I’m back, actually I’ve been back for a while and just got busy and neglected writing up this post and posting these last two posts.
When I left off I was waiting for a flight out of Kuwait. I was able to go and get rid of the majority of my gear, well atleast the heavy stuff so that was a nice unexpected bonus. Other than that just spent a lot of time sitting around burning time. Kuwait sucks. I was able to get on the flight back to CRC as scheduled, just to be sure I volunteered for baggage duty so I end up having a long day of moving bags around for everyone on the flight. First we had to load them onto trucks after we went through the pre screen customs yard they have. That took a few hours but there wasn’t anything else to be doing so it wasn’t so bad. Then we got to sit around for about an hour or two before we boarded busses and took the 2ish hour trip to the airport. I think it is the main airport there but we were off in the middle of nowhere. Just a plane parked on the ramp so we got out and had to unload the trucks/load the plane. I didn’t go up into the plane’s belly as that was assigned to the shorter guys. While we were doing that everyone else boarded so we were the last ones on but they saved all the mid-range seats for us, the big wigs and the guys with the dogs got first class but we had the seats with extra leg room so no real complaints there. We first flew to Germany and watched a few bad movies on the way. Different airport in Germany and we got there in the middle of the night, were then bussed all over the place to some really old terminal also in the middle of nowhere where we hung out for a couple of hours and got a bit to eat and drink before getting back on the plane and flying to Atlanta. We ended up getting into Atlanta at about 4:30 in the morning again at some out of the way terminal in the middle of nowhere but atleast we didn’t have to unload all the baggage they had one of the crew’s there do it. It’s about a two hour bus ride from Atlanta to Ft. Benning which is pretty uneventful, thankfully on heated busses as I didn’t have any warm clothes with me. We went back to the terminal at Ft Benning that we had left from and they had a small ceremony welcoming us back which was pretty nice of the. Then they fed us again. Cold Cuts. But they had bread that wasn’t stale so they were actually rather good. We then went in a returned the rest of our gear before heading back to CRC for the final out processing. Then we were free to leave. This was about noon. So rather speedy process which was great. Of course my flights back to NJ weren’t till the next day, but that gave me time to go to the PX and get something warm to wear for the trip back. Flying back to NJ was pretty uneventful.
When I got back to NJ they had just gotten about a foot of snow (yes in october) a few days before and the place was a mess. It took about a week and a half to get power back at my house so I didn’t really start living here again till the beginning of this week. Not to mention my roommate’s girlfriend and her dog moved in while I was gone so a few changes here. Work is different and the same, I’m looking forward to finishing up the ending paper work for this trip and getting back into the normal swing of things.
Overall I’m very happy that I went, it was a pretty awesome adventure. Don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity to go back or not, time will tell I guess. I suspect this will be the final entry in this blog so thanks for reading! It sure is nice to be home.
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