Saturday 16 April 2011

Early this morning was the Bagram Air Base "Shadow Boston" Marathon. Exactly 367 runners signed up to participate and our team decided to help out and volunteer. We were assigned to work the finish line which ended up being a really cool spot to cover because the course was three laps around the base so we got to help out with times and see all the runners throughout the race and the finish. Unfortunately because Friday night/Saturday morning is our busiest day of the week we had to take shifts to volunteer to ensure the office and message queue were covered. Because my shift ends at 11pm it made sense for me to take the first shift from 1:30-3:00am but that meant that I only got to see the preparations and the start of the race before heading back to the office to put in some overtime so that everyone could participate. One of the coolest things about the race was the start because they actually coordinated with EOD (Explosive Ordinance Division - Hurt Locker anyone?) to have a controlled detonation to signal the start of the race. I didn't end up getting to bed until 6:00am and then it was back to the office by 2pm. It's shaping up to be a mercifully quiet Saturday, the highlight of which was a postcard from my youngest nephew. I also had a semi-awkward/entertaining moment when I went to the hospital for a visit and when I entered and introduced myself to one guy in ICU he goes "Ma'ma you kind of caught me at a bad time. I'm trying to pee at the moment!" Whoops! I couldn't have known he had a catheter in but I offered to leave the room all the same!

No comments: