Instead of going to the first Dew tournament, I went over to Afghanistan and Qatar to hang out with the troops. I went over with Jen O’Brien (skater), Jen Hudak (skier), Graham Watanabe (snowboarder) and Dane Fergusun (crazy person and snowmobiler). We all had the same outlook on going to the middle east… unnerved. We weren’t scared, we just had no idea of what to expect. That’s a pretty unique feeling. The same feeling I had when I left the country for the first time.
We were in Qatar first. It’s the world’s second richest country from gas and oil. Qatar nationals get a little over 100k a year from the time they are born, plus a free house at the age of 18! –Rough life! We left the base in Qatar on a military c130 plane headed for Afghanistan. I was listening to somebody’s Ipod and Cat Stevens ‘wild world’ came on. As I was listening to it, it dawned on me that there was some drama with him not being allowed back into the states because of his radical beliefs. A little ironic.
Just 2 days before we got to Afghanistan, the base we were going to be staying at got attacked with rocket grenades. When we arrived, we were a little startled to see we were staying just 100 yards from the impact zone! We traveled to other bases from there via Chinook helicopters. They dropped the door down in back and we sat on the edge with our feet hanging off! The view was the best I have seen in my life-blue/green rivers, snow capped mountains, deserts, mud hut villages, etc. Just beautiful! In some remote areas we got to shoot the machine gun of the back-ah yeah! The troops at the bases were psyched to have some excitement. They were also into showing us what they did there. At one base in Gasni, the Special Ops guys had some of their weapons set up for us. I shot a .50 caliber sniper rifle (basically an explosion on your shoulder), a S.A.W. (my favorite and first automatic gun I’ve ever shot) and an M4 (this had a short barrel so it was hard to shoot standing up because it pushed you back!)
We got a tour of the war room where decisions are made and info is analyzed. This was amazing! I got to autograph some live hand grenades (wtf?!) It was really interesting to talk to the soldiers and see what they were experiencing. This trip has left me with a new interest in following what’s going on in the Middle East!
