On My Way

Left Speicher early this morning. Currently stopped at Al Asad. Everything is going well, just slow travel as usual. Hope to be home by the end of the week.

Getting Closer

Things continue to progress and I will be wrapping up this deployment by the end of the month. Today I have an appointment to ship my footlockers via DHL back to Fort Riley. Since I have a compressed time line to get out of Riley I can not wait on them to get back in a shipping container that the unit will send back. It is shaping up to be a busy week. I am sitting on another separation board tomorrow and there is a range this week. We have made plans to visit DC on the July 4th weekend. That should give us a good idea of what area we want to live. Based on looking at the map we are leaning toward Burke, VA. It looks like a nice area that is equidistant between Mclean and Belvoir. There should also be a good fireworks show and concerts on the mall on the 4th. Looking forward to getting home.

PCS Progress

Received my request for orders this week. It confirmed an August 25 report date. That will be a quick turn around and I need to be getting out of here soon. Attended my redeployment brief yesterday, so things have started to progress. I should be home by July 4th. The RFO revealed that I will actually be assigned to Fort Jackson with duty in the Washington DC area. RFO states that I need to call Fort Jackson to sign in., but do not have to be physically present there. So that raises the question... Where will we be on the 25th? I assume that is the day that I will check in at the NCTC, but it could be the day that I sign in and start my 10 days of permissive TDY to look for housing. The orders should clarify. There are several points of contact on the RFO that I will contact this week for additional information. I also expect a welcome packet to be mailed to the house at some point. RFO confirms duty at NCTC for 9-12 months with a follow on at Fort Belvoir for common core ILE. The NCTC duty will be very close to 12 months. I looked at the Belvoir ILE schedule and there is a class that starts in August of 2011. That class end just prior to the Holidays. Yes that raised another question... Will we PCS at that point or start another assignment in the DC area? I will start working the follow on assignment in early 2011, so I can have something lined up. That is assuming we do not hate the DC area and want to leave after ILE. With uncertainty comes flexibility.