Update from the desert

Hello everyone, just wanted to give y'all an update on a few things going on here and share a few pictures. For the first picture I put the camera right up to my night vision goggles and took a picture of one of our engines with Baghdad in the background. The second is a picture of our "pods," there are three rooms in each pod with two people sharing a room. We have a crew of six, so our entire crew is in one trailer. The last pic is the crew standing on the ramp at the back of the plane. The other day "The Legends of Aerospace" tour stopped in Balad and they came by one of our hangars for about an hour. There we got to shake hands and take pictures with Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and Gene Cernan. I'm sure you all know Neil Armstrong, James Lovell was the mission commander on Apollo 13 and Gene Cernan was the MC on Apollo 17; and the last man to walk on the moon. When they arrived they spoke to the entire group for awhile, emphasizing how glad they were to be here and talk to us. It was really neat since there were only about thirty people, mostly aircrew, in the hangar so everyone got a chance to shake hands and take their own picture with each one of them. When it was my turn to meet Neil Armstrong, he asked me what my job was, I told him a C-130 nav, and he told me how he liked the 130s the best since they were still real airplanes; not all computers. Which is very true, since we are flying 1962 models which still have all original instruments and the same type of engines. He said they flew a 130 into Balad from Kuwait and they got to go up on the flight deck during the flight. Then I got to take a picture with him, which I will post soon, and then they left to go on a base tour. Everything else is going great around here, it's starting to cool down, the high each day is only about 95, and at night it gets down to around 65. I fly every other day, so on our off day I go to the gym, eat, do laundry, talk to Rach, read, and watch some TV. We have a TV in our room and we have about 6 channels that supposedly show the most popular shows from back home. For some reason it's always CSI: Miami, and 1990's episodes of ER, haha. Thankfully they do a great job of showing a ton of sports, I think I have seen every Badger and Packer game except one of each, and probably missed it because I was flying. Last week they brought a camera crew out to the flightline and setup in front of a 130 and we were able to shoot short "Happy Holidays" messages to be shown back home. I did one and it should be on in Eau Claire and Milwaukee! Thank you so much for all the letters and packages, I really appreciate them, it's so nice to have something that's homemade. Can't wait to see everyone when I get back!!