I'm out of Afghanistan, we left yesterday morning, arriving at Manas, Kyrgyzstan, early this morning. It was a long day, we had a showtime of 6:30 am yesterday and when we got there our flight had been cancelled, due to maintenance issues. They scheduled a replacement flight for later in the morning, which was good as it gave us time to eat breakfast. At the time we didn't know that would be our only meal for the day. Good thing I packed all those extra snacks in my carry-on.
We got to Bagram at about 11:00 and immediately put our names in for the next flight to Manas. None of us wanted to stay in Bagram and knew it would be best to get the first flight we could out of there, leaving no chance of missing our rotator flight back to the states. After a 2-3 hour "Customs" ordeal we made it on the first flight out, but it didn't go. Had an engine problem, a compression failure in engine 2, glad it happened on the ground. The customs ordeal - we had to empty each of our bags, checked and carry on, have the contents inspected, and repack them. They even made one guy throw out his blood pressure meds because they were not in the prescription bottle.
After the engine trouble, they moved us over to the spare aircraft. We got a little further this time, we taxied out to the runway, but then turned around and went back to the parking spot. They were just teasing us. The altimeter failed, so they had to replace it. After another hour or so, we were back on our way at 9:30 pm for the 2 1/2 hour flight to Manas. By the time we got our cots/beds, it was 3:00 am (1:30 Afghan time).
We have a few days here to turn in equipment, that should take about an hour. These extra days are built in to the schedule, for flight delays (which can easily happen). I should be home towards the end of the week.
No pictures as my HP laptop decided to take a vacation. It quit working last Thursday night and I am now using the morale computers at Manas. Since it is a government computer, no external devices can be hooked up to it.
The next blog posting will be from my home computer!
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Tim, I thank you for your wondrous take on such a serious mission. I also want you to know that your blogs have taught me more about what my youngest daughter will be acclimating to. This understanding of some salient facts and images, will assist me when she comess home for "break". Your humour and insight is in accordance with ours. Once again I thank you. ;)
ReplyDeleteWPCJ,
Cyn