Travels

I occasionally have the opportunity to see something other than my dungeon/basement in ISAF headquarters. Last week, I visited a Provincial Reconstruction Team in Farah Province. The flight there was great. I was in a small 10-seater plane that swept close to the rocky tips of snowy mountains. It looked like a scene in an Indiana Jones movie. While in Farah, I took time out to visit a fortress built by Alexander the Great when he traveled through this area. The whole time I was there, I heard the rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire and boom-boom of heavy arms as the governor's private security tested their weapons against the walls of the fortress. It's survived countless ancient and contemporary battles and the interior is littered with hulks of Soviet-era armored vehicles. The fortress survived the day's assault, as did I.