Camp McGrady

Our flight out of Gulfport was at 0600 this morning and while I didn't like the idea of that it did make us the first group into Fort Jackson.  Camp McGrady is a small area of Fort Jackson that is shared between the Army, Navy, and South Carolina National Guard.  This will be home for the next 2-3 weeks while we get training on various weapons, land navigation, HUMVEE driving, and convoy ops.  That would all be pretty valuable training were I going to Afghanistan or Iraq, but going to Djibouti I won't use any of it.  I'm looking forward to it though as it taps into my childhood fun of playing GI Joe in the creeks around my house.

I haven't stayed in open bay berthing since Officer Candidate School (OCS).
We have a small group this week and not even half of these will be filled.

I can't believe this all fit.

Our group was first to arrive and I had my pick of bunks.

The first week of my mobilization is over and I'm already to the second stop at Camp McGrady, Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for Navy Individual Augmentee Combat Training (NIACT).  Navy-wise the last week was a great waste of time.  Friday we were only in uniform for an hour and the entire week could have been shrunk down to probably two days.  And really, the only thing done there that couldn't have been completed at a NOSC was the uniform and gear issue.

It was a nice boondoggle though.  It was my first trip to what I consider the real South (Jefferson Davis was buried just down the road), and I really enjoyed it.  I tried out some local eats like barbecue, shrimp, crawfish, and oysters and it was good if not healthy.  (I didn't visit the ubiquitous Waffle House that were as frequent as Starbucks in larger cities.  There's a reason why Mississippi is the fattest state!)  The coast is really nice and there are some beautiful homes even though they're still rebuilding from hurricane Katrina.

Matthew, Mike, Eric, Simon at Shaggy's

I met up with three other junior officers (JOs) at NMPS and went out with these guys in this one week more than I have with anyone for the past year.  Part of that I imagine is because only two of us had cars and I had the larger one, but I could have just handed off the keys.  I've heard whether you're an introvert or extrovert can be determined by how you relax and recharge your batteries.  Looking at it that way, I'm definitely an introvert but I repeatedly chose to go out versus stay at home in my room.  Part of it is that I'm not home and  don't have someplace to really unwind until I have my own place long enough that it's worth unpacking.  More than that though is that there is a bond amongst those of us in the military when we're traveling together.  We're all going through a shared sacrifice and all generally enjoy what we're doing and want to make the most of it.  Simon took the words out of my mouth last night when he said that when he was active duty he hated it and couldn't wait to get out, but now he loves doing Navy work as a reservist.  I got out of the Navy because I didn't want to constantly be away from my family, but I'm looking at this mobilization as a government sponsored adventure.

I should mention that I'm not entirely alone for this trip.  Eyebrawl of Skylanders Giants fame has joined me for the trip and he's very excited about it all.

This is his first trip outside of Texas!

Surprisingly, I was given a rental car today (rank has its privileges.)  I realized when I got to the car that I didn't know how to get back to the base and didn't have a map.  I remember when people used to just drive around for fun.  There'd be a road they hadn't been down before and they'd drive it just to see what there was to see.  These days with smartphones and GPS no one does that.  They have navigation to take them exactly where they want to go and if they do consider going someplace new they just pull up the map to see what's there before deciding whether to go or not.  Well I don't have a smartphone and so Eyebrawl wanted to us find the beach.

The Gulf coast isn't much to look at but it turns out you can find a pretty good crawfish poboy.

Bon Voyage

The first day of my mobilization to Djibouti and so far so good.  I'll be spending the first week at Navy Mobilization Processing Site Gulfport, MS, and getting here was really painless.  Two quick flights with time for lunch in between and shuttle service to the base.  The only downside is that I don't have a rental car so I guess I'm stuck on base, but the galley, McDonalds, the NEX, and the NMPS facility are all within walking distance.  It might be a good thing that I'm stuck here.  I asked someone at the airport if there were any famous places to eat or somewhere with good local food and she started off with Applebee's...  Not quite what I had in mind.

I'm going to miss Peggy and the kids!  It's hard to believe it might be six months before I see them in person again.  I love you guys!