And here we go..

Hey everyone, Im sorry its been so long since my last post.  It has been a combination of being incredibly busy over the past few weeks and me just being straight up lazy when we are done for the day.  So I will try to catch you all up on what has been going on and whats coming up.

So I was licensed on the MATV which is pretty cool.  The driving portion of actually becoming licensed sucked really hard though.  We were driving from about 1215 until 0130...It was a very long day.  Most of that was spent riding in the back of the truck which is not especially comfortable and your butt falls asleep in about 10 minutes.  We split it up into day driving and night driving.  The night driving was a little more difficult, we had to drive a portion of it with night vision and that has very little visibility especially since when I used it the sun was down but still had whitewash (the light was still coming over the mountains and made nightvision pretty much useless.) It was cool none the less.

      As you can see there is very limited visibility through the NVGs and no peripheral vision.

The following day began our validation process. Its a 5 day process where basically they check to make sure you are ready as a unit to deploy.  It included some convoy practice in different scenarios, it was pretty boring which I think is something I am going to have to get used to.  It will be long periods of bordem followed by some sporadic activity of some sort and then right on back to being bored.  Good thing I will have a PS3, I should be a pro by the time I come back.  On day 2 of the validations, we had to conduct base security.  My position was in a tower along the entry point of the base.  It was a really good piece of training.  They had actual Afghanis and Iraqis come in the play people attempting to enter the base.  Everyone had a different responsibility.  Mine was to watch those entering and make sure they didnt start trouble and if they did. Light em up.  Towards the end of the day, they sent over about 30 villagers and they started a protest outside of our gate and demanded to talk to our commander or else it would get "ugly".  This went on for about 30 minutes the whole time the other soldier in the tower with me had a M240B in case thigns got out of control.  Oh and to top things off, all radio traffic was going through me into HQ.  It was a madhouse with everyone needing to tal kto the commander and me having to relay messages thigns got a little chaotic.  We did the best we could but in the end a van pulled up and opened fire on the villagers.  No US personnel were hurt and we were able to kill those i nthe van but it could have all been avoided.  Thats why we train, make the mistakes here and learn from them instead of figuring it out over there and getting innocent people and your fellow soldiers killed.  It was a really good training exercise and I enjoyed it. 

So after the validation was done, that was it.  Our training here is complete and now we sit and wait for our ride to Afghanistan.  The anxiousness of all of us here is growing and you can sense people just want to get over there.  We are sick of waiting around and are ready to get started.  Im ready to relieve the 84th, let them go home to their families and friends and let us wait for that day 9 months down the road when our relief comes so I can do the same.  Its a very exciting time and a sobering one as well.  When I signed my contract I knew this day was going to come and now that it has, its just so surreal.  Its going to be an interesting 9 months and one I know I am never going to forget.  I am ready to go and so is the 1486th. 

So for probably the last time stateside..Adios!