The World According To Chris Brewer

I thought you’d all be interested to see some photos of a blinding sandstorm that hit on the day I was supposed to fly out. Instead of taking you directly to my photo album, I’ll post the thumbnails here so you can all see what it was like. These sandstorms are unreal.

I was standing on the flightline for most of these. Baghdad International Airport (formerly Saddam International Airport) terminal is just on the other side, but you can’t even make it out in a few of these shots.

The sandstorm is building in the distance. These aren’t clouds.

Now the sand is starting to hide the sun.

Inside the hangar, the sand is starting to create a sort of diffusion with the lights…

An hour later, I walked back outside (coughing of course)…normally you can see the residential areas of Baghdad in the distance.

Looking directly across at the other end of the runway.

Looking south from the hangar.

So as you can see, the storm sucked, which meant all the choppers were grounded….but I got to convoy back to the Green Zone. I think that was the worst sandstorm I’ve seen yet.

Higher resolution versions of the above snapshots, and many more photos, are available in my PhotoCenter. Contact me if you want to use any of the images on your site. This goes for everyone. I don’t have a problem with you using them, but please ask.

UPDATE!!! More videos in the Video Vault!!! Click the link up top for more.

[tags]Iraq, sandstorm, Air Force[/tags]

Tonight a bunch of guys from work decided to band together as brothers on the basketball court and take on a group of formidable foes in a MWR sponsored 5-on-5 tournament.

Our group consisted of many folks who had not played basketball in quite some time. And here we were going up against a bunch of guys that looked like lumberjacks. I could only guess that they were civilians because most of them had scraggly beards. But these guys could play.

I’m kinda glad I warmed the bench to start the game. Our team quickly found itself down 18-0 after a slew of turnovers and bad play. But myself and Maj. Keefe came into the game, and I promptly missed my first three-pointer. Totally unheard of in gym night at Lakeside Church (ask Tyler, Chris or any of the guys, I can shoot the lights out from distance in that gym). Salinas banked in a 3 and we were down 18-3.

After some more crappy play on our part, our attention turned to enjoying the experience and seeing what positives we could take from it. The scoreboard read 25-3 when Lewis missed a layup, the lumberjacks got the rebound…and suddenly I stole it from them and laid the ball up….

….bounce, bounce, bounce, boing, roll, bounce, IN. My first 2 points. Next trip down the floor I swished a mid range jumper to make it 25-5.

Things got more interesting later, but we still lost 37-11. It was horrid on the scoreboard, but if you factor in that we dug an early 18-0 hole within the first three minutes of play, I think we did alright. In Lewis’s words after the game, “All we needed were 13 more baskets to tie.” Good guy. Helped me realize that some games are just unwinnable and it’s good to have some fun even though you’re getting your butt whipped.

And all the people watching the game applauded us for continuing to play and fight, as scrappy and rag-tag as we were. We held our own and showed up to play hard for 30 minutes, and lose with dignity.

We’re legends in our own minds, baby!!!

Here’s a brand-new Top 5 for you this week…enjoy!!! Since Daft Punk’s been in heavy rotation on my playlist this week, here’s my five most listened-to tracks by them.

5 [audio:http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF9509-01-02-01.mp3]

4 [audio:http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF170980-01-02-02.mp3]

3 [audio:http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF186078-01-01-01.mp3]

2 [audio:http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF71151-01-03-03.mp3]

1 [audio:http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF71151-01-02-04.mp3]

Also, I found out this week that Daft Punk’s track “One More Time” lifted its sample from Eddie Johns’ track “More Spell On You.” Check this out.

Sample of “One More Time” [audio:http://mp3.juno.co.uk/MP3/SF71151-01-01-01.mp3]
Sample of “More Spell on You”: From DaftCrew.com

Interesting, eh??? Most Daft Punk stuff is extensively sampled. “Superheroes,” for example, lifted a sample from Barry Manilow’s track “Who’s Been Sleeping In My Bed?” In the original track, Manilow sings “It’s up in the air…I answer the phone and there’s nobody there…” Daft Punk just simply took the “Up in the air” portion and reworked their own track from it. I think it’s amazing.

That’s this week’s Firestorm 54321.

Yuck, yuck, yuck. This dust storm outside doesn’t look good.

The past few days have been absolutely beautiful, but the wind has REALLY kicked up and brought a lot of dust with it. Needless to say, my transportation back to the IZ is grounded. Might be all day, but it might be a good thing that the wind is blowing so hard, so the storm could possibly scoot right out of here. Who knows. If I can’t catch a helicopter, I’ll do what I can to ride the Rhino (the big armored bus that rolls through Baghdad into the IZ) tonight.

This could be a good thing that the flights are grounded. As much as I hate country music, I might go see Montgomery Gentry play tonight just down the road at Camp Victory….I’d only be going just to record some stuff for Aftan and take some photos. I will be bringing ear plugs. I’m gonna hunt down a set of ear muffs real quick too.

Well, it seems each time go on a mission, blog participation takes a dive. Hello, folks, where are you all at??? Just because I’m gone doesn’t mean you have to leave too. Drop a line and let me know how you’re doing.

Oh, and last night while I was sitting there reading “Monster” by Frank Peretti (which is not one of his best books, but still decent), lo and behold, I felt my nose get all wet and before I knew it, my nose started dripping blood all over the floor. Shoot, I had gone about three weeks without a nosebleed and had been feeling pretty good. Twenty minutes after it started, it was all over. It seems to be getting worse each time. Eh, 47 more days of putting up with that crap.

That’s about it. Oh, and the Iraqis seem to be pretty decent at pool too. One of the pilots beat me handily last night and started doing an Arabic dance.

These people are cool.

Hey everyone…life has been interesting over the past day or so.

I arrived at the New Al-Muthanna Air Base yesterday to get a couple stories with the Air Force folks. It’s a small air base close to Baghdad International Airport, jointly run by United States and Iraqi Air Forces. It’s cool because our Air Force has been training Iraqi Air Force folks to fly modern aircraft (that we have donated to them), and been working alongside them for some time.

Today they handed over control of Al-Muthanna to the Iraqis. They held a ceremony this morning to commemorate the base handover, and a few media folks were there. I’ll tell more about that later.

Living conditions here are interesting but good. The building I’m in houses both males and females, and you can tell it is converted office space. Folks there divide their living space by simply hanging sheets and rearranging furniture, and they seem to not mind it all too much. The bathroom is coed, which makes for some very interesting times.

Anyway, I don’t feel like typing all too much. You all be good out there. I come back tomorrow night or Thursday morning. Peace.