It Fits!

It looks like everything will fit in my assault pack, brief-case, and weapons case.

My pack will look roughly like the jalopy heading west in The Grapes of Wrath, with random little bags hanging off the side.

I have my whole little cargo bay sleeping kit strapped to the top. I've got my inflatable thermarest, camping pillow, and woobie (little camo blanket, among the best pieces of kit we get issued) in a large compression sack. My hammock is in it's pack bag hanging off the side.

So floor or hammock, I'm ready for either.

It helps that we aren't packing our armor since we have to keep it accesible during the flight.

I had to cut out some of the foam in the weapons case to make room for my headset, headphones that both reduce loud noises while amplifying ambient sound and can be hooked into our radios.

I should have cut out more of the foam to create custom spaces for all the M4 magazines, cleaning kit stuff, and random slings, sights, lights, etc. I guess I was reluctant to do so earlier, but the case does belong to my unit and is assigned to me for the rifle that is assigned to me. And I'm pretty much at the end of this rotation and don't care as much about what the weapons storage gnomes back home might say.

My rifle is very clean. I took the time to scrape off every little carbon deposit on the firing pin and the bolt. I then lubed it back up, reassembled it and made sure the sight, light, and laser were all off. Just add ammo and flick a few switches and I'm ready to rock again.

When it goes back into storage I'll need to take the batteries out of everything. Everything but the sight. That belongs to me and is going right back on my rifle at home.

Once we get to Bragg I'll need to rearrange this mess one last time. The armor will need to be packed for real. I'll probably just take my jalopy ruck and toss it in the extra duffel along with some other random junk and just check it as my fourth piece of checked bags.

My briefcase will be my only real carry-on for the commercial flights home.

The bag drag to the lodging at Bragg, lodging to my ride, the curb to the terminal, and then from the baggage claim to my ride at my home unit will be rough. Four giant bags with only the weapons case being within weight limits.

Maybe that's the real reason we PT.


And before I forget, I got a copy of an ancient (late 60's) SOWT recruiting film. It starts with this incredible footage of an old-school HALO jump (High Altitude/Low Opening). Classic.

But He-Man knuckle draggers that we are, I found 13 Going on 30 on in the team room here.

They said it was the only thing on.

The Waiting Game

All that's left is to pack.

And clean my rifle. I had a few full magazines left that I didn't get to fire off last night, but I just traded them for empties. Once everything is cleaned and lubed, I'll turn my weapons case in to where we are consolidating them.

I guess there are still a couple last loose ends to tie up too.

I need to turn in my acces badges, which I've been saving for the last minute. Then I'll turn in the keys to my hooch, which is now my replacement's hooch, and then get a key to the temporary room where the other guys are staying.

Everything is scheduled with set show times for the last days.

They made reservations for my flight back my home unit from Bragg, but I'm going to try to re-book the flight. I want the first available flight, not a leisurely slow day. I just need to double check the I can, in fact, take the earliest flight back the morning after we arrive in the North Carolina. I'm working under the assumption that they just booked later flights so people could sleep in, but they may have padded the schedule to ensure everything was taken off the aircraft and accessible to us.

I'll find out.

Meanwhile, back at home, my wife is trying to manage the cats and the dog. We're scheduling training classes for the dog and introducing her to all our neighbors.

I have verified all the dates for my post-deployment leave and even drafted the paperwork. All goes well I'll just sign it when I get back and be done.

Almost an entire month of paid leave with full benefits and a fixed pension plan.

Try finding that in this economy.

Decision Point

I was told that we were authorized to wear ACUs, the Army uniform, instead of ABUs, the Air Force uniform, for the trip home.

I hope that's true because all my ABUs are now packed on the cargo container. I won't be able to get to them until we get back. For me anyway, good or bad, the decision has been made.

Oh well. I'm not particularly worried.

If that is the only hiccup, then we're doing pretty good.

I did manage to cram all my stuff in to two large bags, have a spare duffel bag in case the airlines say that either of my bags is too heavy. My orders authorize excess baggage, and I have plenty of excess baggage.

I have to say that while it can be frustrating travelling on someone else's schedule, as a whole, going to and from the theater as part of one big happy AF ground SOF team has its perks. It is allowing me to draw on support resources that the smaller unit I'm augmenting does not have.

My redeployment is scheduled for me. They just tell me when to show up and when our updated meetings are. Upon arrival back in the states, my room at our stops and on base is already reserved for me. They book my flight to my home unit from Bragg. They even drive me to the airport.

