Positive Pete

I have just been feeling so good about everything lately, I’m not 100% sure why. I think a big part of it is that I have been able to get back onto a fairly regular schedule. That and I have just been enjoying the hell out of my job. Of course my bubbling excitement has not gone unnoticed at work, the guys are attributing it to some mysterious female working her magic and of course any denial would only serve to reinforce their assumption so I just laugh and tell them I’m high on life and move on. Some female company would be nice though, this place is a total sausage fest and it gets really old sometimes.

But yeah, the other day I was out in a place called Farah and asked our pilot to make a few passes over this giant fortress that Alexander the Great built. There isn’t a whole lot left of the interior but the massive walls and towers are all intact. I took a few pictures but with my little Wal-Mart p.o.s. camera the only one that turned out very well was taken from about 6,000 feet. The walls have to be at least 40 or 50 feet high!





Then the day before yesterday we flew up to Herat, an ancient city that was a major crossroad for trade between the Asian and European empires. Along the way we stopped at all of the usual little bases that we visit and refuel at including the airfield at Shindand where I’m actually supposed to end up in a few months. That place is impressive because of the remains of the massive Soviet military complex that was there during the last war here. Shindand was one of their bigger airbases and after they left all of the warlords and the eventually the Taliban fought over it for years. In a way it is somewhat ominous to fly over. All of the old fighting positions are still clearly visible, I can make out where the fuel farms were, the ammo storage areas, the remains of military housing areas, motor pools, everything. And it’s all covered with bomb and shell craters. When I fly back to my base at Kandahar (another of Alexander’s cities) and I see the massive facilities that we have put up, I wonder if 25 years from now some young kid will be flying over Kandahar and experiencing the same mixture of intense curiosity with a touch of solemnity that I feel. Some of our Russian pilots even flew here during that war; I wonder what goes through their heads as they relive a bit of their own history.

Just to top it off, yesterday we had to haul one of the company’s VP’s up to Kabul at the last minute. I wasn’t scheduled to fly with them but I hadn’t been there since 2005 so I hopped on board for the ride and I’m glad I did. The mountains were quite pretty but already a lot of the snow was melting away. I’d never flown up there in a chopper before so it was a lot of fun as the choppers threaded their way through all of the narrow mountain passes that open up to the valley instead of just flying over everything at 20,000 feet like the airplanes do. Kabul is still an absolute dump though.







But back on topic, I suppose that my present state of near elation is brought on by the realization of how rich and full my life has been. As McWilliams said, “Oh, oh the memories...”
Naturally I do plan on doing a lot more in the future but if today were the last day of my life, I would go out without a complaint because I have been able to squeeze a couple of lifetimes worth of adventure into these short 26 years. Of course life is a constant emotional roller coaster but I’m grateful for these epiphanies of gratitude, they make the troughs of existence that much easier to bear.