Weeding. Pulling the wild poppy and marijuana plants which seem to pop up everywhere. Seriously! The personnel doing the weeding are local Kyrgy's, and there are armed guards watching their every move, waiting to destroy the plants they pull.
In the MWR facilities at MANAS, the soldiers have plenty of things to
keep them occupied. The most popular activities are video games!
More weight-lifting equipment than you can shake a stick at!
Playing basketball in combat boots.
Don pictured with Sarge.
Matt plays with a gun during our tour of the Demolition Unit. Here
we were presented with many different examples of Improvised Explosive
Devices (IED's). IED's are the most common form of weapons used by
our terrorist enemies.
Getting briefed before our Humvee tour of the MANAS perimeter.
Don having fun in the top gunner turret of a Humvee.
The first photo-opp, out in the Kyrgyzstan wilderness that surrounds MANAS.
No worries - it wasn't loaded. We know better than to hand Dirk a
loaded gun.
Matt with our tour guides.
MANAS used to be a Russian Air Base, and they abandoned hundreds of aircraft when they left.
This is part of the resulting aircraft 'boneyard'. What an eerie sight.
