Posts
After a few hundred thousand miles, I thought that I had this International travel thing figured out. Sure, there’s not much you can do about a lost bag, except wait for it to be found. [To mitigate the potential loss, though, it’s a good idea to split stuff between your checked bag and carry on, just in case.] The effect of missed, cancelled, or incredibly delayed flights can also be eased through the use of a really good travel agent, that the Company has so, while inconvenient, there are logistics workarounds. I carry plenty of reading material and plenty of meds, and even got a dual band world phone. This, more, and armed with the “Be Prepared” motto I found in the Boy Scouts generally prepares me for whatever’s going to go wrong.
But not always.
We got off of the plane in Doha with no incident and little fanfare. There are just two of us, so it was an easy task to round up the team. The flight was fine, the bags were delivered. All we needed to leave the airport was a rental car (an unsatisfying Dodge Avenger, with huge blind spots).
The rental car business is somewhat smaller in the Middle East than in the States. There’s not the massive parking lot dedicated to each agency that you might be used to. At Doha, the agent is in a countered cubicle adjacent to the countered cubicles of each of the other 20 rental car agencies. Once the documentation is complete, another nondescript (except to his mother, of course) appears to walk us out to our vehicle, perhaps half a kilometer away in a small lot lost within the mass of public parking lots. Even in an Englishcentric environment, I think it would be hard to describe how to find the place. Of course, using well designed signage would be cheating, but would also relieve Mr. Nondescript of his job.
Anyway, we trudged along behind him through the 100^ heat of the late evening. At the car, he unlocked and started it, so that the air conditioning would warm up and cool down the interior before our drive to the hotel. In the mean time, we did the visual inspection and locked our bags in the trunk. Final papers in order, I reached for the front door, only to find it locked, car running, bags sealed in the trunk, air conditioner blasting.
“Hmmm”, I said, actually saying, “Hmmm.”
About 40 minutes later, a second set of keys appeared, which was about 38 minutes after we had exhausted the entire English repertoire of Mr. Nondescript. The lesson – take the keys and keep them.
A couple of days later we dropped off the car, simply leaving it in the public lot and taking the ticket back to a small shack and letting the attendants know about where we had left it. The inside of the shack was lined with very small carrels for the representatives of each of the various car agencies. As I dealt with my business, I watched the screen of the adjacent agent, who was systematically paging through great collections of Facebook images, selecting the pretty girls and making friend requests of them, at a rate of close to 10 per minute. He was a friend making machine, and I wish him all the best.
On the other hand,… Zach and I are being accompanied by up to five government minders, all bureaucrats from the United States who work to make sure that we don’t spend money from the cyan pot, when this money is only to be spent from the aquamarine pot. They are masters of tiny little regulations. It came as some surprise, then, when the one I really wasn’t getting along with tried to enter the UAE with his diplomatic passport, when only the citizen passport is accepted, unless he had a letter from the State Deportment countersigned by the local embassy, in quadruplicate.
Bottom line, he wasn’t allowed past the immigration desk and got deported within hours. So, with the scheduled early departure of one of the others, we two are down to just three minders, but for just two more days.
Read More......
2011-05-28
2011-05-23
Embrace the Suck
This is my third day in country, which means I should be over the jet lag, yet I’m still shagged beyond belief. Perhaps it’s the sapping and oppressive heat during the day, perhaps the non-stop schedule of meetings and field reconnaissance, perhaps the fact that I was typing meeting minutes into the wee hours, only to get up with the sun to start it all over again. Or perhaps a blend of everything.
Typically, I’d bring three or four others with me on a trip like this, allowing them to pick up the slack as I simply put them in the right places with the right people and let nature take its course. This trip, there was so little lead time, and such restrictive staff availability, that I barely secured a graphics person, who dramatically overslept this morning, which gives me some time to pound out this missive.
Meanwhile, there are 20 projects to scope on three desert air bases over about ten days, and I’m exhausted.
Qatar is our first stop. As with the other two, it’s an unnatural monarchy developed by the west after the War to End All Wars (I’d think a “natural” monarchy would have involve someone, at some time, beating the shit out of any and all comers, thereby earning the title, which could be handed down for generations (at least, that’s how Conan did it)). Qatar hasn’t been caught up in the recent Arab uprisings, probably because most Qataris are satisfied with their lot in life – they typically don’t labor, have positions of influence, and get a healthy stipend from the oil revenues. The working class, however disenfranchised they may feel, are almost all foreign labor, who would quickly lose their jobs and be deported if they caused any trouble.
I’m in that second class, despite the swank hotel and trappings.
If you want to know what Qatar looks like, stand six inches from a tan wall and stare at it. Qatar is tan and sand and rocks. There’s development in the cities, of course, but the countryside is barren, with barely any grazeable scrub. On site, there is half a meter of this tan/sand/rock mix, and then just tan rock until the center of the earth, or perhaps just until you hit the natural gas deposits. The rock is immutably hard and unexcavatable. After the overburden is stripped away, large pneumatic breakers are brought in to fracture the hard stuff, which needs further processing before it could be used as backfill. Bottom line, any earthworks or trenching will be expensive, sapping dollars that could go into facilities.
Meanwhile, it’s going to be 109^ today.
Embrace the suck.
Read More......
Typically, I’d bring three or four others with me on a trip like this, allowing them to pick up the slack as I simply put them in the right places with the right people and let nature take its course. This trip, there was so little lead time, and such restrictive staff availability, that I barely secured a graphics person, who dramatically overslept this morning, which gives me some time to pound out this missive.
Meanwhile, there are 20 projects to scope on three desert air bases over about ten days, and I’m exhausted.
