Art La FlammeArt La FlammeArt La FlammeArt La Flamme
Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.
Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.Antidotes are what you take to prevent dotes.
This was the view of my world, an hour before the start of 30 June. Dark, quite, not much moon. Alone. Many people, I suspect, fear darkness because of the great unknown. I have come to embrace it, for all the potential it holds. It’s fitting, then, that this was my image heading into 30 June. Read the rest of this entry »
First off, big shout out to my room dawg. He totally saved my bacon last night, when he ventured back to our room in the middle of the worst sand storm of this deployment, shut down my computer, and covered up most of my stuff. Horrible sand storm, just nasty. We literally hand sand drifts inside the building last night, it was so bad. People got lost walking home. One van of our guys, coming back just from dinner, had to put two people out into the storm with their flash lights, just to make sure the van stayed on the road — you couldn’t tell where it was.
So, thanks man. You rule.
Post-Sandstorm
Ok, enough of the drama. Yes, I’m back in Iraq. No, I’m really not blogging. There’s a reason. Read the rest of this entry »
In about 48 hours, I went from my living room on Oahu, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, to sitting at a picnic table in Kuwait City, just inland from the northern tip of the Persian Gulf.
Is it just me, or do others think that this is truly amazing?
In 1932, my grandmother went to LA to go to the Olympics. Reading her account, it sounds as if that trip took more effort than the American effort to put someone on the moon. But today, in less than 2 days, I can move clear around the world, from an island in the Pacific to the Middle East.
This morning, my son and I got up early and slipped out of the house. We headed up to Tantalus (more), above Waikiki, to take some photos for the 24Hour World project. My guess had been that I’d be able to get a good photo of Diamond Head and Waikiki, but low and behold, the best photo of the day was this one, that he took.
At Tantalus, overlooking Diamondhead
That’s Diamond Head in the background, and beyond it is the Pacific. I could not be further from Iraq, even if I tried — physically, emotionally, or mentally. If this is what turning 40 is suppose to feel like, I can say that it’s a good thing.
I think I have done very well in not doing much on my two weeks of R&R. I sleep well, I am eating very well, I am soaking up time with my wife and the kids, and can’t really imagine this ending. It’s been a period of great rest and then more rest.
We have done a few things.
This past Saturday, we went to the 17th Annual British Car Show, held down in Waikiki near the zoo. The local British car club invites the Hawaiian Mini Motoring Club (of which I am a member), as they view the Mini — even the new ones, made by BMW in England — as being true British cars. Well, who am I to pass on a chance to go to a car show?
Naturally, I put my Germany badge on the front of the car. The kids and I had a great time of it all — from the pre-meet at the mall downtown, to the slow procession through downtown and Waikiki (honking and waving the whole way), to parking in the shade and swapping stories all morning.
And while there were some exotics there, this car below is the one that caught my eye. I could not stop staring. Lovely Austin-Healey — just lovely.
I also loved the wide range of MG’s that were there — quite a few of which were adamantly described as daily drivers (which has to be easier to do here in paradise).
I was surprised, though, to see a fleet of Cobras and even a GT40 roll in as part of this group. I had expected the MG’s and the AH’s, even the Jags and the Land Rovers and the Rolls’, but these ones caught my eye.
I had to go do some reading, to learn that yes, the GT40 was designed and built on UK soil. And the Cobras? Yeah, I’m a dumbass for forgetting that it’s an AC Cobra — which is most definitely British. Nice and loud, too. Great crew of owners, very nice people.
The other thing I’ve been doing while here is running. Well, running and shoe shopping, as I’ve purchased a new pair of running shoes, a new pair of Five Fingers, and now a new pair of combat boots (that feel like running shoes).
How much running? Try 45 miles. I’ve been doing 4 runs a week, using the Hal Higdon running formula (though not adding miles) — short runs on Tuesday & Thursday, medium run on Wednesday, and a long run on the weekend that about equals what I ran during the week. 45 miles seems like a lot, though.
