Well it’s over!

I’m finally home after a little over a year.  It’s GREAT to be back, but it also feels a little weird.  Life is definitely better, but it will take some time for me to get used to things.

I’m taking a few days before going back to work at GE.  I officially stay on the Army’s payroll through the first week of April, but I told GE I’d go back a little earlier than that — probably April 1st.

I’ll use these days to relax, get used to civilian life, and fix the million little things that broke around the house while I was gone.

The Mustang’s still not done, and probably won’t be for a few more weeks.  I’ll keep you all posted on its progress (or lack thereof).  In the meantime, I’ll work on fixing the old Triumph Spitfire that’s sitting in my garage.  I’ll use that until the Mustang’s ready, then sell it.

What a long, strange trip it’s been!

Well, it’s just about over now.

I’m back from Saudi Arabia.  Friendship One was a glowing success — at least that’s what we’re telling ourselves. 

I got back to Kuwait a couple days ago and we’ve been wrapping up things for the exercise.  That’s all done now, so I’m ready to go home.  My flight is tomorrow night, heading to Ft. Bragg.  I get there Sunday morning and probably spend most of that day sleeping.  On Monday I’ll start out-processing from the Army.

I’ll have to do paperwork for finance, medical, and dental.  There will also be a seemingly endless series of videos and PowerPoint presentations telling me not to commit suicide or beat my wife.  I don’t know what the internet situation will be like there, so I may not be able to post until I get home.  That will happen whenever the Army decides I’ve been punished enough with their presentations and approves me to leave.

Then it’s over!

It occurred to me that I haven’t given any updates on the car in a while.

There’s been some progress. As a reminder, here’s the before:

As you can see, the car needed a lot of work.  The infernal combustion engine parts had already been removed.  The previous owner had also made an attempt to paint the engine bay, but didn’t do a real good job.  The hood, fenders, and front valance, bumper, and grill are also off the car.  Those parts were included in the sale, just not attached.

Since that time, Joe has repainted the engine, er, motor bay:

I wish Joe had removed some of the bay parts before painting, or at least masked them. I guess that’s what I get for asking my EV converter to do the painting…. I may take some mineral spirits to the parts and clean them up once I get the car. Oh well, it’s a vast improvement over the way it looked before!

He’s also installed the motor and motor controller:

The motor is the big black motor-looking thing.  The controller is on top with the fans.  The controller takes the 312V of direct current and converts it to 3-phase alternating current, which is what the motor uses.

Battery Bastard (BB) still hasn’t paid me the last $2000 he owes me. I’ve called the police again to re-motivate him. Maybe I need to use more direct methods and head up there myself — go all Good Fellas on him!

Back to the car, I’ve also installed an aluminum driveshaft:

This driveshaft weighs about 20 lbs less than a steel one. 20 lbs may not sound like much, but it’s rotational weight. Rotational weight takes more energy to move when you’re accelerating — almost twice as much in fact. Since acceleration is when I’ll be using the most energy, it makes sense to try to minimize that as much as possible. The same goes for the wheels, so I’ll be buying some lightweight racing wheels as well.

The Army has decided to de-classify the operation I’m helping with, so now I can finally tell you a bit more about it. The easiest way to do that is to point you to its website: http://www.arcent.army.mil/friendship_one.asp

As my time here comes to a close, I find myself becoming more philosophical and culturally observant.

Yesterday we went on a convoy with our Arab counterparts. The convoy was to begin a 1300 (that’s 1pm) sharp. We know from past experience that the locals are not exactly precise when it comes to time, so we told them to arrive at 1230. The Americans were told to be ready to go at 1300.

The US Army drills into its soldiers the importance of time and being ready to move when you’re supposed to. We pride ourselves on our time discipline. We practice maneuvers over and over until they’re second nature, because we understand that each part of a military operation depends on another. If one part starts late, it throws off the whole event. Being late for movement is a cardinal sin in the US Army.

