It's November...

And it feels good to see that on the calendar. It's still difficult to find a place to get to my blog site, now all our mil computers we were able to use are all blocking blog sites. And, I still don't have Internet in my trailer yet...I was thinking of getting by for the year with an alternate site, but it looks like I'll have to try to get on board with a group in my pod of trailers. It's expensive and slow - a real bargain - but also about the only game in town. I'm in one of the Internet trailers right now, it's early afternoon. We are allowed 20 minutes at a time, but if it is not busy, like now, I may get to stay to finish this out. Unlike the great writers of the past, it takes me a while to think about what I want to say, organize it into a somewhat readable format, and then type. I'm not too speedy in that dept. so all in all, it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to get my thoughts, notes, etc. on paper for you to read. Thank heavens I don't have writers block... I think they have medication for that these days...

Well, we are staying pretty busy, 24/7 operations continue. I just recently switched from days back to nights, back at the AMR plans cell, building our future missions. I'll be here for 2 weeks, then back to flying with my company for 2 weeks. It was great to do a bunch of flying, did another six or seven missions, two at night. Had some more excitement though, more tracers fired between our two aircraft. US weapons have one tracer in five rounds; I have no idea what Hadji uses in their mix...it could be one tracer in twenty-five rounds or they only fired two rounds, and one was a tracer... In any event, all the rounds missed us...tracer fire sure is pretty at night though... Don't know if you heard, about three weeks ago, there was a rocket attack in Baghdad, on Camp Victory. It was a 107 mm (4.25"dia.) rocket, about 6-7' long...killed two and wounded thirty-eight. Bad day for us. Thankfully they don't have a lot of these to shoot...they are rather expensive, so they use them on highly populated areas like our compounds in Baghdad. I'm told the rockets come from Iran(?). I'm hoping that they don't decide to use them on our base. We have enough to do with our mortar attacks... I counted fifteen in September, and nineteen in October. Those were the ones I was here to experience. One of the attacks was close to our trailers, and one of our pilots had some dirt and stuff land on his roof.

Our flights get to be pretty long...usually 6-8 hrs, most times without a break. Never get out of the seat. Once in a while we get to shut down somewhere for fuel, and get a break to eat; otherwise, it's go go go - granola bars and Gatorade while we fly. I'm glad I had a lot of long flying days on surveys for DNR Enforcement at home, kind of got me ready for this schedule. We normally get refueled while the engines are running, rotors turning...nicknamed 'hotgas'. Takes about twelve minutes to top off our two aircraft, and then we get back on the route. I planned a mission to a new FOB for me to see called Justice...on the banks of the Tigris river, a short hop north of Washington pad in the green zone. Interesting place - it's where they do all their public hangings...including Saddams. Ironic name, huh?

You know, maybe its a guess, but I think we are experiencing a lot of positive things from the surge...every time our ground troops find another weapons cache, that's a lot of ammo that's no longer available to shoot at our soldiers or us in the air. There are ground ops going on all the time, we hear about them in our intel brief before we go fly. Between here and in Baghdad, troops are busy fighting and collecting arms. I for one am grateful that the extra folks on the ground are paying big dividends in terms of keeping more of us safe as we do our jobs. Our battalion has had some hits in our aircraft - small arms, rpg's that missed, and that's good news for us. We are still concerned about the other missiles that are out there, and grateful for the special systems on our aircraft to help us avoid the big one. We keep on going, getting all our missions done...haven't dropped a single mission yet, either for maintenance or weather. We've been late a couple of times due to poor visibility in Baghdad, but that's about it. We are the only Nat. Guard aviation battalion in town, so we naturally want to be sure to do our part, and have no whining about 'us part timers'. We have already flown more hours than the folks we replaced...they told us to expect that to happen. Might be difficult to maintain this pace for the year, but we'll see. I'm sure our replacements next summer will be told to raise the bar again...must be a limit somewhere.

