The Buchaille

-Day 5 of 31-

Back in May of 2010 I had just finished up my tour in Afghanistan.  I was headed home after an exhausting, but amazing six months in that war-torn country.  I count myself extremely lucky to have never seen actual combat.  The travels, adventures, friendships, hardships, loneliness, seemingly pointless efforts, dirty days, and the occasional views of beauty will never be forgotten.  I look back fondly on the majority of those memories of my friends - US, ISAF/NATO, and Afghan soldiers and civilians.  I pray each day that they are safe, especially my US friends that I know have gone back and for my Afghan friends that struggle to make a better life for themselves there.

I'll talk more about Afghanistan another day.  I took leave when I got back and went climbing in England and Scotland with my friend Alan.  It was an amazing trip on so many levels.  Physically, I was beat from Afghanistan and was struggling to deal with tendinitis in my elbow and shoulder.  The majority of what I did when deployed was work, eat, sleep, and hit the gym.  The gym became nearly an everyday thing as it was the best way to work off the frustrations and get your mind off everything else.  Tendinitis developed because of the constant workouts.  So Alan ended up leading most of the climbs on our trip.

I was also quite mentally exhausted.  It was an incredible shift over the course of a week going from Kabul, Afghanistan (over about 4 days of flights) back to Virginia and then on to London.  Over a couple weeks, Alan and I went to the Peak District (near Sheffield, England), Hadrian's Wall (border region), Western Scotland (Glencoe, Oban, Fort William), and finally down to Edinburgh, Scotland for a few days before heading back to London.