Driving Around

In my broad and deep two-week experience downrange, I have had some opportunity to see a majority of KAF. There's plenty yet for me to see, but here are some highlights from driving around the base and taking pictures of standard things one might expect to see here.

First thing you see when driving around is the steering wheel. Here it is:

Anything strike you as odd?

The steering wheel is on the right!

Proof - except I easily could've shown the mirror image of this photo. You know what? You'll just have to trust me.

Getting used to driving on the right side of the car was an ordeal. It's all a matter of overpowering the desire for your head to be 43% of the road distance from the right side the road and instead having your head located at around 10% of the road distance from the right side of the road - because we still drive forward on the right here. Was that confusing to read? Because it was confusing to write. When I get back to the states people might want to avoid driving with me for a while because I'll be going through a similar acclimation period - also I'll be windshield wiping instead of turn-signaling.

Our next-door neighbors.

So next door there's a sort of headquarters, but it's not the main headquarters at KAF - I haven't quite figured out what goes on over there, but it's apparently the wing of the Army that we fall under in the overarching hierarchy that is this little world.

Here's what you're definitely most likely to see when driving around here:

Barbed wire, generator flood-lights, and fence.

Another thing you're very likely to see: 

What's your sign? "Speed limit is walking speed"? You must be trustworthy.

Signs are everywhere here. Oh look! here comes another one!

For those who can't convert 20 km/h is like 12 mph.

So we have to go very very slow around here. And for good reason! You don't want to get in an accident with this:

MRAP

So this is what an mrap looks like up close. There isn't really anything in this picture to compare it to for scale, but imagine an average sized person standing next to the front wheel right there. Their head would be at about the top of the wheel casing above the wheel - these things are massive, and there are all sorts of them driving around here in addition to a myriad other large and useful vehicles.

Spoiler alert: I'm going to be collecting pictures of the different international compound entrances and posting about them because I think they are pretty cool looking, but here's what one of them looks like.

The Slovaks compound.

And there you have it, a little summary of what driving around KAF is like. Invariably we end up back at the Ed. Center:

Work, sweet work.