The Pit(s)

I am going to share with you something that I have been purposefully choosing not to write about, in the sincere hope that this "something" would rectify itself.  I am not sure why I ever thought that this situation would fix itself since it primarily deals with Air Force security police and deep concrete pits.  Hey, I am an idealist, but I can no longer sit here with a website that I pay for with my own money and not complain about this problem.

I am, of course, speaking of the search pit here at Al Udeid Air Base.  The search pit is something that I deal with daily, so if it seems like I am excessively angry when I explain this, well, I am.

Ok, to ensure that we are all on the same sheet of paper here, let me give you some background on the search pit...

The search pit is an area near the front gate of the base that is used to search vehicles coming on to base for explosives, weapons, etc.  The search pit consists of a large open ended hangar-like building with a small holding area attached.  The idea is that you pull your car into the hangar and open up all you car's orifices (doors, hood, gas cap, anywhere a bomb could be placed) so that a thorough search can be conducted.  For some reason, most likely Security Police Voodoo Magic, you are not allowed to observe how they go about searching your car so they make you wait in a small holding area while they do their business.

So far so good.  I have no problem with this, in fact, I warmly embrace all  the things the Security Police do to make me safer.  

Notice I say "the things the Security Police do to make me safer."  I do not warmly embrace anything  the Security Police do that does not make me safer.  In fact, the non-safe things they do make me upset and confused.  This whole search pit thing is an example of that.  You see, because of unbearably long (2-3 hours) wait times in the pit combined with the Security Police letting roughly 3000 of the largest, slowest trucks into the pit first, I tend to swing into the murderously angry partition of the human emotional spectrum.  This does not bode well for me, or the M-16 carrying, 18 year olds guarding the gate.

I know that I have complained about the search pit in previous emails, and by now, if you are still reading this, you are probably thinking that I need to get to the point.  Well, here it is.

A few months back, lets say, 15, I noticed another search pit hanger being built adjacent to the first search pit.  Finally, after months and months of search pit hell, the Air Force, in their grand wisdom, decided to improve the search pit experience by adding another hanger to expedite the search process.  This is what I thought, at least.

What actually happened was, after what seemed like forever, they opened the new hangar, only to promptly close the old one.  I was aghast.  There would be no expedited search pit experience for me, or anyone.  This was indeed a sad day in the House of Brooks.

To make all this horribly worse, the new pit hangar was equipped with two concrete Jiffy-Lube style oil changing trenches.  The idea of this I assume is to facilitate searching the undercarriage of the vehicles in the pit.  These trenches are approximately eight feet deep by about four feet wide.  The depth is no big deal, but they are way too wide.  For an average car, you have maybe a half an inch of extra space that you can use to guide your car onto the trench.  For a mental giant such as myself, this is not an issue, but for the air breathers that seem to surround me, this is a 30 minute per car ordeal.  I am not a strong man.  Soon I will snap and I will go down in a hail of bullet-ridden violence.  You will probably read about it in the paper.  There will be a picture of me laying there, covered with blood, filled with 18 year old M-16 holes, wearing a snarl of defiant conscientious search pit objection on my gaping maw.  It will be beautiful, I tell you.

Long story short, the search pit process has not been improved with the new pit hangar.  It has been horribly worsened in a way I could never had anticipated.  What can I do?  Express my disapproval on a seldom read web site?  Join a support group for search pit victims?  

I think I will just mutter and bitch to myself, that is much easier.