You know when your luck has run out.

Back again in the Middle East, this time at some beastly hot and dusty base outside of a modern gleaming city. We overcame some logistical trouble on the way here – delayed flights and a Lufthansa pilot strike being the major culprits – but persevered. Soon after landing, we picked up our rental cars and got lost, but a spate of dead reckoning served us well. At the base the next morning, our US military contact met us at the gate and got us right through. We thought we had survived the worst of it.

But on day three in country, the tides changed. I’ll blame arrogance. Not mine, not my team’s, but our government minder, who ignored all of the warnings and warning signs.


This trip falls coincident with one of the major Eids, a Muslim holyday that gets celebrated for a week. Imagine, however, that instead of going home to celebrate with your family for a few days, you get to stand post. Further imagine that the base is entirely empty, because everyone you work with is celebrating with their families, a stark reminder that you should have the day off and not be standing post. The next bit of imagining would be your reaction when a representative of the great Satan wants access to your base, forcing you from your reverie to open the gate by which you are standing post.

So it was absolutely no surprise when I saw the guard demand the backpack from said minder driving the car in front of us and confiscate the enclosed laptop. We had been told, numerous times over the prior few days, that local security might not want to be there over the holiday, and might take it out on us, so keep your technology in the trunk. Someone wasn’t listening.

Once alerted, the following two vehicles were stopped, trunks opened, and computers confiscated.

There’s a full color, two meter tall panel at the Host Nation badging office that clearly shows what they don’t want you to bring on base; weapons, computers, smart phones, GPSs, data storage devices, and VHS tapes to start. Our minder had an obvious computer bag on the front seat, a Blackberry in the console, and a GPS struck to the windshield, yet his reaction to the guard’s action was that he had done nothing wrong.

Wrong. The tacit arrangement was that we wouldn’t be jerks about violating their rules. Instead, we needed to spend ninety minutes retrieving our machines, so that we could lock them in the trunk of one of the cars that we would now leave outside of the gate. Who knows what a day’s worth of Middle Eastern sun would do to the contents of a trunk? We didn’t have much of a choice, short of returning to the hotel in the city and losing a few more hours.

Cleansed of our computers, we made it through the first gate, but were stopped at the second perimeter, where the now fully alerted guard snatched one of our cameras. This was turning into a slow morning, but plenty of cajoling and assurances got it returned to us and we were on our way to the third gate, U.S. controlled, where the guys at the gate had a different playbook, and allowed access with our computers, smartphones and cameras.

Except that later one of our cameras was confiscated by the US security, who thought we were photographing something on the list they can’t show us of things we can’t photograph. The resolution to that took another 40 minutes, four cops, and the deletion of everything on the data card.

Since then, we’ve left our machines at the hotel, risking the smartphones we use to take clandestine pictures of things we’re pretty sure are engineering related and not secret squirrel related. The major downside is that we have to take notes by hand, which equates to many hours of transcribing them by lamplight well into the evening. This cuts down on the time available to eat shawarma and mezza.

Again, we’ll persevere. If you can’t improvise and adjust to changing circumstances, you won’t make it long in the chaotic world of a global engineering consultant.

For example, this morning, we were trying to get some data off of a laptop (FOUO data, not Classified data). We’d tried emailing the files, but without an appropriate connection to the mother server attachments were impossible. We’d tried printing as pdf’s to mail, but the machine wouldn’t let us print. Ultimately, we hooked up an external hard drive as a file transfer device. This worked to get one set of files transferred, but ended up giving my machine the computer equivalent of SARS, or MERS, or Ebola. Regardless, I don’t have wifi now, which makes getting data from every other source a little more difficult, especially since the data outlets in this hotel don’t seem to work.

Maybe we can open up my phone as a hotspot and hardwire the phone to the machine? Some kind of McGruder solution is sure to do the trick.

Or blow up in my face.

I’ll let the help desk figure it out next week.
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Watar, Watar, Everywhere

In one of the local newspapers the other day, I read that the origin of the word Qatar came from some other term, and some other before it, but the one before that meant “search for water”. This is not at all surprising, as it’s danged hot here all of the time, and I never step outside without a water bottle. It would be worse if your job was to keep your sheep from withering, but in the past week I haven’t seen a single sheep, or goat, or camel. I did see a couple of cats in a souq, but I’m sure they take care of themselves.

