Chapter 2: Food

If you missed chapter one you can catch up here.

Chapter 2: Food

The first several days at home revolved mostly around food.  My friends will not be surprised that I have dedicated an entire chapter to such an important topic.  I’d basically been eating the same seven meals week after week for eight months.  On the list of things I was excited about experiencing while I was home, there was Emily, baby, and food.  I’m not hard to please.  So we picked some of our favorite restaurants and got to share a few meals with some close friends.  The first night was just the two of us at Luigi’s, one of our favorite Italian places, with a very romantic atmosphere.  If you live nearby, try the seafood risotto. 

Wednesday night was The Cheesecake Factory with our friends Jeff & Kristie, a meal we kicked off by ordering four appetizers.  They got one wrong, which we realized immediately - after we finished eating it.  When I mentioned it to the waiter, they brought out the right dish, so five apps.  Can you think of a better way to start dinner?  At this point I didn’t think we’d finish, but Emily was eating for two, and they don’t make food like this in Afghanistan.  Though, I did get my cheesecake to go.  Keylime pie makes a delicious breakfast the next morning.  Plus, lime is fruit, so... health food really. 

Thursday was Carraba’s, one of my favorite Italian franchises, after Olive Garden, naturally.  Lauren and Carson, friends from Emily’s undergrad days who also found themselves back in NC, joined us.  After a long wait and many prayers, they finally have a baby girl on the way, so we wanted to celebrate that with them.  Congratulations guys! 

Friday was our first road trip in the Swagger Wagon.  Some great friends, Clay and Stephanie, had their entire extended family at Holden Beach for a week, so we joined them for their last day.  Yes, Emily was like ten months pregnant, but we were only two hours away and we got the green light from our midwife.  After a wonderful spaghetti dinner, I honed my picture making skills by doing some family portraits for their whole clan.  I finished with some shots of Emily on the water before we hit the road.  Thanks for sharing your vacation with us guys.  Your pics are ready!

[Check out some pics of the beach and Emily pregnant here.]

The weekend came with more relaxing at home, Church on Sunday, and lunch at Nonna’s, one of our favorite local Italian places (I'm just now noticing a theme here). 

Monday brought more fun adventures.  Emily had made a great friend in her birthing class, Ashley, and her husband David.  Ashley had considered getting some maternity photos done, but she was a little hesitant and didn’t really know how to get that ball rolling.  Emily happened to know a great photographer with a spanking new camera that he was itching to use.  I saw it as a great chance to get some practice and scout some locations because I still wanted to do a full photo session with Emily.  So the four of us spent the afternoon in downtown Fayetteville, moving from the train station, to a crumbling brick wall, and finished up in a rose garden, complete with a fountain and a bridge.  I’d never even thought about posing a pregnant woman, or a couple, but Ashley and David were awesome, and I think they were very happy with the photos.  Emily, even pregnant, was an incredible assistant.  We all had a great time until the mosquitoes showed up.  We finished off that night at Samurai for hibachi and sushi.  Fantastic time.

Before we knew it, an entire week had disappeared from our calendar.  Luckily we’d already eaten enough food for two weeks.  And the most exciting adventure was still yet to come!  More to follow in chapter three...

15 Days - Chapter 1

Not long ago I got to leave the sandbox and make the journey around the world to spend two weeks with my wife.  I’m back in Afghanistan now, but having recently celebrated Father’s Day for the first time as an actual father, I wanted to capture what that experience was like for me.  So, when I got back to FOB Shank, I started writing.  By the time I’d gotten to ten pages I realized this wasn’t all going to fit very neatly into one blog post.  So I decided to divide things up into chapters.  I’ll probably post one short chapter per week for the next several weeks.  I invite you all to follow along, and share this blog with anyone who might care about what happened on my summer vacation.  With that, I give you…

15 Days: A Birth Story

Preface

Having left North Carolina for Afghanistan exactly eight months before, to the day, on May 22^nd I landed in Fayetteville for two weeks off duty.  The Army calls it “R&R”, or “Rest and Recuperation”, but they must have named if for people who don’t have pregnant wives or newborns at home.  After 15 whole days at home, on Saturday June 9^th, I found myself back in Afghanistan for what will hopefully be the last time.  What most of you are probably interested in is everything that happened in between.  We’ll get there, but I want to say a quick Thank-You. 

