Time to Catch Up!

The last time I checked it was right after the 10 mile race and a lot has happened since then.

I have been training for the upcoming marathon and have been required to run some pretty good distances. Well, I finally ran my “long” run and it was 20 miles. This little run lasted 3 hours and 25 minutes. Not the fastest pace, but wow it really hurt. I started around 0600 and ran with Mickey Miller for the first 12 miles, she had to peel off and get to work and I started on the remaining distance. It was going smooth until around the 17 mile mark. I am not sure if it is mental or physical, but it was a wall that was hard to get past. After that, it was just a matter of getting back to the start point. After about two days of walking gingerly up and down the stairs, all was back to normal.

We are starting to turn in different pieces of equipment that are not necessary for the mission, and it really feels great knowing that we are almost out of here. I try not to count down the days, but it is really hard, especially, when you have a countdown calendar. The weather here is excellent now and we are all relieved for the cooler weather to finally be here.

We have a PT test coming up real soon and it is hard to believe that we are taking one in Iraq. This will be the second one this year and after all this running, I feel better about my chances. The Marathon is coming up pretty quick and it is the last big item on my calendar prior to our replacements arriving. I will let you guys know how it goes on my next entry.

Received word that a good friend, Cynthia Roelle, was selected to be published in B&W Magazine. This is a huge achievement and something that only a select few photographers are able to achieve. Congratulations!

Halloween – Yes, we had a Halloween party in Iraq. I have included some pictures of the event for you viewing pleasure. The night started out with Matt Wolf showing up and his costume was me. He had on a uniform with my last name and rank on and then he even shaved his head. Wow, that is what I call dedication to a holiday. We had pizza and fried chicken and lots of near beer. Matt was the MC for the evening and took most of the pictures; which was a nice break. Matt led us through some trivia questions, puzzles, games, and passed out some prizes for the winners. He did a great job and everyone there had a great time.


Ing Maurstad sporting his Nebraska foam football helmet.


Matt Wolf on the left dressed up as me...on the right.


From left to right, Kari Malgeri, Matt Wolf, Kim McCann


Kari Malgeri(with ponytails), Chris Fredrikson (with Batman Mask), and Jim Culp (with Nebraska helmet and bubba teeth)


Brandon and Michelle Bauer


In the background, Ing Maurstad gives the stiff-arm to Steve Hernandez, Brian Adams looks on.

Army 10 Mile Road Race

Another run is in the books. This time it was the Army's 10 Mile Road Race. It is an annual race that is held in Washington, D.C., but many units host their own at the local Army installation. Since we could not make it to D.C., some folks were kind enough to host it here in Baghdad.

The morning began when I woke up about 30 minutes before the alarm went off. I always get anxious when there is somewhere I have to be early in the morning. I went ahead and got up and went to meet my running buddies at the rally point. The weather was a perfect 70-75 degrees with a slight breeze and a full moon. Everyone showed up on time and we began our walk to the event. It was about a ¾ mile walk there in the dark, but you could get a sense that I was not the only one excited about the run. Everyone in the group was talking about how they were going to do and comparing exit strategies if they did not run well. The path we took to the start location was somewhat surreal; it was a dark bumpy path that led to small walking bridge that led to an entrance in a large wall. The entrance in the wall was no larger than a small door, but when you walked through; you immediately realized how large of an event this was going to be. Bright lights circled the area with hundreds, if not a thousand people who were all ready to run.

The staging area was a flurry of stretching and confusion. You can see the experienced runners going through their routine and then you could see the less experienced runners (like me) looking around in amazement at all the people there and making sure our numbers were pinned on our shirts.

Before the race begins, the event organizers provide a safety brief to all the runners so they can warn them of anything that could affect the race. The kicker for this particular safety brief is that they tell you how to react if there is small arms fire or a mortar attack. I can bet you that this is not the normal safety brief that runners receive at the original race in D.C. Thankfully, we did not have either.

After the safety brief, we move to the start point where members of the V Corps band play the star spangled banner; immediately after, the race began.

The beginning of the race was very congested and runners of all speeds were participating. It was challenging to make our way through the crowd for the first few miles, but that helped pass the time. The route was a familiar since it was following the same path as the previous 10K races. We started out moderately quicker and before we knew it, we were passing the 2nd mile marker. The farther we ran the less people there were to navigate through, which also meant that we were moving toward the front of the pack; always a nice place to be. At about the 4 mile mark, my legs were finally warmed up and ready to run, so I did. I increased my pace considerably and before I knew it, I was passing people and getting mean looks for doing it too. That lasted for about 2 miles, and then came the dreaded signal hill.

