Frequent flier miles

I took a short break from my blog while I was in transit from Bagram airbase to Kabul.  Partly because I was completely exhausted from travel and partly because I was trying to find an Internet connection for my laptop.

After my flight to Bagram from Kuwait, I had thought I was going to be on the next Military aircraft bound for Kabul.  In fact, I was even manifested, but an hour before boarding, an O9 (Three star general) bumped twenty people so he and his entourage could fly out instead.  Really?  A three star general couldn’t get his own plane and had to fly on a space available Air Force cargo plane?

The next flight out to Kabul was late the next night so I decided to make use of the USO for food and distraction.  Afterwards, I took a concrete nap curled up with my weapons in my arms as I slept.  The weather was pleasant; at 95 degrees, it was a good twenty-five cooler than Kuwait.

That evening, I made the short flight and landed around 0200 hrs at Kabul International Airport (KIA) (Nice acronym huh?).  My ride to the base in the city wasn’t coming for about six hours so I decided to hit up the 24 hour Turkish café.  I had some kind of tasty lamb wrap and a diet coke to wash it down with.  This was my first adventure with local food this deployment.  A test case if you will since I’ve come down with at least one case of severe food poisoning every time I’ve traveled somewhere foreign with the Army in my life.  I suppose all the doxycycline in my system as anti-malarial prophylactics works.

So here I am at the end of my eleven day traveling odyssey feeling haggard and worn out.  I probably look even worse.  I joke that the Military should offer me frequent flier miles, but as my buddy once said, you can’t roll back those miles on your odometer and you certainly can’t cash them in for points.

More to follow.