This is another common ab workout for most boxers. Again this is SSG Marvin being personally instructed by the coach.  

This another one of those pretty standard techniques that looks pretty extreme from the outside looking in. Since SSG Marvin's partner had to leave early he got to receive his punches in the stomach while doing crunches from the coach. I probably out weigh him by 30 lbs righ now. 

One minute breaks between rounds are common during the boxing class. As you can see we have a coed class. During this one minute rest period I usually walk around and check on people see how they are holding up. You might recognize the guy with the shaved head with his back to the camera. Two guesses... ;) 

29 MAR 05 Most common question

I hear/ read this question so much I thought i would immortalize it with a blog. Especially the answer to said questions.

The question: "So what do you need?"

The sarcastic responses: Snow. Rain. Cooler weather. The terrorists to die. Sleep. A few combat patrols. Off my leash.

The real responses:
Optimized whey protein Choclate
high protein bar creamy peanut butter fudge
enhance GH
muscle amino
obtained at www.parrillo.com

cadbury mini eggs. (just cause I like em)

swiffer dust cloths (mostly for the super fine moon dust/powder that is every where.)

under armor heat gear army brown shirts size large. (not to many of these)

gum: big red or juicy fruit

beef jerky: Teriyaki or Barbacue (just cause it stores/travels well)

Ultimax socks specifically cool lite crew in black. These are the best boot socks ever especially for the desert.

DVDs basicly anymovie any new release that comes out from jan 05 to jan 06. I am an action adventure guy but open to anything usually.

If anyone knows any boxing or kickboxing organizations out there that would like to donate equipment to our programs here at camp victory south please let me know.

CPT Vick, Christopher
Camp Victory South
MNCI C3 LNO CST
APO AE 09342-1400

Boxing class this is only a small Part of the training that I offer at Camp Victory south. This focus mitt drill was taught to me by Scott "Conan" Mincey our of Norman OK. 

one of the bridges the U.S. blew up when we bombed this place. 

ravenous carp in the moat out side. 

24 Mar 05 Palace Life

People often ask me what it is like to live in one of Saddam's palaces. Well for me it is just like living in the movie office space. The only reason I say that is because work is work. This palace has been totally restored and transformed into a Coalition Headquarters. See most of the headquarters personnel got to just move into there previous sections offices as we took over the fight of the war. Which works good. For example, you work in Public Affairs; when you get to iraq you can go to the Public Affairs section and find your counterpart and eventually take over there desk when they leave iraq with the rest of the unit. The above scenario works really well unless you do not have a counterpart to take over for which is the case of my section. So our fist two months here have been trying to get all the equipment that we need to become fully mission capable.

So How do I feel about living in the palace. Well like so much of iraq the beauty is only skin deep. Just the symbol of the palace is enough to make me get angry. You see this palace was built with oil for food money. Some of you might remember that disatrous program run by the U.N. subsidized byt the U.S. This program was supposed to be help the poor starving iraqis. Also this place was built by french designers with cheap iraqi labor. So every time a marble slab comes off somewher you can look behind the facade ans see the shotty construction work. This place looks huge and it is but eventhough it looks like a castle it was not as well contructed as a castle. It is nice to know that the french pretty much screw everybody. One example is bricks are stacked in some places to make up the walls. No mortar no rebarb just stacked. In some cases my 4 yearold can stack blocks better.

There are carp that are in this giant man made lake around the palace I guess it was supposed to be moat or something. The carp are huge. some of them are like 4 feet long and 8-10 inches in height. When you throw food into the water they turn almost as ravenouse as pirhana's. It is kind of neat actually but it does make you wonder how many people were fed to them.

There are only two roads that cross the moat. One we blew up when we bombed this place as the start of the war trying to get UDay and Qusay. This palace was their porn, hunting, murder lodge. In fact out back there is small man hole grate that only goes down abut 10 feet I am told that is where they used to put people. Do I do not know if that was true or not but it would not surprise me one. Bit.