Signal Hill is about ¼ mile long and has about a 10-15% grade, making it very difficult to run up. As I ran up the hill, I noticed that the people that I had passed earlier were now passing me, I was moving pretty slow, but I did not want to stop. As I made it to the top of the hill, there was a 6 mile marker right before the turn around point. I was glad to get there, but then I remembered that I had 4 miles left. I descended the hill and continued the run at a slower pace.

It took me about a mile or two to get back into the groove. I was pretty tired, so I thought I would just cruise for the last two miles, but before I knew it Mickey Miller was on my heals and said "Hey!" I turned and when I realized who it was, I greeted her with an "Oh crap!" Then she said, "That's right, no excuses young man, you better speed up!" So I did. I ran pretty fast for the last few miles, but I was tired. I was wondering how long I could keep up that pace, but then I could see the finish line up ahead, it was nice to see. Did I mention that the finish line was nice to see? ;-) I made the last turn and at this point, you can't slow down because there are photographers and others standing at the finish line cheering you in. It is really cool, because you get an extra burst of energy (some call it pride) and you finish strong. Yippee! The run is over and I was greeted with a cold Gatorade by Matt Wolf who had already fished the race with a much quicker time.

After the run, we gather to compare experiences and tell everyone how great they did, which is true. Then we gather for photos and enjoy the moment together.

Now onto the pictures!

This is the group before the run - see all the smiles?


Kari Malgeri shows how she keeps warm before the run.


Here I am praying before the run. (Actually rubbing my hands together to warm them up.)


Ing Maurstad throws a smile for the camera while Steve Hernandez explains to me why there needs to be more photos of him on my blog.


Steve Hernandez sprinting to the finish line.


Here I am pretending that I was happy after running 10 miles.


Mickey Miller gives her trademark wave to the crowd.


Ing Maurstad completes his first 10 mile road race.


Kari Malgeri comfortably cruises to the finish.


Kari demonstrates how she fell down and found one of the only mud puddles in Iraq. The incident occurred about 100 meters before crossing the finish line. (Check out the mud on her back!)


The group still smiling, but I think it is because we are finished with another run.

Back Row-left to right: Rick Lear, John Vansandt, Chris Fredrikson, me, Christina Van Der Hulst, Ing Maurstad, and Dawn Wolfe.
Front Row-left to right: Mike Dean, Kim McCann, Michele Miller, Kari Malgeri and Steve Hernandez.

Time is starting to move.

Finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We are now under 80 days remaining before we head back home. The morale in the office seems to fluctuate with each day; some good, some bad. One thing we have started is a "Things overheard today" board. We have placed a dry-erase board in the foyer and it has markers attached, so if you heard something funny today, you can write it on the board. So far, we have had several interesting phrases posted. My favorite today is, "I can't eat enough candy today to make me happy". How about that one?

In other areas, we have had some people from the separate brigades depart the area. One person I will miss is my photo buddy, Cynthia Roelle. We went out most weekends exploring bombed out buildings and palaces looking for the right picture to capture. Prior to her departure, we took some time to gather the best of our photographs and prepared them for a portfolio competition in B&W Magazine. Results will not be released until December.

Training, training, training. I have been increasing my running miles in an attempt to participate in a marathon in Baghdad. Now, if you are deciding to run your first marathon, why not make it a memorable place like Baghdad? We will see how it goes. The person I need to thank for that is Andie Goode, she also departed the area on Sunday. She kept prodding me to get out and run and it worked, we ran three different 10Ks and she helped me begin training for the marathon - thanks!

Below are some random pictures of cool people in our office.


Steve Hernandez - Always shares a smile.
(Another picture of Steve posted as a result of pressure applied by Belinda)


Rick McGuire and Chris Fredrikson - Ham it up for the camera.


Rina Shah - Very thankful for her new partition wall.


Sean Wilson - Wondering who took his workout supplements.


Brian Adams - Go Dawgs. A true Georgia football fan, rarely will he be seen without the football in his hands.

Bozeman Classic 10K Run

Today was another 10K run, but it was much different in that the temperature in the mornings have significantly dropped. This morning, we started at 0600 and the temp was about 75-80 degrees. This appears to be optimal running weather for us here as the majority of people who ran today were faster than their previous attempts. Andie Goode and I have ran the last two races together and today we finished at 54 minutes compared to the one hour in the previous run. We had a great time.

Time Moves On

It may seem that more of the recent posts are not as positive as they have been in the past. It might be that after 8 months of groundhog days, it has begun to wear on me. I am trying to keep outside interests such as my photography while here. I think this helps out a considerable amount. I have been fortunate to have a good friend, Cynthia Roelle who shares an interest in photography. We have been able to head out about once a week to travel around Camp Victory and take photos of just about everything interesting here. We are very limited on what we can photograph, so that adds an additional challenge. This past week, Ben Grimes joined us and will probably be joining us on all of our future photo outings until his departure. We went to the Victory Over America Palace to photograph some of the destruction that occurred a few years ago. We went there in the middle of the afternoon and the temperatures were around 115 degrees with no breeze at all. We stayed for about an hour and a half to captured what we could, but since I forgot to bring my tripod and the lighting was so bad, I have planned on going back a few more times before we leave for good. I have attached a few pictures from our recent trips there.



