27 February

"Today started around 0600…got up and cleaned myself up for the trip to J-Bad…I was a gunner on a hummer, rockin the MK-19…it’s a pain in the ass gun to mount and load and clear and all that, but just one time of firing that bad boy makes it all worth it—unfortunately we never get the chance to use it—or you could make the argument that it a fortunate thing, since it means we don’t get attacked…either way, I would just love to fire that thing off and blow some shit up with it…so, as usual, I had to wake up the armory room guy to get in and sign out my weapon…loaded up the truck and stage it in the convoy pre-departure area…hit the briefing, which was pretty much same ol stuff—bad guys here and there, historic ambush sites, what to do in case of IEDs, breakdown procedures, current intel on suicide bombers and planned attacks against Coalition Forces…none of that stuff happened on our trip—it was just another road trip for us…it was a little chilly this morning on the way out, but it’s definitely spring time weather around here…we made it to the main road thru town and again there were kids waving and giving us the “thumbs up” and yelling for pens and water and candy, the roads were filled with donkey carts, herds of sheep/goats, a couple camels here and there, and the normal stench of trash and food and manure…"
Desert Consciousness