Sandstorm

So there I am out last night on an evening run and I'm thinking, "damn this is gonna be GREAT!! It's only 105 degrees and I'm actually going to get a workout in before 10 o'clock tonight. I'm stylin!" Slam a Lemon Sublime Gu, charge the camel back, put on that ridiculous reflective belt and off ya go now. I started out on my usual run out of the Pods, past the wash racks and a left turn towards the "back 40" of Zone 6. The run takes me down the dirt and gravel road that runs the perimeter of one portion of the base. Good news is that it's desolate and lonely and no one give me shit for wearing sleeveless shirts or tank tops (stupid Army!). Bad news is that it's desolate and lonely and I have to carry aphone not because I'm tied to it for my job (which I am....stupid albatross!) but because if I end up close to morting, I want to be able to call someone to tell them where to find my dead body in the desert. Soooo....left turn past the wash racks and head down the road. It's a nice evening (relatively speaking) with a nice light breeze at my back which is good news because when I turn around and head back, it'll be a nice light breeze in the face to dry some of the sweat. Yes, for those who keep telling me it's a dry heat, go pack sand. It's not a dry heat any more. About 10 minutes (I won't give away the distance for fear that everyone will now know how slow I run...er, jog) down the road, there are flashes behind me which resemble flickers of the lights set up along the perimeter fence. They are generator run and flashes seem a bit odd but what the hell, it's Kuwait....everything's odd. A little further down the road...more flashes. I finally turn around and this is pretty much what I see. Though it's dark, there's still enough cultural lighting that I can pretty much see the hand of God Himself as this cloud of dust just like this is about 200 yards from me at my back. Seriously, if you've never seen something like this, it's bound to scare the livin' shit out of you. I've lived through some interesting weather and flown aircraft through storms that are better left in the past (was in an airplane struck by lightening....now that's interesting) and it didn't quite feel like this. For a half second (the half second that immediately followed the half second where I said, "oh f*@k..."), I said to myself, "oh yeah, this isn't that big a deal, I can keep going." Yeah, ssscreeeeech....freeze gopher! The wind went from about 3-5 knots to about 40-50 knots in the matter of about 10 seconds. Just unreal and no exaggeration. Then it started "mudding". That's the Kuwait version of raining. There's so much crap in the air that when the rain falls, by the time it gets to us on the ground, it's mud. Yeah....ick. Sooooo, there I am about 11 minutes worth of jogging from home which would probably equate to 20 minutes of walking - if I could actually see where to walk in a 50 knot wind getting whipped by sand with no eye protection in the dark. Along with me was a stranded dog (there are quite a few feral dogs out here) and it felt like armageddon. We were roaches looking for cover when the kitchen lights get turned on. Most of the structures out here are designed to withstand the wind (except for the tents which always seem to sustain a bit of damage - then you have to ask yourself, why do we still have tents after being here for so freakin' long? That's another story...) There are periodic shacks along the perimeter fence that collect weather data - they have thermometers and anamometers - small but just large enough to provide cover for one stranded idiot. Too bad I didn't have snickers with me because I wasn't going anywhere for a while. Imagine that worst snow storm. Snow blowing sideways, duning up around buildings and fences. Blowing hard enough to really hurt. Then make it sand and the temperature over 100 degrees. About 15 minutes into my wait, some guy shuffled by and all I could think of was, "sh!t, to add insult to injury, this guy is going to assault me". (Yes, this is how I think. It's tough being paranoid all the time.) Wouldn't that just be the icing on the cake? And I'm here to tell you with all that sand, it would have been really decidedly uncomfortable. So the feral dog went his way, my would-be attacker went his and I waited another 15-20 minutes before I decided it was time to press on. With the wind down to about 30 knots, it was bearable to head back but without eye protection, it ended up being backwards...at a jog. One good thing to come out of all this was the discovery that one does not, in fact, need to ride a bike for four hours to do a good brick. All one has to do is run backwards for about 1/2 mile then turn around and run regular. I guarantee that this will make your legs feel like you have just gotten off a Tantalus ride. Finally I made it back home with sand in every pore of my body. Seriously. I was still digging out sand from my ears tonight, 24 hours later and my eyes are still getting rid of dirt. I looked as if I rolled in sand and not the good kind like you find at Kailua Beach. This is more the kind you find at a beach on Lake Erie or Lake Michigan. That dirty brown sand that sticks like goopy glue. My scalp was finally clean after two washings but no doubt, my shoes will never be rid of the sand that is now entrenched in every stitch. Tonight when it came time for another workout, I was really looking forward to making up that run when I saw more lightening. It turned out to be a great interval ride on the Q-Roo... :)