Qatar is our first stop. As with the other two, it’s an unnatural monarchy developed by the west after the War to End All Wars (I’d think a “natural” monarchy would have involve someone, at some time, beating the shit out of any and all comers, thereby earning the title, which could be handed down for generations (at least, that’s how Conan did it)). Qatar hasn’t been caught up in the recent Arab uprisings, probably because most Qataris are satisfied with their lot in life – they typically don’t labor, have positions of influence, and get a healthy stipend from the oil revenues. The working class, however disenfranchised they may feel, are almost all foreign labor, who would quickly lose their jobs and be deported if they caused any trouble.
I’m in that second class, despite the swank hotel and trappings.
If you want to know what Qatar looks like, stand six inches from a tan wall and stare at it. Qatar is tan and sand and rocks. There’s development in the cities, of course, but the countryside is barren, with barely any grazeable scrub. On site, there is half a meter of this tan/sand/rock mix, and then just tan rock until the center of the earth, or perhaps just until you hit the natural gas deposits. The rock is immutably hard and unexcavatable. After the overburden is stripped away, large pneumatic breakers are brought in to fracture the hard stuff, which needs further processing before it could be used as backfill. Bottom line, any earthworks or trenching will be expensive, sapping dollars that could go into facilities.
Meanwhile, it’s going to be 109^ today.
Embrace the suck.
Read More......
2010-08-28
Rant
I wish I could complain about the massive amounts of work I needed to get accomplished this week. I wish I could complain about the hum drum, day to day monotony of performing too similar tasks for days on end. I wish I could complain about an overly needy client confronting us hourly with nonsensical fire drills.
I got none of that. Wishes and fishes, you know. Strange that I’d waste mine on complaining.
In another light, I’d wish there was no official United State military presence in Afghanland (call it “Afghan-bland” in this, the Week of the Bored. More refined, I’d wish that all of our troops and equipment were returned to native (and territorial) soils. Perhaps we could return once we’ve figured out how to resolve our global foreign policy fuck-ups without mighty displays of brute force. Fat chance.
The unintended consequences of bringing all of our troops home would be interesting, no doubt. Imagine if you will, a sudden influx of half a million very well trained fighting men and women, each oathsworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Perhaps the resistance would get organized.
On the other hand, they could be a half million inappropriately trained fighting men and women suddenly dumped into the surging unemployment rolls of the double dip. And it’s not just the soldiers, sailors, and Marines, but the hundreds of thousands of contractors who will be stateside again without the benefit of a cush job that pays triple wages. Beyond that are the hundreds of communities that manufacture the weapons of war, and the thousands of communities that provide support for the hundreds of communities that manufacture the weapons of war. And don’t forget the tens of thousands of bureaucrats that “manage” the whole mess or the small town international engineering firms that provide planning and design services in support of the effort. We’d all be neck deep in shit.
True fact - the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex squanders over eighteen gazillion dollars annually on themselves and their egos with the only real benefit of having more of the People on the dole.
So there’s my first complaint/wish – regardless of the consequences, everybody comes home. From Afghanistan and Iraq, from the Middle East and other Asian regions, and from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. We defund it all. The eighteen gazillion dollars in annual savings would go a long way to closing the federal deficit. Then, when Germany, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Israel have to start paying to defend themselves, the balances of trade might shift a bit in our favor, giving the half million highly trainable fighting men and women some of those sweet manufacturing jobs that everyone keep raving about.
Like I said before, fat chance, but this is a wish, remember?
Perhaps we could take everyone who’s already on the dole in America and send them here to do the tens of thousands of jobs that are currently being performed by local labor or by the Eastern European labor imported by Fluor as a part of their multi-Billion dollar support contract? Sure beats them sitting on their asses, watching Peoples Court and pretending to look for a non-existent job.
For the most part, I’ll be happy just getting on the plane tomorrow. This week has been dismal, but only because we’re so good. You see, this mission to Bagram involved a small team and a 75% plan set, which we would review with the client, then take CONUS to tweak for the final submittal. As it turned out, there were close to zero comments. As such, the meetings were brief. So brief that the pre- and post-meeting pleasantries took more time than the unpleasantries of project discussion.
Anyway, that was ancient history, days ago. In the mean time, we’ve visited a dozen and a half small project sites, mostly for something to do, as there’s little more information that we can glean in the field than what we had when we dropped out of the sky on Sunday. And drop out of the sky we did, which is a phrase that in this case means, “Who the hell are you and where do you expect to sleep?” Relax, already, Miss Should Have Been Trained For This. We’ll take our normal suite.
We’ll take the vehicle you offer, as well, even though we haven’t passed a base driving test (recently) and have no real destination. Ah, but it’s something to use to have something to do, and sure beats walking around the 10 mile perimeter on our sightseeing excursions.
This was my third trip to and through Bagram, so there aren’t too many holes I haven’t stuck my nose into. One of our crew, though, was on his first visit here, so we made sure to take him to the Haji Mart and the PX, and to the Green Bean for froo froo coffee beverages, and ultimately to all six DFAC’s, where the food doesn’t change too much, but the scenery and people are slightly varied. One thing I won’t do again is get an omelet at the north grill line at the main DFAC, as the cook appears to have just stepped from the pages of Stereotypic Lunch Lady Quarterly and frankly, I’m a little frightened. I fully expected ashes from her cigar to spice my breakfast.
Tonight we’re going to check out one of the local bands (our local project manager is their mouth harpist), then take another long stroll down Disney Road back to the hooch, where I’ll watch the clock and wish for more thrills and adventure the next time around.
And there’s sure to be a next time, as peace has yet to be declared, and I’m still a few years from retirement.
Lastly, happy anniversary, Sweetheart. I’ll be home soon.
Read More......
I got none of that. Wishes and fishes, you know. Strange that I’d waste mine on complaining.
In another light, I’d wish there was no official United State military presence in Afghanland (call it “Afghan-bland” in this, the Week of the Bored. More refined, I’d wish that all of our troops and equipment were returned to native (and territorial) soils. Perhaps we could return once we’ve figured out how to resolve our global foreign policy fuck-ups without mighty displays of brute force. Fat chance.
