Re-born...(Part II)

With only one meeting out of several postponed (a banking work group), we felt the trip had been a total success. Now all we had to do was get back to Ramadi and report our victories. To accomplish this we had two flights booked - one on Monday and the other on Tuesday. As it happened, the Monday flight was actually the back up (in case we finished our work early or if the weather was forecasted to be a problem for the Tuesday flight). Our desk officer at the embassy who had arranged the Tuesday flight requested that we drop it to give the crew a rest and the since the Fallujah leg had dropped off it would be helpful if we took the earlier flight. Not anticipating any problems with the Monday flight we agreed to take ourselves off the Tuesday flight. Big mistake. When we arrived for the Monday departure a large group had gathered at the flight line. We were to share our flight with a VIP contingent from Anbar headed to Ramadi. When the birds landed, the Governor and his staff jumped on one of the helicopters (Marine Corps - which can seat around twenty). The other bird was empty. When we tried to board the aircraft we were stopped and asked if we were with the other group. Unfortunately we told the truth and were denied boarding. The helicopter's wasted no time in taking off and leaving us wondering what the heck just happened. The next day we had to endure several of these incidents of almost getting on a bird and then being denied at the last minute. Additional flights were booked during the week only to be postponed and then eventually cancelled due to the weather.

To be continued...

Re-born...

No, I haven't converted to Islam. Something hit me this week, and it felt rather nice. What is was - I guess - was a realization that something inside me had changed, or flip (as in a light switch).
I was racing back from the Post Exchange (remember mini-Pamida) with about forty bucks worth of crap that I didn't need (only needed ten bucks worth of crap, but apparently I justified a few comfort items on my way to the cashier).
The day before, the entire week seemed to almost be a loss. It started out fine - a trip to Baghdad to fine-tune a few projects, and to give my team some well deserved time away from Camp Ramadi (where we had been choking down our fair share of the powder they call sand, due to the desert breezes that can last up to a day or two). Mainly they earned it by putting up with me for the past six weeks or so, and making nice progress in their assigned areas.
Baghdad provides an opportunity to expand and explore those assigned areas in ways you are typically unable to from our remote site. So, basically their reward for hard work was to find even more and harder work for them to do (and take a dip in the Embassy/Palace Pool)!

(to be continued)