Back Home Again.

We made it home. The picture below was taken in a London Pub, the name of which escapes me at the moment. It was directly across the street from the hotel where we stayed on Friday night after learning that we were stranded until Saturday.
BEFORE eating and drinking at the Pub, we had grandiose ambitions about how to spend a few hours in London. AFTER eating and drinking at the Pub, we realized that we were just too tired to do anything other than go to sleep. Our bodies were giving us absolutely no choice - we were completely out of gas.

Thanks to everyone who read this blog during our 'Stan Tour. I apologize for not being able to update as much as I had originally planned. They kept us very busy, and that's okay.

I will continue to post to this blog for a while. I have over 4000 pictures and about 100 short video clips to sort through. I also plan to assemble a complete journal of the adventure, and post it here.

Since our return late last night, I've been asked a few times to describe the entire affair. In a nutshell, it was awesome. Completely exhausting, extremely gratifying, but overall, fantastically awesome. In the next few weeks I will post a few more times, showing select photos, and describing some of the experiences in greater detail.

Until then, have a great day. I'm going to bed.

~mac

Qatar

Qatar = Heat.

First full day in Qatar in progress. Sitting in my room in the pilot dorm at Al Udeid Air Base. It's noon. I just walked in from outside, where I had a constant 120 degree breeze blowing in my face. I haven't felt a rush of hot air like that since I stood in the wake of a Chinook engine three days ago in Afghanistan.

I find myself wondering why people would live here. Then I remember - oil.

The laptop I brought with me is experiencing problems. The battery is dead, so I have to rely upon electricity, and the power cable apparently has a short in it somewhere. I have to wiggle it around to find a position in which it will work, and once it does, it could drop it's connection at any time. However, the WiFi signal is pretty good.

We have our one and only show here on base tonight at 20:00. We're allowed three REAL beers per day. I can't wait to wrap my lips around a REAL beer later tonight. At all the Afghanistan FOB's, we were only allowed alcohol-free beers, which are okay, but nothing like the real thing.

We actually got more than 5 hours of sleep last night - the first time that's happened in almost two weeks. They've kept us really busy, and that's okay. I can tell it's going to take a while to readjust upon returning home.

Our last stop in Afghanistan was a fantastic experience - Camp Phoenix, where all the Illinois troops are stationed. Unfortunately, most of the Effingham area troops had shipped out a mere hour before our arrival. We enjoyed hanging with the remaining Effinghammers, however, and everyone else there. They really treated us like kings, and we decided to stay the night there and give them more than one show.

I can't say enough about how much of a wonderful experience this whole thing has been. The soldiers have been so eager and appreciative about our presence, not knowing that we're only there because we appreciate what THEY do on a daily basis.

A Colonel at Camp Phoenix said that their camp is like a prison where all the prisoners carry weapons, and he was right. Their days are exactly the same every day. The food at the D-FAC's (Dining Facilities) is great, but I can see how it would get old after a while. Same food each day of the week. Same tasks every day. Same routine every day. It's like the movie "Groundhog Day".

We actually have time today to do a bit of laundry, for the VERY first time on the whole tour. Up until now, we've been just buying new underwear and socks at every PX we find ourselves at. I've ended up abandoning used undies and socks at every base we've been at. Not the perfect way to do things, but it works.

I'm looking forward to getting this last stop overwith, and getting home. I'm ready to see grass again. I'm tired of seeing Humvees and Chinooks, and look forward to being surrounded by Impala's and Celica's again. Most of all, I'm aching to see the wife and boys.

I hope to write more in the next two days, the LAST two days of the tour. we've been capturing thousands of pictures and small video clips, and I can't wait to be able to post them online somewhere where you can view them. The upload speed has been quite slow, so uploading videos is impractical.

Gotta go. Have a great day!

~mac

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Bagram and Phoenix - Memorial Day

Don't have much time, we're packing to go to Qatar. I'll post a few select pictures from our show in Bagram on Sunday evening, and our two shows at Camp Phoenix on Monday, Memorial Day. We ended up staying at Phoenix on Monday night, and had a great time hanging out with the Illinois troops! In a few hours, we'll be drinking REAL beer in Qatar! If we have decent Internet, I'll post as much as I can.

