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These are recent stories - the rest are in my latest book,"Walking Through Adversity."

Stories about Middle East Trips (3)

Rob bryant
2006-01-09 11:43:42

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mines from the desert sand dunes. This is obviously dangerous work and we hired ex-military munition experts to de-mine the area. We also other contracts in Kuwait alone to maintain and store aircraft and militray equipment. At the end of the day, I was taken to the Kuwait-Radisson Hotel. They made it up to me alright. I was put in a suite on the top floor consisting of a living room, kitchen, office, bedroom, walk-in closet, and two bathrooms. I had a day off finally and closed myself in the room and slept late for the second time on the entire month long trip. Each morning I ate a great breakfast, I worked out in a huge gym an hour, then met with DynCorp managers in the office or in my suite. In the hotel lobby, an 8-ton solid marble ball floated on a 3 PSI bed of water and was held in place on a base. The perfect sphere can be rotated by one finger. It is fascinating to watch. It is so finely balanced that it actually rotates with the rotation of the earth. The Iraqis tried to take it with them when they invaded Kuwait, but could not figure out how to lift it.

A Date with Kuwait - The dust storm continued for its third day and each night I had wash sand from my clothes and every oraface of my body. Some dust is so fine that it actually lodges in the pores of the skin causing skin irritation. During an in-brief, I was advised not to say words like: kiss, zip, dog, sex, alcohol, woman or Christ. They are offensive to the local Muslims and can result in being arrested. They do let other faiths worship here as long as they are not too evangelical. Temperatures range from sub-freezing to 130F within a two-month period. However, our temperature only ranged from 85 to 120F. The Gulf water here was a warm 90F so swimming is not very refreshing. While deer are the number one animal resulting in deaths on US highways, camels standing on roads here kill hundreds. Unfortunately camels are of the right height so that when a car hits them, ...