I cannot load a new picture of Alex & me, but I have a very old one. He has changed a bit (me too).
Three times a year they open the gate and parole us inmates for regional rest breaks. The State Department is very generous. They drop you in Kuwait of Amman and you can go anywhere you want with the caveats that you pay for your own trip and come back a week later.
For my first break, I am going to Egypt to meet Alex and together visit the treasures of the Nile. Alex likes history and it is fun to travel with him to these sorts of places. I still recall with great fondness the trip we made to Rome together when he was thirteen. But the road to Egypt runs through Kuwait.
They have an enormous tent city at Ali Al Salem base and I got a nice bed, with a real mattress and blankets in a tent barracks. I arrived aboard my C-130 just in time to miss evening chow and too early to wait for mid-rats, so I went to McDonald’s. This is the first time I have paid for food in more than three months. The Big Mac Meal was filling, but I did not feel that I had missed much by not having it these past months.