As you may or may not know I am stuck in 29 Palms right now doing a Regimental field op.  The ast week has had moment of excitement as well as boredom.  We rolled out early Sunday morning and made a 2 and a half hour drive over 5 hours long (only Marines and grandams can accomplish this small feat).

We got to the staging area here in 29 Palms and proceeded to get out gear ready for the field.  Sunday night was a bitch because there was a MSgt (E-8) that would not change vehicles and made us take the radio system out of his vehicle and put it in another vehicle (a 3 hour job when I should have been sleeping).

Monday mornign came around and I was ready for a relatively east day of getting to the first position.  It didn’t happen that way.  First thing in the morning the Cpl I have supporting one of the platoons came to let me know that he had 2 bad radios (guess the operators didnt do their pre-operational checks properly).  This was followed by a third radio going bad.  so we are now 3 radios down not a good start to a 2 week field op. 

After that I inspect the gear that the Marines packed in Camp Pendleton and find that most of the ducting for my AC is missing.  Luckily I was able to get the ducting from one of the other Marine’s from my shop as the brought out more than enough.  You really don’t want to spend days in 29 Palms with out AC if you have the chance to have it :) .  I get the radios turned in to the Regimental Tech shop for repair and head out to the great void of 29 Palms.

We got to out position to find that the net that was put in our trailer was too big.  My Sergeant and I attempted to put the net up as is but it just wasn’t happeneing it was too big and the wind too much and we didn’t have enough poles.  By this time I am totally frustrated so I pull out my knife and begin making the net smaller (got the stress out).  We finally pulled the net down disconnected some pieces and made it the proper size.

The next few days were pretty mundane as we sat there waiting for the Bn to get communications with the Regiment so that we could start firing (didn’t happen til we moved on Thursday).  The most exciting thing that happened during this time is that the MSgt who refused to move his gear making life easy for me had his Humvee go down and it is more than likely going to get trailered back to Pendleton (fate works in mysterious ways).  he also lost his pack for about 18 hours so his sufferins made up for my lost rack time.

Like I said we moved on Thursday and the Bn was able to start training finally.  Again I sat around doind little to nothing except when the firing batteries brought me broken gear to fix.  I did get alot of gear but most of it was beyond the repaid capabilities that I have in the field so I had to send it to higher so that they could get it replaced.

We moved again today (Sunday) and I have both power and cell phone coverage so I am able to give you the update of my week.  I have some good stories that I hope to write about in the coming days but for now this is all I have.

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