It's Great to Be Back in the USA

As the title says, it's great to be back in the USA even though it is only for one week and then it's back to Iraq to finish up my tour! Last Saturday we headed to the airport in Amman and what a CF!! Just to get into the ticket counter area you have to pass a control point and there were a ton of people trying to get through and even though we had almost 3 hours the prospect of waiting in that line just to even get to check in was already starting to irritate me. Luckily for us they have a service for about $30 that will expedite you through the first checkpoint, through security checkpoint and finally to the counter so that you can check in almost immediately. I am usually tight with my money but even if the price was $50 I would have paid it in a heartbeat. We got through the first checkpoint quickly but the second one took a while longer, and what didn't make sense was after we went through it was obvious that would could avoid that checkpoint and they wouldn't have even noticed. The feeling that one had when we went straight to the front of the counter for the express line was heaven, the normal line must have had 150+ folks and it was moving as fast as Hillary moved when she was getting shot at by the so called sniper in Kosovo in 96!!

3 out of the 4 of us got checked in and Major Sanders the guy who set this all up was told that his ticket had been cancelled and instead he was booked on the Amman to NYC flight that took off over an hour earlier. Calls to SATO travel in the US and Bahrain finally were to no avail and finally they said stand in line and there may be some tickets left over! Our flight leaves at 1130 and at 1100 there must have been at least 50 people still in line checking in. I realized that the plane wasn't going to leave until everyone was on the plane. So I quick went through Customs and grabbed a sandwich and went through security checkpoint 3, and then 4 who stop me because I have a flashlight with batteries in. They confiscate the batteries but when searching my ruck which has everything in there but Carmen, they never find the 12 AA batteries that I always carry just in case, go figure!

Onto the aircraft and when I get to my seat in row 31 I realize that the seat cushion had been used by Royal Jordanian Airlines since they achieved their independence from the Brits!! If there was one inch of padding it was a lot, I looked around to snatch someone elses seat cushion and was shocked to see that all were the same. I snagged an extra blanket folded it and that gave me about 1/4 inch more to sit on whoopeee!! The flight was uneventful and we finally landed in Chicago. They told us what the time was there and I changed my watch accordingly, which was the incorrect time by an hour but hey after all they did say it was 1642 hrs when it was really 1742 hrs which would have an impact later. I called Carmen while we were still in the air over circling around O'Hare and told her that I was arriving an hour early.

We got through customs although 2 of the Iraqi's got stopped for the random checks at immigration. We finally got our luggage and I headed out the door and what a great site to see, my parents and sister Christina had made the drive down from Milwaukee to see me. I hadn't seen them since April 07 when they visited me a couple of days before we flew out of Riley for the box. Here all this time I thought I had an extra hour until my 2030 flight so we are chilling having some coffee and catching up on everything, when Christina says don't you have to get going, I tell her no that it's only 1900 hrs and I still have another 90 minutes until my flight leaves, she says no, it's 2000 hrs and you better hope security is not that long or you're in trouble!

Christina, The Colonel, Mom and Dad at O'Hare

I'm through security in a heartbeat grab a sandwich and before you know it, we're landing in Dallas and then it's a 3+ hour bus ride to Texarkana TX, and by the time I empty out my luggage and hit the sack its 0345 hrs on Easter Sunday. Easter Sunday we did lunch, took the Iraqi's around town, to a auto dealership where they got a chance to see up close Dodge, Cadillacs, GMC's, Saturns, Dodge and Jeeps. We later took them through several neighborhoods so they could see houses, we stopped at one of the guys from Red River house and it was gorgeous and huge. I didn't realize it that it was the first house I had been inside since I left home in January 07. We then went to Walmart so they could do some shopping. As good tourists they spent a bunch of money there to stimulate the economy since Congresses stimulation package is a joke! The still have few billion to spend until they catch up to what we're spending in Iraq!!

The next two days we spent at Red River Army Depot touring the various facilities. Red River is a wheel depot where they rebuild all of the wheeled vehicles in the US Army to include engines and transmissions that are sent separate for rebuild. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the depot so I don't have any.


I will keep you up to date as we travel to Anniston Army Depot in Anniston AL.

The Colonel