For the past couple of months, Emily and I have felt so cared for, prayed for, and loved by people all over who have been tracking with us, each of them curious to know how we were doing.  We want to thank each of you, not only for your kindness, but also for your patience.  Many of our close friends, and even family members, have gone without much information about what’s been happening at our house.  Most of you probably haven’t yet heard the whole story of how baby Jack came into the world.  We’re very grateful for everyone who was so respectful of the few precious moments that we got spend as a family.  Out of 365 days on this deployment, Emily and I got to see each other for 15.  In an average year, most couples don’t know what it’s like to spend 15 days apart, let alone to have only 15 days together.  As much as we wanted to stay in touch with every person we know and love, every minute on the phone, or email written, or visit to someone’s house, is time that comes out of our 15 day bank.  For that reason, we chose not to spend much time doing anything but being together.  We hope no one feels terribly left out or slighted in any way.  There were so many people with whom we truly wanted to spend time, and have meals, and do fun things.  While we did get to do some of that, we simply had to prioritize our time together as a family, especially after Jack showed up.  In the coming weeks, as Emily gets stronger, she’ll be out more and more.  And in less than three months I’ll be home, and I look forward to making up for the year I missed, and getting to spend time with all my friends and family again.  Thank you all for understanding.  

Chapter 1: The Reunion

After a three-day journey that took me through six cities in four different countries, my last flight landed in Fayetteville on Tuesday afternoon, May 22^nd.  As I stepped off the jetway and into the terminal I instantly felt the clock running, as though an hourglass had been upturned and I feared that for two weeks that would consume my thoughts.  While that did happen to some extent, especially toward the end, that wasn’t what I was thinking about when I came around the corner and saw Emily for the first time.  “You really are pregnant!”  It was an odd sensation.  The last time I saw her she looked very different.  Now, standing there just on the other side of the security checkpoint waiting, she looked suspiciously like she was hoping the TSA agents wouldn’t notice she was trying to smuggle a beach-ball out of the country.  She laughed and we hugged.  There’s so much happening in a moment like that; it’s difficult to put into words.  Every isolated emotion that we had felt as individuals over the past eight months seemed to converge just as we connected.  All the happiness and sadness, the longing, the loneliness, excitement, disappointment, nervousness, and relief, all bubble to the surface, tangled, impossible to sort out.  It had us both in tears.  I don’t know how long we stood there before we finally headed out to the new minivan.  That was the beginning of what would be the longest, and shortest, two weeks of my life.  To be continued…

Note: A special thank you goes to Emily’s grandparents on her father’s side.  Both of them passed on just this year.  Not being home when they died reminds me of the sacrifices troops are constantly making to be deployed, but our family will be comfortable and safe on the road for years to come because of the beautiful Toyota Sienna they left behind.  We would give it up today if we could have them back, but it will be a constant reminder of their generosity and love for us, and for the great-grandson they never got to meet.  Thank you Nana and Deac.

It's A Boy!

Today Emily went in for a sonogram which would narrow the list of potential names by 50%.  In a testament to man's ingenuity and God's unfathomable generosity, I was able to watch the procedure on the internet in real time from the other side of the planet.  The connection wasn't great.  And I had no idea how to interpret the blurry mass on my screen, but in a small way I got to be there.  And for that I'm grateful.

Things were sketchy at first.  Apparently when the umbilical cord gets in the way, interpreting the differentiating parts can be difficult, and initially the sonogramist was convinced it was a girl.  I'ts a girl! Everyone celebrated!  Then, after some deliberation, and the discovery of some additional compelling evidence, we had a reversal on that decision.  The professional assured us that it is indeed a boy, without doubt (or with less doubt than there was when it was a girl).  It's a boy! Everyone celebrated!

I really wasn't leaning one way or another.  Though to be honest, I always imagined that girl diapers are much less pleasant to change with all the hiding places that need to be cleaned.  So I'm happy I dodged that bullet.  After all, the baby will be born in June and I won't be home until September.  So I will owe Emily four solid months of diaper changing when I arrive.  Not to mention 12 months of dog-feeding, carpet-cleaning, dish-washing, laundry-doing, oil-changing, grass-mowing, house-fixing and anything else you can think of that she will do on her own for a year.  When you factor in missing an entire pregnancy, I should probably add another couple months to that, just to be safe.

Now taking suggestions for boy names in the comment section below.

Thought the third deployment would be easier...

Then I found out about this...

