getting ready to go

08 May 2008

Yesterday we spent the day repacking all of our tri-cons to be as evenly balanced as possible before we put them on the plane. There seems to be some confusion as to whether we can land the entire weight of the plane at the airfield in the Philippines. If we can’t, we need to do it in increments which will add a lot of time to the evolution. Hopefully we will find out sooner rather than later. Most of the people are flying down (as of now) on Saturday, while a group of us are flying with the equipment to oversee the unloading and putting it on the truck part of the job. This is lucky for me because it means more time on a C-130 with the super comfortable seats and the commodious bathrooms, not to mention the added couple of hours in the air.
Today should be a pretty down day. We had to turn our uniforms in to be “dipped”, which means they are going to spray them with some industrial chemicals to ward off two of the millions of mosquitoes that we will be feeding in the next couple of months. Once we get them back we have to wash them and repack them. As nice as it would be to get settled in here and prepare for the long haul, I am looking forward to getting down to the PI and getting to work. Time goes by so much faster when you’re busy and that’s what’s most important right now. The time change is still a little confusing. My body has pretty much gotten it, but my mind is still struggling. I just realized that it is eight o’clock in the morning here and the Sox are getting ready to play back home. I don’t know what the difference will be in the Philippines, probably a little less, but I’m not sure.