Road Trip!!!

On Thursday night, the 13th, Mum calls me to tell me that Dylan would be home on the 15th of November at 0630, yes AM! So on Friday at lunch time I go to the rental car place on post to reserve a car for the weekend. The clerk makes sure that I don't need it right away as they were all out at lunch time. I don't need the car until 1700 (5:00 pm) so everything is aces. At 5, my battle buddie (a.k.a. friend, ride, fellow soldier) drops me off to pick up the vehicle. I then run to the PX to pick up a map of the area that would include Virginia and North Carolina, all the way down to Camp Lejeune (near Jacksonville, NC). The only thing that I could find is a US road map, fine, I already have one of those at home... :* So it is now 1730 and I am trying to go southbound on I 95 south of Washington DC, talk about rush hour! So I pull off to get some dinner, and by the time I am finished and check out, traffic is rolling at a decent pace. I had originally planned to try to make it to Fayetteville, NC and thus Ft. Bragg to spend the night, but by the time 2100 (9:00pm) rolled around, I realized that it was a- to far out of the way, and b- to far away to make it there any time before 0300. So I decided to cut off of I 95 and stop at a decent sized town that looked as if it would have a few hotels. Goldsboro, NC has one (1) hotel advertised on Highway 70 and this hotel is on the bypass (I now know it is on the northern bypass) So I miss the exit/entrance for the bypass and head through town... EVERYTHING is closed. So I turn south, following the business route that I think I am on, next thing I know I am passing through forest again. I tell myself that I am going to stop at the next clean-looking place I see. And there it is in beautiful Mount Olive, NC! I take the exit ramp on two wheels in my Dodge SUVette. I check in and it is midnight when I finally hit the hay. It had been sprinkling throughout the whole trip, a heavy drizzle here, light rain there, on and off from DC. At 3 in the morning a storm came through, thunder, lightning, fierce winds, the whole deal. I was glad to be in a room in a nice cozy bed.The rest of the trip the following day was mostly uneventful. I arrived at the reception tent at around 1100 (Mum called with the time change, and I verified by calling the update number). The announcer just notified all of the family members that the plane had landed and that the marines were unloading the plane and securing their weapons and would be about 2 hours out. Yeah, cheers and applause! So at about 1500 (3:00 pm) the buses show up and the Marines form up and march in to the confines of the barriers, the barriers were so that they could be formally dismissed before the family members rushed in to greet their Marine. As they were dismissed, I scanned the dissolving formation for Dylan. Then I went over to the bag piles to look for him. I asked a few members of his unit if they had seen him, and they told me to look for the gut carrying the big box. I finally found a Major to ask. He turned out to be in charge of Dylan somewhat and lead me to the office where Dylan was dropping off the secure items. Fortunately enough as I entered the building he was coming down the stairs. We went off to find his bags then we parted ways to change and meet up later to secure his car and boxes in storage. After that we went out to eat at the Texas Roadhouse. Oh My Gosh - that place is awesome, first off they have peanuts in the waiting area and you leave the shells on the floor (CRUNCH, CRUNCH as you walk) then you can pick your own steak from the window! No report on desert as I was almost too full to even walk out the door! Since we ad both been traveling most of the past couple of days we turned in early even for me at 1930 (7:30 pm) The Next morning we met for breakfast at IHOP and then went to an electronic store for Dylan to get a laptop. The silly boy paid for and waited for the guys there to install Microsoft Office. So as we waited I looked around for things to spend my combat pay on and we played a bit of Rock Band. I left at around 1300 (1:00 pm) to head back north to Fort Belvoir. At 1500 (3:00 pm) just south of Rocky Mount, NC a white Dodge Charger entered the freeway, since he and I were pretty much even speeded I pulled in to the fast lane to allow him on and then pulled back in front. A few minutes later I glanced in my rear-view and saw flashing red and blues - Damn! Evidently, I was going 84mph in a 70. Why? asked the cop. (Well) I thought (Cause I didn't know you were a cop!) But I said, Oh I have been driving for too long. - LAME! License and Registration, oh - A rental car... Is this Texas address valid? (GRRRRR get this over with!) Yes sir, it's my home of record. Blah, Blah, Blah, here is a ticket and a court date, January 16th in Nashville, NC. No I don't know the address or phone number to discuss the fact that you will be in Afghanistan serving our country at the time, but I am sure you can find it by calling information, Good Day. (AssHole!) So once I got back to Belvoir, I figured I would go to the Library at lunchtime to find the phone number. Bad news, the library is closed on Monday - Who knew? So Tuesday I get the information and call the office of the District Attorney. Surprise, Surprise, they don't settle out of state residents, I would either have to hire an attorney or appear in court. "$#%&*^&%$@!#^%#$@@*!" Luckily I am in the Army and have free legal council! So I go to the JAG office and say the magic words, "I am deploying" and I am in with an attorney in a matter of minutes. He calls the same number, identifies himself as an attorney with the Department of the Army, and she tells him that they will pull the case to settle it with a fine tomorrow. Why couldn't that do that with me? GRRRRR! So today, the 19th of November, I return to JAG he calls up the DA's office and they have reduced the charge to improper equipment - no longer a moving violation, woohoo!!! - and the fine is $146.00. The attorney also types up a nice letter and I am off to the post office to buy a money order and send the letter and money off Registered mail with return receipt.
~~Happy Ending~~

