Frenchy's Rant

This is a picture of Bagram, Afghanistan taken from a Blackhawk helicopter. The city was founded in 330 BC, and it looks like not much has changed in the ensuing centuries.

This picture was taken Thursday, December 8th, 2005.

A nice place if your favorite color is brown. Looks like there is only one person in the whole town (upper left) that likes blue better.

No alcohol, no drugs, no porn and all the dust you can stand. I’d consider strapping a bomb on myself too…

After fifty plus hours of flying (and waiting… and waiting… ) nearly thirty hours of setup time and a two hour show, the WWE ‘Tribute to the Trops 2005’ show is just about over.

I say almost because we arrived at Andrews Air Force Base too late last night to catch flights home, and had to stay in a clean, comfortable, dust and dirt free bed at the Hyatt for flights home this morning.

To say it was a difficult trip would be a understatement, but I am proud to have been a part of the technical crew that pulled off the nearly impossible, and almost made it look easy.

I took a bunch of pictures and notes, and over the next few days, as life and sleep schedules slowly return to normal (whatever THAT is!) I will put together a journal and post highlights of each day on the blog.

I’m glad I went, but it’s good to be back!

“I’m leeea-vin’, on a jet plane… Don’t know when I’ll be back again…”

The WWE’s third annual Christmas Show for the Troops begins tonight, with a ten hour flight on a cargo plane to Germany, a few hours of bowling (seriously), then a long flight to Afghanistan.

Rita Cosby will be doing daily updates for her show, Live & Direct along with us.

If I can get online at all while there, I will post updates. Either way, I plan to write a journal of the whole trip. If interested, e mail me at frenchys-rant@att.net and I will send a copy along when it is done.

I was standing in line to check in for my flight this morning. There was a guy in front of me that was getting visibly upset. Being the nosy bugger that I am, I went over to see what all the fuss was about.

“What do you mean I can’t carry this on? Where in the regulations does it say that?”

The guy was mad, and getting louder. The TSA agent had his arms crossed, shaking his head.

“But, it’s not even assembled! I can’t believe you people.”

I kept my eye on the discussion as I checked in.

“Sir, TSA policy clearly states that you can’t carry that on the plane. In fact, you can’t even check it as luggage either.”

This almost sent the guy over the edge. He waved his arms and raised his voice. The TSA agent wasn’t budging on this. After a few minutes, it dawned on the guy that if he kept carrying on, getting on the flight was going to be the least of his worries. A policeman was eyeing him with some interest.

So, he calmed himself down, picked up his large, heavy plastic chainsaw case, turned around and stormed off.

Early into my game last night, one of the announcers made the following statement. This isn’t an exact quote, but it’s pretty close. “Folks, the traffic on the way to the arena was brutal today. There was a huge backup from an accident with four fatalities on I 75. It made me almost two hours late getting here today.”

At least he didn’t say the traffic was murder…