sobo

So the pic immediately above ^^ was the kick-off to my "big trip to the mountains" last weekend. Two Huey rides later, I'm approaching the Pakistani border on my way to Spin Buldak... Multitudinous FA potential... The approach is a wee bit involved, though... Stripes!!!1 Hey, someone's trying to pilfer my FA! Guess we're gonna hafta air-drop my gear at the base for the claim! Nah, there appears to be plenty of routes for everyone...

Now, if six turned out to be nine I don' mind, I don' mind! If all the hippies cut off their hair, I don' care, I don' care!

"One out of 1 civil engineers recommends the Huey Iroquois for all your daily in-country transportation needs." My chariot awaits...

HEY SOBO!!!1 WHAT TIME IS IT??? Why, it's 1620! Time for a Safety Break... Afghani style! Complete with Krombacher N/A beer from Germany! For only having 0.5% alcohol, this shit is pretty damned good, considering the alternative...

That is some of the most epic prose I've read on this site in quite a while, ever since we last heard from dear old Uncle Tricky. We are in desperate need of more of this type of lyrical notion here, so we can all just get along...

yeah, it even drove Sobo to enlist! :lmao: Now that's fuq'n funny, I don' care who y'are!

Very astute eye there, Joe. I was wondering when someone would notice that piece of equipment. That very day was the first time I had ever seen such a beast, and I was quite curious about it. Turns out it's called a RTCH (pronounced "retch", as in "about to blow chunks"), which stands for Rough Terrain Container Handler. These things are all over the place here. They move shipping containers about from place to place on the FOBs. We receive all of our construction materials in these things, and some containers are even outfitted as lodging space (remember my CHU from KAF??), offices, and showers/latrines. In fact, my office is an 8' x 20' shipping container with the walls and roof insulated, 6 small windows, flourescent lighting, a wooden floor, phone, internet, desks/chairs, white board, coffee maker, and an AC unit. It's almost as good as my old corner office in the Tri-Cities! Well, mebbe not so much... I took some pictures of a RTCH moving a container past my office yesterday, figuring that eventually someone would notice the one in the pic of the Hueys and ask about it. You don't see it in the earlier chopper pics cuz a RTCH can move pretty quickly, and unless it's carrying a container, the boom is lowered for travel. So you wouldn't see it behind that Hesco barrier (blast wall) unless the ground on the other side was high or the boom was in the uplifted position. So here's a Distel-style photo assault of a RTCH moving a 40-foot container past my office. That's my office in the first pic, the one that says "Regional Staff Office" on the door. I saw the thing go past my windows, and figured that if the guy dropped the container, it would squash all of us inside the office like a bug, leaving us all prepared for burial/disposal in our office/coffin. So I grabbed my camera and hustled outside for a little safety by distance... That's my office on the left, with the white sign on the door. I thought he overhung me by a wee too much, so I skedaddled outta there... To give y'all a sense of scale, the tires on this behemoth are 6 feet tall. "So where do you want this thing, Mac?" "Right over there next to the orange one, but you gotta put the door on the other end." "No problem, Mac..." "I'll just spin it around this way..." "...just a little more..." "...and walk it over here..." "...and set it down right there." "Perfect!" "So where d'ya want the next one, Mac?"

Ya know, they completely missed the boat on that one over here yesterday. No fajitas, no enchiladas, no tacos... Nothin'! I don't consider the choice between stuffed green peppers or turkey and mashed potatoes to be Cinco de Mayo fare in even the sightest way... Anyway, it's almost 0900 on a beautiful Sunday morning here... time to get to work. Y'all be cool!

Yeah, Carl, been in country about 3 weeks now. Don't see myself getting to play the touristo much. The work week here is 12+ hours/day, 7 days/week. Not much time for adventure travel...

