First Trip

In early January, I headed down to Kandahar for a conference. We found out about the conference two nights before it happened. So, I immediately headed to my tent to pack and the next morning headed to Kabul Airport to get on a Space-A flight. Coincidentally, I flew to Kandahar on the same Canadian C-130 that brought me from Bagram to Kabul just a few days earlier.

Kandahar is a much larger place that the post where I live. A large portion of the population is Canadian, so they built a hockey rink for exercise. The floor is wood rather than ice, but everything else is the same. They play every night to blow off steam and they have jerseys, pads, hockey sticks, and a referee. Everyone is allowed to play, but you don't fool around. Everyone plays to win.



The conference went well. I was one of the few Americans at the meetings, so even though I was relatively junior to everyone in the room I found myself involved in most of the discussions.

It happened to be my birthday while I was at Kandahar. Fortunately, since the base is rather large they have a boardwalk area that is filled with food vendors (Subway, Burger King, Pizza Hut, and Dairy Queen.) So, I treated myself to an ice cream for my birthday.

Below are a few pictures of the boardwalk.





After the conference, I had to head north into the province of Uruzgan. I had some more meetings up there. That was a relatively short yet fun flight in a helicopter. They fly with the side doors open, so it was bitterly cold, but the views were great.

The first thing I did upon arriving at Tarin Kowt, Uruzgan was visit the Dutch coffee house on the base. Even though we are all thousands of miles away from home, we all find ways to make our temporary residence more like home.



Once everything was finished in Uruzgan, we hitched a ride from the Australians back to Kandahar. Here is a picture of the executive waiting area at this small post in Uruzgan. You can see that the chairs are made from the finest scrapes of wood with the highest quality foam.



Just before I boarded the plane I snapped this photograph of the mountains of Uruzgan.



The flights to Kandahar and then back to Kabul were uneventful. They went quite well considering all of them were space available. Ironically enough, my last flight was with that same group of Canadians. After a few more flights, I'm going to know everything about these guys. May be I'll visit them up in Canada when I get home.