Guns, bikes and giants...& weed

Herat is still a relatively nice place in July...it's only 100 to 110 degrees, with a nice northerly breeze at 35 to 40 knots every afternoon. It has all the attractions, an old castle from Alexander the Great, restaurants and flower gardens.

 

Another nice attraction is the airplane graveyard right outside the wire, behind our helicopters. It's all the MiG's left over from the dirty Russians leaving Afghanistan...they smashed them, shot them up and abandoned them. It's quite a sight! And it's not just MiG's, there are tanks, rocket launchers...and the guards that live out there. Yes, these guys live here...to keep somebody from stealing one of these gems.

How cool must it have been to drive your MiG right into a T-72 tank...Russians being Russians, there may have been a bottle of Vodka or 16 bottles behind this story. So they probably don't remember it anyway. They left all sorts of treasure piles all over Afghanistan.

There are a couple of really nice ones in here, if interested, let me know, imagine driving your own tank! I can get one real cheap! Just a case of whiskey and a bottle of scotch...and the current owners will be glad to part with one or several. I picked out a nice MiG-17...just needs some bondo and couple of new tires.

 

The giant picked out his favorite...he says size doesn't matter, it's how you use it. He's taking parts off this thing and sending it home in pieces. He'll be done in about 13 years.

And one day, we found another giant. He's not quite at big as our giant...but pretty close. And now that our giant has gone home, this new one will do, he's from a land of giants. He says he's not a giant, we're just little.

A while ago I mentioned the things I miss most (wifey is first, buy she's not a thing). So that list started with milk, ice and toilet seats that haven't been peed on...so I've resigned myself on the first two but that last one is still on the list. We'll leave it at number one for now...and number two...bikes. I MISS MOTORCYCLES. It's so bad, I'd even ride one of these boat anchors...it's no KTM but it has knobby tires, but I'm not sure what the silly dork blinkers are for. Do you really use those when your out and about in Herat, or in hills looking for those rascally followers of 'the religion of peace' that bomb girls' schools?

Um....helmet laws? Nah...who needs 'em! This is the record so far, for people loading on a Caspien 150. By the way, I'll be taking delivery of my Caspien, VERY SOON!

Local campaign bus...we think, I guess we could have checked into the website on the side... fawad_zaranghltd@yahoo.com.

This little dude was pretty stoked to show off for the camera.

Oh yeah, the garden...they have lots of pretty flowers...and plants. 

My wife was in the Peace Corp, so she'll be able to identify this plant.

Frank, Fernando and Farah

Our best Spanish friends left for home the other day so we went out to eat at the Italian joint. We live under some stupid rule about not being able to drink beer. WHO IN THEIR RIGHT MIND GOES TO WAR WITHOUT BOOZE?!!?. Oh yeah, only the United States. This sign on the way to the Spanish/Italian tactical operations center sums it up nicely...

The Spanish guys felt sorry for us for being here for a year, so they took care of us and shared lots of food sent from home. Frank, Fernando and the Italian guy were good dudes. The Italian guy is still here and he still comes over to our office. 

Frank and Fernando handed out the pay to the Spanish troops. They have a copy machine in the back of their office for printing Euros. It's cool. And they always had a good time.

They really liked our pet giant, he spoke Spanish, Gman is what everyone called him. Well, the Spanish guys called him Estaben. He just left today, our translator is gone, we're screwed. Please send help...por favor!

This is Fernando with our Mascot, Laura Croft. She's famous all over our base...we get all kinds of help and goods from the Spanish and Italians if we promise them they can have their picture taken with Laura Croft.  Fernando made this his screen saver. 

We could tell you her real job over here, but then she'd kill you, and not because she actually had too, just because she could.

We had a going away party, Stretch here is indulging in the second worst beverage I've had the misfortune of sampling here in Afghanistan. This is 3 Horse Non Alcoholic Malt Beverage...made in some silly, not allowed to drink real alcohol, country. It was as bad as it sounds...but the waif-ish one here liked it. I am compiling a list of things he has eaten over here that should not be eaten by anyone. I'll put peechures up soon...

They left us with this guy. He doesn't even speak real English. We have to remind him to use his big words when he talks to grown ups. Yes those are real bullets, but don't worry, we took away his guns. We told him he can use the guns he's pointing here in the picture.

This goes under the list of things you 'probably' shouldn't do...give your Afghan crew members your guns to pose with for a picture. It looks like a horribly wrong Charlie's Angles pose...This looks worse that it really was, okay not really, it really was as bad as it looks. Nobody shot each other and we made it all the way home without getting lost or crashing, it was a successful day! Too bad all we had to celebrate with was 3 Horse N/A Malt horse spit. (the author was intending to make a horse urine reference but did not want offend)

This picture speaks for itself.

This was from a mission to Chesta Shareef, our crews went into town and took my camera. Our interpreter actually took 3 pictures that didn't turn out blurry, this is one of them, the other two were of a goat. The other 63 weren't so good. Afghans love having their pictures taken...even though most won't smile...they love it.

