Happy New Year!

I am back! First of all, Happy New Year, I hope all of you had a great time over the holiday season.

In case you hadn't noticed, I haven't written in damn near a month. It wasn't exactly planned, but I figured it would be a sparse month as I was heading HOME on leave! I try not to discuss my intended movements, I like to talk about things that occurred in the past. Bad things can be avoided by talking about the past rather than future when it comes to movements.

Either way, I left Blackhorse on the 17th of Dec, two days before my flight because I wanted to ensure I could get to Bagram if the roads went black. I had a couple of days to kill in Bagram, which gets back to living like a transient out of a bag and I hate that. All in all, its amazing what you can put up with to go home though! My flight went off as scheduled on the 19th, and I arrived in Kuwait for the next step of my trip at about midnight. They put us through a couple briefs, and had us go to the travel agent to get our tickets arranged, and around 2am they cut us loose to go to bed. We had to be back at 7am to get more briefs, and pick up our tickets, and fix any paperwork issues that would crop up. Fortunately I had no issues and was released again until mid afternoon when we went into LOCKDOWN! It sounds scary, and it is prison-esque as they lock us in a compound. You have to go through customs and get rid of all contra-band, and then just hang out for about 6 hours until it was time to leave. Later that night we boarded a bus, and took a 2 hour ride to Kuwait International to fly out heading to Atlanta. I think the flight left around 10pm and at some awful time of the morning and 5 hours of flying later we landed in Hahn/Frankfurt airport in Germany. This was merely a fuel stop, as we were only there about 2 hours. Back on the plane we took the rest of the trip (10 hours) to Atlanta and arrived around 730am. With all the flying and all the time changes, I really had no idea what time my body thought it was, but it was sunny, 8am and I was in the States! Another little note: In Atlanta as we all left the plane and headed to the baggage area, there were large groups of people who stood up and clapped for us. It was really nice, and humbling and almost embarrassing. I also had several people stop me and thank me for what we are doing here. It's nice to know that the general populace appreciates what we are doing, as the news I read isn't always that positive.

I finally made it back to St. Louis around noon, and started my 2 weeks home. It was great to see family and friends again, and to be able to eat real food, and drive in my car without a helmet and body armor. It's amazing how fast you can snap back into real life, in fact I think in my case it took all of 25 minutes. I got to spend Christmas, and New Years at home, which was really nice as I have been deployed for those before and it's lousy. I flew back out of St. Louis on the 6th of Jan, and did that same nightmarish trip in reverse.

Not as patient this time as I was heading to Afghanistan vice home, the trip wasn't nearly as fun! 3 days after I left, almost to the hour, I arrived back here at Blackhorse. Not too many physical changes, except the 8 inches of snow on the ground, but all sorts of little stuff changed either with the ANA Garrison, and our Navy command in general so I have all that to sort out. It's nice to be back though, I really despise living out of bag, and in dirty tents.

So, here I sit, back in Afghanistan, but only looking at 4 months to go until I am back for good. Much better feeling than when I first arrived, not knowing where I was going, what I was going to do, and knowing it would consume the next 12 months of my life.

Gary