ONE LAST BIG TRIP

I spent most of the last week traveling way out west checking out some ongoing projects and to look at some potentially future work. It was probably the best trip I have had this deployment and really gave me a great perspective on some of the outlying bases, cities, and infrastructure. The week started with a monthly conference I have with the Operations Officers of the units which work for us. It is an opportunity to discuss issues, evaluate progress on active projects, pass along information about future work, and just have the time to all talk as a group. This has been very important since most projects have some form of coordinated effort and are executed by multiple units. This conference was supposed to be the week before, but the weather won and I did not fly anywhere. I did get to spend a bunch of time waiting for flights and not getting much sleep, but it comes with the territory.

After the conference, my Operations Chief and I started the second part of our trip which was a visit to one of the camps that are being constructed in the ongoing pursuit of pulling military personnel out of the population areas and allowing the Iraqi police to oversee the cities. No different than in the US. We don’t want a bunch of military vehicles and personnel on the street corners, but have no problem with police doing their job. Anyway, the project was going well, the team was motivated and doing the work quickly, safely, and with very high quality. The only downside to this part of the trip, but the length of the day. We did not get to bed the night before until close to 11:00 pm and had to be staged for the convoy at 2:30 am. That was tough. Well we convoyed to the project I was just talking about and then were picked up by another unit to take us to our final destination for the day. The convoy took us through a small town that I had never been to and it was amazing to see the day to day life. It looked as close to normal as a war torn third world country could look. People were out and about, stores were open for business, houses were being constructed, trash was being cleaned up, and it just looked and felt normal. It was along the Euphrates so there were palm trees along the shoreline and grass in some spots. All of this led us to one of the major Iraqi dams which was our next destination.

The dam was amazing. It was built in the late 70’s until the mid-80’s so it was more modern than most facilities in the United States. The design is Russian and it was built by Yugoslavians and Czechoslovakians. It provides significant agricultural irrigation and some power generation for the entire region. We went there to look at a couple projects were are working or planning, but the best part of the visit was getting a “behind the scenes” tour by a mechanical engineer who works at the dam. We went all over the facility from the sluice gates up top to the turbine rooms, control centers, and cabling/transformer areas. The stairs never seemed to end and we kept going down in to the depths of the dam and into the nooks and crannies. Quite the impressive facility. I would like to be stationed there; most of the forces live in the dam and have balconies that overlook the river. They are able to see sunsets and sunrises regularly and it just seems closer to home. Plus, the PT would be great. You could do stair runs every day or if that is not good enough, run up the ramp that goes from the bottom to the top of the dam. A couple of those and you would be hurting.

I am now back in Fallujah and cranking along. This week should be interesting as we are working through the start of a major project which has had significant coordination problems. There are also a couple organization changes that are occurring which always makes things interesting. The team is still doing great and everyone is safe and sound. I will put some pictures up soon, but the connection is absolutely horrible right now due to that cable break somewhere over here. They say it will be better in another week or so, but I am not holding my breath.

RAMUDDY!!

I have heard Ramadi called that before, but I experienced it for myself this last weekend. I was in Ramadi to look at a bridge project being executed by an Army Engineer Company that works for us and it was a mess – the camp not the bridge. The camp is know for having very deep “moon dust” in the summer and when it rains it turns into the thickest, stickiest, nastiest gunk you can picture. It is not the “let’s go play football” kind of mud, but a type that goes with you everywhere you go. They have huge grates outside the buildings to try and scrape off what you can, but it really does not do any good. As for the bridge – it was going well and would replace some assault bridging with a more permanent solution. The cool thing was it is the same bridging I worked with back in 2002-2003. One of my main missions back before the invasion was to get the Marines bridging to cross certain key rivers during the march north. I worked with the Marines to find the right solution and then toured the factory in the UK to make sure it met our needs. The tech rep I worked with back then is back out here and still helping us out. It was nice to see the relationship is continuing.

On another note, the annual Key West Half Marathon was this past weekend. I have been training with the soon to be famous Camp Fallujah Seabee Regiment Running Club (okay really just 5-6 us running a couple times a week) and we had the course lined up. Well, after bad weather, eight hours stuck in the A/DACG (passenger waiting area), and more mud, I was stranded in Ramuddy. I scouted the camp for a dry part of the road, but ended up doing the Half Marathon on a treadmill. It was terrible. Bad enough to run on a treadmill for 13 miles, but it was in the corner of a room facing a blank wall with nothing to look at. The only entertainment was when the treadmill stopped after an hour and I had to restart it. Not quite what I expected, but I did it just the same. I can add it to the list of places I have run the race. My buddies Mark/Karen did the run in Key West (and sent an email to rub it in) and two of my running partners did the race in Fallujah.

This week has been crazy already and it is off again for a Conference and more project visits. The light is starting to glow at the end of the tunnel.

WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?

SNOW – In Iraq!!! I never would have ever dreamed. Some say it has been sixty years since Baghdad has seen snow and others say Hell has finally frozen over. It has been really chilly, but I never expected to walk outside to flurries billowing around me. It was not enough to stick, but it definitely was snowing. Picture one of the early snows where it may even get fairly heavy, but it just blows around and then melts. Quite the picture. It has stayed cold since then with nightly temps in the low thirties and wind chills in the low twenties. Too cold for me.

COUNTER-INSURGENCY

I am spending the week in Taji, Iraq at a Counter-Insurgency (COIN) Conference. It was fascinating information and potentially beneficial. It does not apply directly to the Seabees in the work we are currently doing, but with our significant Humanitarian Assistance missions around the world, the information could apply down the road. The conference was very Iraq specific, but the themes apply anywhere. The biggest take away is that the theme of Counter-Insurgency is British based and they have been using it for over a decade. There are good examples and bad examples of when the themes were used and what was interesting was the many times the British “forgot” what they had learned previously. The biggest deal was when the Commander of Multi-National Forces-Iraq, Gen Petreaus, came and spoke to us. He was very interesting to listen to and brought an interesting perspective with his multiply tours over here. There were some dry speakers as well, but overall – very good conference.

The compound I was on was an Iraqi training base. There were many Iraqi’s on the camp and they were very friendly. Most would say hello as they walked by and I never felt threatened whatsoever. My room was a metal box (ISO container if you know what that is) with a tiny bed, desk, frig, and restroom. The nice thing was to have a bathroom, TV, and internet in the room, but the bad thing was the heater. It is has been extremely cold here with the temperatures dipping into the twenties at night and the heater was just not keeping up. It was set as high as it would go and it just barely blew any air out and what did come out was lukewarm. Needless to say, I spent the nights bundled up under the one blanket that came with the bed.

Last Friday was a big deal. I finished up my Fleet Marine Force qualification and received my Fleet Marine Force warfare pin. Similar to my Seabee Combat Warfare pin (think pilots “wings”), the FMF pin is something you wear on the uniform and shows people you qualified in that area. It was hard work, but very good information and I learned tons.

Otherwise, we are cruising in the new year and plugging away on our work.

COMMAND NEWSLETTER

Check out the new link to the right side of the webpage. If you click 30NCR (Fwd) webpage that is the command webpage for out here. On the left side is a link to the "December 2007 Desert Buzz" which is the monthly newsletter. This month was highlighting the Operations Department which is my Department. Lots of stuff about what we do and some pics of my co-workers.