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Well, as most of you know by now I am soon headed for a land far away. More precisely, Iraq. Things are busy here in Colorado getting ready and today we loaded up our tanks for the journey across the ocean. As you'll see from the pictures below it is quite a process. To get on the train each tank must drive up a ramp before it has to cross a gap onto the actual train cars. The thing about it is that the tanks are actually about a foot wider than the train car itself. This difference in size causes the tank to hang off each side just a little over six inches. My tank, C11, was this first tank on the train. In the pictures you can see it traveling from car to car. Once it reaches its final place the civilians come in to verify that it is in the exact right spot with a margin of error only one quarter of an inch. That's not much for a 75 ton behemoth of a tank. Once the first tank is in position the next comes, and the next, until the train is full. In one of the pictures you can see my platoons four tanks all lined up in a row. My drivers then put their tanks in park, hop out and let the civilians chain them down. Now this is just the process for my 4 tanks. Every item that is going with us must go through this. Busy busy. along with our tanks, we have also packed the first our our personal belongings to make the trip. Besides keeping us busy at work, all the packing and shipping has really begun to set in the fact that, unfortunately my year away is quickly approaching. But with Tara's decision to move home I think she is going to be much happier while I am gone. Well that is all for now and I hope to start blogging some more here about my adventures. To view my series of pictures just click on this picture and it should load more!

Iphone pics

-Matt