Laggard

It must be the ninth of April. Hard to be sure, though, with the jet lag following a couple of days of travel. Add to the confusion is the fact that Afghanistan has a time zone a half hour offset from the bulk of the world. Makes one think, though – since every place has a local noon, we could really have an infinite number of time zones, which might make watching your favorite shows on Fox more confusing, but at least lunch would always be in the middle of the day.



Such are the thoughts of one devoid of sleep. The flight over the pond was lightly attended, so I did get to spread out over three adjacent seats on the triple seven, but Boeing has placed a metal lump on the bottom of their armrests that lands in the small of your back when curled up, so the sleep you do get is only worth about forty percent of the time spent asleep. Look into that, John.

Once ‘cross the pond, we spent the evening at some al fresco Irish Place a little inland in Dubai, then retired to our totally fabulous suites at the Crowne Plaza. I swear, it was almost as big as our first house, and I didn’t have to rewire it, either.

Then, a ratty old jetliner for the 90 minute hop to beautiful Kandahar Air Field, KAF, which is very likely very close to beautiful Kandahar itself, but I never saw it from the middle of the plane and while concentrating on my proverbial cookies. From around 20,000 feet, it felt like the pilot was standing on the brakes while simultaneously dropping from the sky. Damn cool.

Our ride didn’t show, though, so another of us and I used what resources we could scrounge to try to track him down. Ultimately, we failed. Fortunately, yet another of our storied crew had better success, and we found ourselves in the client offices and ready to start the process, or not, because we still needed housing, and a map to the DFAC, and additional badging. That would come, but it would take the rest of the day.

By 2000, we had settled into our 200 man tent south of everything and downwind of what the base civil engineers call the “poop pond”. Now, I may have trained as a Civil Engineer, but I didn’t take a lot of Sanitary classes in school. What I think “poop pond” actually means, is a pond full of poop. At least, that’s what it smells like when the wind is blowing towards your tent. Today, though, we got new accommodations, four man rooms with a bathroom down the hall. Luxury, for the KAF, and we’re damned lucky to have it.

Now, if only our connectivity were better.