Happy 64th Anniversary to the MP Corps. So, this week is the MP Anniversary Week, which means there's lots of activities and goings on happening around post. For the most part, our class has been blissfully unaware of what has been happening, because we've been good little OBC lieutenants attending class and doing fun things like issuing OPORDs.
That blissful unawareness came to a screeching halt this morning beginning with the Regimental Run. Now over the years, I have done any number of formation runs in large groups, some worse than others, with, of course, such memorable experiences as the Buckner run back, organizational run day while in Korea on CTLT, and the wonderful graduation week run. Today, however, definitely took the cake and then some. To begin with, the weather just happened to have taken a decided turn towards winter this week, and was in the low 40s this morning. Maybe that wouldn't have been too bad if we had had on anything besides a short sleeve t-shirt and a pair of PT shorts, but of course the uniform wasn't changed to reflect the weather. And then there was the little matter of what time we had to be there this morning. We were told we were going to be formed up and ready to go by 0500, which meant being in the area at 0445 with having woken up at the ungodly hour of 0420. We showed up, and it turned out that the rest of the battalion we fall under wasn't showing up until 0500 and we didn't step off to head over to the parade field until around 0520 (having stood freezing outside the whole time). Once we got to the field, we didn't even officially start things until 0600 after the general and his staff emerged from their nice warm cars. After an insanely slow shuffle that was an excuse for a run, we got to stand around and listen to a lot of people talk about how wonderful we all are as MPs and blah, blah, blah. To make a long story short, it was 0745 before we were finally released. We spent 3 hours outside freezing this morning. I had no feeling left in my hands from the wrist down, and almost cried when I got under the shower, because even cold water felt like it was burning. Yes, I was feeling a wee bit sorry for myself this morning, but I think some of it was definitely earned.
In further support of the Anniversary Week, we spent this afternoon as free labor in setting up the gym at the fitness center for the ball that takes place on Saturday night. There were about 75-100 people doing various things, but poor organization meant that most of us were doing nothing a good portion of the time, and it was crazy frustrating because they cancelled our classes, and rather than learning things to help prepare us for being good officers, we got to wrap plaster columns with gossamer and fake leaves (and yes, it looks as tacky and cheap as it sounds). And it's far from over, our schedule tomorrow also consists of additional setup for the ball, and Sunday morning we have to clean up and tear down. Bleh, bleh, bleh.
I am not a fan of Regimental Week. If I'm ever the MP commandant, I'm cancelling it.
Thursday, September 29, 2005
Saturday, September 24, 2005
Caveman Dining
Dinner tonight was interesting, and probably an experience you'd be hard pressed to find in most areas, but good old Missoura' pulled through and provided us with a "unique" experience. We were out in the field all day today doing stupid stuff, and decided that most of us were still pretty beat up from the week, so instead of going out tonight, we figured we'd just go out for dinner somewhere. Of course, by this time we're all pretty heartily sick of the limited offferings available in the immediate St. Robert area. One of the guys had heard from a friend about a restaurant in a cave. Definitely had some novelty factor, so we decided that's what we would do.
I don't know what I was expecting from a restaurant in a cave, but tonight was probably a one-off trip, because it wasn't anything stellar. We started to wonder what was up when we had to drive waaayyyyy out into the boonies, but figured we had already invested the time in getting out there, so we kept going and finally found the place we were looking for. We had to park our cars and then take a shuttle to where we would actually eat, and the drive in this van freaked me out, because there were spaces where we had probably an inch or two of clearance on either side of the van, but we made it there without incident and pulled up to what looked like a semi-dilapidated farm house. We were funneled into an elevator in which they only let us go up 6 at a time, although the sign inside claimed it was rated for 2000 pounds, so could each have weighed 333 pounds and still been okay, but we weren't going to argue with the guy. I was surprised when the elevator started going up, I guess for some reason I just assumed that it would be going down into the ground since I think of caves as being underground, but this one wasn't. Stepping out of the elevator was like some weird time warp, I thought I'd fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone or some camp horror movie. I suppose it's probably because this restaurant likely had its origins sometime at the peak of the popularity of Route 66, and the decor sure didn't look like it had changed much then, from the weird carpeting to the stuffed animals and bizarre fake plants. Our waitress was incredibly rude, and we waited almost half an hour for her to bring out our drinks. Dinner was served late, and pretty cold too, but it was passable. The best part of the meal was definitely the company, we had to have had almost a good half of our OBC class there, and it was fun to have something where we weren't divided up into little cliques.
