Signs of the Times

There are many signs all over this base. They serve very little purpose, and are mostly ignored.  Every street has a name, and every building has a number, but these road signs are routinely ignored because they are just not that useful. It is much easier to say “I’m in the blue building across from [...]

The Airfield

Joint Base Balad is a large military airfield. Saddam Hussein’s former Iraqi government built the air base in the 1970’s, and named it Al-Bakr Air Base. In fact, the village to the East of the base, on the banks of the Tigris River, is still called “Bakr Village” to this day. Years ago, it is [...]

Working Out at the Gym

Joint Base Balad, Iraq, has many gyms. There are three large facilities with about 7,000 or 8,000 square feet each (the H-6 gym inside the Air Force gated community, East Side Gym, and West Side Gym). In addition to these large gyms, there are several smaller gyms here and there. For example, there is a [...]

Policies

Here is something that might be interesting to an outside observer. On Joint Base Balad, and all through Iraq, there are all sorts of rules, regulations, and policies that apply to US personnel. There is much discussion in the news of things like the agreements between the Government of Iraq and US Forces, such as [...]

JBB Celebrates 4th of July

Today is the 4th of July! There are a few special things going on to celebrate.
 We had the 4th of July fun run.  Here’s the start of the race:

 That was yesterday (Friday, the 3rd). Not sure why they moved the date for the run, but luckily they did so because the weather was better yesterday [...]

Sleepless in Salah-ad-Din

I’m back in Balad, Iraq again. “Salah-ad-Din” is the name of the province where we are. Kind of like California is the state, and Camarillo is the city; so it is with Salah-ad-Din being the Iraqi province and Balad being the city close to our base. The capital city of this province is Tikrit, up north. [...]