Today.....oh today.....was a fucking rollercoaster ladies and gents. Started off pretty damn good....woke up feeling awesome. It wasn't too cold out. Things went smooth on mission prep. Then, bam. Shit sandwich. Not more than 10 meters out the gate, we're told our normal route is shutdown because of some big shindig with parliament going down today. So...alternate route here we come. We never go down this route for two reasons. 1: It is narrow as hell and hard to fit our big trucks through. 2: Everyone hates us on this route. So....we're rolling along, rear truck breaks down. Being the mobile maintenance team (never understood how I alone make a team, but whatever) I have to go look at the truck. I'm at the front of the convoy, it's at the back. In between is a huge gap filled with people that look like they'd rather eat their own feces than share the same breathing air with me. Me, my backpack and I make the journey to the back, look at the truck and get it rolling in about 10 minutes. The trucks at the front part of the convoy have been trying to get backed up to us the whole time. Narrow roads and heavy traffic made it a pretty difficult task I guess. We start rolling again. Not 200 meters down the road, SAME truck breaks again. Different problem. Not getting fixed this time. We hook it to the truck in front of it and they break off from the rest of the convoy and head back to camp. We keep on trucking...getting caught in traffic every twelve feet. Finally make it to where we're going, do our thing, and get stuck waiting to leave. We leave about 2 hours after we normally do. Normal route is still closed. Fucking alternate route here we come again. Oh...did I mention that a great chunk of our alternate route is 1 way traffic? Yeah, it is. Now we have to find an alternate route for the alternate route. Routes that haven't been cleared in quite some time. But, we gotta go. We find what looks like a decent enough road that is parralelling where we want to go and head out. Traffic jam. We didn't move an inch in an hour. But, the day starts looking up. Next to us, all crammed into a station wagon, is what appears to be one young boy, and about 12 adult men. The men kick the kid out and he starts going around and cleaning every cars windows. He comes over and tries to get ours. This kid is 8 or 9....10 tops. We're in a giant supply truck. He's not having much luck. So, for a lack of anything better to do, we get out and clean our own windows, and give him some poptarts for the effort. You'd swear this boy was christian and it was Christmas morning from the way he acted about those poptarts. It was great to see. We made some friends there. He went and got another lil boy. Poptarts and water were handed out. The locals even started honking their horns and giving us all the thumbs up. A small crowd gathered....more windows were cleaned. Nobody understood anyone from the other country. But all in all, it was pretty fun. There was some traditional Afghan dancing. There was some horrible American dancing. Laughter all around. And your lesson of the day folks....no matter who you are or where you come from, when traffic starts moving again, EVERYONE cheers!