Yep. Three days after I got on a plane to leave the country for a year, we discovered that Emily was indeed pregnant.  She even sent me the pee-stick to prove it.  I have it displayed in my room like a proud dad would put up the most recent crayon drawing.  We waited until Thanksgiving day for the big reveal to be sure things were going smoothly, so if you're just finding out, you're not far behind.  Emily's 1st sonogram was not long ago and so far everything looks normal; it has two of the things that it's supposed to have two of, and one of each thing that it's supposed to have one of.  Hopefully not a sign of things to come, it was uncooperative during the exam and would not position itself to allow us an early guess at the gender.  We'll know that before Christmas probably.

Here's what we do know.  At the time this post was published, Emily had just reached thirteen weeks.  Don't get me started on the whole pregnancy calculating thing.  Apparently not everyone tracks the pertinent information as well as Emily does and so the natal community prefers to just throw in a couple extra weeks for good measure.  But anyway, thirteen weeks.  For those doing the math in their head right now, I left the country about nine weeks ago, so relax.  Anyway, the official due date is June 1st, 2012.  I've already submitted my request to take my two weeks of leave at the beginning of June.  Please pray for a problem-free pregnancy, and that my request can be filled based on what's available.  I have to miss the next six months of growth; I can't imagine how disappointed I would be to miss the birthday, but we know that's a real possibility, especially with the unexplained inability to accurately predict how long that thing needs to cook.

So how are we feeling?  Well... We were both surprised and I will admit this was not in our five year plan.  (It wasn't really in Emily's 30 year plan :-).  But we also have to admit that we're not steering this ship, and through decisions we obviously made, and God's providence, here we find ourselves.  Friends who know us well will understand that we're both still adjusting to the news, but there's no getting around the excitement to see what the two of us have created with God's blessing.  Emily was able to spend the busiest shopping day of the year with her mom checking out cribs and baby things, and through nervous laughter she will tell you that she's looking forward to meeting this thing as much as I am.

So, that's about all the news that's fit to print.  Please pray for us.  It's gonna be a long year.  But coming home will be so sweet.

Feel free to comment below.  I read them all.

- Jeff

How's The Food?

Everyone always wants to know what the food is like in Afghanistan.  Are we eating M.R.E.'s and granola bars everyday? Is the chow hall any good?  The truth is, the chow has it's good days and it's bad days, but overall I leave each meal pretty satisfied.  Even if it's not restaurant quality food, the convenience of having every meal prepared for you, with a rather large selection of main, side, and dessert items, is something that makes Emily wish she could trade places me for the next 11 months.  

By far my favorite meal of the day is breakfast.  And I get to eat it twice a day!  Right now, and probably for most of the coming year, I'm on a night schedule.  I wake up at about 5pm and get to work at 6pm.  I "work" (I use the term loosely because I actually enjoy my job), until 6am, then I get to sleep usually around 9am before doing it all over again.  The chow hall, or DFAC in Army talk (short for Dining Facility) is open 24 hours to accommodate people who work nights like me.  After serving dinner in the evenings, they serve dinner leftovers and breakfast food for the midnight meal.  Then around 5 am they start serving breakfast again.  So that's two chances for fried eggs (medium), hashbrowns, bacon, sausage (links or patties), toast, french toast sticks with strawberries, oatmeal, grits, fruit, yogurt, and pretty much anything you could want at breakfast.

The great thing about breakfast is that you can always be sure you're going to get something you like.  Dinner on the other hand (like lunch, during which I am sleeping on most days), can be hit or miss.  There are always a few items to choose from but, sometimes you get a bland meatloaf and nothing else looks that good.  So I just use the meat as a vehicle for the Heinz57 or the BBQ sauce. Emily likes to tell people, while some guys are "@&$-men", or "8o0p-men", her husband is a sauce man.  Condiments make everything better.  But every once in a while (every Friday night actually), the chow hall pulls out the big guns and this is what we get...

The lower left dish there is scallops.  I'm sure you can figure out the rest.  Did I mention it's all-you-can-eat?  You want to know how corporations make money off the war?  They offer all-you-can-eat meals like this one and then let me loose on it.  The government never saw it comin'.

Most of the people who work in chow hall are either contracted civilians out of the surrounding areas, or they are recruited by a company in India and shipped here.  I noticed early on that neither the Afghan group, nor the Indian group, were eating what everyone else was eating at the midnight meal.  I discovered that these guys were making their own food after midnight chow was all cleaned up.  One night, the guy to my right in the next picture (below) saw me glancing... ok staring, at his food.  I guess he had an extra bowl of it because he held one out for me and I gladly took and enjoyed the chicken, curry, vegetable, something I can't even describe.  It was so good.  I learned his name is Khalid, and he runs this local smorgasbord for the guys on his crew.  A few nights later I met one of the guys from the Indian crew who shared some of his Indian curry with me, and again, I was happy to partake.  They all eat together and pass around the stack of toasted tortillas (as a substitute for flat bread), and plain yogurt that for some weird reason goes so well with this food.  

