San Diego or Bust!

Ok, so here Mark and I sit at a little place called 11 Degrees North in Djibouti, Africa.

Mark will give you all a version describing some the more humorous encounters thus far, I wanted to give you a quick run down of everything we've done since leaving the ship two days ago.....

As some of you may know we are separating from the Navy after five years of dedicated, selfless service....hehe. We flew off the great ship USS Bonhomme Richard and sailed on a USNS ship for two days, which is basically a floating hotel that refuels Navy ships.

After a glorious night to ourselves in our own rooms on board the USNS ship, we pulled in to Djibouti, Africa. There is a joint task force base here where every branch of our service has some type of presence, this is where we have the privilege of staying for two days until flying out. I say privilege because this place is awesome in every way. First off, the food here is absolutely ridiculous and would put an buffet you've ever eaten to shame, guaranteed! They have a regular menu plus a speed line that servers everything from grilled chicken breasts to chili dogs and everything you can imagine in between. They also serve ice cream, and I mean real ice cream, you would think Baskin Robins was running this thing. The only flaw, and I mean only, is that it's only open 22 hours a day!

Anyway, Mark and I met up with our friend Mando (short for Armando) who was stationed with us on the Bonhomme Richard and he gave us a brief tour of the base. After showing us the gym, we agreed to work out with Mando later on after dinner. The workout came and I think all three of us thought we were going to die! It was a Crossfit workout consisting of 5 rounds of the following: 20 box jumps, 20 burpee pushups, and 20 kettlebell snatches. Now, I would like to consider myself in decent shape but Mark and I seriously almost lost our dinner shortly after beginning, oh and the work out took about 25 minutes to complete.

After showering away the nauseousness, we strolled down to 11 Degrees North, had a beer, watched the Cowboys get destroyed, watched the wings lose in a shootout, and then passed out.

We awoke promptly at 0645 to go meet Mando for a morning run at the base running trail. It was a nice run, 4.2 miles and there was a nice overcast to keep the heat away. After that we showered, ate breakfast, and headed over to one of the base lounges where we relaxed and watched some documentary on the Rolling Stones. Not long after that we headed back to our barracks, packed our things, loaded them into a van and headed toward the airport. We made our first stop to confirm all of our travel plans and found out our flight, which originally had been from Djibouti to Ethiopia, was now rerouted through Yemen. Apparently, this isn't allowed at the moment due to current conflicts between our countries so here we sit.

After walking all over the base to find and access point that would allow me to actually load a page, Mark and I decided to grab a couple African brewed beers and update the blog. By the way, the beer is called Tusker, it's brewed in Kenya and is very tasty!

So now knowing the how, where, and why of our current situation you can see why I called this post "San Diego or Bust". The sooner we get to San Diego, the sooner we can finish up our separation and begin traveling....Peace!

Ryan