Salmon Shtup Village Round Two

Today we took COL Diyah from the 3-1 NP up to Bagdhad to pick up the first round of Humanitarian Assistance for Salmon Shtup village. All in all we loaded up 4 pallets of water, 6 pallets of wood, 3 big boxes of cement and 2 pallets of cinder block.

It was kind of a long day, as good as the US Army is about communication, it is hard to link up with another unit that isn't in your area of operations. We had to find the one Staff Sargeant on FOB Striker (huge place) that had the keys to the storage vans where the Humanitarian Assistance was kept. It took us about 2 hours to find the guy and get all of the pieces together - - keys, forklifts, forklift operators, another forklift with a different kind of fork, yet another forklift because the first one broke, etc. - -but it all worked out in the end.

The fine soldiers of the 639th CSSC (Combat Service and Support Company, I think) from the Montana National Guard out of Kalispell, Montana helped us out a lot. Not only did they load up the goods for us, they also spotted the Iraqi shurta lunch and as much gatorade as they could all stuff in their trucks.

Salmon Shtup Village

One of BG E's projects is Salmon Shtup village. This is a small area northwest of Northern City, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. The village was destroyed during the bad times, it was right on a Shia/Sunni fault line in the north of our sector, and all of the families in the village were chased away. All of the Northern City sheiks think this is a very important area, BG E does as well, we aren't quite sure why, but if they think it is important, we will help out as much as we can.
About 4 months ago, Sheik K started to ask BG E to provide security for the displaced families as they came back to the area, BG E agreed, and made sure Sheik K understood he would only provide security if the families came back and started to rebuild the village. For the next 2-3 months there was a lot of going back and forth between the Northern Sheiks and the Tribal Reconciliation Council (the senior sheiks, both Sunni and Shia, that have been appointed by the Prime Minister to work out issues between Sunni and Shia tribes before they get to the point where they need the government to intercede). While I was on leave 42 families were convinced to move back to the town, BG E put a platoon of National Policemen up there to secure them and now folks are trying to work with the government to get basic services to the village. Pretty standard requirements: Water and electricity. The fields around the village are all green, and there are date palms there so there is something going good, but to be honest, not much for the folks to do up there outside of try to scrape together a village.

Couple of successes: The Red Cross dropped off 43 water tanks (one per family) this week and Sheik K sends a water truck up there every couple of days. BG E visited the village on monday, we went along and BG E will present the village requirements to the Mayor's executive council. The Beladia Mayor (a Beladia is roughly the equivalent of county; a Nahia is a larger city within a Beladia) may be able to do something, I will keep you posted.

Some of the pictures of the village are posted to the web page.

ID Card Victory

Today was a banner day, the forces of US Army bureacratic evil were defeated on the modern corporate battlefield. Today, BG E received his International Zone (Green Zone), Iraqi-wide identification card. This card allows BG E to go into the Green Zone (part of Iraq, btw) without a US escort, kind of funny, but that is the nature of security. The team that worked with 3-1 NP let his ID card expire about 3 months before they left, as we drove away after dropping them off my counterpart said, " . . . oh, yeah, you guys need to get BG E a new ID card."

Because the card had expired, BG E had to go through the whole process, which meant SWATT had to go through the whole process. Once we found the ID card office, we (6.5 and I) had to sit through a 4 hour presentation on how to fill out the proper forms, and where those forms would go. We were also briefed on the operating hours of the ID card office: 0930-1130 in the morning, closed 1130-1330 (for lunch), 1330-1630 in the afternoon, Monday through Thursday. After doing some quick math, the pack of folks in the office worked 6 hours a day, 4 days a week. Now, we thought that maybe those were only the hours they were open to the public and the other 30 or so business hours in the week they folks were busy processing paperwork, making ID cards, returning phone calls, answering emails and dutifully pursuing their mission of ensuring the right Iraqis had ID cards. After a few phone calls, we found out that, nope, they only worked 24 hours a week, and would not consider working a minute past any of their posted hours. Some folks fight wars in different ways, apparently these folks only fight paperwork 24 hours a week.

Anyway, there are three steps to the process: Initial forms, security screening and biometric processing and picking up the card. OK, four steps. Two of those steps, security screening and picking up the card, BG E had to be present, so we had to drive from the country to the big city. For the security screening, we got held up by normal Bagdhad traffic and almost didn't make it there before 1130, as 6.5 and BG E walked up to the office, the ID card folks were closing up shop for lunch at 1120 or so. Luckily, the officer in charge of the ID card office was there and was receptive to how difficult it is to make appointments in a city with little traffic control and a lot of traffic.

We finally got all of the steps completed, now BG E can attend meetings in the Green Zone and on other bases controlled by the US without an escort. Big Victory.