Instantly I remembered one of my best friends in high school.  Gautam and I, usually with several others, would arrive at his house late at night, sometimes very late, and we could always count on Mr. & Mrs. (Dr. & Dr.) Jayaraman to be awake.  His mom wouldn't hesitate to cover the table with dishes that she had either prepared earlier that evening, or was just putting together as we arrived.  I think of it as my happy place.  Most nights in the chow hall at 1am, it's a lot like that, just enjoying food with amazingly generous people, sometimes with the Afghan Crew, sometimes with the Indians.  Again, it's not restaurant food, and it certainly doesn't stack up to what Mrs. J. used to cook, but it's so much more than what I expected to be eating in the mountains of Afganistan.

The United States is not the only country with troops on the ground here at FOB Shank.  Jordan (among other countries) has a presence here as well.  Their group is large enough that they have their own chow hall, and it's open to everyone.  Great news for me.  Most folks, well, at least I, try not to miss dinner here on Monday nights and the 1st & 3rd Wednesdays.  I took this picture with my iPhone.  I did not take this picture to use on my blog.  It's more of pocket reference for me.

While we're talking about food, check out this pizza.  There is a restaurant here on base which has been open for a while now, and is run by locals.  I haven't tried that one yet.  I'm sure I will soon, but this picture was taken at a pizza shop that opened just after we got here.  Again, it's inside the wire, and locally run.  We paid $12 for this pie with pineapple, ham, olives, and some spices which I couldn't identify, but really enjoyed.  My buddy Isaac Lamb and I split it last week.  I see myself heading back here for special occasions.  Anyone who wants to support these trips is welcome to send cash or check to Emily :-)

So thats the food situation.  If you have any other questions please leave them in the comment section below.  I will answer them right here.

If you know anyone who wants to get added to the mailing list, have them email me jgelzinis@gmail.com.

- Jeff

I Have Arrived

Welcome to the Afghan Update.  I started this blog on my last deployment to keep friends and family informed while I'm away.  Since I just arrived in Afghanistan for my third, year-long, all expenses paid vacation, I figured it was time to re-launch the site.

First things first.  If you want to receive an email notifying you whenever I update this blog, send me your email address and I'll add you to the list.  I'm not sure how often I'll get to post.  Last time I came close to publishing about once per month.  It should be at least as often this time, but I promise not to flood your inbox.

Here's what's happened so far.  On Tuesday, September 20th, I left Ft. Bragg on a chartered commercial jet with probably way more gear that I needed and a couple hundred of my closest friends.  We always joke about not being able to carry four ounces of shampoo while each of us are carrying an M9 pistol or an M4 rifle.  We stopped in Maine for fuel and got welcomed by the Maine Greeters.  I posted a short video of this on my Facebook page.  (Still not on Facebook?  Resistance is futile.)  From there we got gas again in Leipzig, Germany before landing at Manas Air Base in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

Manas is a "gateway" stop the military uses before sending troops into a combat zone.  Video of this stop is also on Facebook.  Here, we do some last minute training about how to use our first-aid kits, how to survive a vehicle roll-over (they actually have a simulator that rolls upside down from which you have to egress), and get briefed on the local culture and climate we can expect.  Most people don't like this stop just because of the transient living and not wanting to unpack everything just for a couple days.  Others, including me, have no problem with it.  There is zero work to be done, and the chow hall is decent.  I would miss the flying, but would gladly serve my year there instead of in Afganistan.  One thing everyone talks about in Manas is that it's last time we get to enjoy real milk.  It's served in plastic a bottle, like you might find at a convenience store, they keep it very cold, and it's so much better than the shelf-stable, juice-box style, milk-type beverage we drink in the chow halls in Afganistan.  But, all good things...

On Sunday we got onto an Air Force C-17 (Google this if you haven't seen one.  They're impressive) and flew into Bagram Air Base in Eastern Afghanistan.  More transient living.  More training.  More inprocessing.  Unloading all our bags.  Reloading all our bags onto pallets.  Not sleeping much.  I've developed a cold by this point and join everyone else in no longer wanting to be traveling.  We finally get a flight scheduled out of Bagram and we're in the air for less than 30 minutes.  On Wednesday September 28th, (8 days of travel for those keeping track at home) we landed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Shank and I got my first look at what will be my new home for the next year.  And that's about all you've missed so far.