All in all, aside from the fact that I can now say that I had dinner in a cave, I wasn't terribly impressed with dinner, especially since after leaving Ft. Wood at 6:40, we didn't have food on the table until 9 at night. So now I'm hoping I don't get indigestion from eating so late. Oh, and we took one of the international officers with us, which was a mistake. Actually, closer to a very large, borderline huge mistake. The guy was incredibly rude, granted I know this is not his country, but he had no social graces, he kept jumping in the middle of conversations, while people were still talking and blurting out stories that had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. Oh well, I guess at least we included him, so we did our good deed for the weekend.
I don't know what I was expecting from a restaurant in a cave, but tonight was probably a one-off trip, because it wasn't anything stellar. We started to wonder what was up when we had to drive waaayyyyy out into the boonies, but figured we had already invested the time in getting out there, so we kept going and finally found the place we were looking for. We had to park our cars and then take a shuttle to where we would actually eat, and the drive in this van freaked me out, because there were spaces where we had probably an inch or two of clearance on either side of the van, but we made it there without incident and pulled up to what looked like a semi-dilapidated farm house. We were funneled into an elevator in which they only let us go up 6 at a time, although the sign inside claimed it was rated for 2000 pounds, so could each have weighed 333 pounds and still been okay, but we weren't going to argue with the guy. I was surprised when the elevator started going up, I guess for some reason I just assumed that it would be going down into the ground since I think of caves as being underground, but this one wasn't. Stepping out of the elevator was like some weird time warp, I thought I'd fallen into an episode of the Twilight Zone or some camp horror movie. I suppose it's probably because this restaurant likely had its origins sometime at the peak of the popularity of Route 66, and the decor sure didn't look like it had changed much then, from the weird carpeting to the stuffed animals and bizarre fake plants. Our waitress was incredibly rude, and we waited almost half an hour for her to bring out our drinks. Dinner was served late, and pretty cold too, but it was passable. The best part of the meal was definitely the company, we had to have had almost a good half of our OBC class there, and it was fun to have something where we weren't divided up into little cliques.
All in all, aside from the fact that I can now say that I had dinner in a cave, I wasn't terribly impressed with dinner, especially since after leaving Ft. Wood at 6:40, we didn't have food on the table until 9 at night. So now I'm hoping I don't get indigestion from eating so late. Oh, and we took one of the international officers with us, which was a mistake. Actually, closer to a very large, borderline huge mistake. The guy was incredibly rude, granted I know this is not his country, but he had no social graces, he kept jumping in the middle of conversations, while people were still talking and blurting out stories that had absolutely nothing to do with what we were talking about. Oh well, I guess at least we included him, so we did our good deed for the weekend.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
My Poor Feet
Half of my class spent yesterday and today hobbling around like old people from the aches and pains after land nav. Of course, it didn't help matters that this morning we got to take an APFT. Wonderful timing, coming less than 30 hours after the end of land nav as it did. Oh well, at least I don't have to go out to do land nav again.
My feet weren't as bad as some people's were, but they still hurt an awful lot. I even had to choke down my pride and go over to the fire station last night to have Tana fix them up for me. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of mole skin and bag balm, my feet are slowly but surely on their way to recovery, although I think I'm going to be hobbling for the majority of the weekend.
Yes, life is so exciting here (and I'm procrastinating on writing and OPORD that I really don't want to do), that I have nothing better to do than write about my poor feet being blistered, bruised and battered (how was that for alliteration). Well, at least it keeps my mind off of worrying about stupid things.
My feet weren't as bad as some people's were, but they still hurt an awful lot. I even had to choke down my pride and go over to the fire station last night to have Tana fix them up for me. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of mole skin and bag balm, my feet are slowly but surely on their way to recovery, although I think I'm going to be hobbling for the majority of the weekend.
Yes, life is so exciting here (and I'm procrastinating on writing and OPORD that I really don't want to do), that I have nothing better to do than write about my poor feet being blistered, bruised and battered (how was that for alliteration). Well, at least it keeps my mind off of worrying about stupid things.
Wednesday, September 21, 2005
Spiders, Ticks, and Sweat - aka Land Navigation
Wow. So my last post I complained about sitting through boring classes. Well, today may have started off with a boring class (a review of terrain features, map reading, etc), but this afternoon was definitely not an opportunity to snooze. We got all battle-rattled up for the first time (well, second technically since we did HMMWV familiarization yesterday), and went out for land nav.
