Wah-choo-ka.

I've been battling a cold for the last week, which has been less than pleasant.  But, at least I wasn't up in Phoenix listening to fighter jets all day.

This past week, I was sent down to Fort Huachuca to help with some site reevaluations.  I'll be there for another week or two, and then will head back up to Phoenix.  Sierra Vista is a helluva lot prettier than Phoenix, but I'll be happy for the slightly warmer temps up north.  When we arrived in the field this past Tuesday morning, the truck thermometer read 19 degrees.  Nineteen degrees!  That's just wrong.  No wonder my cold isn't going away.

A few things of note from this past week:

1.  The Army is way more laid back than the Air Force.  That is my totally uninformed, outsider perspective on it.  

2.  UXO is quite possibly the scariest three-letter acronym I've learned in a very long time.  Especially on a base that's been around for almost 150 years.  We had a UXO Safety training class on our first day of work, in which they showed us many examples of the horrible, scary things we could possibly encounter while hiking around.  This particular base has bombs/mortars/rockets/mines/etc from every war from the 1870s on.  I mean, I knew that they used some f-ed up sorts of weapons during WWII and Korea, but damn.  Actually holding some of these things and hearing about how they work and why they were created made me feel slightly squeamish.  Weapons freak me out anyway, so this was especially unsettling.  We didn't find any UXO, although we walked over quite a bit of shrapnel in a couple of places.  Gives me the major heebie-jeebies.   [Disclaimer: Yes, this is a real danger while working in this area, but the chances of us finding anything dangerous are quite low.  I think I am hyper-sensitive about stuff like this, and nobody else, including the army range management, seemed to think we had anything to worry about.]

3.  There is a large tethered surveillance blimp that flies over Fort Huachuca every day.  It is apparently used by the military, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and our good buddies the Border Patrol.  Who knew?

4.  Because the Huachuca mountains (which are directly south of the fort) are on the national border, this is a popular spot for illegal border-crossers.  We found a leather wallet last week, which conatined a man's ID card from Honduras and a hand-written list of phone numbers.  We also came across a couple of discarded backpacks, which are a common find around border areas.  I feel bad for the people who decide to make a run across the border and find themselves attempting to cross an army base.

5.  While getting ourselves turned around on dirt roads, we passed by a scenario camp complete with razor wire, big green tents, and hum-vees.  Then we turned a corner, and saw approximately fifteen men in long white robes walking towards us.  So we quickly turned around and went the opposite direction.  Apparently there was some sort of middle eastern role-playing going on.  Talk about unexpected!

6.  A good base layer of long underwear is my best friend for the remainder of my time at higher elevations.  The desert has really made me pathetically weak to the cold.