Travel day: July 6 and 7

3:45pm Kuwait time, Tuesday, July 7. Somewhere over Turkey.

We’re an hour and a half from landing in Kuwait right now, but let me back up. I had a nice lazy weekend of packing and preparation. Celebrated the 4th of July with a long hilly bike ride, singing “Proud to be an American” on some of the harder hills. (yes I sing on hills!) Then I went for a cookout with my friends Dan, Steve and Polly and the fireworks in Annapolis. Great time. Sunday I spent packing and finalizing details for the trip. By 5pm I was driving myself crazy thinking and re-thinking my packing, so I went to a movie. (“Up” is a really fun movie, highly recommended.)
Monday morning I slept through my workout, savoring the last moments in my bed for 2 weeks. I was starting to get a little nervous, and just wanted to get going. I worked a half day, then went for a run at Patapsco State Park with my good friend Laurie, savoring the last bits of green I’d see in a long time! Then it was time to finalize my packing and walk out the door. FINALLY! My aunt Alice in Washington DC was kind enough to agree to give me a ride to Dullles, so I took off for her house with plenty of time to spare. We met up, caught up, and departed for a celebratory beer and wings at Clyde’s before heading to Dulles.

Then off to Dulles to finally get this trip underway. They got me there with plenty of time to spare, and I met Rob outside the check in area as I had 4 pieces to check (Hey…I had to bring my red taffeta ball gown and all my glorious Jimmie Choo shoes…actually I was carrying the posters and autograph cards for the trip as they’d finished printing when it was too late to ship them. We got all checked in, and headed through security and to the Red Carpet Club to meet up with the rest of the group.
Rob and Frank had arrived 5 hours earlier from Denver on what they called the “cover your butt” flight. (meaning that it would take one hell of a catastrophic delay for them to miss the Kuwait flight.) So I chatted with Frank Shorter for a few minutes, then Bart, Sandy and Nicole arrived. It’s then that I realize even more that I’m in really great company! Very cool and very highly accomplished people. I’m thrilled to be on this trip.
:45 minutes to departure, and I pop off to grab a sandwich before we leave. I find a Wendy’s and grab a chicken sandwich and sit outside our gate, C12 to eat my sandwich, waiting for them to call my seating group. I don’t see any of our group around, but I figure they’re already on the plane. Then I hear them calling all rows for the flight to Montreal and I realize we’re at gate C2 not C12! HOLY CRAP! I get up and take off running to the RIGHT gate, laughing at my stupidity that I could have missed the frigging flight. Can you imagine? Who’s the idiot that brought the blonde. I look at my watch and we’re still 25 minutes from departure, so I’m probably fine, but sure darned glad that I realized before trying to board the wrong plane. “I’m sorry ma’am, this isn’t your aircraft!” So I saunter casually up to Bart, Sandy and Nicole, as if nothing is wrong. Everyone is still cueing for our flight, so I’m in great shape. That was a close one!
We spent a little time chatting, met Josh and Rick Stern, the timing guys and I took the chance to look around at the other people on our flight. (there are a LOT of people there.) What Robi said was right. They were mostly military contractors, and some active duty military.
Board ‘em up! We got on board, found our seats, I looked at the screen in the seat in front of me and saw “11:30 to destination”. Fshew! That’s less than the 14 hours that I thought it was going to be! I set my watch for Kuwait time so I can start to acclimate to “local” time. We took off, I popped a Unisom, hoping to get a good night’s sleep, and sat back and relaxed. They brought around drinks (OJ please, had a tickle in my throat this morning that I want to be sure is gone.) I read a little, then dinner (oops, I had a sandwich, but I’ll have the pasta please….which was very good) and I laid back in my chair with my earplugs in, a little nervous that the Unisom hadn’t…...next thing I know, we’re 1 ½ hours from landing! Wow! That wasn’t bad at all! I swear they pump something into the air on these long overnight international flights because it always seems that everyone’s asleep, then they stir at the same time. Must be something the flight attendants are immune to!
Anyway, here we are. I’m pretty nervous because it’s finally about to start! I’ve been talking about this an anticipating this and getting excited for this for weeks, and we’re finally about to be there. I couldn’t be traveling with a better group of people, and I’m so honored to be able to spend time with our troops, to thank them, and hug them, and talk and laugh with them. This is going to be one hell of an endurance exercise, but I’m going to do my darnedest to stay perky and cheerful through the whole trip, remembering that these soldiers live in this day in and day out, with the constant feeling of the danger that they face on a minute to minute basis, every day of every week while they’re here.

7:18pm, Kuwait airport

Well, we arrived, got our visas, turned in our swine flu forms, got our bags, gathered up and went through customs. Unfortunately our ride isn’t here, so we’re all kind of hanging out here in the airport, but I’ve gotta tell you, there’s plenty to do and look at!

KFC, Cinnabon, Starbucks, Caribou coffee, Harley Davidson Store, wait a sec…..2 Starbucks (typical!), The Body Shop, Claires Accessories all here in the airport. The people watching is unbelievable; everything from women in full burkah and veil to women in totally western apparel. People can smoke everywhere! We were standing in line for our visas, and a guy lit a cigarette. I couldn’t believe it! Men in traditional Arab robes, with their kids in a “Cars” t-shirt and crocs! The clash of the cultures!

10:30pm, Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. Building 149, room 328

A private room? This is better than summer camp! So our rides came, and we had a very official bunch of plain clothed military folks take us to the base. It was dark out by then, but you could still tell that it’s flat, and sandy out there! On the 45 minute drive from the airport to the base, we passed a bunch of oil refineries, some with fires at the top of the smoke stacks. David our driver told us that the lights at the refineries are strategically placed to make it look like a city (which it did) so if someone came in to bomb a refinery, it wouldn’t look like one. It struck me that it’s not uncommon in some places that you should have to design your facility with the plan of someone wanting to bomb it! Wow.
So we got to the base, got our rooms (our own rooms!) and all went in search of some dinner, but not before seeing literally a dozen people walk through in Under Armour! It feels like Baltimore! In the lobby of the barracks a few people were sitting watching the Michael Jackson memorial service on CNN. We talked to 2 young soldiers who are going home on Friday. They were very impressed to meet a real astronaut (Sandy just got back from 4 months on the Space Station!) and an Olympic Gold Medalist.

Few pictures and autographs and we left.


This base is a common place where soldiers heading home stop before leaving the middle east. They specifically designed it to help them get acclimated to home again. The PX is like a CVS on steroids (you can get a ham, and a big screen in the same place!) There’s Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins, Subway, a movie theatre, full gym, track, tennis courts, etc. Josh commented that it feels like a college campus! There was music playing near the pool, and people out and around. Not busy, but definitely there were people around. It’s about 95 degrees out but it’s very pleasant, I think because it’s dry. I’ll report about the heat some more tomorrow.
So we stopped at the PX, I took pictures of the Under Armour for Offutt (our military/tactical guy!), we got the last things we didn’t realize we needed (towels, hand cream, etc) and went for dinner.
4 of us had Taco Bell (crunchwrap supreme baby!), 2 had pizza and Frank went straight to dessert and got a banana split from Baskin Robbins! Smart man.




We sat around in the pavilion eating and chatting. Now it’s time for bed.
5:30am tomorrow morning in the lobby for a 6 hour flight in a C130 to somewhere in Iraq. We still don’t know where we’re going, but it’s going to be an adventure either way.
Good night!