I wasn't really sure how confident I should be, because the last time I did land nav was Buckner during the summer of '01. It put things in perspective realizing that when I was last out navigating through woods, the Twin Towers were still standing, Al Quaeda had not entered the American lexicon, and we were an Army training for peacetime missions. In other words, it's been awhile since I've done anything like that. We didn't do a practice course or anything, just dove right into the graded event, in which we had four hours to find five points. It sounds easy enough, until you actually get out on the course and see the vegetation and terrain. Yikes. That's all I could think of to say, yikes! I had sweated through my BDUs within twenty minutes of being out there, which was only a foreshadowing of the day to come, because all told, I drank over a gallon of water and didn't have to use the restroom a single time. Yeah, I was a wee tiny bit wet.
I found my first point within fifteen minutes (prior to the BDU sweat-thru) and was feeling pretty darn confident about my land nav abilities. Then I spent almost an hour trying to find the second point. At that point I started to worry. It took another hour trying to find my third point, at which time I had just about an hour and a half to find two more points and make it back to turn my card in on time. And, as fate would have it, I managed to lose my scoring card. Talk about a panic attack. I spent almost half an hour trying to figure out where I lost it, but managed (in what seemed to me a case of divine intervention), to turn into the woods at the exact location where I had come out, and sure enough, in a patch of sunlight (no joke), was my white scorecard. I would almost have sworn that there was a chorus singing "Halleluia," but that was probably just my heart about to burst from gratefulness before I said a quick prayer to the Lord for watching over me. Otherwise I would have failed without question. To make a long story short, I found the next two points in short order, and had what seemed like waaay more than enough time to follow the railroad tracks back to the start point and submit my card. Except that I went too far along the tracks, and ended up having to do an all out sprint (with my sorely aching tootsies screaming in pain), to turn in my card with a whole whopping three minutes or so to spare. I think I used up my share of good luck today, because things ended up working out well, though I definitely had a great reason to worry twice today.
The bug life today was awful. I lost count of how many spider webs I ran into face first. Let me put it this way, I ran into enough that I even stopped caring, and I am one of the biggest spider-disliking people you can probably find. It just kind of became an unconscious routine to wipe the sweat and spiderwebs off my face every minute. Spiders in Missouri are awfully industrious individuals, some of these webs were enormous, and left me with quite a squeamish feeling. I guess I almost feel bad because as large as some of these webs were, they had to have been some poor arachnid's life work. Oh well, I needed to get through and I couldn't very well go around every spider web in the woods. When we got back, we all performed the customary tick check.... and boy, am I grateful that I did. I found three ticks on me out there, one in my thumb, one on my forearm and one near my wrist (along with three squished on the palm of my hand), I guess I must have put my hand down in a nest of them or something, although at least I didn't end up with as many as one of the guys did, he had over fifty on his legs because he'd worn his boots bloused. Then, during our hour for dinner, I changed into a dry t-shirt and found two more ticks that had decided that they wanted to live under the band of my sports bra. Talk about disgusting. Oh well, at least they weren't deer ticks, so I shouldn't have to worry about any side effects. I'm just glad I got all of them off.
Night land nav was probably even worse than day, although it was purely for the same of familiarization, and was not a graded event. We stumbled around pitch black woods for over two hours, I kept rolling my ankle, and we didn't even end up finding a single point because they hadn't put out chem lights or anything. But, again, it wasn't graded so it didn't matter too much, although it was perhaps a humbling experience to be one of the groups that failed to find any points.
All in all, today was long, hot, sweaty, full of bugs and creepy crawlies. However, we were out in the 'field' doing something that involved working more than my writing muscles. I'm sure I'm going to be sore tomorrow, but at least I know I did something today.
I wasn't really sure how confident I should be, because the last time I did land nav was Buckner during the summer of '01. It put things in perspective realizing that when I was last out navigating through woods, the Twin Towers were still standing, Al Quaeda had not entered the American lexicon, and we were an Army training for peacetime missions. In other words, it's been awhile since I've done anything like that. We didn't do a practice course or anything, just dove right into the graded event, in which we had four hours to find five points. It sounds easy enough, until you actually get out on the course and see the vegetation and terrain. Yikes. That's all I could think of to say, yikes! I had sweated through my BDUs within twenty minutes of being out there, which was only a foreshadowing of the day to come, because all told, I drank over a gallon of water and didn't have to use the restroom a single time. Yeah, I was a wee tiny bit wet.
