Sick and Exhausted

Good news folks. I Have internet now that I'm assuming will work everyday. The picture to the left is of me (on the right) and a couple other guys right after we got all our body armor handed out to us. We put every piece on for the picture and then promptly tore the arm pieces off the armor. With those on, I feel like the kid from 'A Christmas Story' who couldn't put his hands down after his mom dressed him in all his clothes to keep him warm. If that wasn't bulky enough, that picture doesn't do it justice. Since then we've all added our pouches for magazines, grenades, and such. All in all, it's something like an average of 85 pounds of gear. I'm the grenadier for my team so I carry the M203 grenade launcher.

Today we moved out of our nice two man rooms to a forty man bay. While this severly stinks(figuratively and literally) we do have the trade off of having internet all the time (if it works) and being on the first floor. The last two days have been rough as my body is fighting off the small pox shot they gave us. I feel like I have the flu and am sleeping at every chance. I cannot wait until I get over this. The next few weeks it sounds like we're just sitting in briefings all day. I'm opting not to take my knife to these briefs for fear of trying to use them due to bordom and death by power point.

Until next time...

Literally in the Middle of Nowhere

Hello to all from Fort Riley, KS. I am without a doubt, out in the middle of nowhere. Driving here, the area was devoid of houses and farmland even for probably 50 miles. This is not to say it's not a nice scenery because it absolutly is. This entire place is gently rolling green hills with trees only in the valleys of the hills.

The drive down took roughly 10 hours. Myself and another guy on my PMT took our own vehicles down so we'd have some transportation while we're down here. This was great until we reached the front gate. The other guy, whose name ironically is Lance Armstrong(no joke) already had his vehicle registered in the department of defense so he drove right on. I however, did not. This is not really a problem, except that my insurance card that I had in the car was not the current one so I couldn't bring my car on post. We decided to leave my car at the visitors center and I just got on the bus that most of the guys rode on. The bus then preceded to side swipe the guard rails at the front gate causing a large commotion with the MP's. Eventually we got to our barracks and were issued rooms. These rooms are nice. I have my own room and I share a kitchen/bathroom area with another guy. However, my room key didn't work so I couldn't get in. Yeah...that was just more fun trying to get that figured out. eventually I did make it in my room.

Today we started our SRP(soldier readiness program?). This went quickly at most stations due to the efficiency of the mini-srp's that Illinois had us do. However, I did receive my first anthrax vaccine and a small pox vaccine. I'm not worried about the anthrax one, it's not too contagious. This is not true for the small pox. It's highly dangerous and all the skin around where they poked me 15 times with it will die and scab over and fall off. I have to make sure and keep this covered as I could accidently spread it to other parts of my body.

I will have probably 10 or so more days of all this SRP stuff and then I will have to give up my room and go 'down range' and live at a pretend FOB(foward operating base) to conduct the rest of my training. I'm still working on the internet situation. It appears I can get it, only it's like 3 times as expensive as we all thought it was going to be. I've resorted to walking a few buildings over and using their free internet. Hopefully I'll get this resolved soon.

Well so long folks.

well...let's get this started

Greetings to all. I've been asked by numerous people to start a blog or something to let people know what i am up to and what is going on in my life concerning my deployment. So being very unoriginal, I've decided to go the route my cousin Roger took when he used this same blog website to use when he was deployed to Iraq in 2006 with the United States Marine Corps. (I even am using the same background as Roger...sorry Roger). Please feel free to comment and question about what I am writing/doing. I can't promise how much I will have internet access once I am in Afghanistan but I will try and keep up. With all that being said, I guess I'll start.



Monday morning the 18th of August will be the start line of my deployment to Afghanistan. I will be sent down to Fort Riley, KS for a period of something like 75 days. At some point during that time I and my PMT (police mentor team) will be sent to a 2 week (I think) training event in California called NTC (national training center). In my time at Riley, my team will undergo Afghan culture and language training. This is because my team is going to be living alongside the Afghan police right in there villages from what we're being told. If it comes to your mind during the day, please pray for the safety of my whole 16 man team since we will be working directly with the Afghans.



One more note before I finish this post. I realize that most people don't have much exposure to Afghanistan as they do to Iraq. However, there are some differences in how you refer to them. In Iraq, they are called an Iraqi. In Afghanistan they are called an Afghan, or the Afghans. Most people (myself included) assumed that because you can add an i at the end of Iraq to label the people that you could for Afghanistan also, however this is not the case. Afghani is the Afghan form of currency. Apparently they get offended if you call them by there money.