The unintended consequences of bringing all of our troops home would be interesting, no doubt. Imagine if you will, a sudden influx of half a million very well trained fighting men and women, each oathsworn to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Perhaps the resistance would get organized.
On the other hand, they could be a half million inappropriately trained fighting men and women suddenly dumped into the surging unemployment rolls of the double dip. And it’s not just the soldiers, sailors, and Marines, but the hundreds of thousands of contractors who will be stateside again without the benefit of a cush job that pays triple wages. Beyond that are the hundreds of communities that manufacture the weapons of war, and the thousands of communities that provide support for the hundreds of communities that manufacture the weapons of war. And don’t forget the tens of thousands of bureaucrats that “manage” the whole mess or the small town international engineering firms that provide planning and design services in support of the effort. We’d all be neck deep in shit.
True fact - the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex squanders over eighteen gazillion dollars annually on themselves and their egos with the only real benefit of having more of the People on the dole.
So there’s my first complaint/wish – regardless of the consequences, everybody comes home. From Afghanistan and Iraq, from the Middle East and other Asian regions, and from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. We defund it all. The eighteen gazillion dollars in annual savings would go a long way to closing the federal deficit. Then, when Germany, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia and Israel have to start paying to defend themselves, the balances of trade might shift a bit in our favor, giving the half million highly trainable fighting men and women some of those sweet manufacturing jobs that everyone keep raving about.
Like I said before, fat chance, but this is a wish, remember?
Perhaps we could take everyone who’s already on the dole in America and send them here to do the tens of thousands of jobs that are currently being performed by local labor or by the Eastern European labor imported by Fluor as a part of their multi-Billion dollar support contract? Sure beats them sitting on their asses, watching Peoples Court and pretending to look for a non-existent job.
For the most part, I’ll be happy just getting on the plane tomorrow. This week has been dismal, but only because we’re so good. You see, this mission to Bagram involved a small team and a 75% plan set, which we would review with the client, then take CONUS to tweak for the final submittal. As it turned out, there were close to zero comments. As such, the meetings were brief. So brief that the pre- and post-meeting pleasantries took more time than the unpleasantries of project discussion.
Anyway, that was ancient history, days ago. In the mean time, we’ve visited a dozen and a half small project sites, mostly for something to do, as there’s little more information that we can glean in the field than what we had when we dropped out of the sky on Sunday. And drop out of the sky we did, which is a phrase that in this case means, “Who the hell are you and where do you expect to sleep?” Relax, already, Miss Should Have Been Trained For This. We’ll take our normal suite.
We’ll take the vehicle you offer, as well, even though we haven’t passed a base driving test (recently) and have no real destination. Ah, but it’s something to use to have something to do, and sure beats walking around the 10 mile perimeter on our sightseeing excursions.
This was my third trip to and through Bagram, so there aren’t too many holes I haven’t stuck my nose into. One of our crew, though, was on his first visit here, so we made sure to take him to the Haji Mart and the PX, and to the Green Bean for froo froo coffee beverages, and ultimately to all six DFAC’s, where the food doesn’t change too much, but the scenery and people are slightly varied. One thing I won’t do again is get an omelet at the north grill line at the main DFAC, as the cook appears to have just stepped from the pages of Stereotypic Lunch Lady Quarterly and frankly, I’m a little frightened. I fully expected ashes from her cigar to spice my breakfast.
Tonight we’re going to check out one of the local bands (our local project manager is their mouth harpist), then take another long stroll down Disney Road back to the hooch, where I’ll watch the clock and wish for more thrills and adventure the next time around.
And there’s sure to be a next time, as peace has yet to be declared, and I’m still a few years from retirement.
Lastly, happy anniversary, Sweetheart. I’ll be home soon.
Read More......
2010-08-09
Tons and Bergs
Over the past three summers, I’ve spent more time in airplanes and airports than on the saddle of my motorcycle, flying close to 200,000 miles and almost always to places hotter, grittier and more uncomfortable than the Oklahoma Panhandle in mid-August. This doesn’t leave time for Great Rides. In fact, I rarely have the opportunity to get lost going home from work. With the time I thought I’d have this season, I had hoped to try a local scavenger hunt of sorts, something I could schedule at a moment’s notice, and that wouldn’t take me too far afield so that I could accomplish the task as day rides, as opposed to getting lost for a week.
Enter the Great Lakes Motorcycle Club’s Titanic Grand Tour. Ultimately, it’s an excuse to get out and ride to places that you’ve never been to before, cleverly disguised as a contest to collect “Welcome to,…” signs at cities and towns ending in “Ton” or the various spellings of “Berg”. The big winner gets a gift card, the value of which won’t even come close to covering the fuel required to chase down these locations, let alone the set of tires worn down to nothing but chicken strips and belts in the attempt.
In January, when the snow is still on the ground, biker’s thoughts turn to spring, and start plotting how best to waste fuel and burn up tires. So, before my international travel schedule got in the way, I did some research and plotted all of the tons and bergs within about 350 miles of home. Then I arranged these into ten different day rides, 550 to 820 miles in length, each containing 8 to 21 locations. Since the wife was working again, and I had alternate Fridays flexed, I figured I could pick up about 130 locations and 7,000 miles on my days off. It’s just a guess, mind you, but I was guessing that a minimum of 150 locations would be required to win this contest. I needed just 25 to qualify for the t-shirt.
Fast forward to August, I had seen more and more of the Sandbox, but achieved little more than 2,000 miles on the summer. I had swapped the FJR for a GSA, but was gone too much to get to know it. Worse yet, I hadn’t even qualified for the t-shirt. With more travel coming up, I knew my season was winding down, so I modified one of my remaining eight routes to pick up some adjacent sites from another route and reloaded the GPS. If all went as planned, I’d pick up 23 Tons and 2 Bergs in a 670 mile day and still be home in time for supper.
