{"id":16,"date":"2010-07-14T16:23:39","date_gmt":"2010-07-14T16:23:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bucksurdu.com\/blog\/?p=16"},"modified":"2021-01-24T14:07:21","modified_gmt":"2021-01-24T14:07:21","slug":"the-journey-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/2010\/07\/14\/the-journey-has-begun\/","title":{"rendered":"The Journey Has Begun"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently in Ali Al Salem in Kuwait awaiting the &#8220;Freedom Flight&#8221; back to the Ft. Benning to turn in my weapon and head home. \u00a0It&#8217;s difficult to get the Air Force to do anything in a hurry. \u00a0They are also famous for &#8220;crew rest&#8221; that stops aircraft from flying right when you need them most. \u00a0Strangely enough, just about every flight I&#8217;ve been on during my tour seems to get to Ali Al Salem at 0230!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Ali-Al-Salem-3.jpg\" class=\"broken_link\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-18\" title=\"Ali Al Salem 3\" src=\"http:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/07\/Ali-Al-Salem-3-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Tent City at Ali Al Salem, Kuwait\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This trip was no exception. \u00a0We had to form up at 1900 for a 0245 flight. \u00a0Yes, that&#8217;s not a typo. \u00a0We had to be there 7 hours early! \u00a0By the time we pulled our bags off the pallets and I was assigned a space in the &#8220;VIP tent&#8221; (yes, you read that right a VIP <em>tent<\/em>), it was almost 0500. \u00a0Fun.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I&#8217;m safely in Ali, and will get two days to read and decompress before heading home. \u00a0Looking forward to a real pizza. \u00a0The food was great in Iraq, but real pizza was rare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m currently in Ali Al Salem in Kuwait awaiting the &#8220;Freedom Flight&#8221; back to the Ft. Benning to turn in my weapon and head home. \u00a0It&#8217;s difficult to get the Air Force to do anything in a hurry. \u00a0They are also famous for &#8220;crew rest&#8221; that stops aircraft from flying right when you need them &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/2010\/07\/14\/the-journey-has-begun\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Journey Has Begun<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11564,"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/11564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bucksurdu.com\/bucksblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}