Being a coffee drinker I got a kick out of this story from a fellow Fat Frogger that is deployed in Kabul. Here's the excerpt from his blog....
"The events starting this week with my encounter with the coffee can. Sunday night I was the victim of a CCBIED, Coffee Can Born Improvised Explosive Device, it was about 0100 and I thought a cup of coffee would be the thing to get me through the next eight hours of the work day, we work half-days; if you consider 12 hours is half of a day. Well anyway, I decided to have some coffee that one of the Australians brought back from his rest and relaxation (R&R) in Italy. For the record we get to go to Qatar – it’s like going from Idaville to Burnetsville for vacation (for those in Virginia it’s like going from Creeds to Pongo to visit the big city). As a gift to the collection work center he brought back some fine Italian coffee (out of guilt I suspect). It was in a decorative, three pound vacuum packed can. I thought that Sunday night would be as good of a time as any to have the coffee so I thought I’d open the can and have a good cup of Italian coffee. What I didn’t consider was that much of Italy is at or just a few 100 feet above sea level and Kabul is at about 6,000 ft. As I was at the moment I broke the seal, I am suddenly blinded and hear a loud bang – yes, in that order. Within a matter of a split second, as my eyes were burning and I was unable to see, I realized that the can must have exploded. I blindly felt around for the box of bottled water, grabbed two bottle of water and headed for the door, I got out of the door and stumbled down the stairs and got outside to flush my eyes. After two bottles of water I was able to see shapes and after a couple of more someone brought me I had good 20/300 blurred vision. I’m can’t think of anything to compare the experience with, which might provide it justice. I can say that I’ve had the PRK eye surgery were they take a electric toothbrush apparatus and grind the epidural off your cornea to perform the surgery and I’d rather have gone through that again. Over the remained of the night I continued to flush the eyes and went to medical when it opened in the morning and they broke out the Q-tips to swab my eyes and get the remainder of the grounds out. After about four days my eyes stopped burning. I will also tell you that consuming straight coffee via the eyes will certainly give you the jolt you might be looking for in a cup of coffee, but I don’t recommend it. I also had coffee in every pore of my being; I was sweating coffee when I got home. . When I returned to the work center from the initial eye flush everyone on watch was up cleaning the work area and said there was coffee every where. I didn’t get to see what the detonation area looked liked before they cleaned it up, but the can had just blown out the top seal and was about half empty."
You can see this post on his blog by clicking
HERE
The direct URL to his blog is here:
http://spaces.msn.com/chriselogandeployed/
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