The End

I made if back to Austin last night. It's nice to be home.

The flight out of Kuwait was delayed about 7 hours. From the time I went into lockdown to when I landed at BWI was about 48 hours. We stopped at Ramstein airbase. Not a nice airport. Additionally, it took them many hours to repack the bags on the plane. Two of those hours while we were sitting on the plane waiting to leave. I'm not sure what their problem was.

We landed too late in BWI to make any of our connections. Before we left Kuwait they told us they'd rebook our flights while we were in route. I got a hotel near BWI and called SATO. SATO wasn't helpful. They hadn't done anything. They didn't even cancel our old flights knowing none of us would make the planes. The agent I talked to was very helpful and wanted to book me on the next flight but the Kuwait SATO office wouldn't let her. She even asked her manager if she could override their authority but wasn't allowed. Kuwait insists that we rebook the travel ourselves and pay the fees then submit them for reimbursement. It wasn't a big deal, but the short of the story is that SATO at Arifjan is screwed up and not communicating well with the WTP leadership. Double-check anything they tell you.

We got the next flight to Gulfport at 7am the next morning (Wednesday). A lot of the same people were there from when I came through last year. There is a lot of downtime at NMPS. There are a handful of briefings, medical, dental and PSD. Because they can't schedule them promptly it takes several days to get through. They managed to get us out Friday night though so I'm happy about that. My last obligation is to spend the day at the NOSC on Sunday to finish my out-processing there. I think I have to walk through and visit all the people I in processed with.