Failing, Growing Older, and Other Things I Did in the Army.

Wow, it has been ten days since my last post. That is both disappointing, and completely understandable. I started out with every intention of making a record of every day of training, both for my own amusement later on, and for the sake of anyone who enters BOLC in the future. I wanted to write a post every day. But that was before I knew how little energy I would have after a day of listening to tedious power point lectures and walking around in the Texas heat, and before I realised how much of my time would be spent trying to get, and then waiting for rides, or waiting in traffic at the gates to the base. Commutes suck, but especially so a O-Dark-Stupid in the morning. If you come to BOLC or any other Army training where living off post is an option, DO NOT DO IT if you don't have your own car. Don't do it even if you do have your own car. Driving sucks, and you will never have enough time to really do all of the things you need to be doing if you have to drive all over the place. Just live on base. Trust me. The best evidence I can give for this theory is this very post. I had a very hot, tiring day today, and still have time to write in the blog. See?

Alright, so: failing. That is what I did yesterday. I failed my PT test. For an Army PT test you have to do a certain number of situps and pushups and run two miles in a certain time, based on age and gender. If you fail any single event, you have failed the entire test, and have to retest later. Well, I failed. And, since I don't do anything half-way, I went ahead and failed all three events. I failed pushups by 2, situps by 5, and the run by 10 seconds. I used to be fit and trim and athletic. That was 12 or so years ago. But there is some good news, which is actually caused by the second thing:

Growing Older. Yeah, today is my birthday. Officially 32 years old. Almost 1/3 of 100. Honestly, I really don't care, and I don't feel old. It doesn't feel much like a birthday, either. I got all of my presents already, either before I came to training or last weekend when Dana visited. (Oh yeah, Dana visited. It was awesome, but I completely was too busy having fun to write about it. But she drove over 1000 miles to spend two days with me. If that is not love, then love doesn't exist. That is right, I said DROVE. In two days, nonetheless. My wife = Road Warrior Princess) So today I didn't have a party or ice cream, but I did have cake at lunch, and the Army was so kind as to give me a birthday present: since I am now 32 I fall into a different testing bracket for PT. If I test again, and get the exact same scores as last time, I will pass with flying colors! Sweet! This may be the first time in history that someone has been deemed to be in better physical condition simply by virtue of getting older. Gotta love the Army!

As for training, it has been mostly very dry Army/Military doctrine for the last week or two. Some of it is more interesting, but some is seriously laughable in it's monotony. We spent two hours (that I will never get back) talking about the various stages of casualty transport. This is something that I will never do, no matter what capacity the Army places me in. Or there were the three hours talking about the various kinds of companies and battalions etc. that you can be assigned to, after which our instructor said "but these are just templates. The Army can create any kind of unit of any size, based on the current need. So your own units may look nothing like these." Well great. Thanks for taking my afternoon telling me things that I may or may not ever find remotely applicable to myself. Next up: a list of people who have gone blind from intentionally staring at the sun.

Today was a change of pace, though. Today I learned how to field dress an M-16, which was really cool. For you non-military types, field-dress is Army speak for "take apart" or "disassemble." Don't ask me why they don't just say "disassemble" because I am pretty sure nobody in the Army could tell you that, either. But I digress. The training was simple, straight forward, and I went away knowing for sure that I had gained a skill that I previously did not have. We didn't get to shoot the weapon yet, but that is coming soon. I am really pumped for that. Now that I can field dress and M-16, I almost feel like a serious GI. Almost.