If all went as planned. Famous 455th to 459th words.
Perhaps I should have set an alarm, but I ended up getting out of the house about an hour later than originally scheduled. Not a mile from the house, one of the GPS’s started routing me home again. Eventually I figured out that this was because my inbound and outbound routes were coincident for the first and last three miles, and Ms. Garmin simply assumed that I had intentionally intercepted my inbound leg, asking me to make a U-turn as soon as possible and complete the route. It would not be the last time she made this request.
Once we had resolved our little misunderstanding, she and I became much more cooperative, finding Afton with no problem, entering on a twisty rural/residential roadway from the north. However, minor roads rarely have the Welcome To sign, so I had to head out of town on some county pavement and scan behind me for the plaque. Once sighted, a quick U-turn (and another request to make a U-turn as soon as possible), stop on the shoulder, neutral, kickstand, dismount, gloves, camera, rally flag over the tank, snap snap, stow camera and rally flag, gloves, remount, select first gear, mirror check, U-turn, and back on the road. The entire process takes about two minutes. The two minutes, of course, begins once I found the sign.
Data collected and I was off to Weston, enjoying what for the most part was a nice early morning. Not too cool and well overcast so as to keep the rising sun out of my eastward facing helmet. I found Weston right where I was supposed to, except I never found a Weston sign. Not the green DOT sign, not a “Weston, home of the Underachievers” sign, not even a post office (those being the three accepted signs). I found the bar. I could have registered my turkey there, but I couldn’t claim it as a Ton. I moved on to Irvington, then rode the very enjoyable length of Wisconsin 88, crossed the Mississippi at Winona, and recorded Stockton and Lewiston.
From there, I should have headed a couple miles south and got on eastbound I-90, but the ramp was closed, and I ignored the advice of the flagman, heading further south, past the “road closed 10 miles ahead” sign and ten miles down CR-25 to where the road was closed, where I turned around and flogged back the ten miles, then headed west and south until I could find an open road and another bridge. About this time, the rain had caught up with me, and I hightailed it to Houston, Chaseburg, and Newton, outrunning the wet.
Midmorning now, and I was in full swing. The day was fine, the bike was running well, I had established my rhythm in my bonus hunt, and Ms. Garmin and I had our relationship back on track. I was thoroughly into the moment and enjoying every minute of it. The forest, rolling hills and twisting roadways of the northern reaches of the Driftless area in full summer are spectacular, especially with the sights and smells of active agriculture permeating my noggin. As well, the variety of dead things on the road remind me that I’m not in the big city any more.
Dead deer are ubiquitous, city or country. Dead opossums, pheasants, raccoons are mostly country dead things. The eight dead chickens were a surprise, as was the beaver. I don’t think I’d ever seen a dead beaver before, except as a display, or as a hat. One sparrow I killed myself, or it killed itself as it flew into my chest. Sad, but better a small bird than a cinder block.
It wasn’t all dead things. It never is. On this day, I saw a couple variety of hawk, either an adult Golden or juvenile Bald Eagle, scores and scores of sandhill cranes (I’m sure they weren’t whooping, despite my earplugs), and I braked hard for a couple of small deer (go figure). As well, there were the usual farm animals; cows, ducks, horses, Amish. Lots and lots of Amish doing their Amishness; driving wagons, using draft horses to make hay, working in the barnyard, looking plain, smiling and waving – always smiling and waving. Driving their buggies, smiling and waving. Weeding the garden, smiling and waving. Using a push mower around the farmhouse, smiling and waving. They look so happy. Makes me want to trade my cube for a non-electric, non-plumbed house in the country. Well, maybe I’d keep the plumbing, but I’d love all the smiling and waving. I’m sure they’ll be fine come the Dark Times.
One definite advantage to that lifestyle is that Road Closed signs don’t seem to apply because, on my third attempt to find a way into Kingston, I was again thwarted by the road under construction, but out of the dust trots a happy horse, pulling a sulky of sorts, operated by a smiling and waving, plain clothed, Lincoln-beard wearing believer. Personally, I didn’t believe the road was open, so I turned around, only to be greeted by another request to make a U-turn as soon as possible, and found an even longer way around.
At Clifton, I blew passed the sign before I knew it was there, gave a steady squeeze to the binders and made a U-turn. I made another U-turn at the sign and was immediately greeted by a barking farm dog who, I believe, believed that the farm, the road, the sign, and all that he surveyed were his to protect. Fine, the last thing I need is another dog bite, so I headed to the other side of town, where I made another U-turn, not for the Clifton sign but for the lack of it. Next I tried the third side of town to the same effect, and another U-turn, and back to the start and yet another U-turn. By this time, the dog had settled in on the farm’s driveway, and I figured I’d have about eight seconds to either swing a leg and skedaddle, or,… or,… Fortunately, the mailman cometh, and beast was distracted.
Outside of Portage, I found myself waiting to pass a couple of Lifestyle Riders with their pillions, all four unjacketed and unhelmeted. Then came the rains. The hard steady rains. The big raindrops at seventy miles an hour sharply intersecting exposed skin rains. They stopped on the shoulder pretty quickly, presumably for some raingear, but I could tell that they were already soaked through. I rode on, happy, dry and warm.
Ultimately, the detours and missing signs added about 130 miles to my day, arriving home well after dark but before the severe weather. Discounting the unsigned towns, the f-ed up and ignored detours, and the flyspecks that my mapping software thought were towns but weren’t, I collected all but three of my target towns. Combined with the few I had previously, I should qualify for the t-shirt, but not nearly to the extent that I had hoped for at the start of the season.
