Art La Flamme

It’s been such a quiet month. For having to return to work, to resume being a productive member of society, it’s been rather an uneventful month. And yes, I really, really like that.

It’s been good to be back with the family. Back in the routine. Nights of taekwondo, trips to the library, making dinner and torturing the kids asking the kids to empty the dishwasher. Reading books, enjoying the glory of Jon Stewart on TiVo (By Yemen!), and getting ice cream from the freezer after the kids are asleep — some are the great things of being with family, some are the great things of being here and not in Iraq.

As for what we’ve been up to, well, the answer is Not much. Kristin quilts, the kids read when they can’t be entertained by something electronic, and I run.

Yes, I still run. I ran about 170 miles this month, and a hair shy of 50 this week (49 and some change). I made runs that ranged from 2.5 miles, to 18 miles. I ran loops and trails and sidewalks and roads, in the sunlight and in the dark, in good weather and bad — well, bad by Hawaiian standards, not bad as in, say, Wisconsin this time of year. I ran loaded to the gills with gear, but I also made runs with shoes and shorts and an iPod. I’ve run up hills, through the jungle, and across pineapple fields.

And through it all, it’s been great. With all the changes in my life this month — being home, being back with the family, going back to work, etc — the stress would surely be taking more of a toll on me if I wasn’t running for distance, and if I wasn’t enjoying my time of solitude.

I have always struggled with reintegrating into my home life, after being gone. This time, though, things seem to be going differently, and I think the running is a huge part of that. I’m thankful my family is supporting me and my little hobby, as I think they see and appreciate the dividends that are coming from it.

I’m not sure what February will bring. We’ll see. Time to go start my weekend, though, and see what mischief the kids are causing.

About 6 weeks ago, my blog crapped out on me. One day, poof, all by itself, it lost a bunch of data without explanation. I run everything from my own server, and I’d set Wordpress to email me regular backups of the database, so I wasn’t too worried about it — other than not having the time to go in and fix it, and wanting better bandwidth to use in fixing it. Well, I had both tonight. Welcome back, Mr. Blog.

I am home in HI. Iraq is done. It was nice, but I so much prefer to be at home. I had the honor of being in charge of getting 94 soldiers home, which was an adventure. After some initial delays in Tikrit, due to rain of all things, we rushed from there to Kuwait, through Customs, and onto a North American Airlines charter flight. Similar to when I came home (covertly) this summer, we went through Leipzig to Bangor, Maine, before stopping in Sacramento on the way to Oahu. It was a long, long 36 hours. For me, the saving grace was that, as the guy in charge, I got to sit in the comfy sets at the front of the plane. Still, though — that’s a lot of miles to cover. And really, when the wife and kids are waiting on the other end, the miles seem to take that much longer.

Now that I’m home, I’m really doing three things:

1. Hanging out with the wife and kids.

2. Working on the honey-do list.

3. Running.

The hanging out part is pretty easy. My temperament seems to be a lot better than it has been after other deployments. I am much slower to be irked – which was not always the case after other trips.

I’m doing my best with the honey-do’s. Today, I spent a good amount of time tinkering with our TiVo. With Galleon, VisualHub, and websites like this, I figured out how to add video to our TiVo (when normally it just has the things that it records). Now, I can add programs to it, for us to watch — I can go someplace like this, download a movie like the original Street Fighter, when load it on the TiVo for us to watch later. Not have to do, just nice to do.

And yes, running. Always with the running, even while in the process of staging to move from Iraq to Hawai’i. At the airport in Tikrit, while we waiting for the weather to improve, I did three runs that totaled almost 18 miles. On Sunday, about 14 hours after I got home, I did a 12 mile run through the pineapple fields. Iraq was flat; I am having to adjust both to the lack of flat running, as well as the humidity. This weekend, I am suppose to run something around 18 miles for my long run — I’ll need a plan for water and maybe food along the way.

So, yeah. It’s good to be home.

My little experiment is over. It’s Sunday afternoon, and I just woke up from a 13 and a half hour sleep. I am feeling almost human.

My little bi-phasic sleep experiment drew out of a need to be in the office a whole lot. I was left with the choice of getting maybe 4 hours of sleep a night, or breaking it up into chunks. So, I went with chunks.
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Figured it out yet?
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Just hearing someone say that strikes me on a profound level. It hurts. It’s hard to breath. For all the evil and violence that crosses my sensors every day, those words sink in the deepest.