When I do get a day off (two days a month), I usually have to do extra cleaning in my room, more than the every other day dusting and mop the floor stuff. It's pathetic, I can wipe down the floor when I get up so I can slide across the floor doing my sit-ups and not get dirty...then later the same day, I'll wipe it again and it looks like I never did a thing. This dust is like flour, very powdery. There's a place at BIAP (Baghdad Int Airport) where we get fuel and lunch, I'll try to get a pic of the dirt. It's like nothing at home.

The weather -- it's cooling now, up to 92 day, and about 60 at night. You should see the people already wearing a jacket at night...what will they do when it does get chilly later?? We actually had a couple of days of cloudy weather in early October. We had a brief thunderstorm and enough rain to wet the ground and hold down the dust for about an hour. Ever since, more blue skies and layers of dust from surface to 200'. OOPS! There's the giant voice...got to run, be back in a minute. Well there was our first mortar attack for November...no damage. Thankfully.

Did you see that last tape from Osama? He said we should all change to his system...it has no taxes.. Well duh, it also offers no indoor plumbing or a roof over one's head???? I'll be glad when we are sure he is in a hole in the ground, permanently...

DNR notes -- seeing some pretty birds, one looks like a King bird. It even flies like one, too. Ive' seen a small to mid-size falcon...looked kind of like a Kestral. We almost had a mid-air mess with a large buteo type, Redtail or larger. he didn't try to get out of the way like most birds of prey. We had to make an 'evasive maneuver' to avoid him...would have made a great picture. Lots of large bats flying around our light poles every night, eating lots of bugs. Got a pic of a lizard the other day, and of a green praying mantis. When I walk back to my trailer late at night when there is no moon (very dark, about 0230 hours) there is a curious little bird that roosts in the rounded out depressions in the gravel from our footprints. He stays where the gravel is the deepest. I've almost stepped on him a few times, but he stays put until the last minute, then runs only a short distance away. He stays in an area about fifty feet square. Other folks asked me about him, they've almost stepped on him, too. I'll try to get a pic of 'rockbird' sometime.

I'm doing well in the snack department in case you're wondering...my crazy daughter Lisa is keeping me well supplied and so are Rhonda and Stef, with some home-baked goodies. I pick up a copy of Stars and Stripes, our newspaper, to read when I leave the DFAC (dining facility), it's about the only way to keep up with some of the news. You can't hear the TV in the DFAC...too noisy, too many people. If I'm lucky, one of the TVs is on a news channel, and I can read the ticker at the bottom of the screen. Boy was I glad to see the Yankees lost. Yahoo! They represent the total wrong image for baseball...way too overpaid, too big of ego's, etc. What is it, three of the Yankees salaries is enough to cover all of the Twins salaries? And the Yanks still couldn't buy a playoff win...

Want to buy a Harley?? There's a dealer rep here on the base taking orders for new bikes for '08. What an advantage...captive, longing for home crowd, huh?

One last thing before I close another rambling update/editorial...I asked one of commanders if it was okay if I volunteer for about three days of guard duty up in one of the towers. Since I have to miss deer season this year, I figured a couple of days up in the tower with a machine gun watching for '2 legged deer in a bongo truck' would suffice. He laughed and said "I don't think so...".

I'm still hoping my mid-term leave plans will come true. I hope to be home around the 20th of December. I want to spend the most amount of time I can with Stef while she is out of school for Christmas break. More later. I know we've only been doing this for a couple of months, but we all get pretty tired. I'm really glad that I'm in the Guard, and not active duty. For most of those folks, this is their third tour in anywhere from six to nine years of service. Many of them are making other plans for when their enlistment is up. The Army is offering some pretty incredible re-up bonuses, and has for a while. I did get to make one Sunday evening church service in October...great to sing again. I miss the whole church family, choir deal at home. I know God is helping me through all of this, I'm so grateful for all the prayers...some days are pretty tough, most are okay. We're getting it done, and the clock is moving fairly quick these days. God Bless all of you, and be safe at home. We can't ever let our guard down at home. Thanks for the support...
CW4 Brad Maas
A Co 2/147 AHB
APO AE 09391