I found my first point within fifteen minutes (prior to the BDU sweat-thru) and was feeling pretty darn confident about my land nav abilities. Then I spent almost an hour trying to find the second point. At that point I started to worry. It took another hour trying to find my third point, at which time I had just about an hour and a half to find two more points and make it back to turn my card in on time. And, as fate would have it, I managed to lose my scoring card. Talk about a panic attack. I spent almost half an hour trying to figure out where I lost it, but managed (in what seemed to me a case of divine intervention), to turn into the woods at the exact location where I had come out, and sure enough, in a patch of sunlight (no joke), was my white scorecard. I would almost have sworn that there was a chorus singing "Halleluia," but that was probably just my heart about to burst from gratefulness before I said a quick prayer to the Lord for watching over me. Otherwise I would have failed without question. To make a long story short, I found the next two points in short order, and had what seemed like waaay more than enough time to follow the railroad tracks back to the start point and submit my card. Except that I went too far along the tracks, and ended up having to do an all out sprint (with my sorely aching tootsies screaming in pain), to turn in my card with a whole whopping three minutes or so to spare. I think I used up my share of good luck today, because things ended up working out well, though I definitely had a great reason to worry twice today.
The bug life today was awful. I lost count of how many spider webs I ran into face first. Let me put it this way, I ran into enough that I even stopped caring, and I am one of the biggest spider-disliking people you can probably find. It just kind of became an unconscious routine to wipe the sweat and spiderwebs off my face every minute. Spiders in Missouri are awfully industrious individuals, some of these webs were enormous, and left me with quite a squeamish feeling. I guess I almost feel bad because as large as some of these webs were, they had to have been some poor arachnid's life work. Oh well, I needed to get through and I couldn't very well go around every spider web in the woods. When we got back, we all performed the customary tick check.... and boy, am I grateful that I did. I found three ticks on me out there, one in my thumb, one on my forearm and one near my wrist (along with three squished on the palm of my hand), I guess I must have put my hand down in a nest of them or something, although at least I didn't end up with as many as one of the guys did, he had over fifty on his legs because he'd worn his boots bloused. Then, during our hour for dinner, I changed into a dry t-shirt and found two more ticks that had decided that they wanted to live under the band of my sports bra. Talk about disgusting. Oh well, at least they weren't deer ticks, so I shouldn't have to worry about any side effects. I'm just glad I got all of them off.
Night land nav was probably even worse than day, although it was purely for the same of familiarization, and was not a graded event. We stumbled around pitch black woods for over two hours, I kept rolling my ankle, and we didn't even end up finding a single point because they hadn't put out chem lights or anything. But, again, it wasn't graded so it didn't matter too much, although it was perhaps a humbling experience to be one of the groups that failed to find any points.
All in all, today was long, hot, sweaty, full of bugs and creepy crawlies. However, we were out in the 'field' doing something that involved working more than my writing muscles. I'm sure I'm going to be sore tomorrow, but at least I know I did something today.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Mindnumbing
I think at some point in my life I will simply have to accept that I have to sit through things that are completely boring, and that I will have to learn to stay awake. However, I'm still struggling in fighting the z-monster... even with a full 8 hours of sleep the night before. We have had some of the most incredibly boring classes in the past few days, and it's funny watching everyone in the class struggling to stay awake. Shoot, at one point even our instructor was struggling to stay awake and he was the one teaching the doggone class!
In other news, I was supposed to be going out to West Point this weekend for the Army-Baylor football game and the Systems Department tailgate afterwards, but because of things changing the trip has been cancelled. I didn't even realize how excited I was about the trip until I heard the voicemail cancelling it. Still, in all fairness, it is probably for the best, because this way I won't start off next week exhausted. I was looking forward to seeing my brother and sister, my sponsor family, and Grant Hall pizza, but that will all save for some other time, and at least I don't have to be at St. Louis airport for a 6 am flight on Saturday anymore.
In other news, I was supposed to be going out to West Point this weekend for the Army-Baylor football game and the Systems Department tailgate afterwards, but because of things changing the trip has been cancelled. I didn't even realize how excited I was about the trip until I heard the voicemail cancelling it. Still, in all fairness, it is probably for the best, because this way I won't start off next week exhausted. I was looking forward to seeing my brother and sister, my sponsor family, and Grant Hall pizza, but that will all save for some other time, and at least I don't have to be at St. Louis airport for a 6 am flight on Saturday anymore.
