From Friday, January 11, 2007

I'm in Kyrgyzstan and it is bitterly cold - high today about 16 degrees. Snow on the ground. Of the over 400 military and family members that started out in Baltimore with us, a little over half continued all the way with us to here. Quite a bustling little base this Manas AB is.

Anyway, we arrived early this morning (about 0900) to the cold. Manas has nearly all the comforts of home - a BX, Pizza Hut, a Starbucks-like cafe (The Green Bean Cafe), a full-fledged gym, plasma screens in the chow hall with NBA games and CNN, etc. Refreshing in some regards, but disturbing in others to me it seems - there's the U.S. - out there all over. When we arrived we had to inprocess. There are so many soldiers here and so many young ones. This is the transition hub to all bases in Afghanistan and Turkmenistan - we're called transients! The earlier posts show pix.

After getting the gear we brought settled in our sleeping areas, we went to the chow hall and milled around base at the various key places (the armory to check in our firearm, AAFES village where the pizza hut and cafe are along with little stores, morale computer center where I am at now, the gym, Pete's Place is a bar with pool tables and big screens with movies playing). At 1320 today (after being here for about 5 hours) we had to form up to get the rest of our gear (cold weather boots, body armor, chem gear, etc.) - an hour and half and two 40 lbs bags later I was trudging through the snow to fill the tiny crevice of a bunk I'm occupying with more gear! I really don't know how we're supposed to move this stuff when it's time to go.

We're supposed to check in with PAX (the travel shop) at 2200 tonight to see if we're on the next rotator out of here to Bagram AB in Afghanistan which will be tomorrow late afternoon. Here's how this works: once we are manifested, then we show up at 0900 the following morning to check in all the gear. Then we sit around all day until a show time later in the afternoon until it's time for us to take the shuttles to the airfield and catch the flight. Basically, an all-day affair just like space-A travel and what we experienced in Baltimore. If we don't make the manifest tonight, then we wait until 2200 tomorrow night, etc. Rumor has it that there is such a backlog of personnel here right now (over 1000), that if we don't make the one tonight, then we'll be stranded here for 4 days. I'm sure the weather is affecting things as well, so we'll sit and wait I guess.

I took a nap with my gear this afternoon for a couple of hours - well actually 4 hours - I guess I was tired. When I woke, I shaved and took a shower - quite a chore with all the coats, long underwear, boots, etc. It felt good to get cleaned up having spent the last 30-plus hours in the airplane and enroute and unable to get cleaned up.