More to follow about life at Shank.  Stay tuned and thanks for reading.  Feel free to leave comments in the section below for public discussion, but the best way to stay in touch with me is to email me directly.

30 Days...

Today the countdown begins. I've spent several hundred hours in the air since we arrived in Afghanistan. But in 30 days, God willing, for the first time in almost a year, I will get on an aircraft that is NOT going to land at Kandahar Airfield. To prepare you all for my inevitable return, and to make Emily's life easier for the next 30 days, please review the following list of comments, assembled by the wife of a deployed husband, which you should probably avoid saying to any woman who fits that description. Please forgive the hostile tone - Emily didn't write it.


1. “Aren’t you afraid that he’ll be killed?”

This one ranks in at number one on the “duh” list. Of course we’re afraid. We’re terrified. The thought always lingers at the backs of our minds — but thanks brilliant, you just brought it back to the front. Maybe next you can go ask someone with cancer if they’re scared of dying.


2. “I don’t know how you manage. I don’t think I could do it.”

This is intended to be a compliment. Though, its just a little annoying. Here’s why: it’s not like all of us military wives have been dreaming since childhood of the day we’d get to be anxious single moms [of dogs] who carry cell phones with us to the bathroom and in the shower. We’re not made of some mysterious matter that makes us more capable, we just got asked to take on a challenging job. So we rose to the challenge and found the strength to make sacrifices.


3. “At least he’s not in Iraq.”

This is the number one most annoying comment for those whose husbands are in Afghanistan. What do you think is happening in Afghanistan, an international game of golf? Guys are fighting and dying over there.


4. “Do you think he’ll get to come home for Christmas/anniversary/birthday/birth of a child [gross]/wedding/family reunion, etc?”

Don’t you watch the news? No! They don’t get to come home for any of these things unless you can squeeze Christmas into his 14 days at home in August. Please don’t ask again.


5. “What are you going to do to keep yourself busy while he’s gone?”

Short answer: Try to keep my sanity. Maybe there’s a military wife out there who gets bored when her husband leaves, but I have yet to meet her. For the rest of us, those with and without children, we find ourselves having to be two people. That keeps us plenty busy. We do get lonely, but we don’t get bored.


6. “How much longer does he have until he can get out?”

This one is annoying to many of us whether our husbands are deployed or not. Many of our husbands aren’t counting down the days until they “can” get out. Many of them keep signing back up again and again because they actually love what they do or they VOLUNTEER AGAIN and AGAIN to go back to Iraq or Afghanistan b/c there is work that needs to be done.

[Though I personally am counting the days until I can get out of the Army, I do love what I do, and I have been in much longer than my initial obligation to military since I enlisted more than 10 years ago, so the principle here still applies. - Jeff]


7. “This deployment shouldn’t be so bad, now that you’re used to it.”

Sure, we do learn coping skills and its true the more deployments you’ve gone through, the easier dealing with it becomes. And we figure out ways to make life go smoother while the guys are gone. But it never gets “easy” and the bullets and bombs don’t skip over our guys just because they’ve been there before. The worry never goes away.


8. “My husband had to go to Europe for business once for three weeks. I totally know what you’re going through.”

This one is similar to number two. Do not equate your husband’s three week trip to London/Omaha/Tokyo/etc. with a 12-18 month deployment to a war zone. Aside from the obvious time difference, nobody shot at your husband or tried to blow him up with an I.E.D., your husband could call home pretty much any time he wanted to, he flew comfortably on a commercial plane, slept between crisp white sheets and ate well, paying for everything with an expense account. There is no comparison. We do not feel bonded to you in the slightest because of this comment and, if anything, we probably resent you a bit for it. Comparing a 12 month combat deployment to a few weeks business trip is like comparing a crappy ford taurus with mercedes convertible.


9. “Wow you must miss him?”

This one also gets antoher big “duh”. Of course we miss our men. There are some wives who don't and they’re now divorced.


10. “Where is he exactly? Where is that?”

I don’t expect non-military folks to be able to find Anbar Province on a map, but they should know by now that it’s in Iraq. Likewise, know that Kabul and Kandahar are in Afghanistan. Know that Iran is a major threat to our country and that it is located between Afghanistan and Iraq. Our country has been at war in Afghanistan for nine years and at war in Iraq for seven years. These basic facts are not secrets, they’re on the news every night and in the papers every day — and on maps everywhere.


