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Amidst my time in Balad, I’ve spent a lot of it driving. The euro style van I drive tells me I drive over 100 km a day. From what I can tell that’s roughly 65 miles a day, times 30 days a month, multiplied by…lets say six months. That’s 11,700 miles that I traveled since being here.  That means I could have gone from Anchorage, Alaska to Key West, Florida  and back and still had 1400 miles worth of detours along the way.

Anyway I digress. The point of that math exercise was to show you that, having spent a lot of time in the car (or in this case, the van), I saw a lot of funny/ entertaining/ridiculous  things pertaining to vehicles. These are the things I wish to share with you today. So without further ado, I present you with…Vehic-ulous!

The first item I saw driving around base several times before I was able to get a picture of it. It’s a little utility golf cart thing, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, boredom is the father of creativity in the military.  As you can see, with the help of a crafty welder, this four-wheeler has  been tricked out with a gun turret, chaff launchers and a rhino system. For those unfamiliar with this army lingo, those are all things you’d find on a Humvee (HMMWV).

You had better think twice before cutting this guy off.

There is actually a little man inside there, ready to shoot you if you step out of line.

Next we’ll talk about the up-armored Humvee that I drove for few months. At some point in the past it was used for going outside the wire on convoys, patrols, etc. Over time I’m sure it fell out of repair and was not fit to go on these types of missions, so it was given to a unit that doesn’t have to leave the base, i.e. ours.  Because of this, it’s has a couple of features that we didn’t really need.

I'm no linguist, but I'm pretty sure this says "Stay back! I am delivering some very important meals!"

Unfortunately it had some issues with the features we really did need:

I can drive my Humvee with no steering wheel, no steering wheel.

Next we have a dually truck which obviously managed to hit it’s wheel wells on any number of things around base, poles, t-walls, other vehicles, infidels, etc. Now I love an overhand stitch as much as anyone else, but I’m pretty sure it has no place on the exterior of an automobile.

This became affectionately known as "Franken-truck"

Every now and then an opportunity presents itself that just cannot be passed up. Sometimes a job you want to leave anyway offers you a severance package due to budget cuts (Katie Ide), other times you find $20 under a bar stool with the words “spend me at bar” written with a sharpie (I don’t know if this has happened to anyone). Other times you see a sign that says “Wide Load” and there is just enough dirt and sand on it that you can write “Ass” in between. In all these cases, these opportunities must be capitalized on.

A canvas that some one just couldn't pass up

The next vehicle is the van that I drove for about 2/3rds of the time. One of our guys was on some kind of mailing list and would get care packages pretty often from people he didn’t know. In one of them was this Chewbacca action figure, which one of my counterparts promptly attached to our grill. From that point on, the van was dubbed the “Wookiee Wagon” and I would get comments about it all the time.

(insert Chewbacca noise here)

As far as I know, there was no governing body on base that regulated the vehicles that drove around. Had there been, I’m not sure this would pass, but being in Iraq was a bit “Wild West-ish”, and I saw this baby at least a few times a week. Note that there are no windows inctact with the exception of the windshield, and the obvious sliding door replacement. I should also say that this is probably a 10-passenger van, however everytime I saw it in use, there were at least 18 Ugandan dudes rollin’ in there.

"Well officer, I don't have any registration papers, but all the information you need is written on the wooden door behind me."

This is another one of my personal favorites, and again, took me a number of weeks before I was able to get a picture of it. This is a M984 WRECKER, which for the record, is an awesome name, but it is used basically as a tow-truck for large and/or heavy military vehicles. The front grill is, as you can see, is the perfect canvas for some creative ar-tist to paint some vicious-looking teeth. Now, not only will this thing demolish my euro van in a fender-bender, but it will devour it, along with all the occupants inside.

There are two kinds of intimidation in the military, big guns, or mean looking teeth.

Last, but certainly not least, is this truck. This truck is one of many vehicles on base that were manufactured by the Indian super-conglomerate, TATA. The TATA company apparently quite well known on this side of the world, but should not be confused with some other, lesser-known auto companies like the Iranian made “Bazoomba”, the Australian made “Kawanga”, or the Canadian made “Tig ‘o Biddies”. You may now giggle appropriately.

I'm not sure why this company never caught on in the US, or any English speaking country, for that matter.