Victory Over America Palace


Victory Over America Palace


Baath Party Headquarters

Comedy, Traffic, and Heat

Comedy
I have been borrowing the DVD set "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and I am really enjoying it. But what I have been noticing, the people here could have been on a show just like that. We have so many characters and quirky individuals, I just know there is a story here. I know, most would say, what makes your group any different from the others? Well, I am here to tell you they you have never seen a group like this. There are about 8-10 that could clearly be considered a "character" with their normal behavior. It is just amusing to see how it all works. I guess I am very lucky to have such a great group.

Traffic Cop?
We will start off most mornings at breakfast discussing the previous day and what we are not looking forward to for the remainder of that particular day. Throughout the day, we have people coming in and out of our office with questions and packets that need to be reviewed and forwarded up the chain to our higher headquarters. We spend most of our day directing traffic.

Could someone turn on the air?
The days are getting longer and hotter. As we walk outside, we try to describe the feeling of the intense heat. The best description we can come up with is standing one step too close to that bon fire, except here, you can't back up-it is all around you. Below is a sample from today, also take a look at the 5-day forecast. Yippee - not.

Rest and Recuperation

I have been pretty busy since my last blog entry. I departed to R&R (Rest and Recuperation) in Heidelberg Germany. While there, Margi and I traveled to Strasbourg, France where we visited the historic old town where the Cathedral is located. We stayed there for two days.


Strasbourg, France


Margi and me downtown Strasbourg, France.



Cathedral in Strasbourg, France.

Upon our return, we gathered the kids and took them to a surprise destination. They did not know where we were going until we arrived in the Netherlands. We stayed on a small private island called Den Kaag. It was pretty amazing, we had to ride a ferry to the island and everything was very nice and quaint. While there we drove up to Amsterdam and spent the day walking around and sight seeing. We went to visit the Anne Frank House while there and learned a lot about what her and her family went through. After that, we walked down the main street of town and it was crazy. People everywhere and lots of those “special” coffee houses people talk about. On our way back from Amsterdam, we drove over to a little beach town called Nordwijk. We spent some time walking around the beach and put our feet in the cold North Sea. After the beach, we stopped to eat at one of the local restaurants and had some local cuisine. What we did not plan on was the drop in temperature by the beach; it became quite chilly.



On the island of Den Kaag.



Downtown Amsterdam


Downtown Amsterdam


Brittany and CJ walking on the beach of Nordwijk.

We departed there and went back to the island. The next morning, we rented bicycles and rode all around the island. I think this was the part we enjoyed the most and we even raced to the finish.

We all paused on the bike ride for pictures.

The next day was also the day I had to catch a flight back to Kuwait. We drove the 5 hours back to the house and prepared for me to leave again for 5 more months. Not something any of us were looking forward to.

Since I have been back, I have been trying to get back into the “groove”, but it is pretty difficult. I hope that the next few months go a little quicker.

The Running Club and R&R

The Running Club and R&R

You may wonder why we would start something like this, well; it was Kari Malgeri who has inspired us to get up early enough to run at 0600. As the president of our “club” she stated that the club is about showing up and running as fast or slow as you want and the distance is up to you. The good thing is that it has motivated several from our office and from other offices to get out and run. We are getting in shape and chatting it up while we run. It is also preparing us for the next event run, which we think will happen in August.

Just an update on my status. I have competed over half of my tour here and today is my last day of work before I go on Rest and Relaxation (R&R). I will be heading back to Germany for a while and do not think I will be updating the blog until I return.

Let’s Run – Again! Peachtree Road Race 10k

Today started very early for us. Me and several friends signed up for the Peachtree Road Race in association with the Atlanta Track Club. This event had over 800 runners and is the largest running event to date for Camp Victory.

We had to be at the starting area from 0430-0500 to sign up and then the race began at 0530. The event managers had the person who starts the race in Atlanta start our race via cell phone and a loud speaker. At the start of the race on the first stretch of road, there was an incredibly cool breeze and we could not explain it. The temperatures are around 85-90 in the mornings and this felt like a nice spring breeze; it was a very nice way to start. The water points on the run were manned with numerous volunteers who were working hard to make sure everybody had cups of water for all the runners as they passed. As we were running, it was funny to see very large military vehicles driving by while running a road race. We maintained a good pace until the last mile where most people picked up their pace and tried to finish strong. Upon crossing the finish line, we were given a t-shirt and refreshments. We had a great turnout from our office and we really enjoyed the run.