Really, that is how it should be in many ways. But my specialty is small and the Active Duty side is the busiest career field in the Air Force. On any given day there may not be anyone at our small detachments to pick up a guy coming home or drive him to the airport. And as a smaller unit, we don't have the support resources of some of larger teams.

My next challenges for redeployment are to double check that my car is in fact ready and waiting for me at my home unit when I get back and that someone is there to pick me up at the airport.

Someone will be. It just takes planning, since we have only one guy in the office full time. And I don't have an actual flight reserved just yet.

I do have plenty of free time to figure it out though. All I really have left to do is pack my carry-on bag and kill off the rest of my ammo.

I've already drafted my return travel voucher to save time when I get back. Receipts from earlier are scanned in already and saved in my email.

I will probably double check how the recovery time built in to my orders works so that I can also file my leave paperwork right away. I should be on orders but completely free through the end of October between the 10-15 days of automatic recovery time and the rest of the leave I've earned during this trip.

That time isn't all accounted for just yet, but much of it will be spent training our new dog while making sure our cats do not feel neglected.

I also need to get everything back in order to start up again at school. I need to start finding a summer job in a delightful market for legal interns. And I need to register for the Patent Bar exam and get serious about studying again.

Oh, and bang out everything on my wife's to-do list.

Though given the state of the legal job market... it is incredibly tempting to fill my next summer with a few more training courses and exercises. Getting paid to skydive and possible scuba dive (as painful and horrible as military dive training is while it weans you off that ugly Oxygen habit)--getting fairly well paid and earning points towards an actual real pension--is very very tempting.

Now that I've sufficiently scared my Mother and maybe have my wife's eyeballs rolled so far back into her head that she actually nees our dog to get around town... I know my second summer of law school is an investment in a future career.

And it's gone...

My mustache. It's gone.

I don't recognize myself in the mirror.

The team I flew in with here was taking an official picture and they told me my mustache had to be within regs. I was planning to shave it anyway, but I wanted it logged in our official picture for posterity.

No joy.

Technically they were in the right by enforcing uniform regs. But most of the time we aren't really sticklers for it. But I guess we need to be all gussied up to go home.

Like I said, it had to go anyway. It was getting annoying.

And my wife told me it had to go.

So it went.

Of course, one of the other guys in the JOC with a mustache thinks I'm a failure now. He decided early on that he was committing to his mustache. It's not going until he gets back home. He may trim it back in to regulation if someone bothers him about it, but that's about it.

In the JOC, no one cared.

Silly Air Force.

Day Off

Today was my first day off. I've been looking forward to it for a while now, ever since I realized that it was probably going to work out.

Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, isn't usually something one gets excited about and looks forward to. Being forced to take stock of things and acknowledge our sins is very much a good thing. It's just not fun. Neither is fasting for 25 hours.

However, it was the first holiday I'd really be able to observe in anything close to a proper manner without having to worry about work. That was really nice on many levels.

As a whole though, regular days off here would drive me nuts. If a unit is regularly giving people a day off, then they need to send people home.

Since I am pretty much turned over and awaiting my own trip back, I have some time on my hands. It will involve PT, hitting the range, and putting the last touches on my After Action Report.

I do kind of flame the Guard Bureau and AFSOC for our equipment issues. I also talked to some other people who compile such things about this problem. And I included it in my response to some draft policies AFSOC is finalizing.

I'm shotgunning it out there. There is a problem. I want it fixed. I don't care who gets embarrassed about it. I'm right and being nice hasn't worked.

It is nice to see some draft policies to standardize training needs and goals across our community. It is pretty agressive with a very long list of tasks we need to be able to perform and maintain proficiency on.

My key response was that we can do it. But to get there they need to stop screwing around and get us slots to the necessary courses, give us the necessary equipment... they need to fund it. Otherwise it is meaningless paper.

Maintaining a special operations unit is expensive.

I guess the positive is that it is looking more and more likely that I'll get to go to HALO school in the future. That should be fun, though it will be one more thing to stay current on.

Apparently some of us may have to go to dive school too. That one is a real kick in the pants but if any of my guys will have to go then I should too. The real benefit, aside from a new infiltration skill, is that often military dive trips are real boondoggles.

It is mission essential to go to (insert major tropical paradise location) to ensure good conditions for the currency dive...

