Better than a bran muffin, I tell you…

Things are moving.

During the night, I grabbed a few of the guys and moved pallets. And by moving pallets, I mean there was one of us on each corner and we carried them over and put them on dunnage next to IBOL World HQ, to prep them to load IBOLs. Why four big strong soldiers to move a pallet? Each weighs 200+ lbs., and they are very unwieldy. But that was last night — we did get-er-dun.

Today, I swung by the air cargo guys and got nets for the pallets, and ratchet straps, too. And then I headed out to the warehouse, to build pallets.

I had hoped that by going out there today, I’d be there in the morning when one of the new infantry units came to pick up bundles. Oh, we’ll come gets all of them they said. I think they ended up picking up 400 or 500 — a very good start, but not all of them, by any means. I was not there to see them, but CSM Flores was.

And he was there when I arrived. Helped upload the nets and stuff, too. He had some other work to do there, but I didn’t stop to chat — I went on the hunt for a cornerstone box to use, so I could start in on building a pallet or two.

The pallets are located between the warehouse and one of the chow halls. It was ribs for lunch, BTW — the smell was truly awesome. I was starting right before lunch started, so people were walking by and checking things out most of the time I was building pallets. Nothing gets people curious more than an open door to a warehouse, apparently, as lots and lots stopped to stick there head in, or go in and wander about. Strange.

What I don’t understand is, two weeks ago I ran the Army 10 Miler race here, on an obviously swollen and sprained ankle, in lousy form because my back was out. And people told me I was nuts for running on the sprained ankle, and continuing on when my back hurt. Less than two weeks later, here I am single-handedly preparing to build six pallets of stuff, moving it all out of the warehouse by hand, but that seems normal and OK to people. Go figure.

Anyway, I found my cornerstone. Some, I know would look for a strong, rugged box on which to anchor the effort. Other would probably look for the rejected box –something about the stone rejected by the builder becomes the cornerstone, or something. Me, I went with the prettiest one. Did you think I would choose any other ones?

From there, I started to frame out one the pallet would look like.

It worked out to five rows that were seven deep and seven high, and the middle row that was seven deep and three high.

After that, it was carrying boxes. And carrying the boxes gave me a chance to look at some of them. Which brought a lot of comic relief. Really, I wanted to stumble across bundles from people I knew, but instead I could messages, IBOL logos, and all kinds of other things that made me smile or chuckle. Like this one:

It says, Redirect to address below, and someone wrote in Any Iraqi Police Officer, which I thought was great. I’d seen similar things before, and it always made me chuckle and smile — smile, because it’s such a great idea, and chuckle, because I wonder what the mail folks would actually do.

Oh, and notes. You all wrote a lot of nice things on the boxes. Here are a couple that I saw today. Keep in mind, I only built two pallets, each with 266 boxes.

So, here you have them — two pallets, each of 266 bundles.

And here’s me, my ever faithful sidekick, Mr. Pistol, and the dining facility right behind us. And yes, I wear a different patch on my left shoulder, than on my right. That’s not by accident, that’s actually by choice.

We put the nets over them, more or less just to keep people from messing with them. They will get a lot more work before the actual flight date.

And remember how I mentioned that all of the curious stopped by? One was the aviation guy who’s ready to schedule the helicopters. He looked inside the warehouse, and said something witty about there being a lot of boxes. I don’t think he could visualize what a few thousand boxes really looks like — I knew I would be able to before this.

The guy who gave me the straps and netting — he stopped by en route to his lunch, too. Walked me through how the netting and stuff worked, gave me guidance on how to do it all. I think he was impressed that it was me out there actually doing the work — I had not passed it off to poor junior soldiers who’d otherwise been voluntold they were going to help. Nice enough guy. Said he’d come back when it was time to load them out, to help make sure they were really as ready as could be.

Another was a senior Sergeant who stopped by and asked a few questions. Nice enough guy. He was on his way to lunch, but thought it sounded like a neat project. Later, on his way out of lunch, he came and found me and asked me how I was going to move the pallets next. I said by air — and before I had a chance to confess that I had no idea how I would get the pallets to the air pad to be loaded onto the helicopters, he gave me his name and phone number, pointed to where he worked, and said he would take care of that — he’s got a big forklift, and big trucks, and his guys move this stuff all the time.

I’m telling you, IBOL brings out the best in people.

Last war story, I promise. I had one volunteer for the last half of the second pallet. She was just back from her R&R to the states, she outranks me, and she’d just finished lunch. But she carried boxes and then helped with the nets, and then took the photos of me. And told me to pick a day to finish the other four pallets, and that she would round up others to help — and started to rattle of names of folks who also outrank me. Who am I to argue with putting senior Army officers to work, doing manual labor in support of IBOL?

So, maybe Sunday. I need to see if that will work. Might be the plan, though.

Oh, and thank you. I know the excitement of the climbing box count has come and gone, and now I’m into the boring part of IBOL distribution. But every day I see the value in this project, and every day I am thankful that you all have helped me with this crazy idea I had. So much for cursing at the darkness — here’s to lighting a candle every once in a while.