Rip-It? Rip-It Sir?

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the Army procurement process so I thought I would review it for you.

We often have flat tires on our trucks that need replacement. Usually we can just go to our maintenance shop and pick up a tire already mounted on a rim for us. Sometimes we have to go scrounging for what we need though. Still, this is much preferable to the last tour when we had to break down all of our tires by hand.

We start with a case of Gatorade which is pretty easy to get here.

We take the case of Gatorade over to Jim who works in a bunker on post and he will give us a case of Shock Triple Latte Coffee.

Most people don't really like the taste of Shock coffee even though the package clearly states it is a "Premium Coffee Drink." The advantage to this drink is it has a ton of caffeine in it. We take this case of coffee down to Major Dunwoody at a different camp and he give us a case of hot dogs for it.

He won't tell us where he gets the hot dogs which is a little scary but we don't care. We trade the hot dogs for some steaks down at the AC Shop. They have a cookout every Sunday and for some reason can obtain steaks but not hot dogs.

The steaks are tempting to us but we still have a truck with a flat tire so we must press on. The guys at the radio shop on another post really like the steaks and agree to give us some ice cream bars for them.


Since we got the ice cream bars at another post we really didn't have a way to get them back to Q-West. These had to be unloaded quickly so we talked to some of our contacts. We heard a rumor about a Military Police company here so we went to see them. They gave us a case of Rip-Its for the ice cream bars.

Rip-Its have a mysterious power here in Iraq. They are an energy drink where the taste is so bad it makes you unable to sleep for at least four hours. The caffeine is included simply as a carrier for the poor taste. We took the case of Rip-Its down to the fuel point where we are always greeted by the foreign workers there with "Rip-It? Rip-It sir?" Well, this time we have the Rip-Its for them and they have somehow got their hands on a starter for a John Deere Gator we were looking for.

This starter is what has been causing the KBR contractor mechanics to walk to chow for the last two weeks. If there is one thing contractors don't like, it's walking. They all seem to have Gators or SUV's to get around post and believe it is their right to speed by us as we walk to chow. We took that starter down to their shop and they were more than willing to deal. We got the tire for our truck.



Mission complete,

Kyle




I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.

-Al Capone