Camp McCready to Belvoir

Wednesday and Thursday we finished up all of the classroom time with First aid - lots of gory pictures, Intro to the Army's Sincgars radios, a review of the 9-line medivac request, and Calling for fire (mortars and the like). On Wednesday afternoon, I was voluntold that I would be a driver, cool, I like to drive, especially Humvees! -no that is not sarcasm :) So as a driver I have to be at the classroom at 0615 on Friday morning. Since our class is so small, 12 people now, our convoy will be instructor led, we will drive the course and discuss the treats instead of reacting and having a convoy commander make the decisions. The first threat is a culvert, it usually has a huge mortar round in front of it. We discuss the procedure - Back up, while the convoy commander calls EOD, and perform security measures. So we are told that the next threat will be a far-ambush and we are to just drive through it and fire our weapons(we don't have blanks for the exercise so it will be bang, bang, bang...) So we are driving along minding our own business, and BANG, pow, pow, pow, pow... Smoke canisters are flying etc... the vehicle in front of me STOPS, so I stop too. We get word over the radio to back up, so I do as fast as I can go. I am cursing the vehicle in front of us because we were told to drive though, and what the *** are they thinking?!?
The air clears, the shooting stops, and the instructors tell us to cut the engines and circle for an AAR (after action review) We settle the confusion, Truck 2 (we were Truck 3) commander told the driver to stop and backup. The gunner in our turret was given an atta-boy for his attention, an reaction. The opfor (opposition force) gave me an wtf-wow for backing up at 90 mph (an exaggeration). And over all it worked out OK, because the instructors were thinking what on earth are they doing, and realized that the bad guys would be thinking the same thing. So all was well.
When we got back to the classroom, I had to pop smoke to get back to the Fort Jackson SRP site to clear medical. The ride over there was OK, but when I finished, the other driver was nowhere to be seen, so I hung around waiting for him. Luckily I over heard another NCO saying he was going back to the battalion, so I asked him if by that he meant McCready. He did so I was able to get a ride back, and get back before noon when we were moving out to the airport. We arrived at the airport at 1300 ish, the plane to DC left at 1730. So Rea and I drank some and ate some as we waited. We arrived in DC at 1900 and one of Rea's buddies in DC picked us up from the airport. Since we would be a little while in processing at Belvoir, we dropped the buddy off at his apartment. After four hours of chasing our tails and hanging around the AIT barracks we found the housing POC (point of contact) So by Midnight we were able to get to bed. I was up at 0500 for breakfast and the convoy. Friday was a long day! Saturday was more leisurely, we hooked up with some of our buddies from AIT and a few of Rea's co-workers and walked around the National Mall, went to the Smithsonian - Natural Science, and made our way to Lincoln, then we walked to the Metro at Arlington Cem. We ate dinner at Sin/e(there is supposed to be an accent over the e). Much nicer than Friday. Sunday I took care of some errands at the PX and walked all of the way over to the Starbucks on post to access the Internet(map below). Rea hooked back up with me just now and let me know that tomorrow, Monday, we have a 0430 formation to move to the 0500 AIT PT formation. >:( GRRR. To make matters even better, it is a run day, I am not trying to get hurt. More to follow!!

Ft. Jackson, erm no, ...that's McCrady...

Well Mummy dropped me off at the airport with no visible tears, and in full costume...

Once at the airport I hauled all of my bags to the ticketing desk and of course I found myself in line behind someone with a large bag who kept insisting that it could be carried on... about 20 minutes later I had my tickets in hand and made the whole trip without further incident. :)

When I arrived in Columbia, SC, I was under the impression that I had to wait and talk to the military liaison. Instead there was a large group of soldiers enrolled in Recruiter school who seemed to know what they were doing so I tagged along with them. We arrived at the Ft. Jackson welcome center and I was told that IRR Recalls needed to go to Camp McCready, and not to worry, there was another soldier on his way there. So with one more cab ride I was where I needed to be.

The first 3 days Our group of 20 IRR recalls and Retiree Volunteers in processed through Medical, Dental, Finance, and everything else we needed. The general consensus is the three days could be run a little smarter so there wouldn't be as much sitting around. Female Soldiers are not able to process much of anything until their pregnancy test comes back. Then we rush around trying to catch up. A few of us had to wait until Tuesday to get immunizations, including the TB test, so now we had to wait until Thursday to get that read. So I missed our first soldier class, Heavy Weapons. Luckily, there were only 5 soldiers who were able to o to the class, so the civilian instructor did not issue gear, Helmet, flak vest, canteens... etc...

On Friday we refreshed on Land Navigation, and were briefly instructed on Middle Eastern Cultural Awareness. On Monday we will go over weapons familiarity, and fire our weapons at the range on Tuesday. Hopefully I should be out of here on Friday or Saturday, and on my way to be trained at Ft. Belvoir, Virgina, or on to the Unit in Camp Shelby, Vicksburg, MS to be trained by the unit. The Topo Unit has already been trained by a guy I was in AIT with, who is also processing here with me now. Small World!