I've finally made it into Afghanistan!  We arrived here in Ka= bul yesaterday morning.   My first impressions of Kabul is that i= t isn't as bad as I expected, however it's far from great.  Le= t's start at the begining of my little journey.  We left FT Riley = at 0145 local from the Topeka aiport via commercial charter and flew to Lep= zig, Germany a flight of about 8 hours.  Now when I say commercial cha= rter this isn't like flying normally, first off there is no TSA checkpo= int as everyone on the plane is armed.  Second, we had to save 700 bil= lion for the Wall Street bailout so we fly jammed into this plane.  My= self and MSG Famine were extremely lucky in that we actually had an open se= at between us, it was like GI first class!  We flew to Lepzig arriving= 1800 local where we refueled and had some time to visit the terminal under= the watchful eyes of the Bundeswher.  Next we jetted out to beautiful= Manas AFB in Kyrgistan arriving there at 0600 local time after 6 more hour= s of flying.  The skycaps unloaded our bags, read this as we climbed i= nto the hold of the aircraft and unloaded our own bags and then went ti the= AFB base getting there about 1030 local time.  We went to eat lunch e= ven though my body ahd no idea what it wanted to eat and we promptly found = out that we'd be palatizing our bags at 0145 local the next day for dep= arture to Kabul at 0600.  Needless to say we went to sleep at about 14= 00 local and then got up at 0000 local.  My sleep cycle is devestated = by this time and by the way it about 30 degrees that early in the morning.&= nbsp; As my journey continues we palatized the bags and then watched Death = Race in the manifest area, still don't know how it ends so if anyone= 9;s seen it please let me know?  Happily we moved to the airfield and = loaded a C-17, noe the commercial air wasn't fun but the C-17 sucked!!&= nbsp; Imagine yourself in a standard airline seat with bodyarmor an M4 rifl= e an M9 pistol in a thigh holster, an assault pack and a computer bag and n= ow you know what it's like to fly via C-17.  After about 20 minute= s I had NO feeling in my legs!  Luckily the flight here was only 1 hou= r and 45 minutes and thus we reach Kabul.

 

Well I have to run to chow and in-processing so that's all for now=

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"ODERINT DUM METUANT"