Day 200

I have been here for 200 days now. That’s a big milestone indeed. There was no celebration to mark the occasion. But it is routine for me to count the days since I arrived on Bagram. I do the count every morning as I sip my coffee. This leaves me with at least 164 days and a wakeup to go. I still have my R&R to look forward to as well. That’s coming up pretty fast. I need the break. My life has been so busy that it seems as though the sun is going down every day almost as soon as it came up. We are having a lot of days lately where it would be nice to stop by the local watering hole with friends and knock back a few cold ones. But that luxury will continue to wait. It has now been 204 days since my last real beer. Fortunately, my upcoming R&R will solve that dilemma and reset the “days since last beer” clock. But I need to stay focused on work between now and that time. There are a lot of things going on here with fighting season returning and the Afghan elections rapidly approaching. It could get hot for all of us.

The rains returned for a couple of days to rapidly soak the already saturated ground. It didn’t take long for the massive puddles to reform. Fortunately, there were no more t-wall collapses. However, there were a few more sinkholes around the base. The biggest impact of the rain is the delays it causes to ongoing projects we’re trying to get completed. The ground gets too soft for heavy equipment and work grinds to a halt. It seems like every project we have going continually “slips to the right” on completion date. I have realized that it is pointless to use a specific date in the future when referring to the completion of a project. Instead, I just give a general window of time that we could reasonably expect the project to finish. That kind of reporting can make people in the chain-of-command upset at times but, at least, it saves us from looking like we are continually missing our target. Things get done but they do so according to Bagram time. Bagram is a very stubborn beast who is only reluctantly tamed.

So as I reached my 200^th day on this enigma of a base I could only look ahead at good times to come. I can’t say there is anything from the past 200 days I’d like to rehash or relive. I’m just glad that I’ve come this far and can say I have far fewer days to go than what I’ve already expended here. I never thought I’d be anywhere that would make me miss Iraq. Bagram changed that. I miss Iraq. Where deployments are concerned, Iraq was much less complicated than the intricate web of overlapping levels of commands, authorities, and stakeholders found in Afghanistan. Everyone wants to take credit but few want to assume the responsibility. It’s a crazy place. When this war is over I think I will turn Bagram into a theme park and charge top dollar for folks to experience this place. They will only believe it when they see it. You can’t make this shit up. I have 164 and a wakeup.