What I have seen is an abundance of water, no searching required. Not always in liquid form, but the evidence is there; grand boulevards lined with date palms and topiary; sweeping lawns, manicured gardens. They’ve got the Persian/Arabian Gulf all around them, and their huge oil and gas reserves fuel massive desalination plants. It could well be that the irrigation water is all treated effluent from the municipal sewer plant – but that hasn’t been commissioned yet. Much of the effluent would be hauled to specific irrigation sites, but I’d guess a large volume of the irrigation water comes direct from the potable distribution system.

Yesterday morning, I went down to the beach to watch the sun come up. The silence was eventually broken by the hotel staff doing their morning things. They need to drag the beach of any footprints remaining from yesterday. They set up the poolside bars and restaurants. They sweep everything that isn’t grass or beach. They hose down all of the furniture. And there’s lots of furniture, from the lounges at the pool to the other lounges near the Gulf. From the al fresco dining areas near the hotel to the snack bar near the kiddie pool.

They do this with a hose, with no control or nozzle, turned all the way up. It took an hour. If our well system could produce half of this volume, I’d never worry about irrigating the garden again. These guys never worry at all, just throw more dinosaurs at the power plants and strip the salt out of another few million gallons a day. The Peninsula reports 437 million cubic meters of desalinated water per year. This equates to about 150 gallons per day per capita. In the States, 150 gpd is a pretty good planning factor, but most of the States aren’t in a desert and most of our water comes from freshwater sources without the energy cost of purifying it. In the Qatari defense, they are really rich. Really rich. And the oil and gas comes out of the ground like lies flow out of Washington. I can only hope that their rhetoric about environmental sustainability is more than simple rhetoric.

And for full disclosure, our per capita water in the US of A is almost ten times 150 gpd, but 80% of that is for cooling power plants and irrigation, the rest is for manufacturing, commercial and domestic use.

Meanwhile, the impetus for this trip came from the need for me to attend a meeting. A single meeting. A single meeting scheduled to last an hour. A single meeting scheduled to last an hour on the far side of the planet.

Success!

The other side of the coin is that I need to be in Saudi Arabia for two days of site investigation, but that’s not until next week. So I could have flown home, spent two days there, then flew back to this side of the world, or I could do what I did, hang out in a four star hotel on the water for five days. I’m not entirely sure I made the right choice.

The Intercontinental, while nice and all, is one of those mostly inclusive places. Not inclusive in that everything is provided for one daily rate, but inclusive in that there is nothing else near this place, so I’m sort of stuck eating every meal here. Sure, it’s all expensed, but I’m just not sure I’m getting the best value for the Company at their 240 Riyal buffet (about 65 bucks). Alternatively, I could take a taxi into a restaurant in the city center and back, but would likely total the same.

Besides, taxis in the Middle East (or anyplace I get sent) can be exciting places, and the more I do this, the more I evaluate risk, and carefully select the exciting places I frequent. Maybe that’s just me becoming more crotchety. Maybe it’s just me being bored in Qatar, waiting for these five days to end.

I did make a trip out yesterday. I went to what was once an ancient souq just off of the water at the city center. Parts of it were very, very old I’m sure, but the boutique hotels around the perimeter told a different tale. It was hard to tell who actually shopped there, as I went there very early in the day, wanting to see the place open up in the morning, when it would be cooler and more quiet, and didn’t see much trade. There was a mix of touristy and housewares, local clothing and spices. All of it in shallow, narrow shops, crammed pell-mell into some seemingly random shape with crooked lanes, blind alleys, dim lighting, roofs and ceiling of differing heights and coverage, plenty of shadows, unclear sightlines, and elevation changes out of nowhere.

I took a lot of pictures, but not especially for posterity. The one hour meeting concerned special training facilities, and realism is key for those types of places. When I finally get to design my training souq, I’ll incorporate many of the geometric and architectural elements of this place.

Bottom line, just more work. I’d never vacation here. I’d rather spend time on the water.


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Busy, busy, busybody

Busy, busy, busy.

I'd type more, but need to catch a flight in a couple of minutes. For the curious, I'm in Kuwait this week, heading to Guam tonight, then back home next week. It's been frantic, but there's been shawarma. Not as good as Saudi shawarma, but shawarma, nonetheless.

