4 Weeks from Home in Afghanistan 

   Not much to post about, I cannot stop myself from constantly neglecting this site and the few people who still read it. It would seem the only thing that kept me churning out decent posts before was my own vanity. I just read through some of my old posts, the ones that I am proud of that involve actual social commentary and quality perspective. I noticed the quality of the post is directly proportional to the amount of comments the previous post had fetched from fellow Xangans. I used to regard this site as a reoccurring article and think of things to write about and posts to create. Lately all I do is apologize for the last few posts and accept my mediocrity. I plan to come up with a few things here soon that should be read-worthy if for no other reason then to have a piece of my pre-re-deployment perspective survive this strange time in my life. Plus it felt damn good to go back and read some of the quality stuff I had on here from before, and I feel like I am cheating myself by not doing the same thing with some of the thoughts that I have right now.

  Good news: The I spent before online I now spend in the gym…I gained almost ten pounds in the last month. In comparison before last month I had gained about 5 pounds in the last 7 years. If the Ranger packet goes through I will be ready…physically if not mentally.

(love the hat)

Excerpt from many months ago that I like:

“I was that man, one of the few that ran the edge so unervingly well for a few years, that there is never a day I don’t wonder how I managed to figure out exactly where it is. Apparently the “edge” for me was a 20 foot patch of black ice. Now I sit at a terminal in the middle of nowhere willing to trade almost anything for something that noone else thinks I can do. The funny thing about the razor’s edge, is being that it is a razor. There can be no jumping up and pulling yourself up onto it after you fall. You have to wait for one of those unique times in life when a challenge causes you to sprint the gauntlet, with no alternative to success. Freedom and love at the other side, and nothing but failure and despair in between. And only when that situation finds you, and finds you prepared, will you find your razor. And be alive. And for those who will never face a situation with stakes like that…you never really lived at all”   Emerstan 05′

    Well summer is almost back. The clouds are starting to disappear and the sun is starting to rule the day again. Before I get into all that I thought I would throw in some pictures before they are outdated.

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    This is us lifting the guns again and preparing to move from the last base to this one. I am gonna miss Kitty but nothing else, every step now is another step closer to home.

One of the first priorities of setting ourselves up at the new base, was to hang our flag on the poles outside. We are not located with the rest of the Americans on this base so this was even more important for that reason. Only problem, was that there was no string on the middle pole. I am no expert on flag etiquette but I do know that it is not ok to hang the US flag on one of the lower poles, plus I am a sucker for symmetry anyway.

    And this began the process of going up and down the flag poles no less then eight or nine times. Getting the rope down from the pole on the left was no problem. Not only is removing the string from the pulley a lot easier then putting it through, but the left and right flag poles were a lot more sturdy and didn’t feel nearly as high because of this. As it turns out, despite our well meaning intentions, somehow both myself and the LT had somehow made it through life without being confronted with the knowledge of how a flag pole actually works. If you do know how one works then you know what I mean by this. After about the fifth time up the pull the entire thing started to feel much more dangerous then anything else, climbing to the top is the easy part, it is letting go with one hand at the top that is scary. After a few times up and down we figured out what was going wrong and fixed the rope to fit our flag so that it would fly right and not embarrass us, or the US.

     After the flag was flying properly we both took cheesy pictures displaying way to much pride and sense of accomplishment for doing something as simple as flying the American flag.

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    We have been at this new base almost 3 weeks or more already, the date of our “scheduled” redeployment gets days closer every few hours. To try and explain how that feels let me try an example…If you can remember being a kid, and waiting for Christmas. Waiting all winter for it to come, so excited for a single day, and then right before Christmas did come… alongside the excitement and joy was a hint of disappointment because looking forward to something is just less then half the fun.

   Most of the deployment I have spent the days bored looking for something to do. And now that I have fallen into a productive groove we start talking about home. I put in a packet to go to Ranger school when I get back so I HAVE to spend about 4 hours a day training for that. I have finally started tearing through the books that I bought and there is never enough time in the day for that, and I just ordered two expensive cycles of Mass Stack and have to set aside at least two hours a day to lift and try to take advantage of that and put on 10 or 20 pounds before Ranger school. So long story short, all of the sudden here at the end of the deployment all of the sudden there isn’t enough hours in the day or days in the week before I go back to the “real world”.

     Also strange is the thought, that soon I will have been here for a year. In that first post of the year, I asked myself, “how do you quantify a year in terms that you can actually relate to”? … well now I know how. I remember watching the Super Bowl last year just before or on our last weekend to go nuts before we deployed, as I sat watching the Super Bowl this year, I thought “damn…so that’s a year…”. When you are home and follow the same routine month by month it is hard if not impossible to step back and see a week for what it is. At the end of the year you can stop and go “damn that year went fast”, or “I remember doing this last year and it seems like yesterday”. But to actually attempt to quantify what took place that year or try and gather a sense of time is nearly impossible. Sitting here high in the mountains this year gave me a wicked perspective on the subject of time, and after watching the seasons roll by I can almost see what a year is, and it is scary to think that I may only have 50 or so of these left. The time is now, every passing moment is another opportunity to turn the whole thing around. (trust me)

What a difference between comments when I used to respond back to everyone, and now, when can’t respond to almost anyone. About a difference of 80 comments a day to about 4 or 5. Oh and for those 4 or 5 a day, sorry that I don’t respond (haha). But I DO read and appreciate all my comments…and WOULD respond if it didn’t take 3 mins per page and 3 loads to complete a return comment.