I’d like to think that I’ve got five more weeks to collect more Tons and Bergs, but I’ll be back to the Stans in a week and a half, and that effectively ends my portion of the contest. On the plus side, the bulk of my day was spent on lettered routes which, in southwest Wisconsin, mean twisty well signed two-laners, mostly untraveled and begging to be flogged.
Summers aren’t nearly long enough.
Read More......
Enter the Great Lakes Motorcycle Club’s Titanic Grand Tour. Ultimately, it’s an excuse to get out and ride to places that you’ve never been to before, cleverly disguised as a contest to collect “Welcome to,…” signs at cities and towns ending in “Ton” or the various spellings of “Berg”. The big winner gets a gift card, the value of which won’t even come close to covering the fuel required to chase down these locations, let alone the set of tires worn down to nothing but chicken strips and belts in the attempt.
In January, when the snow is still on the ground, biker’s thoughts turn to spring, and start plotting how best to waste fuel and burn up tires. So, before my international travel schedule got in the way, I did some research and plotted all of the tons and bergs within about 350 miles of home. Then I arranged these into ten different day rides, 550 to 820 miles in length, each containing 8 to 21 locations. Since the wife was working again, and I had alternate Fridays flexed, I figured I could pick up about 130 locations and 7,000 miles on my days off. It’s just a guess, mind you, but I was guessing that a minimum of 150 locations would be required to win this contest. I needed just 25 to qualify for the t-shirt.
Fast forward to August, I had seen more and more of the Sandbox, but achieved little more than 2,000 miles on the summer. I had swapped the FJR for a GSA, but was gone too much to get to know it. Worse yet, I hadn’t even qualified for the t-shirt. With more travel coming up, I knew my season was winding down, so I modified one of my remaining eight routes to pick up some adjacent sites from another route and reloaded the GPS. If all went as planned, I’d pick up 23 Tons and 2 Bergs in a 670 mile day and still be home in time for supper.
If all went as planned. Famous 455th to 459th words.
Perhaps I should have set an alarm, but I ended up getting out of the house about an hour later than originally scheduled. Not a mile from the house, one of the GPS’s started routing me home again. Eventually I figured out that this was because my inbound and outbound routes were coincident for the first and last three miles, and Ms. Garmin simply assumed that I had intentionally intercepted my inbound leg, asking me to make a U-turn as soon as possible and complete the route. It would not be the last time she made this request.
Once we had resolved our little misunderstanding, she and I became much more cooperative, finding Afton with no problem, entering on a twisty rural/residential roadway from the north. However, minor roads rarely have the Welcome To sign, so I had to head out of town on some county pavement and scan behind me for the plaque. Once sighted, a quick U-turn (and another request to make a U-turn as soon as possible), stop on the shoulder, neutral, kickstand, dismount, gloves, camera, rally flag over the tank, snap snap, stow camera and rally flag, gloves, remount, select first gear, mirror check, U-turn, and back on the road. The entire process takes about two minutes. The two minutes, of course, begins once I found the sign.
Data collected and I was off to Weston, enjoying what for the most part was a nice early morning. Not too cool and well overcast so as to keep the rising sun out of my eastward facing helmet. I found Weston right where I was supposed to, except I never found a Weston sign. Not the green DOT sign, not a “Weston, home of the Underachievers” sign, not even a post office (those being the three accepted signs). I found the bar. I could have registered my turkey there, but I couldn’t claim it as a Ton. I moved on to Irvington, then rode the very enjoyable length of Wisconsin 88, crossed the Mississippi at Winona, and recorded Stockton and Lewiston.
From there, I should have headed a couple miles south and got on eastbound I-90, but the ramp was closed, and I ignored the advice of the flagman, heading further south, past the “road closed 10 miles ahead” sign and ten miles down CR-25 to where the road was closed, where I turned around and flogged back the ten miles, then headed west and south until I could find an open road and another bridge. About this time, the rain had caught up with me, and I hightailed it to Houston, Chaseburg, and Newton, outrunning the wet.
Midmorning now, and I was in full swing. The day was fine, the bike was running well, I had established my rhythm in my bonus hunt, and Ms. Garmin and I had our relationship back on track. I was thoroughly into the moment and enjoying every minute of it. The forest, rolling hills and twisting roadways of the northern reaches of the Driftless area in full summer are spectacular, especially with the sights and smells of active agriculture permeating my noggin. As well, the variety of dead things on the road remind me that I’m not in the big city any more.
Dead deer are ubiquitous, city or country. Dead opossums, pheasants, raccoons are mostly country dead things. The eight dead chickens were a surprise, as was the beaver. I don’t think I’d ever seen a dead beaver before, except as a display, or as a hat. One sparrow I killed myself, or it killed itself as it flew into my chest. Sad, but better a small bird than a cinder block.
It wasn’t all dead things. It never is. On this day, I saw a couple variety of hawk, either an adult Golden or juvenile Bald Eagle, scores and scores of sandhill cranes (I’m sure they weren’t whooping, despite my earplugs), and I braked hard for a couple of small deer (go figure). As well, there were the usual farm animals; cows, ducks, horses, Amish. Lots and lots of Amish doing their Amishness; driving wagons, using draft horses to make hay, working in the barnyard, looking plain, smiling and waving – always smiling and waving. Driving their buggies, smiling and waving. Weeding the garden, smiling and waving. Using a push mower around the farmhouse, smiling and waving. They look so happy. Makes me want to trade my cube for a non-electric, non-plumbed house in the country. Well, maybe I’d keep the plumbing, but I’d love all the smiling and waving. I’m sure they’ll be fine come the Dark Times.
One definite advantage to that lifestyle is that Road Closed signs don’t seem to apply because, on my third attempt to find a way into Kingston, I was again thwarted by the road under construction, but out of the dust trots a happy horse, pulling a sulky of sorts, operated by a smiling and waving, plain clothed, Lincoln-beard wearing believer. Personally, I didn’t believe the road was open, so I turned around, only to be greeted by another request to make a U-turn as soon as possible, and found an even longer way around.