We're at the Crowne Plaza which, in Kuwait, is a five star hotel. They've been hosting swank weddings all week, which seem bigger and louder than any in the States - despite the lack of booze. Last night, I stood in the parking lot to watch the Bugatti's, Maseratti's, and Rolls's roll in. Quite the sight as I ate my Baskin Robbins.

They ain't all filthy rich here, but there's a lot more of it that the other sides of the planet.

Sure it's short, so here's some filler by Neil Peart. For this week, change the hours from nine and five to five and nine. Oh, and eliminate the reference to beer. This is the Middle East.

Working Man

I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

[Chorus:]
It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the working man

They call me the working man
I guess that's what I am

I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out a nice, cold beer
Always seem to be wonderin'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

[Chorus]

Well, they call me the working man
I guess that's what I am

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Incident at Tabuk

John got the call as we were packing up and getting ready to catch our flight to Tabuk. There were no details as of yet, only that there had been “an incident” in Tabuk and that said incident could thoroughly mess up our next site investigation. All we knew for certain was that we would no longer have local transportation provided for us. We were on our own.

Once on the ground, I needed to get a car – something big and fast would be my first choice. We were learning more about the incident itself, and the phrase “revenge squads” kept coming up in conversation. My choice was the fastest car on the lot, a Lexus ES 350. It had an annoying turbo lag, but seemed quick enough and stout enough to get us out of trouble with alacrity. It was also a shiny black Lexus, which made us look like big shots, and hopefully, the big shots weren’t going to get harassed.

The incident, as it was eventually revealed, was a traffic accident between an American in a large SUV and an unhelmeted Saudi motorcyclist. The motorcyclist didn’t survive the encounter. Enshallah.
On occasion, this sort of incident can get the people riled. Just imagine that you’re the mob, and one of your own has just been offed by an infidel. Would you accept the decision of your god to take this pilgrim’s life, or would you thrash out at anyone who believes differently than you? From my point of view, this was a matter of expecting the best, but planning for the worst.

Ultimately, there were no incidental issues, and we got to tool around Tabuk in a flash car for a couple of days. There were other issues, of course. There are always other issues.

Typically, expatriates in Saudi Arabia are housed in western compounds, where we have a lesser chance of subverting the pious. In the north, this was a group of single story villas within three perimeters and also within the base perimeter – they really didn’t want us sullying the people there. The villas were constructed by the Corps of Engineers in the 1960s to house their people while constructing the adjacent Military City, and it showed. Each villa was equivalent – an old, dirt colored concrete building with fifty year old dirty finishes on dirt lots barren of practically all vegetation. The neighborhood looked like those fake cities that the Department of Energy set up to test nuclear weapons – the empty towns with scattered toys and clotheslines. Sort of depressing, but we did get local fare within a few miles, so we ate well.

In Tabuk, I think the villa complex was originally built by Aramco. It was encircled by a couple of four meter concrete and razor wire walls. Here we had a nice two story villa with regular internet access and irrigated, fruited grounds. The problem was the camp restaurant. Not that the food was bad, but the service sure was. Our last night there, one of us ordered the special, baked lasagna. Now, you’d think that serving the special lasagna would be a matter of spatula-ing a hunk out of the pan, tossing it on a plate with the vegetable du jour and bringing it to the table, but you’d be wrong.

Who knows what they were doing, but they eventually served a stone cold corner section, and only after our other two diners had finished their meals entirely. We swore we’d never return which, in all likelihood, is exactly what will not happen. Not much of a threat since the project doesn’t require we come back.

Back in Riyadh, we’ve been staying at Eskan Village, a very large complex of single and two story villas with multistory, multifamily structures at one end of the compound. There’s room for a few thousand residents. Back in the middle of the last century, the Saudi government thought that they should bring the camel herding nomads in from the desert and set them up all civilized like. It didn’t stick. The American armed forces (and flunkies, sycophants, and hangers on), however, seem to like it here, and for good reason. The villas are nice.

Ours have been single storied, three bedroom places, with modern kitchens and baths. The entire roof is accessible and under shade (a nice spot for one of the Cuban cigars they sell at the haji store). There’s cable TV and daily towel service. Plus, the restaurant has well trained servers, a varied and fresh menu, and they serve bacon. Tasty, tasty bacon. Upstairs, they serve beer. Tasty, tasty beer. It’s not like I’m an addict, but when someone tells me that their god arbitrarily says I can’t have something, I want that something.

