Not too long ago I had the perfect sort of day to pop me out of the melancholy moods that I’ve been in lately. We flew out with a big group of corporate bosses from the States on their little Wild West tour that they periodically go on. We flew in and dropped them off at a place called Shindand and then made a few other hot stops and then came back to pick them up but ended up waiting a couple of hours for them.

It was a beautiful day with cloudless blue skies and just the perfect temperature. I threw my emergency pack down on the ground as a pillow and crawled underneath the nose of the chopper into the shade and took a nap. Talk about peaceful!

I do love Kandahar because there is always something happening. We have F-16’s, F-18’s, Marine Harriers, Tornados, Mirages, every kind of helicopter out there. For a military hardware fan like me this place is amazing. But all of that awesomeness is so loud with jets taking off on afterburner every 20-30 minutes. Out at Shindand I was struck by how quiet and peaceful it was. The whole 2 hours that I spent dozing under our chopper, I think I heard maybe 2 or 3 other choppers fly by. It reminded me of how Kandahar used to be back in the day when it was just a sleepy little FOB. Now it’s a monster of a base with over 20,000 people and about 7 or 8 times as much real estate as it used to take up.

But back to my day; everything went perfectly with the beautiful weather, no idiots on board, a peaceful nap in the warm spring sunshine. Just 8 hours of zooming through the sky. I couldn’t have planned a better day. Once again, life is good!