...but I have doubts that slots and money will follow anytime soon.

I can't really be bothered by it though. I'm making arrangements for return travel. All is well.

Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day

It was actually a few days ago.

First, my truck died. It's not really mine, but I control the keys and have regular access to it. It was working just fine, I parked it for a minute to pick up some papers, and then it was dead.

Fine. So I got it jump started in the morning. It happens. I drove back to pick up a bunch of equipment to put in our cargo container and left the engine running so that the battery could keep charging while I loaded the vehicle. Once it was loaded I turned around and it stalled as I shifted it from Reverse to Drive.

Awesome.

Not quite the middle of the road, but close to it. And very very stuck. No lights turning on. Nothing.

Awesome.

I crammed all the equipment from the bed of the truck into the cab and locked the doors. I walked over the the vehicle maintenance shed and they gave me the paper work to submit a work order. It sat on my desk while other fires came up and had to be put out.

The truck continued to sit in the middle of the road, near the hooches. I actually walked by and heard a young female NCO tell a senior NCO that the truck was making her paranoid that someone was stalking them, they way it just sat there by her hooch.

I had to tell her the backstory, which made her full much better. I also offered to write "Free Candy" in messy handwriting on the otherwise dusty white truck so as to complete the effect.

I didn't.

Anyway, just after the truck broke I found out that an all too common and oft repeated screw up was happening again. It was something I'd actually taken great pains to warn about. Now it looked like it would end up causing a lot of trouble for two of our Airmen... not cool.

Thus began a crazy scramble of emails, internet chat, and international phone calls to track down the issue and resolve it.

The good news was that while I may have never gotten any response to my warnings, and while they were most likely lost in cyberspace or ignored, the problems I'd warned about were not the actual cause of the problem.

It was a stupid database management problem. Another issue that often comes up and is known about, but yet to be fixed.

Fortunately my final After Actions Report has not been submitted yet. I'll be updating it for these last little hiccups.

There were a bunch of other little things that day, but it's all a bit of a haze now.

The Airmen are taken care of.

The truck is being fixed. A more complicated process than it should be, but it's being fixed.

Our flight home is in the final planning stages.

My car will be running with good tires and working brakes when I get back.

All is well.

...provided Michigan doesn't choke. They're down in the fourth quarter right now. I'm getting along pretty well with the OSU guy that sits next to me right now. I'd hate to have to shoot him this close to the end of his rotation.

Goodbye/Hello

The air conditioning briefly went out in the JOC when the main generator went down. It happens.

A senior NCO pointed out that it was just like in Jurrasic Park when the had to reset the system to turn various components back on.

He then proceeded to give his best impersonation of a velociraptor. It sounded like an angry goat.

Maybe they did sound like angry goats. No one called him out on it.

It is possible he hunted them when he was younger...

--------

But the real event of the day was my formal farewell at a briefing for the boss... followed almost immediately by me giving my normal briefing as if nothing happened. It's a little odd.

The whole farewell process is kind of funny. The boss doesn't know many of us. He's busy in the rarified air of command. However, he wants to personally and publicly recognize us before we all leave.

In order to do this there is a standardized form with some basic questions like our name, home unit, family info, hobbies, etc. I filled it out.

So according to my official bio:

I'm married to an almost-doctor.

I live in city X, but my unit is in city Y and I'm a fan of football team Z--this is key because all three cities are big football towns. X and Y are rivals, by Z is a neutral party and it always confuses people that I'm not a fan of teams X or Y.

My hobbies are fixing the garage door, sharpening hte kitchen knives, and anything else on my wife's to-do list for me.

My job was to tell him when it would be hot, dusty or hot and dusty. The joke is always that we have the easiest job since it will always be hot and dusty. But how hot? How dusty?... whatever.

I got a chance to say a few words afterwards. I thought about pretending to have a long speech since everyone is sitting there waiting.

I didn't though. I just said that it's been an honor and I'll probably see many of them again there, Afghanistan, or the next one.

It's a small community and an odd world.

In then end the boss shook my hand and gave me a coin. Everyone gets a coin.

It's not quite as un-special as when I got one of Gen Petraus's coins from someone at the Pentagon that had a drawer full of them, but close. It will go in my little coin collection in the closet in the back room.

And just like how I had to give my normal briefing after this little farewell ceremony, tomorrow I go back to work a normal day.

To finish it off, I got my flu shot.