At Clifton, I blew passed the sign before I knew it was there, gave a steady squeeze to the binders and made a U-turn. I made another U-turn at the sign and was immediately greeted by a barking farm dog who, I believe, believed that the farm, the road, the sign, and all that he surveyed were his to protect. Fine, the last thing I need is another dog bite, so I headed to the other side of town, where I made another U-turn, not for the Clifton sign but for the lack of it. Next I tried the third side of town to the same effect, and another U-turn, and back to the start and yet another U-turn. By this time, the dog had settled in on the farm’s driveway, and I figured I’d have about eight seconds to either swing a leg and skedaddle, or,… or,… Fortunately, the mailman cometh, and beast was distracted.
Outside of Portage, I found myself waiting to pass a couple of Lifestyle Riders with their pillions, all four unjacketed and unhelmeted. Then came the rains. The hard steady rains. The big raindrops at seventy miles an hour sharply intersecting exposed skin rains. They stopped on the shoulder pretty quickly, presumably for some raingear, but I could tell that they were already soaked through. I rode on, happy, dry and warm.
Ultimately, the detours and missing signs added about 130 miles to my day, arriving home well after dark but before the severe weather. Discounting the unsigned towns, the f-ed up and ignored detours, and the flyspecks that my mapping software thought were towns but weren’t, I collected all but three of my target towns. Combined with the few I had previously, I should qualify for the t-shirt, but not nearly to the extent that I had hoped for at the start of the season.
I’d like to think that I’ve got five more weeks to collect more Tons and Bergs, but I’ll be back to the Stans in a week and a half, and that effectively ends my portion of the contest. On the plus side, the bulk of my day was spent on lettered routes which, in southwest Wisconsin, mean twisty well signed two-laners, mostly untraveled and begging to be flogged.
Summers aren’t nearly long enough.
Read More......
2010-07-15
Fly, boy
My current office is in an increasingly dusty/dirty construction trailer, sitting on one of many mismatched and broken chairs. The nicest looking ones seem ready to snap off at the pivot and the overall wheel radius is smaller than normal, so you take a chance in leaning back and putting your combat boots up on the desk. The second variety is too narrow except for the narrowest of asses, like taking a seat in your old elementary school. Fortunately, the arms seem to break off at will, making it a little easier to remove yourself. The third set has neither arms nor wheels, or rubber stops on the legs, so that the sound of them sliding across the tile raise such a screech that we banned them from use. Such is the nature of third world chairs, they’re pieces of crap.
Through the window is the construction of KCC Phase III, most of which is a block of grey, windowless concrete, three stories tall. Three or four hundred Turkish supervisors and Afghan workers scurry about, currently finishing up the mass concrete, assembling the pre-detonation/blast roof, and getting a start on the interior finishes. Their laydown yard is an inefficient mass of piles and stockpiles, trailers and equipment, scaffolding and assembly yards. Surprisingly, the Turks brought in a shiny new tower crane from China for the effort, which will leave country as soon as the work is complete.
In all, the contractor is using about every available open space on this end of the camp, taking care not to pile reinforcing steel on top of the mosque, inconveniently located on some prime real estate. Mosque coordination should work out for this project, but will be much more difficult when Phase IV enters the construction phase. Phase IV, my work, will double the finished floor space on this 15 acre camp, adding another 300,000 square feet.
During Phase IV, it just won’t be this end of the camp that looks like a construction site, but the need for suitable laydown space will eat up every nook and Afghan cranny. In the States, a contractor could schedule deliveries for the day he needed them, but that’s a little harder when your Russian steel gets trucked in through the stans, and your specialty parts move here through the Khyber Pass. Even if they got close, perhaps to a yard down the street, materials still need to spend a day getting through camp security, as we’d hate to have an exploding load of toilets.
It’ll be a mess, (the Phase IV work, not the exploding toilets, although the exploding toilets would also be a mess, it’s not the mess that’s the subject), but when it’s all over, we will have a huge administration center in the midst of Kabul. I’m not privy to what exactly we’ll be administering here, but I’m sure it’s critical to the war and peace effort and one that is absolutely unable to get suitably perform CONUS, where we have scores of wholly unsuitable military administration facilities.
Apparently, there’re some 1,000 persons on base. Our proposed improvements will allow for a population of 2,000 persons, with a surge population of 2,500. I can only imagine what a surge of 500 administrators looks like, probably a lot of flailing manila folders and Cat 6 cables. Sounds ugly. Even uglier if we don’t get the Green Bean erected in due course, as fru fru coffees are critical to unnecessary administration.
I never see all of the thousand we’re supposed to have today, except for some mass PT event yesterday morning when about 300 filled the courtyard. Otherwise, there are claims that the DFAC is too small, yet I’ve only stood in line once. They say the shower facilities are inadequate, yet I’ve never had to wait. They say that there’s a lack of parking, yet ten spaces are used for the basketball court.
No, my biggest complaint is that, despite being in the middle of Kabul, there’s no sight of the city, it all being hidden by T-walls and twenty-five foot sniper screening. I know Afghanistan is out there somewhere, because I saw it driving in and from the top of one of the existing buildings on our first day here, but the way this camp is configured makes me think that there is nothing besides the camp and the job to improve the camp.
Perhaps the next time, I’ll get to see more of the countryside.
The LOGCAP contractor came into the tent this morning to complete hooking up the air conditioning unit that's set idle since we arrived. I guess this means it's time to leave again. Wheels up in hours.
Read More......
