We left for Kuwait today. What a trip! We flew from El Paso into Baltimore for a one hour layover. From there, we flew to Rhein Main, Germany and from Germany to Kuwait. What a long flight. I'm not sure the actual time in the air, but we left at 2:30 PM Saturday and arrived at 8:00 PM on Sunday. With all the time changes, I think it works out to 20 hours or so of actual flying. Luckily I had a nice seat - an aisle seat with no one on my other side.

I slept almost the whole way because I had been up the entire night before packing. They told us we could take 3 duffel bags worth of gear, plus two carry on bags. Let me tell you, I used every single inch of space in all 5 bags, plus some. They issued us a ton of crap at Bliss!! I couldn't fit my kevlar helmet in my bags so I ended up carrying it by hand. I even ended up putting my dirty laundry in the pouches of my body armor because I had no space left.

Once we landed in Kuwait we were bussed to Camp Doha where we were scanned into the system and had a couple of briefings. We then went to what they called RFI (Rapid Fielding Initiative) where they issued us still more gear. Two pairs of boots to go with the 3 pairs we got at Bliss, plus some other gear like Wiley X goggles, military issue goggles, some Under Armor t-shirts, and some other miscellaneous gear. Nice stuff. The best thing they gave us was another duffel bag. The gear I got at RFI only takes up about 1/4 of a duffel, so now I have somewhere to put my diry underwear until I can get to do laundry.

So, since I slept almost the whole flight over and my clock is thoroughly screwed up from being in a different time zone, here I sit writing at 0400 in the morning. According to the schedule, we fly for Baghdad tomorrow evening on a C-130. That was a surprise to me as well, as I had been told we would spend a week or so in Kuwait. I'm glad for the quick movement. Less chance to sit here and get tied up in bureaucracy, worry about what's going to happen in Iraq, or just be plain bored. I say get me in country and let me start soldiering so I can get my ass back to the States.