The Latest....

On Friday night we toured the outskirts of Bagram. Here are a few of us posing in front of the mine fields which surround the entire base. The mines were left behind by the Russians, as a gift to Afghanistan.

Here we are lugging the gear off of the truck on the flightline, on Saturday morning, getting ready to load up the Chinook, enroute to FOB Metharlam and FOB Fenty.

First stop - FOB Metharlam, a small post out in the middle of nowhere. It was 115 degrees. Rob fried some eggs on his cymbals. The officers showed us a ram they kept in the middle of the complex - saying that the plan was to barbeque it on Monday evening.

Check out the view of the village directly behind FOB Metharlam. Also note the pallets and pallets of water, and the bomb bunkers directly behind the band.

Next, we visited FOB Fenty in Jalalabad. Incidently, Jalalabad is where a while back we bombed the living shit out of the mountains because Osama was hanging around in the caves. This FOB also utilizes the Predator drone planes, which are piloted via remote control by pilots in Las Vegas.

Awaiting our C-130 to take us back home to Bagram.

Friday Update

The flight from MANAS Air Station in Kyrgyzstan to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan took a few hours, but we had a whole C-17 to ourselves. Wow. What an experience. I even got to be in the cockpit for the takeoff - what a thrill!

Our barracks at Bagram are great! Internet, big screen TV, refridgerator, 5 pairs of bunkbeds, and posters of all the previous entertainers who have stayed here.

The trip to Camp Salerno on Thursday brought a few problems and we were stranded there until late this morning. You can read about the particular problem on Matt's blog at mattposs.com. The trip to Salerno was on a Chinook troop transport helicopter. Now THAT was cool!

The show we did at Salerno was pretty good, despite the fact that not many soldiers showed up. Those people work hard all day long, in 90+ degree heat from dawn to dusk, so I'm sure they were tired and didn't feel like being there. Or, maybe they were listening. I'm sure you could hear us from all over the camp.

We flew back to Bagram today on a small cargo plane, where we could each sit at a window seat, and we got great views of the countryside.

No more gigs today, so we're chilling out. A little later we're going to go hang out with some Air Force boys on the Flight Line, and get close up and personal with the A-10 warthog. Then the Army boys are hosting a 'surf n turf' party. Steaks and lobster, baby.

We'll continue gigging tomorrow. No word yet on whether Camp Phoenix will be on our schedule, but we hope it is.

~mac

Fallen Comrade Salute

We attended a Fallen Comrade Salute earlier today. They were bringing two fallen soldiers coffins in through the streets of the base. All available personnel are requested to line the street on both sides, and salute as they drive by.

We stood with the MWR unit who are hosting us. Seeing a busy street lined with hundreds of soldiers saluting the fallen is a really somber experience. It gives a real sense of what our soldiers are sacrificing in order to keep America safe from terrorists.

~mac

Same Plane, Five Years Ago. STRANGE!

hmdngr sent a picture of the SAME exact plane, in the same spot, from the same angle, taken 5 years ago. Now how weird is THAT???

More...

At MANAS, there is a huge 'boneyard' of abandoned Russian aircraft. During our Humvee tour, they drove us through the boneyard. Wow. One free tour souvenir to the first person to correctly identify the aircraft in this picture via comment on this blog....

At more and more airbases, they're utilizing companies that provide falcons to keep the population of other birds away from the flight line. We got the grand tour of one such facility at MANAS. Here is Matt hoping the falcon won't chew his nipples off.

Here we are with the KC-135 Refueling Wing crew. They gave us a great tour of the KC-135, the jet that carries fuel and refuels other aircraft IN FLIGHT.

Those C-17's are monster planes.

Little did we know that just a few hours later, we'd be flying in one, all to ourselves, strictly for the purpose of moving us from Kyrgyzstan to Afghanistan.....

Stay tuned....