The next step in my preparation for going to Kabul (and the first topic for this blog) is to attend Combat Airman Skills Training (CAST), in San Antonio TX.
The purpose of CAST is to help people like me get ready to go to a combat zone. By "people like me" I mean military types whose day jobs don't generally involve living in tents and running around in the desert with weapons. So I'll be there with a bunch of engineers, accountants, admin & intel specialists. The class list has about 60 people, of which only 4 are LtCol's. Looks like I'll be one of the old guys, which is weird 'cause I'm one of the youngest guys in my current office.
They tell me CAST includes things like first aid, land navigation, convoy procedures and a wine & cheese party each evening. OK, I made up that last part. But I did hear there will be paintball, so that's cool.
Basically, CAST sounds like Boy Scout camp on steroids, with guns and armored vehicles added in... and with worse food. All signs indicate we'll be eating MRE's for 10 days straight. Yay. They tell me the tents have electricity and air conditioning, which we never had at scout camp, but at least at scout camp we could cook over a campfire.
I bought a cheap digital camera to bring along - watch this space for photos. It's a "sport" model, so it's water & dust proof. Those are probably important attributes for the environments I'm heading into. I hear it's been over 100 degrees in San Antonio lately and I hope the waterproofing can hold up to the prodigious amount of sweating I plan to do.
More to follow...