Cab bomb sucks. They take suck to a whole new level. Their sucking goes to 11.

I hate them because they are so full of violence. The news from yesterday was of 6 killed and 67 injured. I don’t remember what the killed / wounded numbers were from the other day, but I am sure it was high when combined with the suicide vests (yes, with an “S”) that also were used in Ninewa, the province in which Mosul is the center. They destroy people. Not just kill then, but destroy people. The bombs don’t care what’s there, they destroy it all — homes, schools, kids, shops, cars, memories. They are rage, in the worst public way.

And they also represent profound frustration. I am so fed up with things, I need to lash out. Like a 6 year old, who can’t find words for the firestorm of emotions inside. I see no answer, things aren’t going my way, I’m going to go slam the door / fill a truck with explosives and set it off in a neighborhood.

Because really, who responds to a VBIED by giving in? When would a society, a people, a government decide that, after a car bomb, the answer is to abandon their society, their ways, their values and their dreams, in order to make the changes wanted by the guy on the detonator. Didn’t happen when it was the Red Army Faction, and it’s not happening now.

Put down your rifles, put down your det chord. Pick up your ballot, your books, your newspaper, and pull your kids in closer. All this is, of course, my Judeo-Christin view of things, that solutions can come within and through progressive change; what makes sense to me won’t make sense to the VBIED makers. However, I just want them to end.

I’ve stopped sleeping.

OK, that’s not entirely true. But my sleep has changed.

When I got back from Hawaii, my work changed. Suddenly, I was on nights, learning what my day counterpart was doing so that with time I could do both — as he had been doing. I was easing into changing jobs and taking over his.

Well, he definitely does not sleep. Long, long hours, often being in the office until after midnight and coming back in at 4 or 5.

I don’t know about you, but I only do so well for so long under those conditions. So, I broke the mold.

I wanted and needed to come into the office by 3 am. There’s some key work that is done before the start of the regular work day, work I think is important. But the work day really doesn’t end until 10 pm / 2200 on a regular basis, and yes, sometimes as late as midnight when things are crazy. That leaves little time — and the problem.
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Darkness in the neighborhood

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.
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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.
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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.

Wow.

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.

So, what do you do when you’re on R&R from Iraq? After a week at home (almost), I can tell you — the short answer is, whatever you want.

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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?

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And I like that.

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.

Quiet, but interesting.

I suspect that what I am about to say won’t be for everyone. Go ahead, skip this one. I won’t be offended.

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Sunrise in Tikrit

What was old is new again.

I am running. I doubt I’ve mentioned this to many, but it’s true. Last week was about 15 miles total, including an awesome 8 miles on Saturday. This week, I should push pass the 20 mile mark, with a 10 miler scheduled for Sunday, once this storm and the dust passes.

I am trying to get back to the point of regularly running half marathon distance runs. Yes, 13.1 miles. I want back the strength, I want back the solitude, I want back the peaceful bliss of running for a couple of hours here and there.

In 2005, I did not run. I could not run. The year ended with a Doc telling me he’d fixed me, and that I could maybe run 2 or 3 miles, but never, you know, a 10km or anything like that.

2006 was the year I took flight, and started running. I ran, really to see if I could break something — which I didn’t.

By 2007, I was a running fool. I ran all kinds of crazy distances, and did all kinds of crazy things people don’t normally do — like going to Luxembourg to run a nighttime marathon, and finding a favorite run that happened to be seven (yes, 7) miles up the K?nigstuhl to the mountaintop, and then back down again. I closed out the year leading 23 others half-way across Romania to run full and half marathons.

And then poof, I ran very little in 2008. I closed out 2007 with Achilles tendon problems, and I really had to get off of them for good. I made a couple of tries to return to running, always too soon, and always with the same painful results. I ran some when I was in Georgia (the state, not the country), but damn if that heat wasn’t a killer.

I’d written off running in 2009, figuring the workload or the heat would be the death of me. But I’ve needed something, and I finally realized that I needed to hit the road again. It probably helped that I’ve spent the winter reading the tale of Jack, a runner and blogger from SW Germany who ran through the worst of the winter months in order to hit the marathon circuit early and hard this year. Very inspiring, that Jack character.

