New Home

Hi all, Christine here,

We have been in St. Louis, Wentzville to be exact for about 2 weeks now. We are getting settled in, it takes a little more time when you have a little one to work around.  We have had a very warm welcome and are getting to know our new surroundings. We have met most of our neighbors and are looking forward to meeting the rest Halloween night.  Our community does it big!  They have a parade and then trick or treat to follow.  Our neighbors have invited us to join them at their house to pass out candy under their "Haunted awning" they put up in their driveway.  I love me some trick or treaters!!! FUN FUN!  I need to get to work on Carter's halloween costume...pics to follow.

Carter is sleeping through the night in his own room! YAY!!! He is almost crawling. Travis and I call out to each other every once in awhile because we think he is going to take off.  Travis starts back at work on November 5.  We are really enjoying our family time and will miss Daddy during the day.  

Our new address is:

410 Valley Oaks Drive

Wentzville, MO 63385

We hope you all are well and we get to see you soon!

Travis, Christine and Carter

Back Home

Greetings all from the USA. I arrived back at Ft. Dix on September 6th where I spent a week out-processing from Active duty. I had to clear medical and admin before I can be a civilian again. I arrived back home on September 13th were I was greeted at the airport by Christine, Carter and my Mom. It was nice to get off the plane and see the three of them there.

I have now been home for a week now. Carter has taken to me as if I had never been gone. Christine has done an awesome job with him. She has to be the best mom ever.

Our next venture will be relocation to St. Louis. I will be on Active Duty orders until late October on transitional leave. We will use this time to house hunt and move. I plan to go back to work in early November once everything is settled.

Thank you all for your prayers, thoughts and support. I could not have done it without them.

TTFN,
Travis

Last Days in Afghanistan!

So here I am, my last day in Afghanistan. I have been in country for just over 6 months. In that time I have made some good friends and had some great experiences. I have also learned a lot about myself and other things in this time. I have accomplished some personal and professional goal to include dropping 15 pounds to a lean mean 179lb deployment body with about, and made some life long friendships. I am starting to feel a little guilty for leaving before my original time, but cannot wait to get home to Christine and Carter. Carter has grown up way too much in pictures. Christine says his is saying "da-da" all the time now.

The next few days I will be in transit from here back to the states. I will post again once I get back and settled into Ft. Dix. I will have to spend about 10 days there before I can go home. I have to out process from active duty and such.

Here are a few pictures from my last days here. We have had a few cigars and near-beers over the past week. A couple of the others are headed home not long after I depart which is good news as well.


Receiving my end of tour awards. I received a Meritorious Service Medal, Afghanistan Campaign Medal and NATO Medal.


Getting to reenlist a great Airman for 3.5 more years on the roof overlooking the Airfield.


One last night with my crew on the roof reminiscing and kicking back with cigars.

Stay tuned, the blog is almost complete.

Travis

Almost Done

Ok, so here is my current situation. I should be home to Christine and Carter by the middle of September. I have already transitioned my position over here and am in a bit of limbo right now, trying to stay busy and working out a lot. Unfortunately they cannot send me home any earlier. As I have learned first hand, there is really no cost analysis that goes into anything over here. I will spare you all from my ranting on how we are throwing money away here for another time. Just wanted to let everyone know all is well and I will be home very soon.

Change of Plans

It has been sometime since my last post, about 4 weeks actually. Many of you might be wondering what's going on over there. Well to be honest, I haven't been on any travel during this time, but I have been busy with some personnel issues and projects here at Bagram. I won't go into any gory details on those, but just know things are going well.

One of the guys I hang pretty close with, MSgt Cisneros, is redeploying this week, heading back to San Antonio, TX. As with any deployment you begin to develop relationships with some people and others you get to know pretty well and become closer. I would put him in the category of close friend over here. I am happy to know he is going home to his family, but saddened to see a companion depart. Such is the nature of this environment. In this type of unit, when you don't recognize anyone left that was here when you arrived, it is probably about time for you to be leaving as well, because everyone has already rotated back home.

Speaking of rotating back home, if you will shift your eyes to the right of the page to the countdown timer, you will see that I have just over 70 days before I return home from this deployment. Yes, this is well short of what was expected, but just the way it goes. As you know our President has ordered an additional withdraw of troops from Afghanistan by October 2012 called the Surge II Recovery. Well, I and many other reservists and active duty members have been targeted for redeployment mid-September to meet this draw down. I was not able to return home for R&R to visit this week, but will be home for good in about 8 weeks. In about 8 weeks I will fly out of here, spend about a week at Ft. Dix and then fly home. Once at home, I will have close to 30 days of leave (vacation) and then head back to work. I am just hoping the next two months goes as quickly as the last 6 months.

As you can imagine, Carter is growing like crazy. He is now rolling over from his belly to his back and from his back to his belly. This is yet another reason the new timing for my redeployment is good. I am really getting to the point where I do not want to miss anymore of him. Here are a few pictures Christine has taken over the past few weeks.

 

 

Well until next time,

Travis

Sharana and the KKC Superfob

I guess I am getting a bit lazy on the posts. Since I returned from Bamiyan, my last post, I traveled to Sharana, a FOB about 120 miles south in an effort to get to KKC Superfob, but we were unsuccessful as once we reached Sharana there were no helo flights going out. We waited overnight to see if we could catch a flight the next morning, but there were none. We ended up just hanging out the rest of the day and hit the haji shops for gemstones and dvds, then we took in a few movies at the morale center. The next morning we got up at 0230 in the morning to catch a fixed wing flight back to Bagram. Once we hit the ground we racked out until about 1100 then went into finish the day. Here are some pictures of our lovely accommodations while we were there, myself and MSgt Cisneros, some of the gemstones, and some pictures of the area.

Waiting for our flight at 0330 in the morning. Nope, there are no body metal detectors, body scanners or pat downs.

MSgt Cisneros and I @ FOB Sharana.

Our accommodations for a couple of nights.

Doing a little shopping.

Watching the Sun go down behind the mountains.

 

The afternoon of our return, Saturday, we go word that a general was headed down to KKC Superfob and were asked to accompany him on the mission by our commander. We took a UH-60 (Blackhawk) helicopter all the way down and back. While on the ground there we inspected the build from a communication wiring perspective. The day we were on the ground there an article actually came out about this location. Here is a link.  Here are some pictures of the flight to and from as well as some a couple while we were on the ground. We had an Afghan ANA security force escorting us while there.

Back on a bird headed south.

A quick stop to pick up the important people.

Afghan Army security gun truck that followed us around while we toured the facility.

Inside the power plant.

 

Other than my latest travels, my team has gone through some recent turnover. I recently lost two Navy guys as their tours ended, but picked up two more Air Force guys to replace them. My team is 7 strong and working well together. 

My Afghanistan National Security Forces Networks Regional Support Team. These guys travel all over inspecting Afghan builds. I tag along when I can.

 

Kicking back on the roof of our building enjoying the view and a cigar.

 

That's all I have for now, until next time TTFN,

 

Travis