From Disneyland to Kabul in One Week

Well a belated Happy New Year to you.  I'm currently sitting in a lounge in Dubai Airport enjoying what will probably be my last beer for a few months and preparing to fly out to Kabul at four in the morning.  It's eight at night now.  So there might actually be a couple more beers.  It's back to the war so that means back to the blog!

Dubai Airport.  Fannnnn-cy.

Meh.  It's a blend.

My R&R was awesome.  Alice, my six year old, wouldn't let go of me for days after I got back.  Oscar, 8, wanted to play soccer with me everyday.  Even Helen, my wife, was happy to see me.  We had a fantastic Christmas and New Years with friends and family.  The highlight of the trip (apart from seeing my family of course) was the trip to Disneyland in California, the Happiest Place on Earth. 

The weather was fantastic and we had five days of sun, swimming and exploring Disneyland and that other park right next door, the name of which currently eludes me.  When you walk into Disneyland the first the thing you hit is Main Street.  Not just any Main Street but the apotheosis of Main Street.  Main Street USA.  I suppose you could get all cynical and point out that Main Street is just a ruse for extracting money from tourists' pockets on the way to the rides, but I found it strangely moving after four months in Kabul.  City Hall, the movie theatre, the ice cream store, the parades, the olde-style trams and horse-drawn buggies, and a hundred-foot tall, gloriously decorated Christmas Tree and the Magic Castle in the distance. 

Main Street, USA, Disneyland

The kids were climbing over themselves getting autographs from all the Disney characters (especially Alice!), ogling the mouth-watering candy, and figuring out which direction to go exploring. 

Everyone is always smiling in Disneyland. The best thing is that, if a child starts crying for some reason, he is immediately cordoned off by a bevy of dapperly-dressed dandies in orange and white striped suits and hats who turn and face the crowd forming a human wall that we might not be subjected to the sight of human misery.  They slowly back up, and, if the child does not cease his wailing then the family are backed through a gate and pushed behind the grand façade amongst the empty palettes, garbage bins and forklifts and expunged from the Magic Kingdom.  Such is their dedication to a happy experience for all. 

Smile ... Or Else!

There's  a lot of wheelchairs at Disneyland.  I think you must get some kind of line bypass or something, because the place is crawling with folks pushing around wheelchairs occupied by people who were forever getting up out of the wheelchair.  There was also a lot of strollers (they have designated stroller parking at Disneyland) filled with kids who were, frankly, too big to be in a stroller.  The wheelchairs and strollers are excellent for navigating crowds.  Just point your wheeled device and push to clear the way in front of you.

Another cultural observation is that those Tap Out brand T-shirts they make only come in in three sizes:  XXL, XXXL and muu-muu. 

I was, of course, very interested in the engineering aspect.  Actually Walt Disney called his design team Imagineers, a moniker that might seem pretentious unless you take into account the grand scale of the place and exquisite attention to detail.  Even the garbage bins in the different parts of the park were designed to fit the theme (how can you tell I'm an environmental engineer).  They could have easily put in painted plastic fences around the rides, but opted instead for beautifully realized wrought iron creations.

We need a mountian for this ride?  No prob, we'll just build one.  Let's call it Bear Mountain.
Oh--and let's make it shaped like a giant bear.

And the animatronics!  Splash Mountain was my favourite.  I don't even know what Disney movie it's based on. Brer Rabbit?  It's probably an old movie that has some politically incorrect component to it so they don’t show it anymore, but the singing wolves and rabbits were really a wonder to behold.  The best part was that Helen always situated herself in the seat she thought would get the least wet and inevitably got more soaked than the rest of us. That was revenge for Helen making me go on the California Screamin' roller coaster.  That is some roller coaster.  And the Ferris wheel scared the crap out of me too.  Your car shifts suddenly as it moves around the track.

Scary Roller Coaster and Ferris Wheel.  Look closely and you can
see how the cars in the Ferris Wheel shift as they turn.

Oscar was oddly fascinated by the empty, little movie cinema on Main Street that showed the original Mickey Mouse movie, Steamboat Willie, from 1928 over and over again.  Every might, on the way home, the kids would stop and watch it and laugh all the way through.  Hats off to Walt Disney is all I can say.  As far as our family was concerned that place really is magic.

Where I'm headed, big booms in the sky at night mean somehting completely different. 

So now I'm on my third pint after saying good-bye to my family, flying to LA, a four-hour stop-over, a 17-hour flight to Dubai, an eight-hour stopover, and an upcoming flight to Kabul, arriving Monday morning.  When I walk out of Kabul Airport there will be machine guns trained on me and I'll know I'm back to the war.

That said, I've got friends there, and I'm looking forward to seeing them.  Back to Canada House BBQs, working out at the gym, reading and writing, and doing some important work.

It was hard leaving though.  Harder than the first time.  Helen and I try to gloss over the fact that I'm heading for a war zone, but the kids sense it.  They know.  They've got it tougher than me.  Helen has to manage the family by herself, and the kids have to make do without a father.

Well, now I'm on my fourth pint and getting all maudlin and having to rely on spellchecker more and more so I'll sign off here.  Talk to you soon.

Epilogue

Arrived safe and sound in Kabul as advertised.  I knew I as in Afghanistan, because we were stuck on the plane for the better part of an hour while they tried to find some steps so we could get off the plane.  Then the power went out in Customs...twice. A gorgeous sunset as we flew in.  The picture from the through the airplane window doesn't really do it justice.

Sunrise over Afghanistan

Mountains south of Kabul from the air.