11. “Well, he signed up for it, so it’s his own fault whatever happens over there.

Yes, ignorant, he did sign up. Each and every day he protects your right to make stupid comments like that. He didn’t sign up and ask to be hit by anything, he signed up to protect his country. Oh, and by the way, he asked me to tell you that “You’re welcome.” He’s still fighting for your freedom.


12. “Don’t you miss sex! I couldn’t do it!”

Hmmm, no i don’t miss sex. i’m a robot. Seriously… military spouses learn quickly that our relationships must be founded on something greater than sex. We learn to appreciate the important things, like simply hearing their voices, seeing their faces, being able to have dinner together every night. And the hard truth is, most relationships probably couldn’t withstand 12 months of sex deprivation.


13. “Well in my opinion…..” [I love this one]

Stop right there. Yo, I didn’t ask for you your personal political opinions. Hey, I love a heated political debate, but not in the grocery store, not in Jamba Juice, not at Nordstrom, not in a restaurant when I’m out with my girls trying to forget the war, and CERTAINLY NOT AT WORK. We tell co-workers about deployments so when we have to spend lunch hours running our asses off doing errands and taking care of the house, dog, and kids, they have an understanding. We do not tell co-workers and colleagues because we are giving an invitation to ramble about politics or because we so eagerly want to hear how much they hate the President, esp. while we’re trying to heat up our lean cuisines in the crappy office microwaves.


Last, but not least...

14. “I’m so sorry!”

He’s doing his job and he’s tough. Don’t be sorry. Be appreciative and please take a moment out of your comfortable American lives to realize that our soldiers fight the wars abroad so those wars stay abroad. If you want to say anything, just say Thank You. After all, we are sexually deprived for your freedom.

Holidays and Emergency Landings

Lots of excitement since the last edition (it's been about two months). We've made it through the holidays, which is always interesting when you're deployed. People send some wild stuff to make the troops feel closer to home. Did you know they make turkey spam? Don't worry, the chow halls do a wonderful job preparing meals with lots of things to choose from. Some celebs even came to visit around Thanksgiving. Gary Sinise served me lunch. Apparently he has a band now, aptly named The Lt. Dan Band, though I didn’t get to see their show. Then we got to eat with Chris Farley’s brother (I guess his relation makes him a celebrity, nice of him to visit either way) and Kristy Swanson. Ten points if you can you connect Kristy Swanson and PeeWee Herman without using Kevin Bacon (or Google). Also, thanks to everyone who sent food and snacks and presents and Green Beans Coffee gift cards. Thanksgiving and Christmas was about as good as it gets without being at home thanks to your generosity.

And now for something completely different… Mom, you should stop reading now. So, there I was, flying along, happy as a clam because of what I get paid to do. Ten more points if you know when clams are the most happy. Again, no Google. My copilot, CW2 Robbie Hammond was on the controls as we were making our final approach into Kandahar Airfield (KAF). The whole crew was wearing night vision goggles, and with zero illumination provided by the nearly nonexistent moon, the green world in our 40 degree field of view was almost overpowered by all the lights on the airfield. As Robbie pulled back on the cyclic to slow the aircraft, he lowered the collective, the stick that makes you go up and down, to begin a descent from about 500 feet above ground level (AGL). After being cleared to land, Robbie lined us up on the long taxiway just to the right of the runway, and our rate of descent reached about 500 feet per minute. Now, if you start at 500 ft AGL, and descend at 500 fpm, do I need to do the math for you? Put a minute on the clock:

As we got closer to the ground, Robbie tried to bring in some power by raising the collective in order to slow our rate of descent. Imagine my surprise when he said, “Jeff, the collective won’t move.” I immediately remembered how the friction assembly, the clamp that holds the collective in place when we don’t want it to move, hadn’t felt very smooth earlier in the flight, almost ratchety. We had even discussed swapping the aircraft for a new one at the end of our mission. Given our current situation, we most definitely wanted the collective to move. I’ll throw out some numbers for helicopter pilots in the audience; we were approaching the taxiway at about 80 knots IAS, with about 30% power applied, not nearly enough power to bring the aircraft to a hover if we slowed all the way down to zero. “Let me see what it’s doing, I have the controls”. I pulled up on the collective, certain he just hadn’t tried hard enough to overcome the problematic friction assembly. He had; it wasn’t moving. We quickly checked to make sure a checklist or some other cockpit-essential item hadn’t gotten wedged in the flight controls. How’s that one minute looking now?

