Obstacle Course, Victory Tower, Radios

Well, we have been busy.

Do you remember those old Army commercials where they said, "we do more before 9am than most people do in a day"? It is still true.

Yesterday we marched to the obstacle course in the morning, came back for lunch and then went to the victory tower in the afternoon.

It seemed like it was cold all morning. On top of that, I have a spot in my right boot that is rubbing on the top of my foot. I have been using moleskin, but it has bruised the area, so walking is just getting painful now. No blister, just pain.

The obstacle course was a fun series' of challenges in order to get a small group of us working as a team and cooperating under a volunteered leader. It was fun, but somewhat physically challenging in some cases.

The victory tower was a series of challenges that included using rope bridges, rope ladders, and rappelling. This was a lot of fun too, but even more challenging. At least it had warmed up a bit.

Then today, we woke up and did PT (physical training) at 0600, and yeah, it was cold again. Then we trained on radios and did some classes in the afternoon that included a discussion on the chaplain being a non-combatant.

This was a very interesting discussion. In case you did not know, chaplains are not allowed to carry, use, train on, or even transport weapons or ammunition. Our discussion of course centered mostly around the ideas of why can we not even train with them, and what happens when you are caught up in a fire-fight?

Tomorrow should be another interesting day. We will be training with gas-masks, and then we will go to the local gas chamber (you have one of those, right?) and testing them out. Part of the "testing" is that you have to take the masks off in the chamber. My understanding is that this causes a great deal of coughing, the flow of snot, and a great deal of arm flapping to get the stuff off of you and your clothes. I'm sure it will be a fun time for all.

Blog updates may be delayed at this point for recovery time. :-)

Here are some more pics from the last couple days.

Your blogger,
Corey