Headin' Out

I head out tomorrow to return home. Susan, check your cox.net email for details.


Outta here,
Eric

It's the Final Countdown

It's kind of late here and I'm writing this blog. The rest of the guys in the open bay barracks have hit the sack and it's pretty dark. I thought about not posting, but I think I should.

Today was our last day of training. Technically, tomorrow could have been another training day, but we finished up everything early. Now, I have to see if I can change my plane tickets to an earlier date. I hope so.



It would be nice to spend a little more time with family. My mother-in-law is supposed to be in town then and my parents are coming up during that time, too. Maybe fate will be with me on this one.


That's it for this evening. Over and out,
Eric

On the Road Again

It's been a few days since I last posted comments here. But I'm back and ready to update you on my latest adventures. Those adventures would include some urban ops, as well as some convoy stuff. Again, I'll remind you that I don't expect my job to involve any of the above-mentioned items, but who knows.

While most of my group have been hoofing it around little fake villages, I've been in my HMMWV. As they went through this little town, building by building, I sat there with my engine idling. Whenever they needed us, they'd call us in.

Yesterday and today, however, we did some convoy stuff. Yesterday was a lot of instruction (under a tent, no seats, so it was stand, kneel, or sit on the ground). That was fun. Today, they ran us through a bunch of scenarios, in which I also drove my HMMWV, a lot. It really was pretty fun.

Now I'm down to two more days of training. I'm not sure what outbriefings we'll have to attend after that, but my return home date is still the 1st.


See you peeps later,
Eric

Urban Cowboy

So, for the last three days we've been learning about clearing rooms and marching in formations into cities, etc. Today would've probably been okay, but it was so looooong. We had the old death by powerpoint in the morning for a few hours and then we went into the "field." We had to march around, dive onto the ground, jump up, run around some more, yell a little bit, run around a little more, avoid running in front of any weapons (which were not loaded), and then stand around out of breath while we rehashed everything we did wrong. Fun, fun, fun.

It's the final countdown here, now. Just over a week to go and I'll be headed back to home-sweet-home. Can't wait.


Eric

Fire on the Mountain

More firing practice today. Not only that, but they liked us so much, we get to go back tonight and fire some more. I guess it really doesn't hurt to have as much firing practice as possible: day time, night time, anytime. I'll take it.

Additionally, they taught us how to clear a house, room by room. Now, a lot of this training really has nothing to do with the job that I'm going to do. It's still better to have some basic knowledge of these jobs and never need it.

Less than two weeks before I get back to the family. FYI, I still haven't received the package that was mailed to me earlier this week. It might not hurt to check on its progress.


Eric

Crawling, Walking, Running

Today was another fun day. We learned how to move... Army style. We low crawled, we high crawled, we walked and we ran. And after running a little bit we'd throw ourselves back on the rocky/sandy ground. To top it all off, while we were running and hiding behind mounds of dirt and old vehicles, we had a couple of guys shooting paint balls at us.

At any rate, one phase of our training has ended and we are entering another one. For the next ten days (or so) we'll be putting into practice all the things we've been learning so far. It should prove to be interesting.


Gotta run,
Eric

Ground Control to Major Tom

We had a little more radio and navigation training today. Again, it was pretty fun. We used a couple of different electronic items to navigate both on foot and in a vehicle. Move around, find the specified points, write down the number, Bob's your uncle, you're back.

I guess the big thing right now is all the tension. I think the constant training and separation from family is getting to many people. We are way past the polite stage now, so there are a lot of things getting to people. Small segments of our group do act as a team, but we haven't quite formed ourselves up as a complete team, yet. I think the fact that we know we're not going to be stationed together may be a barrier to the whole team concept. We'll have to see what happens over the next two weeks.

Speaking of the hard work we've been doing and the stress we're all under, we went bowling yesterday. We had to go over to the Ft. to return some items, so we stopped in. It really was a pretty good stress relief, for the most part. I was pretty proud of my first game (158). My second game was pretty good, too (122). Anyway, it made me a little homesick to get back and watch my kids doing their bowling thing.


Guess that's all for now. Miss everyone and looking forward to getting back home,
Eric