57 Days

According to my little deployment counter I have 57 days left here before I’m sipping an umbrella drink on the top floor of my hotel in Dubai waiting for my business class flight back to the US to be greeted by the open arms of all my friends. It doesn’t seem like I’ve been here for 133 days already… Well unless I really think about it.

57 days… Can you believe it? It feels like it’s just around the corner. I’ve come a long way since that first day, stepping off of the C-130 on a strange airstrip in the middle of the desert. I’ve met a lot of cool people, who sometimes like to remind me that they have fewer days left than I do.

It’s been quite an adventure getting to where I am now. I remember that first day… Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, I was a naïve operator, fresh out of school and ready to make my big break into the UAV world. I was so eager to get started that I didn’t even want to sleep, despite the fact that I should have been more jet lagged than I’ve ever been in my whole life.

Of course after a couple weeks I kicked on the cruise control as my interest level decreased and my frustration level grew. Not long after coming into country, I was sent to set up a spoke as part of a three man team, which brought a whole new set of challenges.

Covered in hydraulic fluid, I stepped off of a CH-53 on a strange helo-pad somewhere even further into the middle of the desert. Even more lost than before and even more sleep deprived. After spending a week setting up the spoke and living in sub-livable conditions we were asked to stay an additional 2 weeks before heading back to the hub. It was my first real taste of hell on earth.

It was hot in the days, unbearably hot by my standards, and the nights weren’t much better. We didn’t have air conditioning for the first week we were here, which made sleeping difficult. Plus the camel spiders found their way into our tents on a nightly basis. After the first week, the marines installed the a/c units, which made it bitterly cold in the tent but I wasn’t complaining. I was rotated out of that site after 3 weeks because I was closing in on my R&R date.

As you can imagine, after spending a week at home I had no desire whatsoever to return to the life I had chosen for myself. It was like giving a child candy and then taking it back after they got one lick. Since I don’t give up I reluctantly returned to the desert to serve the last 4 months of my deployment.

I spent about a month back at the hub before being asked to lead a new hub being set up at the site I had set the spoke up at. Most of the set up work was completed by a team of guys who came down to do the site survey/construction. I took the opportunity because I’d never pass up a chance to shine. And this is where you find me today, in the middle of the desert at a site of my own design and crewed by operators of my choosing. Life is good.