Through the window is the construction of KCC Phase III, most of which is a block of grey, windowless concrete, three stories tall. Three or four hundred Turkish supervisors and Afghan workers scurry about, currently finishing up the mass concrete, assembling the pre-detonation/blast roof, and getting a start on the interior finishes. Their laydown yard is an inefficient mass of piles and stockpiles, trailers and equipment, scaffolding and assembly yards. Surprisingly, the Turks brought in a shiny new tower crane from China for the effort, which will leave country as soon as the work is complete.
In all, the contractor is using about every available open space on this end of the camp, taking care not to pile reinforcing steel on top of the mosque, inconveniently located on some prime real estate. Mosque coordination should work out for this project, but will be much more difficult when Phase IV enters the construction phase. Phase IV, my work, will double the finished floor space on this 15 acre camp, adding another 300,000 square feet.
During Phase IV, it just won’t be this end of the camp that looks like a construction site, but the need for suitable laydown space will eat up every nook and Afghan cranny. In the States, a contractor could schedule deliveries for the day he needed them, but that’s a little harder when your Russian steel gets trucked in through the stans, and your specialty parts move here through the Khyber Pass. Even if they got close, perhaps to a yard down the street, materials still need to spend a day getting through camp security, as we’d hate to have an exploding load of toilets.
It’ll be a mess, (the Phase IV work, not the exploding toilets, although the exploding toilets would also be a mess, it’s not the mess that’s the subject), but when it’s all over, we will have a huge administration center in the midst of Kabul. I’m not privy to what exactly we’ll be administering here, but I’m sure it’s critical to the war and peace effort and one that is absolutely unable to get suitably perform CONUS, where we have scores of wholly unsuitable military administration facilities.
Apparently, there’re some 1,000 persons on base. Our proposed improvements will allow for a population of 2,000 persons, with a surge population of 2,500. I can only imagine what a surge of 500 administrators looks like, probably a lot of flailing manila folders and Cat 6 cables. Sounds ugly. Even uglier if we don’t get the Green Bean erected in due course, as fru fru coffees are critical to unnecessary administration.
I never see all of the thousand we’re supposed to have today, except for some mass PT event yesterday morning when about 300 filled the courtyard. Otherwise, there are claims that the DFAC is too small, yet I’ve only stood in line once. They say the shower facilities are inadequate, yet I’ve never had to wait. They say that there’s a lack of parking, yet ten spaces are used for the basketball court.
No, my biggest complaint is that, despite being in the middle of Kabul, there’s no sight of the city, it all being hidden by T-walls and twenty-five foot sniper screening. I know Afghanistan is out there somewhere, because I saw it driving in and from the top of one of the existing buildings on our first day here, but the way this camp is configured makes me think that there is nothing besides the camp and the job to improve the camp.
Perhaps the next time, I’ll get to see more of the countryside.
The LOGCAP contractor came into the tent this morning to complete hooking up the air conditioning unit that's set idle since we arrived. I guess this means it's time to leave again. Wheels up in hours.
Read More......
2010-07-12
My 200th post! Collect them all!
They sent me here with a new team this time, only two with prior Afghanland experience, but everybody’s worked in this section of the world before. I’ve got an electrical, two architects, and three civils, including myself, which strikes me as one civil too many. In the contract, I’m actually a “military planner”, but I’m pretty sure that only means “skilled kibitzer”. Mostly, they’ve got me assigned as team leader on this one, not quite as glorious as project manager, but I don’t have to deal with the Company accountants.
Our project manager, safely ensconced in the home office, needed someone to watch over the production team in country – to make sure they get in and out of theatre, find their billets, show up for work, bathe regularly, and don’t make nuisances of themselves. I don’t really have much of a technical role, which leaves me obligated with the task of cat herding.
Seriously, all of my team are experienced and skilled professionals. They know what’s expected of them and take the necessary steps to accomplish their work. They are self sufficient, but perhaps to a fault, which is where the cat herder comes in, to ensure that they don’t go so far off of the reservation that they can’t be recalled if need be.
Unlike cats, though, these guys don’t sleep for twenty three hours a day. Tim and I are up at 0400 to hit the gyms before the crowds. Jim’s up soon thereafter to get on line. The others stagger up and out by breakfast at 0600. We’re set up in our construction trailer office by 0800 and hard at it well into the evening, with four or five coordination meetings and group interviews each day, analyses and inspections, hypothetical discussions, theoretical and hard design, and just plain old bullshitting.
As more detailed information is needed and time allows, ones or twos will break out and pursue base personnel, make some measurements on site, or pester the operators of the various physical plants. Armed with a schedule of the day’s events and a detailed scope of work, they’re off and doing their independent thing. Actually, they’re a relatively good group, and they don’t need much from me. Like any good cat herder, I know that they’ll be in for supper.
Read More......
Our project manager, safely ensconced in the home office, needed someone to watch over the production team in country – to make sure they get in and out of theatre, find their billets, show up for work, bathe regularly, and don’t make nuisances of themselves. I don’t really have much of a technical role, which leaves me obligated with the task of cat herding.
Seriously, all of my team are experienced and skilled professionals. They know what’s expected of them and take the necessary steps to accomplish their work. They are self sufficient, but perhaps to a fault, which is where the cat herder comes in, to ensure that they don’t go so far off of the reservation that they can’t be recalled if need be.
Unlike cats, though, these guys don’t sleep for twenty three hours a day. Tim and I are up at 0400 to hit the gyms before the crowds. Jim’s up soon thereafter to get on line. The others stagger up and out by breakfast at 0600. We’re set up in our construction trailer office by 0800 and hard at it well into the evening, with four or five coordination meetings and group interviews each day, analyses and inspections, hypothetical discussions, theoretical and hard design, and just plain old bullshitting.
As more detailed information is needed and time allows, ones or twos will break out and pursue base personnel, make some measurements on site, or pester the operators of the various physical plants. Armed with a schedule of the day’s events and a detailed scope of work, they’re off and doing their independent thing. Actually, they’re a relatively good group, and they don’t need much from me. Like any good cat herder, I know that they’ll be in for supper.