You guyz crack my shit up. rob- That was the best cc.com mash-up I've seen yet. Good on ya! Stephen- Not that president... Yeesh... Jim- Total coincidence. Totally... Yeah, that's it... Joe- I may come off as lackadaisical in these posts, but I never let my guard down. Always watchin' my top knot... Rob- Sadly, nope. And getting caught at the range popping off caps with an Army buddy's piece is a 1-way ticket home. Shal- Love ya, Baby. Always. I am the Party Perpetuator. :brew: Scott- Nice to hear from you again! Are you back in country yet? How was your trip? Banking my scrilla?? No way, man. But I'm making good decisions with it. I'm zero credit card debt, almost out from under my HELOC already, and working on the note on the house next. Maxin' out my 401k contribution, and looking at stocks next. Life is good in thi$ regard. Nothing new to report this week. The days are too long, the nights are too short, and Life goes on... Had a Skype date with the young'ns last night (your yesterday morning), but they never came online. Don't know what happened there...

Excellent work, Lowell! Thanks for all you do and have done to preserve the "history of the hills" in the PNW. :tup:

Yes. I've had my SF LI for 10+ years. I've been with SF for 25+ years for other policies (auto, renter's, homeowner's, personal articles, etc.). Yes, true with SF. Not true with my MetLife policy thru ASCE. Only exclusion was suicide, and that dropped after 2 years, as I said in my first post above. Not sure I remember if there was a difference identified. In either case, if you don't declare it and you die before the exclusion drops, your NOK will find it difficult to press a claim to fruition. No, it's not just you. I opened my mouth too, cuz I wanted to be sure the wife (at the time) and the kids (still to this day) would derive a benefit in the event of my early demise. It is my contention that attempting to deceive an insurance provider by refusing to disclose certain information relating to your active participation in an activity that is, in the event of your death while engaging in that same activity, readily discovered and/or corroborated, is foolhardy, pound-foolish, and stupid. Insurance companies are much more adept at tricking you than you are at tricking them. Be honest, tell the truth, and don't die in the first 2 years. That's all there is to it. Just sayin'...

Yup, State Farm here too, and no cares about climbing, SCUBA, sailing, etc. As rob mentions, they do frown upon the private pilot thing. Also, I carry additional LI/AD&D through my employer, and also a large policy through my professional organization (American Society of Civil Engineers) that has no limits except suicide, and that restriction was dropped after two years. The ASCE policy is dirt-cheap by comparison to the SF policy. I highly recommend looking into your occupation's representative organization (if you have one) to see if they offer a "member's benefit" of reduced-premium LI. Best thing I ever did re: looking out for the fam was to get that policy. And my employer just upped my LI by a factor of 5 for going to AFG. I've got so much LI on me right now I'm worth 10X dead as compared to what I'm worth alive.

You guyz (Stephen and CF) are not very kind. Seriously, the chow here is way righteous. I need to step back from the table or I will get huge. Anyway, I'm firmly established here now, and just last week, my company's president and VP from the Government Facilities and Infrastructure Group paid me a visit, all the way from Altanta! I got to show them around the FOB, treat them to Ben & Jerry's ice cream at the DFAC, and then send them back to KAF and on their way home. I didn't take any pictures while chauffeurring them around base, but I got a couple as they arrived and as they left. Also, today was the 1st Anniversary of the shooting of OBL, and we were warned to be alert for attacks. We didn't get anything here, but other FOBs reported some hits. Life is pretty good here... Incoming... Outgoing... Bye, bye, bigwigs!

Prime Rib Night last night, suckas... And tonight was Surf n' Turf Night! Real Alaskan king crab legs, golden prawns, and ribeye steaks with all the trimmings. Plus, real Ben & Jerry's ice cream! A guy could get large living here at Walton...

