They don’t have paper towels at COP Shocker — you have to dry your hands with toilet paper.

There are camouflage Bibles available, I’m assuming for free.

There are signs everywhere warning soldiers to mind secret documents to avoid being the next wikileaker. (CORRECTION: I was informed that these notes just use Wikileaks as a reference. It’s about not giving away mission-specific information or base information that might endanger them or anyone else here. I needed an Army translator to understand the note!)

There are multiple copies of one of Bill O’Reilly’s book on one of the shelves here, like a case was shipped in for the soldiers.

The food is good, particularly breakfast. And it’s all you can eat. Soldiers live for mealtimes, because here there are no weekends.

Call of Duty — this is the strangest thing — I have seen and heard more soldiers shooting and killing digital enemies than I could have imagined. There’s a certain irony in soldiers relaxing on their deployment by trying to shoot things.

There are dogs in between the outer wall of the base and the barbed wire barrier 50 feet out. Lots of dogs. Somehow last night two made it up onto the wall. I couldn’t get my camera out in time, unfortunately.

There are minefields all around from the Iran-Iraq War. As the oil companies come in to drill they hire people to clear the mines.

The bathroom trailer doesn’t have potable water. There are big warnings not to brush your teeth on all the mirrors.

Every Iraqi I met today was incredibly gracious. Of course I was with a heavily armed group of soldiers, so that may have weighed into it.

There are spray hoses in the toilet stalls, if you so choose to use it. This is the first base I’ve seen that.

There was an old bunker on a hill near the border crossing, again from the Iran-Iraq War. A lieutenant colonial told me the locals now use it as a toilet.

The governments of Iraq and Iran allow cross-border trade, but not for trucks to go across. The goods are all taken out of the truck in one country and put in a truck in the other country by hand.

The mountains in Iran have snow on them, clearly visible from the border. They jut out of the desert as Iraq ends.

When you ride in a Rhino you can wear a headset and listen in to the radio chatter between Rhinos and among the crew. There is an internal conversation and and external conversation going on all the time, and the two are very different. Today, while riding from FOB Delta to FOB Shocker, I got to listen in to one that made me wonder.

“Which limb would you lose, if you got to choose?”

“I’d totally lose a leg to get out of the army.”

“I’m not talking about a foot or a hand, I’m talking about the whole thing.”

“I’d lose my right leg. It’s my dominant foot, but that means I jump off my left foot, so that’s the one I’d want to keep.”

“It may sound stupid, but some of those space-age limbs they have now look pretty cool, and you can still run and do sports and shit.”

It does sound pretty stupid, but then again in my job I usually don’t think twice about the possibility of losing my arm. Things are calm here — at the convoy briefing the sergeant said they hadn’t been hit by IEDs in more than a month — but that doesn’t mean they will stay calm. Iraq can always get out of hand, as recent bombings attest. How do you spend concerns facing such possibilities? Is it any wonder the talk might get morbid?

I have not been shot at yet on this trip, but at times I’ve felt naked. When I stepped off the Blackhawk at FOB Kalsu the soldier directing passengers announced they get shelled every night, so be prepared for anything. I couldn’t help thinking my helmet and vest were pathetic protection for explosives falling like rain. That’s not a sane world. Is it any wonder soldiers ask which limb you’d choose?

“If you get hit by IDF (indirect fire), it was just your time,” a lieutenant told me at Delta. The bases are big, she said, and they can’t aim IDF. Sometimes they don’t even hit the bases, much less the barracks or anywhere important.

But it’s not a sane way to live, thinking you’re probably fine, but there’s a slight chance you’ll be engulfed. One in a million, perhaps, but certainly a little more stressful than car accidents or cancer.

Which limb would you choose? It’s just a question, asked during the carpool to work.

I interviewed a master sergeant the other day, and every time he said soldier it was clear there was more to the word than I understood. As a civilian, I understand it only concept, not in practice. When it becomes time to consider which limb you’re losing that’s when I get off the bus. But here it’s something people have to contend with, part of the job, part of a day’s work.

