R&R Leave

Sunday, 10 June
1800

I finally got to go on my R&R leave last month. The whole subject of R&R is one that I didn’t have a clear understanding of when I was mobilized. But for every one year deployment you get to take a fifteen day R&R (rest and recuperation) leave to the destination of your choice. Most people choose to go home, although some travel to other countries. I know people who have gone to Germany and to New Zealand. My plan, however, was to go home and visit my kids, and see my daughter graduate from high school.

In addition to the 15 days of leave time, there are several days of travel allowed. The amount of time on my leave form was 18 days, but they don’t officially start your leave until you sign out in the USA, which allows for potential travel delays. I thought I might have to take advantage of that!

The closer I got to my leave, the more I seemed to focus on getting things done so they wouldn’t be left hanging while I was gone. By somewhat of a coincidence, several important repair and upgrade projects were ready to execute just as I was leaving, so I expected them to be done when I got back. But I finally just had to wrap everything up, pack, and head for the USA.

There was a series of briefings to attend covering various practical as well as psychological aspects of going home on leave. I thought it was fairly well done, although I didn’t consider myself any kind of risk.

I signed out on leave the day before my departure, and spent the evening finalizing my packing. I decided to take home a bare minimum of luggage. I didn’t want to be dragging a bunch of bags around. You are allowed one piece of checked luggage, one carry-on, plus a laptop. I stuck with the carry-on and laptop and skipped the checked bag. I had to travel in uniform, so I took an extra set of underwear, toiletries, a PT uniform, a few travel amenities, a book, and my computer and other electronics. I figured I’d wear the civilian clothes I had left at home, so taking any along would be like carrying coal to Newcastle. It worked out well.

I had an interesting 36 hours or so getting home.

I got up on Thursday in time to catch the 0600 shuttle bus to Ali Al-Salem Air Base. The only problem was, there was a sandstorm and the roads were coded red. That means nobody can drive anyplace and all flights are cancelled. So I went back to my room and went back to sleep. I called every hour or so to see what the status was. Finally at 1000 they told me the bus had left Ali and I should go the Arifjan bus stop at 1200.

I went there at 1145, just in time to see the bus pull away! I called, and they caught the bus at the gate, turned it around, and came back to get me. *Whew*!

It was about a 1 ½ hour ride to Ali, and then we got started processing. There were 8 of us from Arifjan going to Atlanta. They told us partway through the processing that because we got there after the 1100 deadline, we couldn’t fly out that day and would have to stay there overnight. This meant a cot with no bedding in a tent that might or might not have AC, and more importantly, it meant a delayed arrival until Saturday afternoon or evening.

We went along with the processing, but when they were taking us through the travel office on the way to get our tents, I spotted an officer and stopped to talk to him to see if we couldn’t get onto a flight after all. It turned out they had room, so they processed us through. (The civilian contractors working in the SATO travel office just won’t bend the rules unless their boss tells them too, so it was just a case of finding the right person to talk to). The other people had been kind of peeved at me because the bus had turned around to come get me, but now they were glad I was there! Instead of a hot uncomfortable night in a tent and a day’s delay getting home, we were on our way.

Going through customs was a trip – TSA has nothing on MP Customs! They made us dump absolutely everything out and went through it all very thoroughly. It was well-organized and efficient. After that we went through and got our tickets for our follow-on flights. Unfortunately there was no place to call from to give my family the information at that time.

Then we waited in a tent for several hours until it was time to get on the planes. Finally we loaded on buses and went back to KCIA (Kuwait City International Airport) to depart. We waited around for 2 hours more in the dark, milling around outside the buses. Then they took us to the planes and we got on. Once we got organized on the plane and took off, all the delays didn’t matter.

It was kind of an uncomfortable flight, but I can live with it. There was not enough leg room so my leg is in the aisle and I had to move it every time they come by with a cart. As soon as I got on the plane I set my watch to Michigan time. I was trying to get on a sleep schedule that at least approximates what I would be on there, to minimize jet lag. It worked pretty well.

After about six hours we landed to a two hour layover in Shannon, Ireland. Since they have wireless in the airport, I could finally reach my family to tell them when I would be arriving in Michigan. It’s about an eight hour flight to Atlanta from there.

The flight to Atlanta was better. One of the flight attendants saw how cramped I was (his cart hit my leg every time he pushed it by me) so he found me a seat up in the first class section by the bulkhead, with more leg room. Awesome!

The arrival in Atlanta was very well organized, and they got us through customs and processed over to our connecting flights very quickly. They had separate lines for military, and ran us right though there. I was able to get on an earlier flight to Detroit, and ended up landing there about 1500 on Friday. So counting the seven hour time difference, I spent about 34 hours in transit.

The first few days of my leave were an exhausting whirlwind of activity. “R&R” is kind of a misnomer in that regard. I have talked to people who said they did “absolutely nothing” on R&R - they must not have families! Many of my family members were in town for my daughter’s graduation, and of course they all wanted to see me. So the first few days were physically exhausting, albeit very refreshing and reinvigorating from an emotional and psychological standpoint.

Graduation was Sunday. On Saturday we had dinner and then breakfast on Sunday. It’s all kind of a blur, but it was really great to see everyone. Here are a couple of my favorite pictures from the graduation:


The new graduate
Originally uploaded by hkp7fan.

The graduate with her grandparents
Originally uploaded by hkp7fan.