NCAA Update: Round two had some pretty profound impact on the pool. I am still in third place, but it is much closer. 6.5 has moved into 1st place, tied with Smooth. Superman has faded back to 4th place. There are some major differences in our Sweet 16 picks, so things will get clearer in the pool. 6.5 is banking on Duke making it to the final game, I think that is a stretch after watching Duke break my heart over the past 3 years. I picked Syracuse over oklahoma and am sticking with unc making it to the final game against Louisville.

Hook up

I am now back in Iraq and have probably caught up on my sleep and jet lag. A few changes while I was gone the main one being that we now have a new task force to work with - - TF 1-82 the Dragons. They are just coming into COP Cashe so it will be a few more days before they are all here. The Gators and Knights are heading back to their areas.

The 3-1 NP BDE is still doing well, everyone I talk to tells me how great a unit they are, which does me proud of course.

I have posted most all of the pictures I think I am going to post from Australia, it was a great trip and I will have to plan on a way to get back down that way.

The team has started up the mandatory NCAA bracket, I am currently in 3d place out of 4. My goal was to beat 6.5 because he was talking so much smack. He picked Duke to go to the Final 4, as much as I love the Devils, I had to go with the Heels, the Devils haven't beaten the boys from Chapel Hill for a couple of years now. Smooth (SFC T) is currently leading the pool, he was all over the first round. I will keep you posted.

I have found out about a couple of interesting Iraqi social things. First of all, it is pretty common for an Iraqi with a cell phone to randomly call numbers just to talk to someone - - someone of the opposite sex that is. I received a call late last night, the caller hung up real fast, so it must have been a guy looking to chat with a girl.

The other thing is Hook Up TV. This is a channel of nothing but cell phone numbers, names and whether or not the phone is owned by a guy or gal. An Iraqi watches the channel, picks out a number and calls it up. Funny National Police Story: COL A, the deputy commander, signed up COL H one of the other senior colonels in the brigade on the channel, as a young women named Hanna. As soon as his number went on TV, COL H got 30 calls in the first 30 minutes from young men looking for Hanna, COL A got a pretty good kick out it all. I got a really good chuckle out of it when he told me about it. No telling what will happen when the Internet spreads around here.

Big congrats to JFord from DC for completing his 25th Marathon, pretty good for an old guy. Good job JFord, and thanks for the newspaper clippings.

Back in Kuwait

Wow, great vacation - - who knew Sydney was so HUGE. I was kind of expecting a city the size of Charlotte, NC, but it was more like LA or something. There was a ton of stuff to do, I could have spent the whole two weeks there and not seen it all. I never made it to the beaches or to the other side of the bridge, but I think I had enough of it. The map below kind of captures it, I liked the map because it is always good to know where you are in the world, and any map that has a "You are here" arrow on it is a good map in my book.

In Sydney I did the typical tourist stuff: Bus tour (highly recommended so you can get the layout of the town down), Aquarium (not as good as the one in FT Fisher, NC, nowhere near the quality of the Monterey Museum, I did get a good reference on the fish that I saw while diving, though), Maritime Museum (hmmmm, kind of lacking for a museum that is supposed to track the maritime history of an island nation, but, free). Has anyone else heard of the German guy that kayaked from Germany to Australia? Only took him a short 7 years, including two or three years interned during WW II. Interesting stuff, no way I would do it, his boat was tiny!

I also spent a lot of time just walking around the Darling Harbor area: That is the area that was where the original fleet of convicts landed in 1788. The first house (pictured below) wasn't built until much later and has been preserved.

The Sydney Harbor bridge was impressive, as was the Opera House. I will post some of the pictures to my blog site.

Australians have a weird sense of humor - - - the tower that controls all of the traffic and berths in the harbor is called "the Pill" - - because it controls berths . . . . not a lot of catholics down under.

I have a few more hours to wait til my flight back to Iraq, I think I will take a nap or two . . . .

Dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, dive, eat, then, umm, dive?

Wow, what a trip. I just spent 7 days on the Spirit of Freedom liveaboard, great boat, great trip, great diving. The weather was a little rough, more on that later, but I wanted to put up a few shots to let folks know I am OK, the cyclone didn't hit our ship and no sharks came after me.

The camera was rocking, the visibility was not that good, and I couldn't get the white balance correct to save my life, but I did get some good shots once I remembered all the settings and such (thanks for the notes, Melissa).

The first part of the dive was on the Tusa T5, a very crowded day boat. We were on that boat because the Spirit of Freedom had some maintenance that had to be done so they farmed us out. We did three dives on that boat, not much to speak of, a whole lot of folks were on the boat so it was tough to get away. Luckily, we linked up with the Spirit that evening and headed up the reef. I didn't take too many pictures on that part of the trip.