We flew to Farah on a pretty good mission, we moved a lot of different people and a lot of different stuff. We two American pilots usually fly in seperate aircraft with an Afghan pilot. But this time we flew in one aircraft aircraft and took turns. The Stick Figure flew first, so I sat in the back and took pictures. I got to fly home. After we landed in Farah and got tricked into shutting down the aircraft. This wasn't planned...they said 'we eat breakfast!'...then they said...'we're going into town to go shopping!'  We said 'whaaaat?!?'. Then they said, 'uh, we mean we need to go into town to talk with the intelligence people'...this is code for shopping for paying customers to take back to Herat. We're a little slow but we're cathing on!

Oh yeah, the reason I flew second, it was really the Lean One's turn to fly the whole time, but the Afghan pilot told him that he has more experience than me (he's been here for 10 months) and I needed the experience. So we compromised and split the fight time...our pilot explained that I needed more experience because the Wiry One is 'more powerful'. He reminds me of this everyday. 

In the states we like to fly low level down the beach to look for girls in bikinis...it's the same everywhere. In Afghanistan they cruise low level hoping to see an ankle or a wrist peeking out from under a burkha.

Our gunner...he's awake, and that's how we like them to be!

We took this picture so our mommies could put it on their refrigerators...and so our friends could use it as a screen saver on their computers, and I know some that already have...who wouldn't want to look at this picture everyday?!

4th of July and the 5th too.

Happy 4th of July...or as our Italian, Spanish and Afghan friends say, "Congratulations on your Independence Day". Though we had to convince the Afhgan's that American had to fight for it's freedom from the British government.

They couldn't believe it or that it was only a few hundred years ago!

We started the day with a visit to the site where NATO is building the Afghan Air Corp a new building and we brought our pet Giant with us. We got a tour from the Afghan company that gives us gas for our helicopters. The manager is called, The Principal...he looks like Afghan mafia? They showed us where they store mason jar sized jars of jet fuel, in the office, on open shelves next to some dude's desk, not sure how that guy has any brain cells left!

They showed us the storage facility...it was crazy!!! A tiny oasis and a duck! Who knew there were ducks in Afghanistan. The mom was sitting on her eggs, she didn't like the looks of our pet giant though!

Yes, that's a 25' or 8 meter (since we're in Afghanistan) fountain behind the giant.

We were invited to the Regional Training Center (US cops that are here training Afghan cops) for a 4th of July party! It was great...we even saw things like ice! It's been a long time since we've seen ice! Sorry, I got a little side tracked. I have list of things I miss most (the wife is first but she's a she, not a thing). 

First is real milk, second is toilet seats that haven't been peed on and third is ice.

Anyway, again, sorry for the digression. 

The cops put a really good show! There was a ping pong tourney, poker, darts and volley ball. And on a side note to that...the Afghans love volley ball...not sure when it started, our interpreters tried to tell us they've played it for years. If that were true, they should at least be able to beat a 6th grade girls' team, and I'm pretty sure they'd get crushed by the 6th graders. But I guess I shouldn't make too much fun of them, we lost to some Italians...even with our Pet Giant. It was pretty weak to get beat by Italians on the 4th of July, at least they weren't French! Just Italian dudes in Speedo's. Okay just kidding, but that is a funny conversation when they try to convince you that a speedo is totally hetero.  I told an Italian Colonel that was an argument he'd never win!

We had cake...Graydon is showing us the 'cheese cake'? I think that was a layer of cheese-like substance between layers of white cake. And if you look close, you'll see what look like mushrooms in that aforemetioned substance. I abstained, as mushrooms are fungus, and fungus is the same thing as athlete's foot. I didn't want to take the risk.

Our Italian and Spanish friends asked us over to a couple of...fiestas or whatever they call them in Italy. Our Italian friends were really good dudes, they went to Pensacola for pilot training. They told us that they don't wear speedos when they go the beach in Florida.  

This guy is an Italian F-16 pilot...he went to America for training too...that would be with the Tucson Air Guard. He learned a lot. Not just flying F-16's...the Guard guys taught him some other important skill sets. And like a good instructor, he teaches the lessons he's learned. In this case he's teaching fellow Italians how to shotgun a beer. I think he's on his eleventeenth beer by now. Go Guard!

Our best Spanish friends...Frank and Fernando, we call them the old guys from the muppets. Their office is right across from ours and they take very good care of us! Fernando is a talented painter...and artist and a gentleman. We had a good time with them and we will miss them when they go home soon! Fernando was trying to take us from the Italian 'get-together' to the Spanish one...he put on his magic red hat but still got lost in the dark. We made it home safely with the Lithuanians. No problem!

We had to get up really, really early to launch out the Afghans on an all Afghan mission. We even loaded up 1000 kg of cargo...by hand. It was nice morning.

Then after the cell phone silliness of the Afghan scheduling system, this is what happened, and then we unloaded  1000 kg's of cargo.