But form my daily life her. It is alot like office space. If you have not seen teh movie watch it is very funny. Also typical.

remember
"freedom is not free it is paid for in blood by those with the courage to defend it."

Drum demonstration in little Tokyo. There are things the way their camp is set up that we can learn from them 

judo demonstartaion in Little Tokyo 

Travel to little Tokyo in Iraq 21 MAR 05

Well this morning started at about its normal time. To early! Actually it was about 3 hours after its normal time for me. Let me explain. Most morning I get up a 0330 so that I can make to the gym while there is next to nobody there. I do cardio and callestenics for about and hour or so and then I go show to make it into work at about 0700.

This morning I slept in until about 0500. That is sleeping late for me. Sleeping really late for me is going until 0600. Any way I got up walked the mile to the chow hall ate and eggwhite omlet a piece of french toast, grape juice, choclate milk. Then I walked another mile back to my trailer to get ready to take my helicopter ride to Samawah. Talk about flat. That place is flat. Some of the Japanese forces are located there so they had a visit today. So I went to the flight line boarded a black hawk or UH-60 which ever you perfer and take the 1hour 45 min flight to the middle of no where. I got some great pictures of the stuff on the way out there. god be willing I will be able to add the pictures to the blog soon.

I got to travel with the italian Major Genreals (MG) personnal security Detachemnt (PSD). We got along great. Go figure boys and their toys as my wife might say. But they had some very nice M-4 and I was also very intrested to learn that the Italian PSD team was also in Afghanistan. They were in kwost at the same time I was in Baghdad. So I might have seen them when they came in from the boonies.

Okay so In little tokyo as I affectionately refer to the Japanese compound. We at a traditional Japanese meal. I used Chopsticks as I have since I was like in the fourth grade. The things you pickup when you are an army brat that will stay with you for ever. Not to mention when those things that you learn will come in handy in yourlife. I was also impressed at how fast the little bit of japanese that I knew came back to me. But it was just like falling off a bike. no matter how old you get you can always fall off the dog gone thing. The Japanese put on a show of Judo complete with rondori. Which is like a judo match where each player attacks and does defense at the same time. If you have watched it in the olympics then you know what I am talking about. From there they did a display of theatrical drum playing. The japanese name for the drums escapes me at the moment. Maybe if I remember later then I will add it to the blog. But today I just don't remember. but I got great pics and video. From there we made our farwells and boarded our helicopters to return to my house built on sand in baghdad.

So I suffered through the rest of my shift and then walked over to the gym to teach boxing class with SFC Myers and SSG Micotta, we had 28 students to teach. I the class goes alot longer when you have that many students training at the same time. I have a new found respect for Scott "Conan" Mincey now.

That's all Vick

20 Mar 05

Well as some of you have noticed I am a little behind on this blog. Well like I said most of my days are really quite the same. Hence the reason for books and email to break the monotony.

Okay the last couple of days has been filled with lifting and boxing instruction and my boxing work out and lifting. So right now most of you are thinking I am at a health spa and not combat but that is the way it goes sometimes.

Okay some of the goings on I have seen since I have been here in lovely baghdad. for instance the AL Faw palace is built on the Huessein family hunting reserve as a result the animals all went and hid during the war but now that the major combat is over the animals are coming back all over the place. For instance there are birds all over the place. We have magpies here that sound like crows and are as big as crows. They are really strange to see they have a white body except for a black patch on their chest. I have been trying to get a picture of one for weeks. But the dog gone birds never stick around long enough for me to get a picture of one. But it will happen.

There are also carp in the man made lake outside that could put some of the U.S. cat fish to shame. These guys are really big. Some of them approaching 4 feet. They are surface feeders. We feed them so they are gonna keep getting bigger.

One night last week on my way to the gym I was cutting through a parking area. Yes there are parking areas here on and I encoutered two coyotes and a fox. They seemed to be traveling as a pack. I saw that and immediately thought of the movie Ice Age "we are the strangest herd ever!" they were the strangest pack I have ever seen and I am from okalhoma I know coyote packs. Coyotes are every where around ten killer and camp gruber.