The Americans started showing up a little after 1200 in order to ensure our vehicles were in line and correct order. As soon as each vehicle arrived, its driver would get out and start inspecting the vehicle for defects (lights, etc.). Each vehicle’s commander would get out, locate the convoy commander, and see if there were any last-minute updates or instructions. The commander would then return to the vehicle and help the driver with whatever needed to be fixed on the truck. By about 1245, all the American trucks were in line and ready to go.

The Arabs started rolling in at about 1235 (remember, we had told them 1230). The enlisted soldiers drove the trucks, while the officers arrived by bus. The enlisted soldiers stayed in their vehicles and waited. The officers got off the bus and immediately observed with disdain that US officers were fixing trucks. They were upset that officers were doing dirty work and didn’t want their soldiers to see it — it might set an unpleasant precedent. They were still trying to explain this to the American convoy commander when all the US trucks were fixed and it became a moot point.

The Arab trucks continued to roll in over the next 30 minutes. They didn’t agree that the order of the trucks was important so it took us a long time to get them arranged the way we thought it should go. The Arabs were finally ready to go at about 1345. At that point we announced it was time to begin our safety briefing. This is standard for American soldiers and we all began to line up. After some grumbling, the Arab enlisted soldiers started coming over to the brief. Then we stated that we wanted all soldiers to hear the briefing — including officers. This cause more grumbling, but eventually they all joined us.

Once going, the convoy was fine and everything went as planned (albeit 45 minutes late).

It was interesting seeing the two strong cultures clash. No one lost their temper, in fact most found the differences amusing. But clearly, each side thought the other was being unreasonable and unprofessional.

The Arabs felt the Americans were obsessed with time. To them, all things will happen as Allah wills it and it’s a waste (and even disrespectful) to try to rush it. The Arabs also feel that good order and military discipline derives from upbringing and class culture. Their enlisted soldiers do what the officers say because that is their place in life. Officers must keep aloof and avoid labor. The enlisted soldiers expect to be treated like slaves, and the officers oblige.

The Americans felt the Arabs were frustratingly slow and disorganized. The Americans feel that military order and discipline derives from tactical competence and leadership. Our enlisted soldiers expect the officers to do their fair share and help out where necessary. They expect to be treated with respect and officers who fail to do so will have problems.

I’m obviously biased toward the American view, but their system works for them. It was interesting to me though how certain aspects were simply incompatible. When operating as a joint military, there’s no way for the American and Arab systems to compromise on some issues. Our officers are going to get their hands dirty — if they didn’t, their soldiers would lose respect for them. Their officers are not going to get their hands dirty — if they did, their soldiers would lose respect for them. The result is that is there’s no way our enlisted soldiers will respect their officers, and vice versa.

There are many other examples of this cultural clash. None of it has become a serious issue — both sides obviously want to get along here, despite the differences — but it does make for some interesting observations.

I’m on my trip and surprisingly have some time on my hands, so I thought I’d write about something interesting here: Toilets.
They have some interesting features. The first thing you’ll notice is there’s no bowl — just a hole in the floor. That’s right, you squat — and hope the guys that used it before had good aim. At least the ladies don’t have to worry about the seat being down! Another thing you may notice is that there’s no toilet paper. See that little hose? Yea.

In this photo you can see the final interesting feature: it’s a shower too! Now that’s efficiency — who needs that little hose, right? You can just clean everything! Watch your step, and you’ll definitely want to wear shower shoes…and don’t drop anything worth picking up.

These are the standard toilets here. We’re lucky, the villas where I’m staying were built by Americans and have normal toilets. But these are what we have at work. Since I’m at work (notice I didn’t say ‘working’) about 14 hours/day, that requires some serious bowel management.

So ends today’s cultural awareness class!

Well, tonight’s my last night in Kuwait for a while. Early tomorrow morning, I head out for a few weeks. I have to come back to Kuwait before I go home, but just for a few days. I basically checked out today — signed out of the unit and off the post. I’m hanging out in temporary housing now until my bus leaves.

