We then continued onto Al Udeid. After hours of briefings, and the Qataris briefly losing my ID, I finally made the mile track to temporary housing. We were given no map and if not for blind luck and following the right random guy I would've slept in the desert and never found the bunk. When you are traveling and sleeping at 5 am the last thing you want is 10 guys to come in, turn the lights on, and make a ton of noise trying to unpack and make their beds- but that's exactly what we did. With most of my stuff "in storage" on the other side of customs I had no way of telling the time when I awoke. It happened to be 4 pm and dark outside. With no idea where to go or who anybody was, I wandered around until finding the dining facility. There I met up with Lt Lopez and we went to the Fx sports bar after dinner. "The Deid" is a study in contrast- the dorms were bare bones and the sports bar would rival any in the states. I couldn't wait to get out of Qatar and onto UAE after just a few hours. Working with little patience and less sleep we were told I flight was delayed until 1800 and we just had to wait in the terminal until then. Finally we were bussed to our plane and it finally hit me that I was now deployed- no more Delta flights, we were taking a C130 without any cute flight attendants in sight.
This is what I sat next to for the final leg. And when that nice gentleman said he did not have any earplugs, "but the noise wouldn't be that bad,"he lied. It was the loudest flight I have ever been on, while at the same time the biggest rush. We were put in mesh seats (shown below) with little to no support, but at least we had plastic bags to put over our heads if we lost cabin pressure and parachutes somewhere just in case.
While all of that was reassuring, we made it safe and sound, albeit with a nice headache from the noise. After getting checked in I finally headed to my dorm and to meet my roommate. He helped me get my bags into the room, but no one gave me the heads up that it was not just the two of us (read in Will Smith's singing voice) but in fact there was a third roommate. Ooh and by the way, luckily Sam in the Sand gets the top bunk and crappy shelving because the others were taken already. After grabbing a quick dinner I tried to unpack the necessities and get as much sleep as possible. Today, as any first day of work should start, the Secretary of the Air Force decided to drop in and talk to us for a little while. After doing some in processing, I was driven back over to the flight line for some steak and lobster (sunday night tradition). All in all not a bad first day. I will however be working on GPC buys (not exactly what I signed up for) and will not be the deputy, but at this point there is nothing I can do about that.
I find myself surrounded by Ohio State and Bengals fans, but at least my roommate is a Gator fan so I might survive after all.
-SITS
