Here

As I woke up this morning (actually, one of the several times I woke up this morning), I reflected back on just how much effort has gone into getting me here. Where's here? Wow, that's a loaded question. 'Here' is a disheveled CHU (containerized housing unit) at Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq. 'Here' is a God-forsaken desert that never lets you forget that fact. 'Here' is day one of a new experience for which I'm both excited and a little apprehensive. 'Here' is the twilight of my Air Force career as I hope the sum of my experiences will add up to a positive contribution to the fight.  'Here' is thousands of miles from everyone and everything I know and love.

The transit to here has been both quick and easy, and long and arduous. In concrete terms, the actual transit from San Antonio to Baghdad went extremely smoothly. We left SAT late on 18 Jun, and by noon on 22 Jun, I was standing on the runway at Baghdad International Airport (BIAP) breathing in the hot, dusty air of Iraq. Those 3.5 days are a blur, caused mostly by sleep deprivation, but everything seemed to line up just right, and I got here just about as quickly as is possible. On the other hand, I was tasked for this deployment on 14 April (which is a little bit short notice) and a ton of work went into getting me ready to ship out, as my previous posts to this blog will attest.

In more abstract terms, it took me over a quarter century to find myself situated to take this bullet (a poor choice of words?). I've wanted to deploy...to support the warfighter in a more direct way than my career has afforded me so far...for perhaps a decade now. From my brief observation yesterday, I expect the day-to-day nature of my job will be not dissimilar from any stateside staff job. Yet, at it's core, it is imminently different, and that sole fact is what compels me.

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I finally slept last night. At Al Udeid, I slept a total of 1.5 hours, so by the time I went to sleep last night, that 1.5 hours was all I had in over 43 hours. Really, if you include the sparse sleep I got on the Norfolk-Leipzig-Doha flight, I probably got no more than 8 hour sleep since I woke up in Norfolk on the 18th. Now, showered and rested, I'm ready to take on my first full day on the job.

So, here I go!

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P.S. I'm now inclined to post most of my photos via Facebook. I'm bandwidth limited on my internet here, so FB will help me conserve some of that. Also, it's easier to upload there. What I will do, though, is post on this blog the public link to pictures for non-FB users to access them. Sorry for any inconvenience.