This trip has opened my eyes to that reality. My respect has grown for the sacrifices soldiers make. Why? Because even if you don’t come home missing a limb, there’s a good chance you were willing to. I barely breathe when the helicopter flies over the city, and these people are out there everyday. Naked. Exposed. Holding their limbs out for the taking. Even if an IED doesn’t claim it, that’s one hell of commitment. It’s a black conversation, but at the same time real. What a world to live in. I’m glad I get to go to home.

Tomorrow I head towards Iran after my first two night stay somewhere since getting here.

Actually, I got in at 5 a.m. this morning, so even though I slept until 9 a.m. I guess it’s still only one night. Tomorrow I get in a convoy to head to a base where a New Hampshire soldier is working with the Iraqi Army to prepare them for the change-over. I’m looking forward to the ride (snark-snark), particularly after my last one. At least this one is during the day. My last one, which brought me here, started after I caught a helicopter to Kalsu, the forward operating base I’d been told I’d be staying at for a little while. But plans change, and because of the confusion about the date of my arrival (their confusion, not mine) I landed, spent 10 minutes on the ground, and then loaded into a Rhino for a 6 hour convoy to FOB Delta.

The convoy was 5 Rhinos and a mile’s worth of tractor trailer trucks, some armored, some not. I was in the back the middle Rhino, with two in front of us and two in back. I had a pair of headphones and got to listen in on the radio chatter.

We left around 11 p.m. for what was to be a four hour trip. Thus began one of the more adrenaline filled nights of my life. I was already running on three hours of sleep, but there was no way I was going to sleep bouncing down an Iraqi road outside the wire (how soldiers refer to off the base). I couldn’t see anything because I was in the back, but I every time we passed a suspicious car, or someone on the side of the road, the lead truck announced it over the radio, and I waited for an explosion or a gunshot. Kalsu, I’d been told, gets hit every night, and the road we were on, Tampa, had a reputation as well.

Around 3 a.m. an Iraqi police escort met us and told us the road was blocked. We had to follow them, they said. The soldiers were reluctant, and they were all over the radio weighing the situation. If they went the wrong way it was going to be impossible to turn around the convoy, but they didn’t trust the police.

It was decided by SABRE, the convoy base, who said we should follow the police. No one was happy. They led us down a side road, rutted, unpaved, through tight streets of some small town nicknamed Bucharest. The chatter on the radio got frantic. “Where are they taking us?” “Keep an eye on them!” “THEY JUST GOT OUT OF THE CAR!”

I was sitting in the back, wondering if I was safer or a target because our vehicle had a gun. The tractor trailer trucks looked like sitting ducks — I could see them out the rear window slowly rolling along.

“Watch the roofs,” the lieutenant told the gunner, “keep your head down.”

I tried to climb into my helmet. I tried to pull my arms and my legs into my vest. I kept peering around, trying to watch the roofs.

“It’s OK, he’s just looking around. He’s getting back in the car.”

The police started rolling again, and so did we. I exhaled, and we crept through back to the main road.

Two hours later we rolled into FOB Delta. Just a night’s drive in Iraq, one of the soldiers told me.

Just so people know what’s on deck, I’m catching a helicopter ride to FOB Kalsu tonight, and then continuing east to FOB Delta. I have a bunch more photos of MRAPs and traveling through the city, as well as of the places I went today with the 94th MPC. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get wireless internet anywhere, so I’m not on my computer. Until I can solve that issue it’s going to be only text that gets uploaded. I also have a video I made yesterday to go up, but that too is waiting for wireless.

Other than that I’m still trying to get my body in tune with the hour of the day it is supposed to be here. I’m ready to go to sleep and it’s still afternoon. I can’t wait to get on schedule there.

I’m sure there’s more, but my mind isn’t clear enough to keep typing. Let’s hope I can get to a CHU as soon as my ride on the helicopter is over…