Notes from the Field: Part 2

Day 10: “This is our second-to-last collect day and it’s been pretty busy, so far, which is good for making time go by, but not so great for the collect.  Anyway, I got up at my customary 4 AM, made lunch, ate breakfast, and then took apart the computer I was using and got it downstairs for the car.  We drove out, got set up, and then went out to Fake Afghanistan, which is less exciting than fake Iraq.  It’s actually still a little under construction, they’re expanding it out some more, so there’s no activities or crazy training exercises going on here, though I did notice a few of those fruit stand props.  Also we’re up on the hill again, in one of the collectors. 

It was a bit of a trick to get up here.  We had to drive out *really* slow because 1) we were behind someone slow and 2) the roads are just dirt, so anytime anyone drives over them it kicks up dust, and in the early morning there’s no wind to blow it away, so it just builds up and makes visibility a pain.  When you’re dealing with tanks potentially coming down the road, you tend to drive a little extra conservatively.  By the time we got out, the sun was coming up, which was good, because our navigation up the hill was a little ad-hoc last time, and we weren’t sure we’d be able to find our location again, especially in the dark.  With the sun, though, we were able to find our old path and meander up the hill. ”

“They gave us a safety briefing when we first got here about Unexploded Ordinance (UXO).  Basically don’t touch anything that isn’t obviously a rock.  I don’t know about unexploded, but there is non-rock stuff all over the place out here.  Old shells, even .50 caliber ones.  Nothing bomb or missile-looking, or we’d definitely call it in, but you had best believe I’m very cautiously watching my step everywhere I go. 

Oh, and I don’t know if I told you: I saw a rattlesnake.  From a distance, mind.  We were walking around ‘painted rock’ where everyone paints their emblem when they come in for rotation, and I spotted one on the ground.  Good thing I was looking out, lots of places for critters to hide among the rocks.  Anyway, I kept well away: he looked pretty small and didn’t even move, which was fine by me.  I want no part of that accident.  And, of course, ever since I’ve been watching my feet when I get out of the car or when walking around.”

And...that’s pretty much it. The majority of our work consisted of driving a car to some predefined location, setting up an antenna and a sensor, and then sitting there and watching it record data for four hours, switching hard drives once in the middle of the test. If everything went correctly, it was really boring. Lots of time to kill, which I passed either by staring out into the desert or messing around on my computer.

And you did read that correctly, traditional wake-up time was 4:00 AM for about two whole weeks there. Which actually isn’t too bad, considering that I’m two hours behind Texas. If I ‘sleep in’ to 5:00, that’s like my normal wake-up time back home, theoretically. It means I get to Skype with Jessie in the morning sometimes, if I don’t have to rush off to work right away.

Also, in case you can’t tell I wrote a *plethora* of e-mails to Jessie, as well as sending her text and picture messages on our sexy new phones all the time. A pretty nice way to stay in communication, as it turns out. The one downside is that when we were downrange (in ‘the box’) we had really spotty cell-phone coverage. Though the fact that we could make phone calls out there *at all* is kind of a marvel of modern technology, wouldn’t you say?

-N