Heading off Post

Managed to sneak off post twice at CRC in order to enjoy the local Columbus, GA culture…and it really wasn’t much of a sneak as all it took was a cab ride…which cost a minimum of $30.

First time off went out with my colleagues Greg and Josey as well as Mike, one of the guys that we met at CRC. He’s from Charleston and will be turning wrenches on Humvees. CRC was his first time back in the States in about three years. He’d previously been in Iraq for two years and then spent a year in the Philippines building a house, drinking, gambling, and shacking up with a Pilipino. That seems to be pretty much standard fare for many that come to Iraq. The number of folks that had been to Iraq and then moved to either Thailand or the Philippines was fairly surprising…as was the number of folks going over for the first time that stated they were planning on heading to Southeast Asia after their deployment was done.

At any rate, I digress. The first night out we were all desperate to watch football and we figured that the local Hooters would have the game on…which, of course, it did (not that we really watched much of it). We spend most of the time drinking and enjoying the company of the wait staff.

The second time off post Greg, Mike and I asked to go to downtown Columbus figuring that there would be a few bars that were open. As it turns out all of the bars were open but they were empty…save one. We found some hole in the wall with a few pool tables and a live band (they were actually halfway decent). Several drinks in we decided that it was time to play pool and given that there were three of us we decided to play Cut Throat. Which is all well and good (even though I’m terrible) however the bar had lost the 3 ball so we were forced to play with two 2s. Didn’t exactly make life easy after a few rounds…

We also managed to go to some local place called “The Shanty Shack” where the focus of the entertainment was this girl:

And that’s all I’m going to say about that…

Luckily we didn’t have to be up until 1000 the next day which was a good thing given the fact that we didn’t get home until after 0330…