Couloir! So nice to see you again! Hey, bro, you need to upload some of those hawt avatar pics of yours, cuz that's the only pr0n I'm gonna get over here! Seriously now, I got to my permanent FOB early this morning, and spent the day touring FOB Walton with my new “underling.” Everywhere we went, he introduced me as his “new boss.” Technically, that’s entirely true, but in reality he’s been here in theatre for almost 2 years, and knows infinitely more than I do about how things work/get done around here. But he just finished giving me a 1-hour crash course in that after dinner, so I'm getting up to speed on the program. And that leads me to the next thing... This place is da bomb! The chow is most awesome! Tonight I had Mongolian grill and cherry pie a la mode! We’re one of the only FOBs in theatre that has REAL ice cream! Ben & Jerreys, no less! And even though I don’t have a private CHU anymore (I’m now going to be in a large tent that sleeps 8, with blankets hung from the ceiling to create “walls”), the smell has improved markedly from KAF. At KAF, my CHU was about 100 yards from the Poo Pond (that’s what everyone calls it), an open sewage lagoon that takes in shit from the entire KAF base (about 20,000-25,000 people). It wasn’t too bad at night, because I was living upwind at night. But the wind shifts to the opposite direction every morning at KAF, and when I would open my door in the morning, my nostrils would be assaulted by the most hideous stench you could possibly imagine! There is no sewage treatment at the Poo Pond to speak of that a civil engineer like me would demand. No, shit just gets piped there and it fills up, the turds settle out, and the heat evaporates the liquid portion of the “mixture.” In the winter and spring (like now) when it’s not hot enough to evaporate, it just overflows into a ditch that runs through camp and out into the desert. Now I understand why so many people get sick at KAF – they are breathing dust that contains such a large percentage of fecal coliform that you can’t help but get ill from breathing it. Glad I made it out of there before I got the screaming shits! Everybody says I’ll be fine here at Walton, now that I’ve escaped KAF. Oh, and no rocket attacks at Walton! But they had another rocket attack today at KAF. Haven’t had an incident at Walton since about a year ago when a suicide truck bomber detonated at the base’s main entry control point. A bunch of Afghani locals were guarding the gate (don’t ask me why they do that here – it’s like the fox guarding the henhouse), and they let the truck inside. Then he detted and killed all of the Afghani guards (and himself, of course), and wounded two American soldiers who were rushing over yelling at the Afghanis to stop the truck from coming in. Our guys wear body armor and helmets, and the Afghan National Army guys don’t. They see it as “more honorable” not to wear protection and if killed, they’re martyred. Bottom line: the Americans lived. The Afghanis didn’t. Anyway, it’s getting late here and I have to go set up my “room” in Tent 10, Berth 7. Need to get that done before everyone turns in for the night and I’m the FNG turning all of the lights back on. Hoo-ah!

Now that sounds like a h00t!

Thanks, Mel! It's been pretty quiet for the past few days, although we did all have a pretty good laugh today at lunch. We were in the DFAC eating when the attack siren went off, so we all dropped our spoons and forks and hit the floor. Not two seconds later, we get an "all clear" signal. We all busted a gut laughing. Apparently, the person on duty "butt-dialed" the warning siren and sent out a false alarm. I wonder how that went with his/her superior officer later that afternoon...

Ya know, Scott, I noticed that after I posted the pic. I have no skillz regarding PhotoShop, so mebbe a mod can blur that out... Kurt fixed the photo for me. Anonymous diner's identity is safe once again.

done. http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1065697 NICE!!!1

Ah! Thank you. I saw it when it came out, but that was a while ago and I don't recall the scene or character. My apologies...

Yeah, I'd have to agree with that, D, for fresh out of high school. BTW, who is your avatar? Is that Pippi? Or the young girl from Little House...??

Have you ever seen a camel spider before, Drew? These things are fuck-all sick! They run after you seeking to hide from the sun in your shadow, and they emit this high-pitched scream when they chase after you. They cling to the bellies of camels to hide from the sun, like a remora clings to a shark. Bizarro! Interesting reading...

Ya know, Scott, I noticed that after I posted the pic. I have no skillz regarding PhotoShop, so mebbe a mod can blur that out...