I could have returned to running more and harder earlier, I suppose. This is, after all, just my third week of hard, disciplined running. I had started to get up and run — sometimes. I had started to arrange to run at lunchtime — sometimes. The problem always was the rhythm; I have had such a varied schedule that I could not go the same mornings, or the same time of day. And with the weather here, even if I did find the right day and time to go, there could well be horrid weather outside. In other words, it wasn’t going to be easy.

There’s too much work, too much stress. There’s too much food too easily available, that is too bad for me. There’s too many projects, too much pressure. Too many snacks and cookies and waaaay too much chocolate. And though an Army may march on its stomach, our days too often begin and end with coffee. Strong, strong coffee.

And all of these things – all of them — do not bode well for a guy who wrestles with the demons of PTSD.

So, easy stopped being an excuse. I returned to where I belong, the open roads of the early morning, waiting for the sun to creep up past the horizon and start to warm the land. And it feels great.

I have to run in my Army exercise gear, and not my preferred civilian running attire – I might not like it, but I can live with it. I have to run through some pretty marginal conditions sometimes, to include strong winds carrying silt and dirt – I might not like it, but I can live with it. And invariably every time I run, I then am rushed to get cleaned up and get on to something for work – I might not like it, but I can live with it.

I am running. And it feels good to be alive again.

I have been in Iraq now for over 100 days. I was in Hawaii for 4 or 5 weeks before coming to Iraq, and in Georgia (the state, not the country) for the 110 or 120 days before Hawaii. Since June, I’ve seen the wife and kids for all of 4 or 5 weeks. I am 100+ days into a year-long tour in Iraq.

I don’t think anywould would fault me for being bummed, or bitter, or a sour-puss. Not just being apart from my family, not just the stress of being here, but also because of the death and destruction that continues on — at a greatly reduced rate — here in northern Iraq.

But this time here in Iraq has actually given me a great sense of optimism. I know I wrote about it some, with regards to the elections. The Awakening worked; the tide has turned on those who would wage war on the Iraqis. The elections went off very well, with certification of the results expected next week. The Security Agreement, between the sovereign nations of Iraq and the US, has been implemented, and seems to be working well. And the President has laid out a time line for US troops leaving Iraq.

Yes, there is still death and destruction. Yes, there is still violence. Yes, there are still those who would overthrow the Iraqi government, or fight American forces until the last one of us leaves.

But really, at long last — Iraq is doing pretty damn well. I smile a lot here. There’s open discussion. There’s rule of law. There are police on the streets, and food on the shelves, and children in the schools again. As someone who has read way to much about the 90+ years of this country, I really feel that Iraq is on the verge of a great new dawn. And that is an awesome feeling.

So, I’m happy. I still wish I was in Hawaii, drinking a beer and bouncing kids on a knee or something, but it’s a great time to be here, to be a part of all this and to see such an awesome change overcome a society.

In case you missed it, just over 24 hours ago IHEC announced the results of the 31 January provincial elections here in Iraq.

In our area, 3 of the 7 provinces held elections. The three provinces in the Kurdish Regional Government (the Kurdish semi-autonomous region, on which I could yammer for 14 days straight) did not, nor did At-Tam’im / Kirkuk, due to continue discussions about Article 23 and the road ahead for Article 140.

For the three that did have elections, the Sunni did well. The Sunni had boycotted the 2005 elections — the last provincial elections. In Ninewa, home of Mosul and a lot of the attacks these days, one Sunni party (the al Hadba Gathering) took the majority by themselves. They will have a lot of work to do, right away, to bring the necessary change signaled by the votes of the people. In Salah ad Din, Sunni parties across the board did well, and they’ll need to work together to come up with a coalition of some kind — ditto for Diyala.

So, they were good, peaceful elections with good, peaceful results. I am proud today, proud to be here, proud to play even a small part in all this. Very cool.

But they’re not.

The NY Times has a piece today, talking about whether the new Obama administration will change the policy on photos of the caskets of dead soldiers coming home from the war front.

After all, the caskets really do show the human cost of this long, long war. And they’re just photos. The photos are what they are.

But they’re not just photos. I am unsure if I can really capture in words just how I feel about this. Those aren’t photos, those are men and women making one last journey.

In the summer of 2003, when my First Sergeant and I were taking home two of our platoons, we were set for a night flight. We staged at the airport in Kuwait City, and when it was time, we loaded everyone onto a big bus and headed out for our airplane. The bus had curtains on the windows, which were drawn closed as it was the middle of the night. No one thought to open them, as everyone was just too excited to be going home.