The Crew

Back to the States

Wow, has it been an exciting visit to the states for my family. Over the last few weeks, Margi has been back in the states visiting family, but has been traveling all over Kentucky and Tennessee running the kids all around. Brittany is staying with friends at Fort Knox and getting to hang out and have some fun, while CJ attended a swim camp at the University of Tennessee for one week, then upon his return he had to be rushed to the emergency room to have his appendix removed. We were very lucky that Margi was able to get him to the emergency room as quick as she did, they said he only had a few hours before the appendix would have ruptured; a scary moment for us all. He is out of the hospital and is recovering just fine!


CJ shows the incision from surgery.

I am now under 20 days before I depart Iraq and go on Rest and Relaxation. I will travel back to Heidelberg, Germany and will do a little traveling while there. The time here continues to move and I have finally reached 50% on my countdown time tracker.

Morale Night

Last night we had our Morale Night. The night began with non-alcoholic beer, hamburgers and hot dogs on the grill. For the evening events we had volleyball, bocce ball, karaoke, scrabble, and other card games.

I did two things last night that I have never done before and one that I do not plan on doing again. What is it you ask? One was playing bocce ball – which is a version of horse shoes but played with balls. The other thing I did was sing karaoke! No, I never thought I would be doing that and especially in front of a group of friends and coworkers. The song of choice was Brick House. I did a terrible job singing, but the crowd carried the song. It was really hot when I was standing up on “stage”. Actually, it was in the courtroom. I have attached a few pictures for reference.


Here I am working the crowd...?

We had a great turn out for the gathering and lots of people signed up to sing. We had one person who decided to put on a show – Steve Hernandez. When he started the song, it was just another song, but then he started to dance and before you know it, he ripped open his jacket, spun it above his head and tossed it to the crowd. We were all laughing and cheering him on; it was great. We see that a few here are not shy about shaking their groove thing.


Steve Hernandez removes articles of clothing while singing. Why? - we still do not know.


Keirsten Hage gettin' her groove on.


Ben Grimes showing us what he is made of.

Also, for some reason, we felt compelled to put on a “gun show” for the camera. Please see picture for more explanation.


"The Gun Show"

As usual, we all had a great time and look forward to the next one.

What's Going On

Another couple of days have gone by and not a lot has changed. I am counting down the days until I am able to take the Rest and Recuperation (R&R) leave from here; I can’t wait.

The Family - Right now, my family is headed from Germany back to the US to visit family and for my 9 year old son to attend a swim camp at the University of Tennessee. They will be there for about a 3 weeks and I am assuming they will be very busy during their visit.

Work - As you have seen in the news, the Haditha Dam investigation is heating up and receiving increased press. Our office in working full time in preparation for what is to come.

Me - As for me, I have been able to get out and take some photos. However, the time available to photograph is pretty limited because of the intense brightness of the sunlight. I normally wait until around 6:30pm to catch the softer light. I am getting the feeling that my creativity is not where it should be. The scenery around here is very very similar. It is plain and uninspiring architecture and all the tan colors of the building and ground do not help. I would really appreciate some greenery.

I was fortunate to have LuckyPix conduct an email interview with me for posting to their blog. I think Christoph did a great job with the questions and made me think about a lot in my journey with photography, but mostly about my family and how they have supported me over the years.
I have posted a few photos below of recent outings.

Let's Run

Today was a great day for a run – but I am not sure if it was great for one that was 7.2 miles. We started off our day by meeting up at 0530 for the trip over to the starting point. The weather was nice and breezy, with just a little bit of heat. At the starting line, while we were waiting to begin the race, we were able to watch the sunrise over the city of Baghdad. The run was not as bad as I thought. The water points had ice cold water and there were many more than the last run. Everything was going well until the very end. There was one small detail that we had not fully calculated into this run; Signal Hill. The last mile of the race was down a nice stretch of road with the water to our left and the wind blowing off of the water keeping us cool. The problem was that the finish line and the last two tenths of a mile were all up Signal Hill. Well, it was a tough finish, but we all had a fun time and everyone did great!

Toby Keith in Concert

Toby Keith decided to drop by and play an acoustic jam for the troops here in Baghdad. He came on wearing one of our uniform shirts and he had to have been exhausted after playing all over the deployed area and I believe this was the third concert today. He played some songs off of his new album (White Trash with Money) and also some crowd favorites. The concert lasted about an hour and drew a large crowd of clearly devoted fans. Lighters being held in the air, posters with song references held up high and a couple of soldiers holding up the American flag. We all had a real good time and appreciate him and Scotty Emerick coming over to entertain us.


Toby Keith sings for the Troops.


Scotty Emerick and Toby Keith play for the crowd.


Soldiers holding up the Red, White, and Blue.