“Robbie, put me up tower.” Immediately, he moved my radio selector knob around to position three and I keyed the mike, “Tower, this is Daddy 54, I am declaring an emergency and I need the runway”. The taxiway to which we’d already been cleared had vehicle traffic and other aircraft further up the field, and since I knew we couldn’t bring our aircraft to a hover, I wasn’t sure how much asphalt I was going to need to stop. “Daddy 54, cleared to land, runway zero five. State the nature of your emergency”. Only 20 seconds left before we were going to touchdown whether we wanted to or not; I told the controller my collective was stuck. “Daddy 54, tower, unfamiliar, please describe the emergency if able.” Seriously?! “The thing that makes me go up and down is stuck and I need to land on the runway”. “Roger Daddy, cleared to land”

Ten seconds. I entered a shallow left turn toward the runway and it became clear that our current angle of approach wasn’t going to take us all the way to the pavement. Without getting too deep into helicopter aerodynamics, increasing my airspeed would have gotten me all the way to the runway surface, but at the cost of increasing my rate of descent and we were already coming down fast. So, I decided to rely on the sturdy landing gear Igor Sikorsky put on my Blackhawk, and continue to a touchdown point somewhere in the dirt just short of the runway. Since it’s difficult to see ground detail through night vision goggles that are being washed out by airfield lights, I just had to hope the terrain was somewhat even and that some ditch wasn’t waiting to roll us upside down, though I was reasonably certain that wasn’t the case.

Three seconds. I pulled back gently on the cyclic to bring the nose up slightly, just prior to reaching the ground. This slowed our rate of descent and decreased our airspeed just a bit, and what could have been a very hard landing, can now really only be described as “firm”. You’ve probably felt harder landings in a commercial jet. We probably touched down around 300 to 400 fpm, and somewhere between 50 and 60 knots. I jumped on the brakes as we rolled onto the pavement and over a blue taxiway light, which, thankfully, missed all three of our wheels and wasn’t tall enough to scrape the belly. We came to a stop just short of the runway. Thanks tower, didn’t need it after all. We shut down right there next to the approach end and got towed back to parking with fire trucks as our escorts.

So, that was it. I made it through the holidays without my family, I’ve been shot at a few times, and I made it safely though an emergency that’s not even taught in flight school. I’m ready to come home.

Happy New Year!

The 50 yard line

In an attempt to connect with my audience, I’ve chosen a sports reference as the title of this post, which I will explain momentarily. Please don’t think that means I’ve started watching football, which is where that particular reference comes from (I think).

It just started getting cold here at night. I figured that meant it was time to update the blog. Well, that and all the people telling me it was time to update the blog. October was a milestone for the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade as we have now been in Afghanistan for more than six months. Halfway home, it’s all downhill from here. Not much has changed since we last spoke, still planning missions, chasing the medevac birds around, and searching for IED emplacers. Though, the monotony is often disrupted by brief moments of excitement. A few war stories for your enjoyment/terror (Sorry about this Mom)…

Several weeks ago I was on 24 hour Med Chase duty at a FOB about 100 miles west of here. We got launched on an urgent call for a Marine who had been wounded in a fire fight. As I’ve mentioned before, the medevac birds are not allowed to carry weapons so they rely on us for Close Air Support when there are no attack platforms in the area, like Apaches, or F/A-18s. As we overflew the LZ at 1,000’, chalk 1 (the lead aircraft) announced they were taking fire, so we moved out of the area briefly until a Cobra helicopter, an AH-1, arrived on station with much bigger weapons than we have. On the final approach into the LZ at about 200’ the med bird came under fire again, but they continued their approach and were able to extract the patient. We got him back to the hospital, and after shutting down, we found four bullet holes in the medevac’s helicopter. Two rounds pierced two of the rotor blades and had produced a slight vibration, but didn’t affect them otherwise. The other two rounds went into the bottom of the helicopter but were unable to pierce the armor that lines the floor of our cabins. Good thing too, because one of the rounds impacted directly beneath the crew chief’s seat. He saved some of the shrapnel he found around the hole, grateful that he wasn’t pulling it out of his butt. Overall, no one was hurt except the Marine, who, despite our medic’s heroic effort, did not survive the gunshot wound.