Today, I had a wild hair and I ended up doing 10 miles. I pushed through the fields on a route I had scoped out via Google Earth. I’ve been trying to find a semi-legal way to get from my house, to Schofield Barracks where I will work post-Iraq. There’s a road that drives there, but it’s certainly not running friendly. That leaves the pineapple fields — which are all adorned with NO TRESPASSING signs. Leaving at 6 AM this morning, I moved with people going to work in the fields — all of whom waved and seemed OK with my being there, which is all I needed to keep going.
I had no intention of doing ten miles today, but the sun was low, the clouds blocking the sun very well, and I was on a roll. Here is a Google Earth file from today — I think this might be my new favorite route, though I do worry about the work area in the middle (I think it’s part of the Dharma Initiative).
Why am I running so much on R&R? I have no idea. Running & More Running. It feels great, though. Last week, I was still dealing with jet lag, so running early — between dawn and sunrise — was working out ideally. Now that I am sleeping well, I should — should — lay off the miles some. Maybe. We’ll see; I am very excited about finding this new route, and may need to go back there once more before I turn into a pumpkin.
I would encurage you to spend some of your summer free time following the tale of Jack. He lives and runs south of our old place in Heidelberg, and this year he’s running big.
Running big. As in he did a 50km / 30 mile run this week. He ran for — are you ready for this? — 5 and a half hours. I don’t even like to watch TV for that long.
And did I mention that he blogs in German and in English, or that from time to time he runs with his camera in order to share photos from along the way, or that he, too, is a Garmin user?
Or that on 12 June, he’s going to tackle a 100 km / 60+ mile race?
So, yeah. Follow along. Running with Jack — it’s the new black this summer.
For all those years that we lived in Europe, flying to and from deployments was a very uneventful thing. The USAF picked us up, and they dropped us off at an airbase in Germany. Maybe there’d be a reception or something at our actual garrison when we got off the bus, but really, the travel itself was very straight forward and uneventful.
So, flying from Iraq to Hawaii was a bit of an adventure for me, for among other things, I was flying commercial airlines for 2/5 of the trip, and flying in uniform (which we never did on commercial airlines in Europe).
The entire way home, I felt like I was being treated like a rock star. Which, I’ll be honest, made me a bit uncomfortable. I am so very not-used to that. I am a staff guy, a solver a problems — not some hardened killer. So, the rock star treatment was a bit humbling — why would anyone treat me like this?
65 hours and 13 time zones later, I have completed the secret mission. I made it to Hawai’i and surprised my family by ringing the doorbell late on a Friday night.
So, if you need me, I’ll be at home. Yes, I’ll blog more about this later — sneaking out of Iraq and to your house is a pretty neat trick, I think.
Northern Iraq, if you’ve not been following the news, is an interesting place to live these days. 3 of the 7 provinces up here — Ninewa, Salah ad Din, and Diyala — have new provincial governments. New Governors, new Provincial Councils, etc. They also have some new capabilities, thanks to the implementation of the Provincial Powers Law that went into effect with these new governments, maybe most important of which is that the Iraqi Police units in these provinces now answer to the province and the provincial leadership, not the Iraqi Security Forces (i.e. Army, national police, etc).
Why only three? Well, the three provinces that comprise the bulk of the Kurdish Regional Government are set to hold their elections sometime this summer, July I suspect. Why later, and now when the rest of the country held the provincial elections? Ask me over a beer sometime — it’s not such a simple question.
And the seventh? Well, that’d be Al Tamim, aka Kirkuk Province. To be honest, I’m not even willing to make a guess as to when they’ll have provincial elections — Iraq needs to get past the UNAMI and Article 23 issues before Kirkuk will hold elections. If Kurdish elections need a back porch and a cold beer to explain, Kirkuk and Article 23 and all that jazz needs dinner — probably fajitas.
The last thing adding spice to all this, is the upcoming “out of the cities” date. The security agreement between Iraq and the US states that combat forces will be out of the cities and towns by the end of June. And that’s coming up here, pretty quick; that’s coming up, whether the conditions call for it or not. Should be interesting.
Two days ago, I got up, went for a six mile run, skipped breakfast, and went to work. I had a light lunch, but had a horrible afternoon, not really looking up from the chaos of it all until just after 9 pm — when I realized that I had missed dinner. I made it back to the room, to find a missed call on Skype from the wife. Her Wordpress, she said, was acting up.
