There are phones here, plenty of computers and Internet connections. But the effort to file stories from Iraq and to blog has been difficult to say the least.
The cell phone I got with coverage in Iraq was useful for about a day while in Baghdad. But I haven't made a call on it since.
My laptop's great if I can get a connection but even then it's been so slow that it's taken a half of a day to send even small files.
There are plenty of people who blog from here and do just fine, but bopping from place to place, as we have been over the last three weeks, has required a constantly changing set of resources.
Beyond the computer stuff, the stories themselves take a lot of work just to get some of the basic reporting done.
We often do not know what we're going to get before we get to a place and once there we've had stories sort of fall apart.
Just before leave Ramadi we were scheduled to head with a convoy to a new and very remote outpost in the desert. It was supposed to take six hours. We'd stay about 12 and then turn around and drive all the way back and then onto our next destination.
It sounded good but we ended up waiting in the convoy for about five hours with one mishap after another delaying us before the trip was ditched.
Physically I'm feeling every one of my 44 years.
A lot of the travel has been in MRAPs, these big lumbering mongrel vehicles that are part Brinks truck and part Humvee. They're pretty safe, but very uncomfortable. Especially when you're driving in them for six hours, wearing a 40 pound kevlar vest with armor plates and a helmet. It's the same get up you wear in the helicopters and cargo planes. Doing this for 24 or 36 hours at a time takes it's toll.
I've also come to marvel at how much sweat the human body can produce. It's very hot, of course, but in your kevlar and long pants and long sleeves under an intense sun the body just starts shedding water. After a patrol through a small town in Diyala my shirt, pants and socks were soaked through. As they dried they left white powery salt stains.