Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Turkey Day in Afghanland!

Thanksgiving Day.......

Here is Blackham getting ready for the Thanksgiving Day 5k Turkey Trot. 

Here we are gathered up for a safety brief.
I spy an Indian Bradley D! 

Here are the guys giving us a safety brief.
They basically said "Be careful running and don't get lost". So it was useless. 

Here we are listening to it with enthusiasm


Here is the 1-211th guys. 

Some Indians. 

Here is the medical section about to run the Thanksgiving Day Turkey Trot 

Two of our little people ran! LOL
Blue and Wallace 

Here is some of our running group before the race.
From left to right:
Bray, Young, Blackham, Deena, Holman, turkey guy, Blue, Me, Doc  

Photo bombing!
Look there is a cowboy in the background. 

Deena decided that we should run as a group. 
And as a group we had music with portable speakers, Costumes,  and this awesome banner. 

And we are off running. 

Here is Blackham. (Lt. Dangle from Reno 911)  
Running by the Port-o-Johns 

As we ran the letter from the banner kept falling off. 
Obviously Vandremolin (far left) wasn't ready for this pic.

And now he is ready. 

This Blackhawk flew about 15' above our heads and dusted us out. We had to hold on to our hats, and we lost about 4 more letters. 

Here is our sign oat the end "PPHKGNG"!

They wanted to "GAG" after 3.1 miles.

Doc took first place in the run. Or should I say he was the first military guy! A ultra marathoner civilian guy beat him by 2 seconds. Here he is getting award. 

Now its dinner time, and the higher ups are working with the Afghans to serve us. 

Some of my fellow Joes posing for a picture. 

Here is my table :)


Here is my Thanksgiving Day Feast! I wanted to barf afterward! 
And yes that is eggnog in the Styrofoam cup

Thanksgiving dinner was an awesome experience. It felt like we could just relax for once.


Tuesday, December 4, 2012

November Flew Bye......!

November.......... Minus Thanksgiving day! That gets its own post tomorrow! (HOPEFULLY)

So sorry the picture is so crappy, but the air quality is seriously so bad that the flash captures all the crappy particles that are constantly in the air! This picture is from the BBQ we had for the MP unit, and the Linguist that we went out on missions with to the ANCOP.

This is Qais! He owns a shop at the Bazaar. He likes to dress me up and take pictures. Its pretty creepy, and I think he may have a crush on me. Good thing I sleep with my weapon. 

We added lights to our cornhole area! 

So when the medics get board they make stuff out of medical supplies.
So here you have a 'Blowgun with Darts' 
AKA - a Chest tube container, 14 gauge needles, and 5ml syringes.   

And it works like a charm on the dart board. 

These Afghans are always cleaning the bathrooms when I go to shower, and they always ask to take a picture with me. Now that I did they want me to print it out for them, and they don't understand when I tell them that I do not have a printer. 

This is Ma-boob-a-la, the linguist for the workers. I have no idea how to spell his name. He thinks he is one cool guy, because he can talk to Americans!

So the German Colonel brought over this "Sauna Tipi" from the German side. He said "When there is war you will always find certain things with certain cultures. Where ever there are Germans, you will find bars (There are over 15 bars here on the German side). And where ever you find the Finish you will find Saunas. And where ever you find American, you will find stupid strict rules." So he got this tent from one of the Fins. I have yet to use this thing though.

So we are getting ready to come home and we got to ship our Black Boxes home. They carry military gear we aren't using. But it feels good to start the packing up process.

Here is the DEA dog sniffing our boxes for drugs and explosives! 

Here is Holman waiting to get his box inspected.

Here is Qais again. He ordered me some display cases for some flags

And of course he has to dress me up and take a picture! 

This guy wanted a picture with the SEXY American too! LOL. They love cameras!

Here is Jeremy and I posing in the shop! 

Here is a sign we made for one of our other medics birthday! The Big 30. 

I though about buying this, but they want $10. I think I have become a tight wad! 

We thought she had a Bible Cyst (It gets its name from a long time ago where they used to hit the cyst with a bible to break it up). Good thing we had an Ortho Surgeon here this day and we just drained it. We took out 6ml of blood!  It was crazy that it formed a hard lump on her wrist.   

I got to go out with the Germans one day. And we took these giant CH-53 helos! 

These things are enormous! 

Here is a picture of the Germans eye in the sky. It was down for maintenance. It is also huge! 

Another pic of the CH-53 

Here we are co-existing with the Germans. 

We stopped at a place called "Kill-a-guy"! No joke, that is the name of this place! 

Smoking a Cigarette before the flight! So these Helos are super fast, and these pilots are know for flying the Nape of the Earth. So it was seriously like riding a roller coaster that lasted for 2 hours! 

Here are some of the Afghan National Army playing some SOCCER! 

I got bored and sent this picture to Whitney one night! Now that is some serious White Trash. 

And here is my Night Vision monocular. Also a bored picture. 

Here we are qualifing for the Germans marksmanship Badge.
I shot Gold (Or the highest level you can shoot) the first time. I was disapointed because they let everybody shoot as many times as they wanted to try to get gold! At least I know I earned mine! 

Here I am again kicking some ass! 

Here are the higher ups just relaxing! 

Here is our buddy Colonel Wittke 

Cool Guy 

We rode home in the back of this German truck through a valley of Afghan Moon dust! 

Luckily I had this Shemagh to filter some of the dirt! 

So the medal I got would go on my dress uniform right here.

Here is a close up of it.



Here is a Hellfire missile on its way to blow some stuff up!
This picture is from the trailing Apache, so you can see the lead Apache firing the missile.     


And this is taking from the Leading Apache.  

No more target.

Here are just some random cool pics from the month! 







Here is our unmanned Helicopter.