The shuttle that took me to Camp Pendleton was a large van driven by a garrulous old man. As I was the most conversationally interesting, he had me sit in the passenger's seat, while the other five troops sat on the benches behind us. He regaled us with many tales of his days in the service, as well as of his son, who is currently in the Air Force special forces school, trying to get to be a Combat Controller.

The driver dropped me and two other guys off at the transient barracks. I paid my $25 (hopefully I'll get to file a travel claim and get reimbursed), but forgot to tip because, well, the Japanese don't do that. It was almost nine PM. The barrack duty stander stamped my orders and took me to a room, with another guy already in it. He'd also come from Okinawa, but his luggage made it uninterrupted, so he'd arrived at Pendleton a few hours earlier. He was dead asleep, but I woke him as I moved in. His name is Cpl Reed.

The barracks is… kind of rough around the edges. Dirty. Worn. Small. Old. The matresses are new, but there are no pillows. There's no A/C. My room faces west, so the afternoon sun heats it up like an oven, and it stayed boiling hot all night. At around 1 AM, a third guy arrived, claiming the last rack. I rolled over and went back to sleep.

In the morning, Reed and I got up and put on our cammies, going to the 0730 formation that the duty had warned us about. Turned out that formation was for people that had completed their term of imprisonment in the brig, and were now getting separated out. My roommie and I didn't need to be there, but we did learn where to meet the duty driver to take us to the Admin folks to get ourselves processed.

At the admin section, we took numbers, waited our turn, then discovered that we should have skipped the wait and gone right to the civilian responsible for processing Okinawa types. She screened our paperwork. Reed looked good, he was ready to leave this very day... except that the furniture was being replaced in the office where tickets were issued, so they had the day off. But he can come back Monday and get sent on his way back to civilian life.

I was not so fortunate. All my paperwork is good, except for my final physical, which my squadron flight surgeon did before I left. The final physical has a half-dozen parts, and the doc and I went over each part, both of us signing the end of all six sections. Then doc had to sign the cover page. But he didn't, so the whole thing is invalid. I, ahem, "debated" the issue with the civilian clerk, as obviously all six parts of the exam were completed, making the cover sheet a meaningless formality. My crushing logic met the immovable object of "The Regs Say…", and I slunk off in defeat. The best I could manage was an appointment with the local air group's medical section on Monday. If I can get that completed expiditously enough, I may be able to leave that same day. Otherwise, Tuesday.

Unless another error gets noticed…

*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *

So I was done with processing by 0930, with nothing to do until Monday morning. The transient barracks is a hole, and I did not want to stay all weekend and stare at the walls. I walked to the on-base car rental agency and managed to secure a car. They were out of compacts, so I had to settle for a midsize- a Chrysler Sebring. I am not very impressed with it so far.

The retal office is closed Sunday, so I have to keep it until Monday. I'm thinking of doing Legoland California tomorrow, and I dunno what on Sunday. After I got the car I stopped by the Pendleton flightline, where three old buddies are working. One was at WTI (a two-month training), one was an convalescent leave (he finally had his gallbladder out: see old posts one and two.) The third guy was at work, so we had a fun chat for an hour. I don't know if I annoyed his boss with distracting him from work, but we did amuse the LCpls with our old stories.

Back to the car. I sprung for the collision insurance, to the tune of an extra $12 a day. I'm aware that it's normally a ripoff, but my own car's insurance only covers liability, and I am a much more dangerous driver than usual. I keep turning on the winshield wipers instead of the turn signal, and I am not so good about pulling into the correct lane. Baka gaijin, driving on the right (wrong!) side of the road!

Posted by: Boviate at 08:35 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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