Saturday, September 10, 2005
One of the Longest 4 Day Weeks Ever
To begin with, all I can say is thank goodness this week was only 4 days long. I would not have survived a fifth day. It was that long.
Granted, I'm sure a big part of it is that even after being back in a routine for awhile, I'm still not quite digging the whole waking up at odd hours of the morning, and dreading the days when I have to set my alarm clock to go off before 0500. That's just wrong in my opinion. 5 is an insane hour to be awake in the normal scheme of things, but at least it's only slightly abnormal. Any time that begins with 04__ is just not right. Argh, oh well, enough on that.
We also had quite a long block of NBC instruction this week, which began after taking an absolutely brutal combat service support test. Our instructors are beginning to wonder what is wrong with our class, because apparently we had more people fail that exam than they have ever had before. Wonderful. At least we're giving ourselves plenty of room to improve as a class... I hope. Well, the guy we had teaching us constantly referred to himself in the third person, rambled off on the most ridiculous tangents, and at times treated us as if we were elementary school students, not a room full of officers with college degrees.
This morning capped it all off with a run that went downhill for over a mile. Yes, the hill was over a mile long. So while it wasn't too terribly bad on the way down, jarring our joints aside, it was absolute misery on the way back up. Oh well, TGIF.
Granted, I'm sure a big part of it is that even after being back in a routine for awhile, I'm still not quite digging the whole waking up at odd hours of the morning, and dreading the days when I have to set my alarm clock to go off before 0500. That's just wrong in my opinion. 5 is an insane hour to be awake in the normal scheme of things, but at least it's only slightly abnormal. Any time that begins with 04__ is just not right. Argh, oh well, enough on that.
We also had quite a long block of NBC instruction this week, which began after taking an absolutely brutal combat service support test. Our instructors are beginning to wonder what is wrong with our class, because apparently we had more people fail that exam than they have ever had before. Wonderful. At least we're giving ourselves plenty of room to improve as a class... I hope. Well, the guy we had teaching us constantly referred to himself in the third person, rambled off on the most ridiculous tangents, and at times treated us as if we were elementary school students, not a room full of officers with college degrees.
This morning capped it all off with a run that went downhill for over a mile. Yes, the hill was over a mile long. So while it wasn't too terribly bad on the way down, jarring our joints aside, it was absolute misery on the way back up. Oh well, TGIF.
Saturday, September 03, 2005
Home for Labor Day
It's amazing, for the first time in recent memory, I was actually able to drive home for a long weekend. Granted it was a 7.5 hour drive or so, but I didn't have to fly anywhere. It felt somewhat strange. Someone suggested books on CD for driving, and I will say that it helped to have something to keep me awake and alert for the drive. I wish I'd discovered the concept sooner.
I haven't done too much this weekend, but it has been a relief to have a bit of a respite from the killer pace that class has been for the first few weeks. It also helped to have a bit of a recovery time from being sick last week, when I didn't have to worry about waking up before the crack of dawn to make it to PT on time. Hopefully I won't lose too much of my fitness level in the four days :-)
Nothing of note has really happened in the last week, just an awful lot of classes and trying to cram as much Army knowledge as possible into the tiny space that is left in my brain. After almost 20 years of schooling, I'm amazed that there's any room left at all, pretty soon I'm going to reach that point like in the Farside cartoon where the kid raises his hand and asks the teacher if he can be excused because his brain is full. I feel like that kid. My brain is full. It hurts to try and remember anything else - so I'm blaming any and all future headaches on information overload.
I haven't done too much this weekend, but it has been a relief to have a bit of a respite from the killer pace that class has been for the first few weeks. It also helped to have a bit of a recovery time from being sick last week, when I didn't have to worry about waking up before the crack of dawn to make it to PT on time. Hopefully I won't lose too much of my fitness level in the four days :-)
Nothing of note has really happened in the last week, just an awful lot of classes and trying to cram as much Army knowledge as possible into the tiny space that is left in my brain. After almost 20 years of schooling, I'm amazed that there's any room left at all, pretty soon I'm going to reach that point like in the Farside cartoon where the kid raises his hand and asks the teacher if he can be excused because his brain is full. I feel like that kid. My brain is full. It hurts to try and remember anything else - so I'm blaming any and all future headaches on information overload.
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