Bicycles in Fallujah?

Yup, you guessed it. We have a ton of bicycles out here. Average price $20. Or you could buy a brand new one for $99 from the PX on base. Choices include 'Jeep' or 'Huffy'. All are full suspension, and some even have disc brakes! believe it or not, i have not tried to ride while out here yet. I don't want my specialized epic back home getting jeleous or anything.

It rained really hard last night. Our roof is awsome, but incredibly loud. The rain also decided to short out our generator, so we currently have no power in our 'hooch'. Which means, no lights, and no A/C. oh well. Oh, and it blew over the portajohns too. At least we don't have to clean up that mess, thank god for KBR and civilian contractors.

Whoa

LCPL Howe: Whoa, our trucks on fire, what do we do sergeant?

SGT Loss: Times like this call for decisive decision making, and appropriate action taking. Quick get everyone over here for a team photo!

Pictured from Left to Right:

Sgt Loss (Call sign: Truck Norris)

Lcpl Fall (Bobby Digital)

Cpl Smith (Joe Dirt)

Lcpl Morgan (Mongo)

Lcpl Howe (How-eeee)

Lcpl Willis (Snowman)

Lcpl Gary (Scary Gary)

Lcpl Mattern (Muscles)

Roooof

They finally finished our roof! Of course we were trying to sleep at the time, after being up for 25 hours, but the hammering didn't really keep anybody from sleeping.

We also accidently set the bed of our truck on fire. The bed is steel, so it didn't do any lasting damage. It was funny comeing through the front gate to the camp, the guards were yelling "HEY YOUR TRUCKS ON FIRE!!!" and i reply "So what?", we kept rolling.

We now have Satalite in our hooch! yeah! it's AFN, with only 9 channels, but thats ok. better than having to walk the 1/2 mile to the chow hall to watch the news. We also ran a feed from our satalite up to the classroom, and one to the company office.

Jenga!

So we now have two new games to add to our inventory, one being monopoly, and the other is jenga. I never thought jenga could be so entertaining. Who would have thought that a group of Marines could figure out how to turn Jenga into a tackle sport? Not I. But they did, with two broken chairs, a bunch of bruises, and one bloody nose, we called it a night, with no clearly defined winner.

In other news, they started working on our new roof yesterday. I spent most of the night staring up through the missing roof, and looking at the stars. The night sky is spectacular out here. At night all the lights are turned off outside, it's kind of like being in the boundry waters. Only a little sandier.

Chess Tourny

Once a month, they hold a Chess tourny at the internet cafe here on base. Last month, i was knocked out of the first round, by this little chinese MasterSergeant (E-8). Last night I made it past the first round (i'd like to say that i royaly tore him up) and made it to the 2nd round. Guess who was waiting for me at the table? yup, the little MasterSergeant. And he won again. So now my quest, before i leave here is to beat this guy.

Rain, rain, rain

So, the rainy season finally decided to start pushing it's muscle around here in Iraq. We found out too quickly how water proof our building isn't. We attempted to get some buckets and barrells inside, but it was a futile attempt. So we just settled for moving all our gear to higher ground (by placing it on our beds) Since we were already soaked, we decided to go outside in the torrential rain and play some football (american football). that lasted for about an hour and a half, then the rain became a light drizzle. the leaks in the roof slowed down, so we popped in the movie "Stick it". It was the only movie we had left that we havn't watched yet. It's a movie about gymnastics, not somthing you would typically assosciate with a bunch of Marines watching. But the movie turned out to be hilarious, all the Marines enjoyed watching it. So if you can imagine this, all day yesterday, the Marines were using their hands as 'phones' saying "Neenah, put down the phone!". Ok, maybe it's not funny to you guys, but it is to me :-)