We haven’t tried the pool, or the driving range, the spa or the gym, but I’m sure they’re very nice, too.

We’ll hit the final western compound for my last couple of nights in country. Word is that it’s the best one of all.
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Curses!!!

When I woke up this morning in Tabuk, I was only eight flights from home. I hadn’t been so far away since I found myself in remote northern Afghanistan. No helicopter rides will be required to facilitate my return, but it will take six different airlines – seven if you count United Express, and eight overall. Add to that seven cities in two countries, ten different beds and four different rental cars over four or five weeks, and it’s no wonder my brain is hanging upside down.

So far, so fun, though, except for our reentry into Riyadh a week ago. We had spent a few days in a rundown western compound within a large Saudi military –industrial complex in the north and needed to head back to the capital to drop off most of the traveling circus and to spend a couple days to catch up with the work before heading into the field again. Our client was driving the lead vehicle, our US Army major had the second, and I took the rear.

The drive was scheduled to take five or six hours, and would have, but we tended to stop every hour or so at a truck stop for snacks and biologics. This slowed us down, as did the sometimes heavy rain, so we had only made it to the outskirts of the city in five and a half hours, with the sun close to set and afternoon traffic in full swing.

In Riyadh, afternoon traffic is hardly distinguishable from morning, noontime, or evening traffic. It’s awful. It’s crowded. It’s manic. Now, it would be one thing to simply drive through town to our hotel, have the valet park the cars, and retire to a nice Japanese meal at the Radisson. Yeah, that would be nice. In reality, we drove to the city center, then down some minor avenue to the Sheraton, where we dropped off three of our crew. They needed to be downtown to facilitate some meetings the next day.

I would have liked to have made a left turn out of the hotel and headed back to the highway. Yeah, I would have liked that, too. Left turns at the time were not going to happen. The four lane road was hosting six lanes, and none of them had any gaps in the traffic large enough to fit three large left turning SUVs. So we turned right, into the heart of it. Somehow, the traffic got thicker, so it quickly became a chore to keep behind the leading vehicle, then it became a struggle to keep only a single local car between our convoy components, and then I turned on the offensive.

Being a nice driver would have been a recipe for disaster. One local car slipping between us would have turned to two, three, or ten, and before you know it, the lead vehicle would have been out of sight. Maybe this wouldn’t have been so bad, except that it was dark, sort of raining, we had no maps or GPS, and we really weren’t sure where we were headed. Our lead car did, sort of, know where we were going, but he had never got there from the Sheraton, so dead reckoning was the call.

We found the Sheraton after crawling for an hour. We found our intended accommodations at Eskan Village three and a half hours later, a distance of no more than 16 crow flying kilometers. It didn’t help that numerous highway underpasses were flooded and/or closed. It didn’t help that our Major driver was an Army aviator, who was more used to flying over obstacles than driving through them.

At one point, the lead vehicle was making another u-turn, and the trailing two vehicles were forced to make the maneuver after the signal turned red, scoring us a couple of flashes from the traffic control cameras (I’ll include my 500 Riyal ticket on my expense report). At one of the underpasses, floodwaters were over the floorboards, and we had to pass through that one twice. At another point, it was very dark, still raining, and I swear we were driving through a landfill.

I eventually lost interest in the task, and was about ten minutes from taking charge when we finally reached our destination, where we spent an hour getting through security and finding our hooches.

Totally worth it.

The final hour, I mean, not the three and half that preceded it. I’m not particularly subject to flashbacks, but the endless drive around Riyadh reminded me too much of crossing the wire in the sandbox, except for the lack of weapons. Driving a single vehicle would have been no problem, but keeping the convoy together when there was an unclear plan of attack was no less than stressful.

Someone said that Mark Twain said that "I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them." When I first heard this, I didn’t know if the subject was people in general, like you would travel with on a plane or shared highway, or people in specific, like those you would have in your vehicle or tour group.

Now, I’m pretty sure he meant both.
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Chiller

The display on the Expedition’s dash says that it’s 24 degrees outside, but I don’t believe it. I wouldn’t go any higher then 17, although I do think it’s rising. Regardless, it’s even colder in the facility we’re working on and in, and I’d already spent a couple hours outside on the windy and overcast tarmac in my shirtsleeves, so I came out to the vehicle to run the heater for a bit. I didn’t exactly plan for sweater weather when I packed my kit for this trip, but there you are, or rather, here I am, freezing my proverbial nads off on a fine desert afternoon.

