It’s 2200 (10 pm) and I just now got back to my room. This isn’t an exceptionally late night, I’ve worked until 10 pm several times since I’ve been here. The difference being that on those nights, I was working.<\/p>\n
Tonight, I had very little going on; I browsed facebook, I reluctantly ate some sugar cookies since the DFAC didn’t serve the usual Friday night molten lava cake that I generally look forward to, I enjoyed the fruits of my engineer friend’s oil barrel meat smoker and the “brisket” he had been cooking for the previous 7 hours. (I put brisket in quotes because to acquire meat here, we give some money to our linguist friends who have connections in town and hope that they bring back the cut of meat we ask for, but it’s kind of a crap shoot)<\/p>\n
While we were out on the patio enjoying morsels of smoked beef and beginning to clean up the mess, the Big Voice sounds. Whoop Whoop Whoop, Incoming Incoming<\/em>.<\/p>\n I didn’t think much of it. We don’t often get indirect fire (IDF) at this base. Not to mention, just yesterday the Big Voice went off saying there was a ground attack. This would mean that someone had penetrated the ridiculously fortified gate and is attacking us from inside the base. Of course, this alarm was sounded either by mistake or it was an unannounced drill. We never found out either way, which made tonight’s alarm seem like a subterfuge too.<\/p>\n Then we hear a thud behind us. It resembled a large volume falling off the top book shelf in a quiet library. My friend Matt and I turn around and look over to a building about 40 yards away where a plume of smoke is rising off the roof.<\/p>\n The Big Voice then says to Shelter in Place<\/em>, so we make sure to put the tupperware lid over the container of meat, carefully ensuring it’s sealed,\u00a0and take our meat back inside the office.<\/p>\n For the next three hours the Big Voice would whoop whoop whoop<\/em> our hopes up for an All Clear<\/em>, but continually dash them again with There Is A UXO <\/em>(unexploded ordinance) on Base, Remain Sheltered in Place\u00a0<\/em>until the bomb squad was able to locate the round and ensure it would’t detonate. During that time, we kept up office morale by making jokes about our efforts to save the meat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s 2200 (10 pm) and I just now got back to my room. This isn’t an exceptionally late night, I’ve worked until 10 pm several times since I’ve been here. The difference being that on those nights, I was working. Tonight, I had very little going on; I browsed facebook, I reluctantly ate some sugar… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9IVlY-1p","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":65,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/03\/peh\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":0},"title":"PEH","date":"October 3, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Pohantoon-e-Hawayee (PEH) is the officer candidate school for the Afghan Air Force. It is a one-year program and upon graduation the candidates are commissioned as officers and then go on to specialty schools such as pilot training or maintenance engineering school. The school is on the Afghan Air Force base,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/image-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":39,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/09\/07\/pbs\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":1},"title":"PBS","date":"September 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There has been a lot of terrorist activity in Kabul since I arrived. My first night at RS, the team was dealing with media inquiries regarding the first American casualty from hostile fire since the beginning of the year. This didn't occur in Kabul, but it was a significant event.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/image-300x225.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2018\/12\/13\/newport-dunes-2018\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":2},"title":"Newport Dunes Triathlon 2018 - Race Report","date":"December 13, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"November 4, 2018 Olympic Distance Official Time: 02:16:251500m Swim: 00:23:10T1: 00:01:3640k Bike: 01:04:51T2: 00:01:2410k Run: 00:45:24Overall: 9th of 18335-39 AG: 3rd of 24 I\u2019m 2 races behind on my blog now, so I\u2019ll try to be brief to get through them both. I came into Newport Dunes with very low\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Triathlon"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/chrisdonlon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/img_0641.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":120,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2018\/03\/07\/tolo-aftab\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":3},"title":"TOLO AFTAB","date":"March 7, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I don't even know what this one stands for. But it was a combined live fire exercise led by Afghan Tactical Air Controllers (ATACs). ATACs are trained by coalition JTACs to be the eyes on the ground and call in air strikes. In this exercise, it was the first time\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":325,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2020\/01\/29\/180-degrees\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":4},"title":"180 Degrees","date":"January 29, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"It\u2019s been about six months since the last time I wrote anything here. My relationship with writing resembles my love\/hate relationship with running, especially in the winter: I agonize about starting, I\u2019m slower than I\u2019d like to be, but when I finish I feel better about myself and am glad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "life is life"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":112,"url":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/2016\/12\/07\/wapo-part2\/","url_meta":{"origin":87,"position":5},"title":"WaPo part2","date":"December 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Remember my post about TM? Well, after he returned to the states, he wrote this article: https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/checkpoint\/wp\/2016\/10\/16\/band-aid-on-a-bullet-wound-what-americas-new-war-looks-like-in-afghanistans-most-violent-province\/ Resolute Support leadership had a conniption, removed two colonels from their posts, launched an official investigation (15-6) and created an environment where all subordinate commands are afraid to talk to the media and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AFG"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":88,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions\/88"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chrisdonlon.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}