Twilight Zone - 05 March 2009 - 1530

So ¾ of our Platoon was scheduled to leave today. Bags were repalletized and shipped down to the Flight Line. When it was time for everyone to load up, they had to walk back out to the road since buses still can’t come into Southpark for some reason. They loaded up the bus and rode off to their flight. Out of my squad of 9, only 3 were flying down today. There was one plane which was going to make two flights down and back since it is only about an hour flight. Around 30 min after they left for the Flight Line, several of the guys staying back started receiving phone calls from the leaving group saying they were on their way back to the tent because the plane was, in fact, “broke”. Are you kidding me with all these damn broken planes? This is at least the 3rd flight that has been “broken” since we started this mess. The Air Force must have the worst kempt planes in the world. Luckily we weren’t turning in the 2 other tents until the morning so everyone was able to keep their same bed. Once they leave, which now sounds like Saturday at the earliest, the girls will all be out of their tent, and the guys from the other tent will consolidate with us. Oh btw, they girls had to move out to Southpark about a week ago. They needed the housing for units coming in which were staying on Kandahar. Sweet justice! At the Tim Horton’s coffee shop they are having a promotional game solely for Kandahar. On every large coffee cup you have a chance to roll up the paper cup lip and win a prize. They are giving away 6000 coffees and donuts, 1000 Tim Horton’s baseball caps, 60 laptops and 5 $1000 cash prizes. It started about a week ago. I have so far won a couple coffees and a donut. PV2 Mead, a private in our Platoon, won a laptop the other night. Since he already had one he sold it to SSG Baker, another Soldier in our Platoon for $500. I keep trying to win though as I’m fairly certain they put crack in their coffee and donuts. The line in front of the shop is always at least 20 people deep. There is a Green Bean coffee shop about 2 shops down and no one is ever in there, even though Green Bean is pretty decent too. No one on post has won a $1000 prize yet but about 15 laptops have been given out, mostly to Canadians. They have a big prize board out in front of the shop for the lap tops and cash. A last word on Tim Horton’s (unless I win big later), I’m not sure what they are offering their employees to leave Canada and come work at a coffee shop in Kandahar Afghanistan, but they have a full staff of attractive college age girls. Money must be darn good. Tomorrow, SPC Taylor and myself are going to start working out at the ASP here on Kandahar a bit. Our specific specialty, the computer system that tracks the ammo, is a very perishable skill. We will more than likely just watch them do a few transactions and play ping pong and watch movies. Not sure for how long I will be doing that but it will be good to actually have something to do. We were given our basic load of ammo last night. The ammo that every Soldier is issued is called their Basic Load. A Basic Load for an M16A2 Rifleman is usually 210 rounds with intermittent tracer rounds. It comes out to 7 30 round magazines for each Soldier. Now would not be a good time for someone to go “Postal.” I have been doing a pretty crummy job of putting pictures in lately. A: I haven’t been taking many, and B: I can only upload what the internet allows. Service on the Boardwalk is slow but decently reliable with not many disconnections. Check back on some of the more recent posts though as I will try and add some pics to them. Oh, also, I now have a small rash on the back of one of my hands. This country is the greatest. It’s like I’m falling apart at the seams. Wrist is way better though. Didn’t end up taking any meds for it, just laid off the heavy lifting where I could.