The clock started ticking today, and in the worst possible way. Each time I come back here it’s with tentative steps. Afraid not of getting killed or maimed but of being stuck in a foreign land, a very hostile foreign land, with no surety of making it home.
I arrived on the 29th after leaving "oh dark thirty" of the 27th. The whole drive to the small local airport listening to the radio hoping for some hint of something like this to break so I could cancel my trip and bow out in good conscience.

 But nothing.  

Leaving home with the hatches battened down and whatever preps I could accomplish is a short 28 days behind me, I crossed my fingers and came to work.
June 30th is the day I’m supposed to roto home. Now either I trash my rep and walk off the job or I sit tight and play chicken with a train on the tracks, hoping that I step off the tracks before it hits me.

Gas prices up, big whoop, me and G.I. Joe over here are going to be the last ones to feel it, but when we do, it’s gonna be too late. America could be down to running cars off smoke like the Cubans do and Joe would still be driving his super armoured HUMVEE’s around Bagdad, getting 6 to the gallon. Now getting home, that’s gonna be a little bit harder. Last I looked, the Bering land bridge wasn’t getting any closer to popping back up. Even leaving all the equipment behind and catching the birds only goes so far. Maybe the rest of us are supposed to fit on the nuke carriers and take the slow boat back.

But that’s in the future, and avoiding it is an option I got. First thing I gotta do is figure out when the squeeze is gonna be felt here first and how to ID it. Hell, Joe just might order us all out of the country early so he doesn’t have to deal with us. Of course that means lots of his vital functions don’t get done (Joe’s turning all of his cooks into “nutritional specialists”). Or possibly he lets us stay till the last possible moment and then sneaks out the door while we watch his back shouting “go ahead and keep the tanks and arty boys, consider ‘em your last months wages”. Gonna watch for that one.

PX goods and some of the more perishable items in the chow hall will be the first things that stop coming in. Like last year when they said they weren’t going to be bringing in as much Gatorade powder due to the logistics strain Joes constant consumption of the stuff was causing. So when protein powder and DVDs stop coming into the PX that will be a sign. Not “the” sign but one of them.

And of course there’s always just quitting right now. After all I’m just a contractor right? I can leave any time I want. Fly home, get in my little car, and drive back up into the mountains with as much food as my remaining wages can buy in a Weimar economy. Ohh, that’s right, it’s not that bad yet.

But the clock is ticking!