The biggest, most important, and most complicated part of my project was completed today. So that’s a huge weight off my shoulders. It went well, despite some hiccups. Murphy’s law was in full effect, but we were able to adapt and make adjustments. My boss is happy; which means I’m happy.

Progress continues on the Mustang. There’s one last important part that still hasn’t arrived. It’s the battery management system, and it was supposed to be delivered before the end of December. Now it looks like it’ll be the end of February, or even early March. That will set the car back enough that I don’t think there’s any chance it will be ready by the time I get home. Oh well.

I posted a few pictures of the construction on the Flickr site if you want to see how things are progressing.

I don’t know how good the internet connection will be where I’m going. I’ll post if I can, but if you don’t hear from me for a while don’t worry. I’ll be back in Kuwait for a few days at the end and I can catch up then.

Take care!

Yesterday marked the return of the dust storms.

It started about 4:00am — I know this because the dust blew into our barracks and set off the fire alarm. We all had to go stand out in the storm, in our pajamas, and wait for the fire department to come and reset the alarm. This happened to us back in April, shortly after we got here. That time, while we were out waiting, it started raining hard. Fortunately that didn’t happen this time. Small favors.

The storm is still going on. Sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s not so bad, but there’s always dust and sand in the air (and in your eyes, ears, nose, underwear, etc.). We were hoping to get out of here before the storms started again, but no such luck.

The Mustang’s starting to come along. One of the problems of converting such an old car is that you end up having to do a lot of restoring along the way. You remove a part and something breaks. You find rust where you didn’t think there was any. Some new parts just don’t fit right.

I had anticipated this would happen, and I planned on restoring the car anyway, but I was hoping to put off most of the restoring for later. That way I could do the work myself, which I enjoy, and not pay someone else $70/hr to do it. Each setback is not only expensive, but time-consuming.

But now things are starting to move along, and a few ‘problems’ are even going to be cheaper/easier to fix than we initially thought. So that’s all encouraging. Joe has promised some new pics soon and I’ll be sure to post them on Flickr as soon as I get them.

Just a couple more weeks until I leave Kuwait. A few weeks after that I’ll be back in the States. A few days after that, and I’ll be home.

Whew.

It’s getting crazy busy for me here as I try to put the finishing touches on my project prior to leaving. Most of the others in the unit already have one eye on the door, so it’s hard to get others to focus. But busy is good; it helps make these last few weeks go by.

The actual conversion work on the Mustang still hasn’t started, which is worrisome, but Joe is still confident he’ll finish by the end of the month. Of course, there’s still work to be done after the conversion. The car needs to be shipped to NY for one thing, and that could take a couple weeks.

The car also needs some restoring. Several body panels are still not attached and it needs a paint job. The convertible top is not installed yet either. All that can be done after the car gets to NY, but I was hoping to get some of it done before I got back. It doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.

Oh well. The main thing is to get home — for both me and the car!

Just a few more weeks to go! I will actually be leaving Kuwait a couple weeks ahead of the rest of the unit — unfortunately, I won’t be going back to the States. There’s one last trip I need to make (again, no where dangerous) and I’ll leave Kuwait in a few weeks, then hopefully fly back to the States directly at the end of my trip (instead of having to come back to Kuwait first).

I put up some more pictures from my last trip on Flickr, like this one of the big feast we had on the last day. In Middle Eastern tradition, we celebrated the end of a long week of negotiations. We accomplished a lot, but still have a lot to do.

Most of my time at work now is about getting ready for this last big trip I have to take. There are LOTS of moving pieces and (unfortunately for me) a LOT of high-ranking people looking at it. It’s one of those projects certain to get me a pat on the back if it goes well, and a boot in my butt if it goes bad.

On the Mustang front, still no progress on the car itself. I’m trying to give Joe some room, instead of emailing him for updates every day like I was doing…. I’ll try to hold off for another day or two, then I’ll have to give in and start pestering him again.

BB did send the second installment of $2000 last week. So he still owes me $2000, which he has said he will ‘try’ to get to me by the end of the month. It’s been a frustrating experience, but at least the money is coming back — slowly.