After graduation was over and my family had departed (and I had gotten some sleep) I got back to a more normal routine. My two older kids wanted to stay at their mom’s house while I was home, but my youngest wanted to come stay with me. Since my son had finals, and I have no private room for my older daughter, it worked out well that way. My youngest had come over already, so on Monday I got up to take her to school. Then I had a chiropractor appointment (BLISS!) I really miss my chiropractor over here. Although the military has supposedly seen the light and acknowledged chiropractic as a medical specialty, there are none over here and they will not send you to one no matter what. I tried to get a referral to a local one, and the doctors looked at me like I was asking to go to Mars or something. So that situation leaves something to be desired.

The rest of my leave was like a dream. I spent a lot of time with my kids, although less than I would have liked to with my son, because he still had school and finals to study for. I took my younger daughter to school every day and picked her up afterwards, just like before I left.

I got to spend a whole day walking around Ann Arbor with my new high school graduate, who will be attending the University of Michigan in the fall. She is so excited about it, and I am very excited for her. She is like a bubble about to burst, and I can see her doing great things with her life. She is so ready to be out on her own, and I am so proud of her that I could just about burst myself. We walked all over campus, had a nice lunch at Zingermans’ Deli, bought UM shirts at the M-Den, bought some English Breakfast Tea for me at the People’s Food Co-op (where else but Ann Arbor?) and just generally enjoyed a beautiful spring day. I actually got sunburned, something I have managed to avoid over here in the desert!

I am so happy that nothing else really seems to matter, even coming back here.

Which is an interesting subject in itself. Several people had warned me that coming back over here after R&R is tough. And like all good things, my leave did come to an end. It was hard toward the end because we all tried to fit so much into our limited time together. My son was finally finished with his final exams when I had only a couple of days left, so we managed to spend a little time together but not as much as I’d have liked. Same with my older daughter – we had that one day in Ann Arbor, but never really got to spend another day together when it was “just us”. Since my youngest was staying with me, we got more time together. But it was never enough for any of us.

They have lives of their own, jobs, friends, etc., and naturally didn’t want to spend every waking moment with dad. It would be that way whether or not I was there, and before being deployed I had already grown used to just catching fleeting glimpses of them here and there as their lives intersected with mine. But with me having been gone for so long and now being home for only two weeks, it was hard to adjust to this again when I wanted to see them more. 

But we worked it all out reasonably well. Since I had to leave on Sunday morning, on Friday we had another movie night. I spent Saturday getting packed and with my kids. That evening they came over with their friends and we had another movie night at my place.

Sunday morning we got up and they took me to the airport. That morning we were all a bit subdued. It wasn’t an overly emotional parting, but I’d say we were all on the edge. I know I didn’t trust my voice so I mostly whispered to them as I hugged them each goodbye. It was hard to let go, but we did. They drove away, and I turned my attention to the return trip.

I had a ticket as far as Atlanta, and that was it. There was no indication on my itinerary of what came next. I had called SATO travel and they said to just go to Atlanta and report to the USO at the airport. So that’s what I did. When I got there it was quite a production. They had a line set up where USO volunteers picked us up and showed us where to go. People were applauding and cheering us as we walked through the airport. It was kind of neat and made me feel good. It was especially good to see the USO volunteers there. They had one paid staffer and quite a few volunteers, upon whom the whole process of moving us through the airport depended. They had a waiting area set up with refreshments, TV, internet access, etc. They signed us in and processed us for flights as they got enough people. There were hundreds of us moving through there – it was something to see.

I only had to wait there about an hour and a half before getting called for a flight. It was the reverse of my flight here – eight hours to Shannon Ireland, a brief layover at the airport there, and then six hours to KCIA. Took the bus to Ali Al-Salem (after a two hour wait at KCIA). Then processed back in country at Ali Al-Salem (“scanned in” with my ID card), and waited for the shuttle bus to Camp Arifjan.

While waiting at the bus terminal at Ali I was reminded of the movie “The Best Years of Our Lives”. It is a wonderful movie showing the adjustments made by three returning servicemen to their hometown after WWII. It stars Dana Andrews, Frederick March, and Myrna Loy. It won the Academy Award for best picture in 1948 or 1949. It starts out in a terminal at the ATC with two of the men waiting to get on a flight to go home. If you haven’t seen it, do. It’s one of my favorite movies.

I had followed my same procedure for avoiding jet lag, by setting my watch to Kuwait time as soon as I got on the plane in Atlanta. But I found that unlike the trip back to the USA, I was unable to adjust and sleep at the right times. My inner biological clock was stubborn and refused to adjust. So by the time the shuttle bus got me back to Arifjan at 0300 on Tuesday, and I got to bed at 0400, I was not really all that tired. The next day was a different story, though.

I spent most of the week kind of adjusting to being back here, not only from a biological clock standpoint but also from a psychological and emotional standpoint. It wasn’t exactly hard, in that I was not pining away or walking around “kicking the can” in dejection. But it was a bit hard to get my head back in the game. Naturally there was a lot to do right away, which helped. Since my job here is rarely boring or slow, it took over and swept me along for the week. But it was the end of the week before I really felt I had the energy or impetus to initiate any kind of new activity.

In fact, for the first couple of days I found that I was sort of coasting along on the euphoria from having been at home from all that had happened. My adjustment was more about tearing myself away from those thoughts and memories than it was about dealing with any kind of disappointment or unhappiness about being back.

So now I am back to thinking about air conditioning, electricity, etc., as well as working to complete my required military education. But that’s another subject for another day.


Mood: Happy
Music: Heart – Keep Your Love Alive