Well, not really fine. The thunder woke me up at 0300 or so, and rain was still falling when I first stuck my head out the door around 0600. Our planned very early start was delayed and the rain had stopped by 0700, so I left the raincoat on a chair, shrugged off the leather coat I was saving for my December arrival in the Middle West, and headed to work.

There was only one general at our inbrief, and only a brigadier at that. I was sorely disappointed, but only sort of. He had fabulous snacks – bowls of dates dipped in dhibs, small platters of pastries, assorted nuts, bottled water, and the tea boy brought small cups of some piping hot ginger-clove tea. Steve and I made sure to try each of the varieties of tiny pastries so that we could circle back on the best ones – scientific methodologists to the end.

At a later meeting with one of the contractors working here, I only got a cup of weak, sweet coffee, but no snacks. Most of the other scheduled meetings have had tea served, sometimes strong and black, sometime strong and a little sweet, but always really hot. The best beverage so far was some ginger and herb infusion that followed the first round of tea. I couldn’t tell you where or when at this point. There’s been a lot of meetings, and an awful lot of tea.

The best snacks, though, were at the date factory.

We had a relatively slack day on Saturday, manufactured by our decision to stay at Al Qassim for the weekend instead of driving back to Riyadh. Either way, we would have to head to our current site eventually, so sticking around meant less driving overall, and there’s still a lot of driving remaining. We really didn’t mind the two hours down to Al Koht, where we called Mr.Dilham, who sent his driver to escort us from the giant tea pot at the interchange to his facilities.

The area was unlike any part of Saudi I had seen up until then. We dropped through a steep cut in a high mesa to town, and then followed a fertile valley upstream, through palm farm after palm farm, until we arrived at a large collection of structures backed up against a shear wall of sedimentary rock. This was the signature facility of the Al Fakhra Date Company, although I had only known them through one of their retail outlets, this one in Abu Dhabi, called Bateel. It became evident that it was one in the same once we sat down in their well appointed conference room and I recognized the stuffed dates we were served as those I had found in their shop last year sometime.

We had dates stuffed with orange, dates stuffed with walnuts, date cookies, and some type of sparkling faux wine with some type of date based fortification. And tea, and coffee, and water. It was only after we had sat for most of an hour snacking, watching the corporate video, and chatting with our host did we finally start the plant tour. We walked through the receiving and sorting warehouses, to the huge refrigerated storage building, then to the factory floor, where the dates were sorted, cleaned, and sorted again prior to packaging and further processing. Some of the premium dates went to be stuffed. Many of the less than premium rejects went to the dhibs process, where something akin to honey was pressed out of them.

Then it was back to the conference room for more tea and more talk. Soon enough, we toured their offices and then headed to a rooftop for a small snack of fried chicken, eggrolls and hummus, then back to the conference room for one more round of talk, another round of tea, and presentation of a couple of kilos of dates to each of the eight of us as we made our extended goodbyes. Out hosts for the rest of this tour are going to have to step it up a notch.

Throughout the outing, the plant manager graciously answered all of our questions about productivity and processes, but what he really wanted to talk about was how well he was managing his staff. He painted himself as their benevolent father. Calm but firm. Kind and disciplined. Eager to teach them about how to behave in a modern business, and how to behave in a western restaurant – sitting in chairs, using forks – that sort of thing. Feed them cake, show the love, but never forget the iron fist of leadership. Be vague about assignments, yet micromanage.

Honestly, it made me a little dizzy. Still, it was a plant tour, so I’ll claim a couple of hours of continuing education credits for my next license renewal.

We could have stayed longer, and would have probably been invited to dinner, but dark was fast approaching and we wanted to get back to Al Qassim in daylight. It was raining lightly as we got in our vehicles and worked our way towards the highway. There are plenty of dangerous road conditions here. Driving after dark is definitely one of them, but light rain might be the worst. The roads here are mostly asphalt, and they’re built well, so they last a long while. The trouble with road longevity is that the pavement abrasiveness tends to decrease over time, so the roads get slick. Add a layer of motor oil and heavy dust and they get more slick. Now add a little rain and traction becomes seriously compromised.

