Flight to Kuwait

On the flight to Kuwait I was chosen to sit in the cockpit during take off. It was pretty cool listening to all the pre-flight checks that go on before you go.

This next pic is of me and my friend once we hit ground for the first time.

Flight to Germany

After NYC, we landed in Frankfurt, Germany where we were taken to a secure area away from the airport and allowed to get off the plane and visit this warehouse where the USO had snacks and coffee for us. Here's a pic of us getting off the plane we flew on.
Here's a picture of the airport from our secure location.

This is a picture of this little car that was driving around. I think it was electric powered because it ran really quite. I wouldn't mind having one to drive to work in!

Flight to NYC

After we took off from Topeka's airport, we found out that we would be arriving in New York City's JFK airport for about a two hour layover. Here are a few pics from that.
In this one below you can see the Statue of Liberty.

Manifest

At 2:30am this morning we woke up and prepared to depart Ft. Riley. Even though our flight wasn't until 1pm, we had a lot to do. We had to check out our weapons from the Armory, clean our rooms out, and get our baggage ready to go. Here's a pic of someone trying to stuff their bag into the wood box which we had to do to make sure our carry-on items weren't too big. At least they let us take a backpack and a laptop as our carry-ons.
This next pic is of our manifest holding area. Basically after checking in and making sure everyone has everything, we are quarantined to this room until we load the bus to go to the airport. It wasn't bad, some organization had food and drinks for us while we waited. We spent a good two hours waiting around.
This was me in front of a flag in the manifest area. It's probably the biggest one I've ever seen.

Adjutant General Visit

Today the Nebraska Adjutant General, Major General Lempke came down to wish us well on our deployment. Along with him was the State Command Sergeant Major Shunk. Myself along with about seven other soldiers were awarded a State CSM coin for excellence in the work we've been doing in Ft. Riley. This is the second CSM coin I've got so far on this tour, you can see a picture of it by clicking here.
Myself and Major General Roger Lempke
Myself and State Command Sergeant Major Shunk.

PT Test

Today we had a PT test and I passed! My scores were:

Push-ups (within 2 minutes): 42
Sit-ups (within 2 minutes): 60
2 Mile Run: 16 minutes and 20 seconds

Another SRP

Third time's a charm right? Well today was our third time doing a SRP, which is the processing of your medical, personnel, finance, and law files. Fun stuff!

Everything went pretty smooth for me except the medical. I had to finish my immunizations, which was a shot for Hepatitis A second series, Hepatitis B second series, and the Flu vaccine. Hopefully those are the last shots for a while!

4 Day Pass - Pumpkin Hunting

Today Tara, Ann (Tara's mom) and I went to Roca Berry Farms. Tara's dad works for Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway which holds a event at one of the pumpkin patches around Lincoln. Unfortunately Tara's dad couldn't come with us because he was working out of town for a couple weeks. Here are a few pictures:

Later that night Tara and I did the traditional pumpkin carving with my Mom, Dad, and Spence.

Tara and I hard at work carving our pumpkins.

Spence did the US Army pumpkin.

This is my pumpkin, reminded me of 'Outlaws' which is the name of our platoon.

4 Day Pass - Out with Friends

This is me and a few friends on my4-day pass. We had a few excellent beers at Lazlo's, poured by my friend Jon (Thanks Jon!). We then ate at Fireworks, and headed downtown for some drinks at Sandy's and Iguanas. Here are the pictures:

Tara and I at Sandy's Pub

Sean and Julie Tooker

Aaron and Me

Troy and Me

Sorry I couldn't get everyone's picture on here. But thanks for coming, I had a blast and I hope you did too!

FOB Exercise

We spent all this last week doing a FOB (Forward Operating Base) Exercise. We had a lot of good training. While it was general in nature and in part not realalistic from what we will see in Iraq, some parts of it were very valuable. I can't go into the specific details of the training because its classified. (We don't want the enemy who is probably reading this to know what kind of stuff we are getting trained on!)

Here's a few pictures of me and the area where we lived for the last week.

This is the general FOB area where we stayed. The tents didn't provide a whole lot of shelter from the rain and the dew. Ours leaked like a sift.

Here's me inside the tent posing as RAMBO and holding the SAW, note the ammo belts.

The last two days were kinda boring. I had to do guard duty and block off a couple roads while a live fire (shooting with real bullets) exercise was going on all day.

4 Day Pass

Today at formation the 1SG announced that we are going to be given a four day pass after we complete our training this next week.

I'll be leaving Ft. Riley on October 13th in the evening and will return back to Ft. Riley on October 17th.

It'll be nice to get home and have a 'mental recharge' before heading overseas.