Okay for the real exciting news there is a lion loose on the compound somewhere. Can you believe that; a real lion! So remember if you are on baghdad that if you are running around lost lake to take a buddy. Remember you don't have to out run the lion you just got to out run your buddy. So don't be the slow guy. For those of you who did not grow up on National Geograpic specials Lions like to pick off the slow and the weak or sick. Just something to think about.

Well MWR has given me a room to keep all of the Boxing equipment at the gym in. It is kind of nice. It makes teaching boxing class much easier. In fact there are very few places that I can go without runing into someone in my boxing class. I have on average 20-24 students a night. It makes it hard for one person to teach but I am getting help now. SSG Micotta is a real help. Like me he is a wounded boxer. He does private workouts and helps coach but the days of climbing into the ring for mere sport are probably over. But you never know. God does work miracles. If Bo Jackson can play baseball and Dennis Bryd can walk again anything can happen. Nothing is truly imposible.

Well good night and god speed.

"Freedom isn't free it is paid for in Blood by those with the courage to defend it!"

15 Mar 05

All ready has a busy day today.
Every monday, wensday and saturday nights I teach boxing to anyone who want so learn here on Camp victory south. But that is a story for another time.
So this moring. SGT Gardella and I loaded up a MAJ prouty to take him home to BIAP. We were dropping MAJ Prouty off at BIAP so he could get a ride down to Ali Al Saleem. Once he gets to Ali Al Saleem MAJ Prouty will catch his freedom bird back to the USA.

That was a good trip we learned an alternate route to get to BIAP. Picked up my buddy CPT Lively. We came back to the palace so Lively could take care of some personal buisness.

It is nice to have CPT Lively back. The two of us started this little adventure together way back when the adance party came in back in mid January. We spent the rest of the day showing him how things have changed since he was gone. Not to mention commiserating about life in the war zone in general.

Later that night I went to do my own private boxing work out. That is always nice to be able to work up a good sweat and relieve some fustration by punching something. Standard work out focusing on Jab Cross Hook and body hooks.

Most people will begin to see a trend in these postings. Life in the war zone I compare to the way Malcolm X explains his prison stint. It is the boredom that gets to you. Like here we spend most of our lives in total boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror and chaos. Not that I have had any of those anymore. Especially after afghanistan where mortars flew over heads all the time. So i do alot of the same things everyday. For instance I lift six days a week. I also get up and run very early in the morning three times a week and on the alternate nights I do my own boxing workouts. The nights of the days that I run I usually coach the boxing class here at camp victory south. That occurs 3 nights a week monday, wednesday, saturday.

My excitment so far is going the wrong way and ending up outside the fence line in Baghdad proper. But that was really nothing to get worked up about. But as I said earlier that we found an alternate route to BIAP.

Well last week it rained for 4 straight days here. So every thing is flooded still and if it is not it is very muddy. We refer to as the tar pit because the mud is so sticky that it sticks to everything and gets on everything. So everything is very dirty.

Well hope all of you are doing well.

Vick's Travels

well it all started one night at FT bragg. We got on a airplane flew for what seemed like forever. We landed in a place Ali Al Saleem and airport in Saudi Arabia. However this would not be our final stop. We would load a bus and head to camp Doha. They needed volunteers to guard the passengers on the bus during transit. I volunteered along with my future Roommate Cullen although neither him nor I new we would be bunking together when we left bragg. We drove to Doha. We stayed at camp snoopy for about a day. Then we drove back to Ali Al Saleem and flew to Baghdad International Airport or BIAP as we call it now. From there we went to billeting for the night then the next morning we got out new rooms. We live in a trailer and as opposed to Afghanistan I have a bed not a cot.

Me in the Al Faw palace in Early Jan. Okay so every body watch the picture over the months and see the stephen king story "Thinner" in action.