As I pointed the Excursion down the on ramp, there was a jack-knifed semi on the mainline just before the merge, and cars sliding into the median and shoulders from both sides. We crept with the trucks down a long steep hill at about 40 kph, while the opposing traffic was jammed solid as they inched uphill. Of course, the wipers sucked and we ran out of fluid, but we did make it back at dusk, just in time to head out for more shwarma.
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Poppe Wanted a Turkish Coffee.

Poppe wanted a Turkish coffee, so we walked to the Bon Café drive through on the way back from lunch. It’s open 24/7/365, except for prayer time five times a day. Even now, I’m not sure what to think of my cappuccino, as the thought of a Turkish coffee so close to Turkey had me wary. It was hotter than blazes, thick, and immensely powerful. I probably won’t need another dose until tomorrow. And silt. Lots and lots of silt.

Fortunately, it only cost me 10 Riyals – cheap anywhere for a froo froo coffee. On the whole, this seems the right cost. I bought lunch for four of us for 65 Riyals, about 17 bucks, and we were stuffed – hence, the need for strong coffee. It’s been worse, costwise. The lunch buffet at the Radisson in Riyadh was 208 Riyals (you do the math). Expensive, but the lamb was mighty tasty.



Riyadh was another huge middle eastern capital city. Not quite as chrome and glass as Abu Dhabi or Dubai, but still expansive, crowded, and dusty. Traffic was horrible. Not as crowded as Cairo, but the drivers are worse and they tend to drive large American cars and SUVs. No shit, I think the most popular car here is the Crown Victoria, followed closely by the Grand Marquis. It’s like a step into the past, except that they all look to be of fairly recent vintage. Of course, if could be that the arid desert climate keeps them pristine, but if that was the case, we should be seeing more thirty year old Tatas.

[Actually, I have no clue if Indian cars were ever imported into “The Kingdom”, or if it was even an automobile manufactory thirty years ago, it’s just that women are very rarely on the street, and those that are are very well hidden – so it’s just Freudian.]

I eventually choked down the coffee, but fluidization is paramount here, so I’m now enjoying (if that’s the word) a Green Apple Flavored Budweiser Non Alcoholic Malt Beverage. Perhaps one day, centuries from now, real beer will be available here, but I’m not counting on any change very soon. The cultural restrictions here are too deeply ingrained. Meanwhile, the GAFBNAMB isn’t horrible, probably better than the Tang they serve for breakfast, so I’ll likely have another. There are small shops scattered generously around the hotel, so a new supply of beverages is easy to obtain, along with some tasty local dates and, as has become the norm on these excursions, ice cream after dinner.

The ice cream selection isn’t nearly as good as in Japan, but ice cream is, usually, ice cream. I say “usually” because Jim and I stopped at a small shop in Riyadh while walking around last week and what they scooped and served to us looked like the real deal, but must have had something extra to prevent melting. Perhaps it was latex, I can’t be sure, but it was sort of rubbery, and I broke the little spoon.
With the free time we have today, a group of us will head south from Al Qassim to Al Koht, where we are scheduled to tour a date plantation and factory, and perhaps check out a heritage village. It’s sure to beat spending another day in a crowded conference room. Besides, we leave Al Qassim tomorrow for points north, and I’ll probably never have another chance to see the sites of this district.

This tour started in Riyadh, the seat of government and, for my purposes, the seat of the Ministry of Defense and its assorted acronymic agencies. Over the next few weeks, we’ll visit four more sites and do our thing. I’m not entirely sure how the Saudi Land Forces are organized, but our meetings thus far have been a little top heavy, with three generals attending the first and two more generals attending the last. Fortunately, as aviators, they all speak pretty good English, so it’s easier to get various points across. “No problem” is a common phrase, but I think that’s just them trying to sound accommodating – some things are a real bono fide and actual problem, which is why they hired us.

But we solve problems like these all the time, so logistics have been the biggest problem. There are twelve of us on this traveling squad, so our ability to modify plans on the fly is severely curtailed. It also means a three vehicle convoy (we’re driving borrowed USG Expeditions) and an hour to check in and out of each hotel, which means slow going most of the time. No problem. After the second week, the bulk of the group will head home, and we should be down to a more manageably sized contingent.

Word of advice – avoid the restaurant at the Al Qassim Ramada. There is a line of schwarma shops just down the street who do a fine job. Visit them instead.

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