. If that wasn’t good enough, the flight attendant cooked up and served a great meal from scratch. This guy usually serves 4 star generals, including General Patraeus. He has also worked on Air Force One and served George and Laura Bush! He got the raw ingredients from the chow hall, so it proves that the food is good to start with and it is all a matter of the skill of the cooker.

So, here I sit, writing these notes, on the airplane. I am marveling that I have my own table, my legs are stretched out long, two of my traveling companions are also on their computers, one with a joystick, playing a football game.

We were told that there is an aircrew jinx. If you get on the a/c and start celebrating and taking pictures, it will break. You have to wait to celebrate until your divert point is no longer back to where you started. In our case, we decided that we had to wait (and be calm, cool and collected), until our divert point was no longer Afghanistan or Pakistan, which meant UAE. We asked the pilot to let us know when we were at that point, which he did. We looked out the window to see the outline of the palm tree island in the water, and then we started taking pictures and laughing.

I couldn’t wait to get off of NKC so that I would have nothing to do, and so be able to reflect on things and write something really brilliant. However, my mind is blank. It all seems like a dream.

Well, I made it out of the frying pan….and straight into the fire…it was 119 degrees in Kuwait when I arrived (Sunday), and it is 106 degrees, right now, at 10:00 at night. No matter…a little over 2 weeks and I am home.