A few nights ago we got launched on the ARF (Aerial Reaction Force) after a pair of Kiowa’s destroyed a truck full of explosives and insurgents. When something like that happens, our job is to insert a platoon of pathfinders, ground troops trained to do this sort of thing, along with a few FBI guys who can collect evidence from the remains and piece together any intel on the terrorist network. It was the middle of the night and there was absolutely no moon. For the first time in months there were actually clouds in the sky, which meant no illumination from the stars either. Keep in mind, night vision goggles only amplify existing light; they do not illuminate a completely black image. Under those conditions, at 1,000’ above the ground, the desert floor looks like the ocean, barely any detail at all. As we approached the LZ that the Kiowas had selected, the intense light from the burning truck made our NVGs almost unusable. Despite the limitation to our vision and the extremely uneven, rocky, dusty terrain, we got the guys on the ground and moved into a holding pattern as they went to work clearing the area.

While we were orbiting, a convoy of about 20 trucks was moving into the narrow valley where we had inserted the pathfinders. The Kiowas were busy providing cover for the troops on the ground, guiding them in the darkness to areas of interest, so it was left to us to stop the convoy. We flew in low, head on with the lead vehicle, and shined our 400W landing light into his windshield. Outside the wire, we fly with no other visible lights on, so he wouldn’t have seen us approaching until our light lit up his world, and I imagine he thought he was being abducted by aliens. The convoy slowed to a crawl, but they obviously hadn’t gotten the message that we wanted them to stop. We moved into a position about 100 meters in front of the lead vehicle and my crew chief laid several rounds of 7.62mm stop sign on the road in front of him. That did the trick. The convoy stopped completely – for about five minutes. One of the trucks several vehicles from the front either hadn’t seen our show of force, or thought maybe it didn’t apply to him. He began passing one truck after another, and we let him keep moving until he made it to the front. We put a few more rounds onto the road in front of him, and he seemed to figure it out. Not long after that we extracted the pathfinders and returned to base. On the way out we saw that the convoy still hadn’t moved. I wondered when we got back if they were still waiting there for us to reappear from the darkness. Of course I felt bad that we had to involve most likely innocent people with such threatening action, but we had to keep the guys on the ground safe. There’s no way to know what danger they would have faced had we allowed those twenty vehicles, with any number of passengers, to roll up on their position.

I’m not a fan of war. I could do without the violence and it’s sometimes hard to connect the fighting over here with the safety of people at home, though I believe that connection exists. But understand there are very clearly bad people in this country, people taking advantage of every possible opportunity to take lives not only of Americans and coalition forces, but of those who are just trying to live here, their neighbors. Much as Jesus sacrificed himself out of love for the whole world, I work with people everyday who would sacrifice themselves to save just one life. Whether in support of the war or against the war, remember we are fighting people who would sacrifice themselves to destroy just one life.

hashtag = #nponline ... RT plz!

14 years ago, Andy Stanley, a pastor in Atlanta, had a vision to create a church that "unchurched" people would love to attend. Northpoint Community Church was so well received that they outgrew their building, and instead of moving to a new one, they added another auditorium and piped the message into that room on a live video feed. Once that room filled up, they wondered if they could show the same video across town and reach people in a different community. Buckhead Church was born and their new vision became creating churches that unchurched people would love to attend. Not long after that, an incorrigible young lad named Troy Fountain decided that if they could do it across town, surely they could do it across the country. He moved to Dothan Alabama and started Wiregrass Church, the first "Strategic Partner" of Northpoint.

When Emily and I moved to Alabama, we were lucky enough to receive an invite to Wiregrass Church. We went, and for the first time, watched the Sunday morning message on a video screen, delivered by a guy we didn't know in Atlanta, GA. The whole experience was so amazing. We didn't stop going back until we had to move to Ft. Bragg, NC. Ever since then, we've wanted to share that experience with friends and family around the country, and even though there are now more than 15 strategic partners showing Andy Stanley on Sunday mornings, and creating irresistible environments where people can learn about God, most locations aren't anywhere near the people we know and love. That is, until now.

If you're reading this on a computer, you're already at the newest Northpoint campus. All you have to do is click http://northpointonline.tv. This Sunday night, August 16th at 6pm, for the first time ever, Northpoint will broadcast their entire service live on the internet from the Buckhead location, the music, the video, the message, everything. I invite each of you, regardless of whether or not you actually "go" to church, to check this out from the comfort of your own couch this Sunday. There will be a live chat room, and I'll be online in Afghanistan. We can actually hang out together from around the world!