Tired, and a bit hungry, I tapped it. She and I were on Skype, and I ended up on chat with the guys running the server. Not a Wordpress issue, after all, but a change in the settings on the server itself (mod_security was somehow activated). Once again, my powers of Boolean saved the day. Exhausted, I crawled into bed.
I got up yesterday, ran just over 4 miles, and skipped breakfast (and told everyone to avoid getting between me and lunch, just to be on the safe side). I made it through the work day decent enough, and I made it to dinner and got home in time to try and blog for the 24h World project (see below). Low and behold, my Wordpress and my blog were acting up — I had lost data (Earth Day post was gone), and I could not add some (but not all) new types of posts. 1st Tech Support guy via chat said it was not the same thing, but my troubleshooting indicated it really, really was the same thing. Half an hour later, #2 tech support guy found that yes, it was the same thing. Great. All seems right in the world. I posted a couple of entries, and crawled into bed.
I get up this morning, and did not run. I fired up my page, to make sure things were still ok. Um, no. The two new entries are gone, but I got back the Earth Day post that had vanished yesterday. Great – FML. I’m hammering out this post, hoping it’ll take — and am saving it to a text file, in case it doesn’t. Ah, the joys of technology. Suddenly, pen to paper has a new appeal.
[UPDATE: Well, it posts. And I lost the Earth Day post, but got back the two posts from last night. Odd.]
These battered feet of mine
5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. My pièce de résistance is a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.
But these aren’t complaints; this is my reality. I’m a runner, and these things won’t stop me.
I should try saying something funny. Or maybe adding a cool, secret link — like this.
Why am I doing all this? My server is wonky right now. Symptoms are showing up in Wordpress, but the support stuff from Wordpress all points to server end issues. So, I am in chat with Tech Support at the server, and trying to figure it out.
The symptom, if you’re curious, is that it won’t save new drafts or posts. The solution, it turns out, is to edit the .htaccess file and turn off mod_security feature.
I have faith, though — I went through this last night with the wife’s server. Same deal — out of the blue, Wordpress got wonky, and it turned out to be settings on their end. Hers was misbehaving a little differently, but same solution. And I have no idea why both of these suddenly developed these problems. Time to go back up, though!
Oh — one more thing, if you’re still reading this. I podcast — did you know that? I am not posting the link, but email me and I’ll likely send it to you, along with more about it.
5 days, 4 runs, 30 miles. My soles are like alligator skin. I managed to get a blister on the arch of my foot. My pièce de résistance is a blister on a blister, on a blister that has now popped.
But these aren’t complaints; this is my reality. I’m a runner, and these things won’t stop me.
Don’t be the one, twenty years from now, who remembers that there was talk of interrogation and torture. Be the one who read up on it, developed and informed opinion, and who can talk about what it means to you and how you view the US.
I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to help with your school project. It was a lot of fun.
Flat Art on the Bus
To get here, Flat Art probably went from North Carolina to New York, where he would have left the regular mail system and entered into the military mail system. From there, he likely went on to Germany and Kuwait before landing in Iraq. He came here to me at COB Speicher, a former Iraqi airbase just outside of the city of Tikrit, in Salah ad Din Province.
Flat Art arrived at an interesting time. There’s a lot going on here, in Northern Iraq. The Iraqis just had elections, so there are a lot of people very excited about being involved in their local government. There’s also a drought going on, so times are somewhat tough (there’s a lot of farming around here) and the local governments are that much more important.
Stopping for a spot of tea
Flat Art is about the same size as the notebook I carry with me everywhere, so I tucked him in there and took him with me everywhere. These photos, the ones I sent to you earlier, were ones I was able to take when I snuck Flat Art out of the office in order to visit the area. But most of the time, Flat Art worked with me, going to meetings and trying to solve problems. And a lot of the places I go for work, well, they’re a bit camera shy, mainly for security reasons. So, for all of our great adventures, I have fewer photos to share than I’d like.
On this, the first full day of spring, it’s hard to find signs of the season, partly for being in Iraq, party for being in the middle of a drought. I looked high and low, and found these flowers out by a helo pad, flowers tall enough to gently sway in the breeze.
