Humvee Security

Alas, it appears that there might be a spy among my long list of followers to this blog (Iraq 2010).  Within a matter of days of posting on my blog (Iraq 2010) about joyriding around in a humvee to do some errands there were suddenly padlocks on all the doors of all Fugitive's humvees. This is a strange coincidence...or is it??!?  I may have to encrypt future posts on my blog (Iraq 2010) if they deal with a sensitive matter.

However, I will say this:  If you are going to secure all the humvees with padlocks to restrict their use then you might want to secure the keys themselves.  That's right........with newly-discovered keys in hand I freed a humvee this afternoon and "borrowed" it for an hour.  First it was a legitimate run to the Post Office to send a package to my wife and one to my boys.  The only snag at this point was that the KBR Mail Nazi (that is what his name tag read.......or it should have) decided to enforce Mail Enforcement Code 119-6c like he wrote it.  Evidently this Code precludes air shipment of carbonated drinks.  Nevermind that on the previous three trips to the PO I had managed to ship drinks home.  (You see they have one side in English and the other in Arabic........I thought the boys would get a kick out of them.)  Anyway, the KBRMN wouldn't budge on the issue and I had left my weapon locked in the humvee.  Stalemate!  Sooooo, we reached a compromise: the packages went out minus the drinks and KBRMN is off my Christmas card list.  Bam!  ...that just happened.

As I was on the way back to the Motor Pool (or MoPo in Zombie-speak) I sensed a deep resistence on the part of the humvee to return so soon, so I continued past the entrance and went sight-seeing around JBB.  My humvee (I began to think of her as Mable) and I had a great time seeing some new sights, ignoring many of the posted signs regarding silly things like speed limits, direction of travel, and restricted access areas. (A quick note about that:  Dear Air Force, If you are serious about keeping people out of your little restricted areas wouldn't it make sense to actually put a guard at the gate.  Just sayin.)  If I had my camera (and I will next time) I would have gotten some great close-up pictures of F-16s and C-130 aircraft. But, sadly, all good things must come to an end.  No, the Security Police did not pull me over.  What kind of question is that?  I just knew that we should be getting back. So, anyway, along perimeter road on the return leg of our journey Mable points out that the shoulder is wide, flat, and made up of a very dry sand/gravel mixture.  With my approval she puts her two right side tires on the shoulder and.....whooosh!...instant dust cloud behind us.  Well, if two tires were good then four would be better, right?  Yep....much better.  Thick, billowing clouds of dust spreading out behind us.  So, we enjoyed several kilometers of JBB-four-wheelin at 40mph along the shoulder of the road.  Ohhh we just laughed and laughed. Yeah, good times!  As I eventually got around to returning Mable to the MoPo we agreed that we should definately do it again real soon.   It's a date!