Read More......
2010-07-10
C'mon, people now,...
I hang a map of Afghanistan in my office at home, decorated with small yellow flags indicating the varying locations where I’ve got my boots dusty. In the past fifteen months, I’ve collected close to a score of little yellow flags, this past week adding one more at Kabul. Despite seeing large portions of the eastern side of this country, my tours have been largely by air, and our ride in from the airport was one of very few times that I’ve been over the wire on the ground.
At Sharana, we took an exciting MRAP ride through an adjacent scrub goat pasture to site an airstrip. At Mazar E Sharif, our private security force took us halfway around the perimeter into the proposed base expansion area. At Kunduz, we trekked a few miles through secure grounds to visit a local ANA compound. During that solo week at Kandahar, my twice daily commute was from the ANA Special Forces base into the airfield.
At Kabul, though, we deplaned at the Kabul International Airport, or KIA (irony or sick joke – I can’t be sure), with half a plane load of citizens and other contractors. We used the “new” terminal which looked old, despite having been built since the invasion, and cruised through immigration and customs, before finding some seats on the arrival hall, where we waited for our PSDs to give us a lift to the FOB. It’s not really a FOB. Certainly more FOB than COB, but the Kabul Consolidated Compound (KCC, or sometimes the New Kabul Compound (NKC)) is what we call “enduring” meaning, it’s going to be here for a long, long time.
I won’t. By the time we hit the ground, we were already into single digits before we split. This is a rapid fire, preliminary design effort. Simply drop out of the sky, scoop up as much data as possible, interview anyone who gets in the way, and find the next Kam Air flight out of Dodge. Piece of cake. It’s only Afghanistan, and this is my fifth trip here, so I think I’m getting good at this.
Still, though, bags can get lost. Tim lost his flying in. Rather a PITA, considering he had some tools and measuring devices packed away that were a requirement for the successful completion of his various tasks. Ultimately, he found his black Samsonite rollaway sitting next to the belt, along with all of the other black Samsonite rollaways. Let that be a lesson – or not. If you still have a black Samsonite rollaway, there’s no hope for you and your bag should get lost.
The loss of tools would have been a shame, though, as it would have made the job much more difficult. Despite their utility, these were on the heavy side, and we fully expected to be paying a few hundred dollars to the excess baggage fee fairies. On a lark, I thought I’d ask for “consideration”, literally, and surprisingly received it. I didn’t see a tip jar or anything, just left the agent with my thanks.
To my chagrin, the KAM Air flight from Dubai to Kabul departs at 0240, when the airport, much to my further vexation, was packed to the gills. The flight, though, was at about 60%, leading me to believe that not everyone wants to fly into Kabul, and for good reason, one of which is that the mens’ room floor is surfaced with some open cell, porous material, like a sheet of spun geotextile, instead of the more usual (and infinitely more sanitary) terrazzo. Icky bubba.
Anyway,… the ride to the camp was short and uneventful, despite our route on public roads though not quite teeming hoards of Afghanis. They were busy, of course, with their own lives, uninterested in the ramblings of some gringo engineer.
Read More......
At Sharana, we took an exciting MRAP ride through an adjacent scrub goat pasture to site an airstrip. At Mazar E Sharif, our private security force took us halfway around the perimeter into the proposed base expansion area. At Kunduz, we trekked a few miles through secure grounds to visit a local ANA compound. During that solo week at Kandahar, my twice daily commute was from the ANA Special Forces base into the airfield.
At Kabul, though, we deplaned at the Kabul International Airport, or KIA (irony or sick joke – I can’t be sure), with half a plane load of citizens and other contractors. We used the “new” terminal which looked old, despite having been built since the invasion, and cruised through immigration and customs, before finding some seats on the arrival hall, where we waited for our PSDs to give us a lift to the FOB. It’s not really a FOB. Certainly more FOB than COB, but the Kabul Consolidated Compound (KCC, or sometimes the New Kabul Compound (NKC)) is what we call “enduring” meaning, it’s going to be here for a long, long time.
I won’t. By the time we hit the ground, we were already into single digits before we split. This is a rapid fire, preliminary design effort. Simply drop out of the sky, scoop up as much data as possible, interview anyone who gets in the way, and find the next Kam Air flight out of Dodge. Piece of cake. It’s only Afghanistan, and this is my fifth trip here, so I think I’m getting good at this.
Still, though, bags can get lost. Tim lost his flying in. Rather a PITA, considering he had some tools and measuring devices packed away that were a requirement for the successful completion of his various tasks. Ultimately, he found his black Samsonite rollaway sitting next to the belt, along with all of the other black Samsonite rollaways. Let that be a lesson – or not. If you still have a black Samsonite rollaway, there’s no hope for you and your bag should get lost.
The loss of tools would have been a shame, though, as it would have made the job much more difficult. Despite their utility, these were on the heavy side, and we fully expected to be paying a few hundred dollars to the excess baggage fee fairies. On a lark, I thought I’d ask for “consideration”, literally, and surprisingly received it. I didn’t see a tip jar or anything, just left the agent with my thanks.
To my chagrin, the KAM Air flight from Dubai to Kabul departs at 0240, when the airport, much to my further vexation, was packed to the gills. The flight, though, was at about 60%, leading me to believe that not everyone wants to fly into Kabul, and for good reason, one of which is that the mens’ room floor is surfaced with some open cell, porous material, like a sheet of spun geotextile, instead of the more usual (and infinitely more sanitary) terrazzo. Icky bubba.
Anyway,… the ride to the camp was short and uneventful, despite our route on public roads though not quite teeming hoards of Afghanis. They were busy, of course, with their own lives, uninterested in the ramblings of some gringo engineer.
Read More......
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