Reflections...

I thought I would take a minute to reflect upon all the little aspects of life that you take for granted until you have to live without them.

Running Water- You can’t drink the water in Iraq so everything is in bottles. You brush your teeth out of a bottle, you wash your hands with purell, you clean things with bottled water (like when you use your pocket knife to cut up a piece of fruit and need to get it clean).

Indoor Plumbing- While there are quite a few hard stand bathrooms, they are not located where you live or work. To go to the bathroom at night I have to get out of my room, put on shoes and a reflective belt and walk 100 meters to the bathroom and then 100 meters back to my room. Just to give you a mental picture, imagine how nice those porta-johns are after a couple hundred Soldiers use them in 100 degree heat.

Your Own Food – Every day you go to the Dining Facility to see what is for dinner. You have no control over what they serve you. Some days there are a couple choices that seem okay, other days you have to decide what sucks the least. Either way, you can’t decide you are going to have Chinese or Mexican food, you are stuck with what they serve you. The other great part of the dinning facility is when the group of guys who suck out the porta-potties sits down right next to you and asks you to explain why you think American football is better than their football. Also sometimes you have meetings during the two hours they are open for dinner. You can’t just go back and make something, you have to wait until midnight chow or you need to go to the Shopette and buy a candy bar or a bag of chips.

Alone Time- While I am not a solitary person, I would like a couple minutes to myself each day. I wake up in a room with a roommate, I take community showers, the bathrooms are community, I eat in a dinning facility with hundreds of people, I work out in a community gym, I can’t even get in a car and just drive because we don’t have vehicles. I do get alone time on my way to and from work, but in the two mile walk I end up having to salute close to 300 people. Unless that person is a Captain, I out rank them and they salute me, or I have to salute them because they outrank me. I end up having to salute them and say, “Good Morning” a couple hundred times or if I can see their patch I reply with “blood on the ax or steel tigers lead the way or never quit or always ready or rise above it”. That gets annoying after a couple hundred times in a row.

Having a Vehicle – Walking everywhere really makes you appreciate how nice it is to be able to drive somewhere in the heat of the day. It doesn’t happen very often, but when you forget your id card inside your computer (all computers have an id login required) and walk the half mile to the dining facility and can’t get in, you wish you had a car to make the trip back and forth. I haven’t seen the statistics, but I think that the dining facility guards probably turn away 100 Soldiers a day and 0 terrorists.

1/2 Marathon

This morning I ran the half marathon here in Iraq. It coincided with the Air Force marathon that was being ran all over the world on this day. By the time I was able to register for the run, they did not have anymore bib numbers, so I did not receive a medal for completing the run. I ran it in 2 hours 2 minutes, but it was longer than 13.1 miles.The route began off at the airfield at 5 a.m. and we started to run around the little part of the base that we could. The base only being 2 miles, means that you can only run so far until you have to double back on itself and with 500 runners, the roads aren't wide enough to accommodate two lanes of runners. By mile two, we began to run outside of the base. We had a scenic view (and smell) of the incinerators (where they burn feces), the burn pit (where they burn trash) and the dump (where they dump things like soiled mattresses, old cars, metal junk and other things) and yes the incinerators and burn pit were running. Why they couldn't have shut them off for a couple of hours to let us run by, was a mystery to all us runners. We were seriously 15 feet away from them running on the road in smoke and flies. There is nothing like breathing in burning trash for a couple of miles. The rest of the run went by pretty uneventful as I was listening to my Harry Potter book on tape in my iPod.
The ending however was ridiculous. Since we ran out and around the whole base, the run didn't stop at exactly 13.1 miles. There was a mile marker every mile and I was looking forward to hitting the finish line at the 13 mile marker, but I became a little confused that there was no people at the 13 mile marker. The race finished at the same place it started, but that was 14.2 miles from the start point. As you hit the 13 mile marker there was a sign that said, "just .1 to go" and a big sign that said 13.1 miles, congratulations! However, there was still another mile to go until you reached the finish line where they were reading times and giving medals.
So yes 2:02 minutes wasn't that great for 13.1 miles, but for 14.2 it wasn't as bad. The time was just under 9 minute miles. I wasn't winded or hurting too bad. I had to walk another mile and half to my room after the run, take a shower and then walk 2 miles back in to work. I figured that since I burned off enough calories I could eat whatever I wanted for Breakfast. I was going to eat, two sausage patties, two hash brown patties, French toast sticks and a cheese omelet. However I ate about half and got sick from all the grease.
Last year I ran the half marathon in 1:47, so I need to run a little faster in the next 1/2 marathon on October 4th. Maybe the race coordinators can get the incinerators and burn pit to shut down for a couple hours. This next time I will be sure to register early enough to get a medal.

Since I learned that someone is actually reading my blog, I should probably update it. I am no longer at Balad Air Base. I am at COB Adder, which is a little bit further south in Iraq. The further south obviously means it is hotter down here than back in Balad. I am in a non flying position working for Brigade (one eschelon higher than my job in Balad). The reason I am down here is because we fall under a unit here in Iraq that has no idea what we do as pilots. My job is to explain all the great stuff that our unit does. I spend all my time dumbing down briefs and answering questions. I will be here until November so since it will be a while I am going to put out my address here in Iraq in case anyone needs it:
CPT Michael Weipert
504th MI BDE
COB Adder
APO AE 09331
The one good thing about this place is that we have internet inside our room and the chow halls are really good. I have to share a room with a Lieutenant that stays up almost all night playing video games on his side of the room. At least I outrank him so he has to play his video games in the dark.The biggest reason why this place is lame is that I live 2 miles away from work. It takes me a half hour to walk to work each morning and night. I guess I am getting in good shape, but it takes forever to get around here. Oh well, two more months and I can go back to flying.