Salerno-Day 6

Sorry I've been away a couple of days. I had to file taxes and take care of a couple of other things, and by the time I finished in the evening I didn't feel like pouring my heart out to you people ;). On a positive note, and just so you're not worrying about my lack of female hands on my body for a massage, I got a haircut today, and I ordered up one head and neck massage with it (cuz it's my birthday). Damn near had to pour me out of that chair it felt so good.

Just a random (but very important) thought.....I had to get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. (By the way, the bathroom and showers are across the gravel walkway as I showed you in the pictures, and if you don't carry a flashlight you WILL kill yourself--no need for the Taliban, just take away our flashlights at night). Anyway, I came back into our hooch (that's what we call where we live), and some sort of a funky smell blew me halfway back to the latrine. This is what happens folks when five men live in an unventilated brick and mortar building that's about 40' x 20' in size. Well, I couldn't get to the PX fast enough to buy some anti-funky-smell products. I opened those babies up full blast and sprayed my entire room with Febreeze. Whoever made those products deserves a combat medal!

Back to my main train of thought.....we are now just knowledgeable in our jobs to be extremely dangerous. We are getting very adept at making decisions without any knowledge of what the previous team did, and we really don't seem all that concerned about it. We're really good at faking it. That's always the first step toward a successful deployment.

We did see something pretty entertaining today. A layer of oil was being put down on the road base prior to an asphalt paving process. Usually that's done by a spray truck. Guess what the Afghans do when the sprayers on the truck don't work. Mind you folks this oil is pretty freakin' hot (like boil-your-skin-off hot). Well, I guess according to Afghan OSHA standards you first get yourself two pretty big watering cans (like for flowers and stuff), then you get a big ole' five gallon metal bucket. The next step involves one guy taking the big metal bucket up to the hot oil tank, flipping the lid open and reaching down in there like he dropped a screw through his engine block and filling the buck with hot oil. Then he gets off the truck and fills one watering can. The second guy takes the filled watering can and starts to water the road like it was a sunny day in his garden. Meanwhile the first guy fills the second can so the second guy can run back and grab it when his is empty---un-freakin'-believable! I'm sure this won't be the last of our outstanding construction experiences over here.

That's all for today--Jack out!