The bus was full. 1SG and I were, literally, standing next to the bus driver, probably the only two who could see out to the side of the bus, through the front door we were all to use. We drove to our airplane, pulled up alongside it, and stopped. The doors open. And 1SG and I just stood there, waiting.

Our soldiers were anxious, I’m sure. They wanted to honker down into the seat that would take them home to their families, their loved ones.

But all that 1SG and I could see was the sight of the flag-draped caskets being loaded into the cargo hold. There was no way we were going to have our soldiers come bouncing out of that bus, so full of so and glee, and right into this most solemn of scenes. 1SG and I stood there, in quiet unison, and just watched, delaying the magic of getting home, he and I having a quiet moment today in solemn honor of those who would be going home with us, our most honored passengers.

So, this debate over photos hits a nerve with me. I understand that for so many, they’re just photos. But they aren’t. Maybe I’m overly sensitive, maybe I’m not. It’s just how I feel, even if it makes no sense.

They’re going to the polls today, and I’m pretty excited about. It’s election day here in Iraq, with the citizens taking to the polls to elect members for their provincial councils. It’s these councils that will decide upon the new governors (and a few other key provincial leaders). The last time the Iraqis did this was in late 2005.

They’re going to the polls today, and there is no doubt — this is their election. We, the Americans, just happen to be hanging out. It is their doing, lock, stock and barrel. Their security, their plans, their officials, their sites. If you think we’re here to help the Iraqis learn the joys of democracy, watch today and smile.

They’re going to the polls today, in keeping with the fine Iraqi tradition of voting. I was speaking the other day with a woman born and raised in Kirkuk, just after someone had tried to assert that this was Iraq’s first real chance to vote. She and I had a good giggle over this; Iraqis have voted ever since Iraq was created, except during times of occupation by others. Sure, us westerners might take issue with how elections were done esp. late in the Saddam era, but still, they had elections much as Egypt still has elections. Iraqis are very clear on what it means to go and vote. And today, they’re going to be out in HUGE numbers.

They’re going to the polls today, and for thousands upon thousands of them, there is nothing that will stop them from voting. In 2005, not far from here, there was a polling (as they call their voting) site not far from here that came under attack by a sniper. The polling site was a building with a few rooms for voting, so the masses were formed in a long, long line outside. The sniper had lined them up in the rifle sights, and started firing. While the Americans rushed to kill the sniper and end the threat, the Iraqis waiting to vote had just taken a knee, and waited in place. Quickly, the sniper was out of the equation, and the silence of the day had returned; the people literally stood back up, still in line. Ask yourself if casting your vote means that much to you; it means that much to the people here.

They’re going to the polls today, and more than anything I wish I could go and walk among the crowds. I’d love to ask them how they feel today, if they’re excited, who they’re voting for and why. I’d like to ask them about the changes of the last 10 years, and of their hopes and dreams for the future. I’d like to ask them about their children, and what they see in their Iraq. I’d like to be able to share in the joy of the day, because it is going to be a glorious day, for sure.

They’re going to the polls today, and more than anything in the world I wish I could share this with my wife. During the ground war, I held back so much. The death, the destruction — those are things you want to keep from your loved ones. I did not want her to ask me how my night was going, and hearing the words fall from my mouth about how many we’d killed, or that the hunt was going well. I want her to see and hear and smell the freshness of this land, of the uplifted spirits, and the sense of limitless future and optimism that comes from standing with your peers to decide your fate, your future. These are the days of glory, the best it can be, when a man of violence is given the chance to also be a man of peace. I don’t want her to know how many widows can look to me with blame, but to know that I am capable of service not just to her and our children, not just our people and our nation, but to so many others.

They are going to the polls today, and I am going to go to the office and make a lot of PowerPoint slides. For the Iraqis, today is the pinnacle, a high point. For me, I am already onto the next giant rock that needs to be rolled up a hill, surely to just roll back down when I am almost there. They will enjoy the quiet time, their national holiday, and surely be at home with family and friends and maybe even a nice meal. And I, I will change fonts, and add transitions, and arrange colored boxes, all in support of the free will of the people.

They are going to the polls today, and I want you to know that it’s a damn great day.