Day two, we were up on the top of the reef, and the diving got good. Initially there were only 12 divers on the Spirit, so we pretty much had the reefs to ourselves. The only hold up was there was a serious storm brewing, and there were a lot of winds associated with that storm. The winds made waves and the waves stirred up the sand so visibility was kind of bad, but the reef made up for it.

The first three days we were diving up on the top of the reef, working towards Lizard Island. One dive was a cod feeding dive, interesting, but I was more interested in the scorpionfish and dragon fish that I tried to take some pictures of. I have to go back and check the pictures out again and see if I can adjust them with the computer. Most of the dives were on traditional reefs, there was one dive on a bommie, Lighthouse bommie to be exact, very cool dive, but lots of current.

The first half of the trip my dive buddy was Tila, an awesome spotter and a great dive buddy. She could pick out the smallest stuff and waited patiently for me to take pictures of it. She was the one that found most of the pipefish and nutibranes early on in the dive. Tragically, her husband showed up the second half of the trip and she went diving with him. I dove with Dave, a lawyer from Great Britain, good dive buddy, but not as sharp eyes. The last few days of the trip I dove with Tila and her husband Steve.

Some of the other folks on the dive: Jenna the doctor in training from Kansas (last 4 days of the trip), she was just getting done with a month of exchange residency in Melborne and was travelling around Australia and New Zealand. Dick and Lydia, a couple from Alaska were with us for the first three days, Mike the author/swim coach/artist/illustrator was Dick's dive partner for the first three days, he gave me a cool sketch of some reefs he saw in Utilla, Honduras. We had a good talk about Honduras and Caribbean diving. CPT Zack was on board for the last 4 days as well, he was doing the same thing I was doing, getting as far away from Iraq as possible, while doing some good diving. There was also a pile of folks from Canada and a few other folks from the US, all in all, a good bunch of folks to go diving with.

My favorite pic:

The shrimp were just hanging around to clean any fish that came in there, pretty cool. The way they are looking reminded me of the seagulls in Finding Nemo, except they are saying ".....clean, clean, clean. . . . clean?" instead of mine. Tila, my dive buddy found the shrimp, she was excellent as a spotter, most of the early shots were stuff she saw and pointed out to me, after her husband showed up, my picture production fell off.

NOTE: All of the pictures that were posted on Picasso were adjusted with the computer for light, brightness and they were all cropped down to show the small stuff that we saw. If you have any questions on what the pictures are of, let me know. Even better, if you have any idea on what the pics are, let me know, I was just kind of guessing when I labeled them.

In Cairns

My first few days in Cairns have been spent wandering around the city, checking things out. Cairns is a city that is dedicated to tourism, kind of like Key West or Myrtle Beach, just not as obnoxious. Most of the tourism is diving tourism, but there is also some other tours that I have checked out.

The first tour was a trip through a part of the Daintree National Forest which is part of the rain forest preserve here in Australia. .1% of Australia is rain forest, most of it north of Cairns. In a geeky sort of way, it was interesting. I have always been a big Discovery Channel fan, and the rain forest tour was like an episode of Planet Earth. The tour guide pointed out how all of the plants compete for sunlight - - food and water being plentiful - - some of the trees grow up quickly, other plants cheat and use the trees to climb up to the sunlight. Other plants use crooks and crannies to start off. This picture shows most of that in action. Fast growing trees, cheating vines and plants starting off on top of other plants. Pretty cool.

There wasn't much wildlife about, but there was a very cool looking spider: The Golden Orb spider. Family note: This pic was taken with my Olympus Camera, pretty powerful camera, I used it much more than my normal land camera, makes me almost want to go buy a new camera to carry around in Iraq. Can't wait to get it under water. Back to the spider: The picture is a female, she is about 6 inches across, the male is less than an inch, and he doesn't live very long. The two pics are two different spiders, just to show the size of the spiders and give a good view.

There were a couple of good flowers in the rain forest, the best looking one was this white flower, no idea what it is, but it will probably look pretty good framed up:

After the rain forest, we were heading to lunch, when the driver just plain went nuts, turns out we saw some cassowary birds crossing the road, there are apparently only 1200 of these birds around, all of them in the Australian rain forest. There was a dad and two chicks crossing the road, he slammed on the brakes and started yelping, I got a few shots of them, the folks in the back of the van didn't have a chance. Pretty ugly birds, almost prehistoric looking.

After the van tour of the rain forest, we hit a river to check out some crocs. We took a boat tour on the Daintree River, pretty cool, we did see some crocs, a small female named Elizabeth and Fat Albert, a huge (18 foot) male that was just lounging around on the bank. Pictures are posted in the photo log link.

The crocs were cool, but I think the best thing that I saw that day was a Sea Eagle just sitting there waiting on some fish to swim too close to the surface.

The dive trip starts off tomorrow, should be interesting, I won't be able to update anything on the blog, but will be taking a lot of pictures if I can find a patient dive partner.