Ok, so where was I . . .? Oh, yeah. Leaving training.
That night I was afraid that I wouldn't sleep well, but truth is I slept like a rock. All the building fatigue caught up with me and I crashed. I fell asleep while praying, lying on my cot. I was praying that everything would work out, that our angel would be comforted and guided by the Holy Ghost to make the right choices, and that we would be guided to do and say the right things to help her feel confident and reassured about her choice. There was still a very real chance that everything could fall through.
In the morning, I was up before the sun, and well before my alarm was set to go off. I could have easier teleported to Utah than go back to sleep, so I got up, and fussed around with my gear, getting it ready to be stored away. I packed all my airline friendly gear I thought I would need for the trip in my little assault pack, and left everything else in a pile for the unit to put into a storage container. That only took me ten minutes, leaving me over an hour to burn before first formation. The time stretched on forever.
After formation, there were three of us who were headed to the airport. I was going to catch my own flight, and the other two were going to pick up some late arriving providers who had been assigned to our unit for the training. It was this trip that had so fortunately provided me with the means of getting to the airport to catch my flight. I have no idea how I would have gotten there otherwise. We went to the dispatch after formation to get our van, which had been reserved since day one for this purpose, but the logistics folks told us that a Warrant Officer had come in earlier that morning and taken the van that we were supposed to have and had signed up for.
What ensued would have been entertaining if it was not also simultaneously giving me an ulcer. Tracking down this van was a complete comedy of errors, something out of a Three Stooges Movie. The WO who took the van was not supposed to have it, and had no authority to take it, but she outranked the SGTs who ran the logistics shop, and pretty much bullied them into letting her take it. Once the three of us arrived, those same SGTs had to tell three CPTs that the van they had signed up for days ago had been given away to someone else. Their faces were hilarious, and they were literally pointing at each other and yelling, each trying to place blame on someone else. "He did it!" "No I didn't! I wasn't even here when she took it!" etc. None of this helped get the van back, and each minute that passed was one minute less I had to make my flight and save my adoption. I was not a happy camper, but I managed to refrain from dressing anyone down. Well, I mostly managed.
The solution they came up with was to pile us in another van that had been tasked to take 10 soldiers to a mandatory class, and that after dropping them off we could chase down the van we were supposed to have. This added 30 minutes to our travel time, but it could still theoretically work. This was the point where I began to feel slightly nauseous. But it was the best solution the logistics people could work out, so we took it. Leaving my company commander and my 1SG there to spend time tearing the logistics guys inside out for not honoring the sign-up sheet. I feel bad for them now, but at the time I was just proud that I didn't choke anyone out.
As we drove off in van #2 to find van #1, I started to relax a little. I should have known better. When we got to the ammo depot where van #1 was supposed to be, there was clearly no van there. There was however a big gate labeled "NO ENTRY - TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT" No kidding. It was the ammo supply point for the fort we were at, and they don't play around with security at these places. We figured that our sneaky Warrant Officer had pulled into the depot, where we couldn't follow or find her. She was not best pleased when she found out that someone was coming to take her van in the first place. So our driver started to speculate while the other guy with us started a flurry of cell phone calls to the logistics shed again. The folks at the shed tried to tell us that the van was there, while our eyes stubbornly insisted that there was no van to be seen. Again, it would have been funny in a movie. Living it was like having food poisoning on finals day.
We turned around and headed back to base, mostly because we couldn't think of anything else to do, and the clock was ticking. On our way back, however, we passed van #1. The blessed WO had completely disregarded the instructions she agreed to, and drove back to base as we were driving out to meet her. She dropped off the van in a huff and refused to stay to explain things. So the intrepid SGTs at logistics got in the van and drove out to where it was supposed to be. Why they didn't call us to let us know will forever be a mystery. If we had not recognized the van as we passed it, we very likely could have been yo-yoing like this for hours. But we did recognize it, and flipped around in blatant disregard for traffic laws and customs, and chased them down at the ammo point. A hasty swap-out followed, and the three Captains finally headed off towards the airport. Two of them merely irritated, one of them having only barely staved off cardiac arrest.
My GPS told me that we still had just -barely- enough time to make it to the Alexandria airport in time for me to catch my flight. That is, provided security didn't take too long and there were no problems at ticketing. Both of which are certainly not guaranteed, of course. But I prayed and hoped, and as it turns out, things worked just fine.
Alexandria International Airport has 4 gates. Total. Security had 3 people in line and 5 people working it. I breezed through, and walked 10 steps to my gate, and even had time to sit down and learn how to breathe again. Obstacles were falling away, and as each one did I was that much closer to home, closer to being a father, closer to being able to support my wife during the most important chain of events since we got married. Relief doesn't come close to describing it. But for each obstacle that fell away, the ones that remained became that much clearer.
I still had to get to Utah, and once there I still had all the uncertainties of the actual adoption to get through, and the whole thing could have still fallen apart if a single young woman changed her mind about the most emotionally difficult thing she had ever done.
On the up side, since everything was so overwhelming, I went into a kind of emotional shock. I became detached and was able to look at it all from some distance. It was no more fun from a distance, but was somewhat more tolerable, and I was able to start to appreciate the funny bits.
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