Covering the Fort Wainwright, Alaska route for two weeks. I've run enough bulk runs to Fort Wainwright that the folks who issue passes know me so it is a fairly easy process to get my temporary pass. Not sure if the regular driver has a 30-day pass or something a little longer. They give me a one-week pass when I show up which allows me access for the remainder of the week. I get randomly searched about one in five accesses to base.
Fort Wainwright is about one third the size of a division post (e.g. Fort Lewis) so the regular driver is a late start (he isn't part of the sort...we have no Preload in Fairbanks, Alaska) and does air pickups and drops them at the airport in a P32 by 11:00 before coming back to center to get the P500 for his route. As a cover driver on the route, I do Center Clerking and Counter Clerking before doing the route.
General issues with Fort Wainwright is that many do not know their actual address because they address their stuff to the unit at a generic post address (1060 Gaffney Rd, Fort Wainwright, AK 99703 in this case) and the USPS sorts it by unit for pickup by unit Mail Clerks so our Customer Clerk readdresses a lot of packages for Fort Wainwright. All buildings are numbered and the building number is the street number for the address but the sequencing is not always ordered along a street (i.e. a street number can only be relied upon for general area of base if you don't know where the building is). Temporary buildings (e.g. job trailers for construction) have a building number but they rarely have the number posted. Typically, people use the nearest major road rather than the actual road they are located on so a street name in the address can cover a swath as wide as three blocks on either side of a major road.
As far as deliveries are concerned, the base shuts down at 17:00 and there are quite a few early closes at 16:00 or 16:30 and other stops with irregular hours. Some support functions on base are closed certain days of the week (e.g. Sports Store on Monday or the Base Library on Tuesdays and Wednesdays). All residence areas have a posted 15 mph speed limit and 35 mph is the speed limit on Fort Wainwright unless posted lower.
In general, most drivers are not a big fan of delivering to the military bases at our center (Fort Wainwright and Eielson Air Force Base) unless they served on the base which is only going to be more pronounced since there are no longer open bases. The regular driver is not a military veteran but is happy that the route was his first bid route. The route is great if you have the area knowledge (evidently, we have had a cover driver get nearly 100 misses in a day during peak season on the route).
Most interesting delivery as far as a military base that I've done at Wainwright was for package addressed to a room on the third floor of the Brigade Headquarters. The building has a goofy layout to begin with and I knew how to get to the second floor but had to ask for help to find the stairs to the third floor. I turned right at the top landing of the stairs based on the numbering on the bottom two floors and ran into a security door so I turned around and beat feet the other direction but it was clear that the room was not in the unsecured part of the third floor so I asked a Captain in the hallway if he knew where the room was. His reply was, "It may be behind the door but I've never been behind the door so I do not know." So I returned to the door and noticed it was the Brigade S-2 (Intelligence) so I followed the directions posted on the wall next to a phone ("Let the phone ring twice and wait for a click") while looking into the camera with a great big cheesy grin. Then I heard the door click so I opened it and a soldier kindly signed for the package and I went on my merry way.
Most interesting day on Fort Wainwright was my first day covering the route. I had to run my own bulk run and the intersection in front of the base is under construction. I started the route at 13:00 and by 14:00 or so I had made a classic rookie mistake when I locked my keys in the back of the truck. By the time I contacted management in Anchorage (On Car Sup in Fairbanks was out driving a route and did not have his cell and there was no one at the center in Fairbanks to receive DIAD messages) and got lockout service from a locksmith, it was too late to get most of the non-residences off the truck and I stopped delivering resis at 22:10 when it became apparent that all I was going to do was wake people up and piss them off if I kept delivering (I did not know there was a curfew on delivering) plus I needed to get off of Wainwright and back to the center before I hit my twelve hours. Needless to say, it has been gravy for the most part since the first day.
And I bet when you first came in 48 you pomised not to bring any nuclear weapons.
