Day 5 at NTC

[aadler]

 

During the night somebody warned me that a coyote had been seen around the line, occasionally jumping up on top of a truck in search of something interesting. We weren’t bothered, however.

Once the station opened up, the line moved fairly quickly. Unfortunately, when we reached the front, we were told we weren’t in the system. Damn. I went back to the big tent, spent ten minutes making contacts with the NCOIC, and returned to the line. We coordinated with someone who actually knew what he was doing, but this time when we reached the front it was to be informed that they were still working on entering our information, so we had to pull off to the side again.

Meanwhile I’d put in another call to Susan. I learned she’d had a blood pressure spike, so she was given a couple of days off work and she’s driving back to center-state to see her doctor.

Just as the vehicles were preparing to re-enter the line, on the expectation that the necessary data would be in the system by the time they arrived, I was called by the NCOIC, and (leaving my team with the truck) spent several hours moving between various TOCs, meeting people and coordinating information, and in some cases providing (or acquiring) information and facilitating meetings. I showed up at the convoy brief to let them know we wouldn’t be in it (vehicles still awaiting equipment, have to join a later convoy), and dealt with things until I ran out of things to do.

I rested and cooled down in the main tent for perhaps an hour, then returned to the MILES line. It wasn’t necessary — my assistant team leader was managing fine — but I saw it as a team solidarity issue. They were already through the point where the MILES receivers had been installed on the truck; the second station was for testing and verifying. It took time (more than it needed to, because the truck in front of us — also part of our detachment, but a different team — didn’t get okayed until an hour after ours, and we couldn’t move until it did), but eventually we were done.

Though I hadn’t been there for the entire time, my team had been waiting in that line for seventeen and a half hours.

Back to the tent. I went to evening chow, and had just returned when I got a call to report right now to such-and-such location to sign for individual MILES gear for our entire detachment. (We’d gotten the trucks equipped, but this would be for the soldiers themselves.) My driver and I took off immediately, I reached the designated location … and, of course, had to wait half an hour for the issuing NCO to show up. When she did, it was with the news — apologetic but inflexible — that we were unknown to her and she couldn’t give us anything without the necessary approval.

That was straightened out in ten minutes by cell phone, but we still wouldn’t be able to draw the gear until tomorrow. I returned once again to the tent, we finished unloading the truck, I took off my boots and prepared to rest before trying to write again … and was informed that I was to report to a convoy leaving in fifteen minutes.

I thought they were joking with me. It wasn’t a joke. We scrambled to re-pack the truck, scrambled to get to the departure site. We made it, though not in the time allotted — the convoy was delayed briefly for our benefit — and then proceeded to our notional Forward Operating Base (FOB) out in the desert.

Which is where we are now. We set up cots in the TOC for the night, awaiting widespread assignment to various barracking tents, and settled in for the night.

All told, I managed a total of 64 words today on “Queen’s Gambit”.