Another Long Jump Into the Future

My week off passed pretty uneventfully. Charles was busy with school, it was still cold outside, and I really wasn't interested in doing a lot. Just relaxing for a week without having to think about the Army was a good time. I did spend one day at work. I went to lunch with a couple of friends and caught up with happenings there. I spent close to three hours in a brainstorming session with one of them. I think we could go into business together some day. Between us, we have solved every problem we have run across with the hardware we use at work.

My last day at home, I got a call from ECRC who pointed out that my travel itinerary had me going back to Ft Bragg instead of Ft Dix. It got fixed, but it meant arriving at the Philidelphia airport close to midnight. I didn't actually get to Dix until after one AM. That was an appropriate start to this part of my training. Some of it has been interesting. Over the last two days, we have been doing driver training. I now have a military license to drive Hummvees. Tomorrow, we are drawing weapons and going to the range for the first time. I think that all this week will be in weapons qualifications. I will qualify with the M4 (M16 carbine) and M9 Baretta pistol. I will get to shoot the squad automatic weapon, the M240 machinegun, and the M203 grenade laucher too, although I wont get to qualify on them.

Most of my time here has been spent waiting. I live in a twelve man barracks room with nine Navy officers from my last course and two Army officers, who by now have been mostly converted into to the Navy. We have a lot of fun, but mostly we complain about the Army. We get up early every morning and then wait for transportation to wherever we are having our training. Then we wait for everyone to arrive, then for the training to start, then for transportation to our next stop. Today, we finished the training evolution in about an hour, then waited for almost three more hours to find out what we were doing next.

All of us Navy types have a hard time believing that it is even possible to be so unorganized. The Navy mentality would not allow this kind of time wasting to occur. Long days aren't so bad if you are actually doing something. If there isn't anything to do, let your people take care of their own business. Nothing will change, so all we can do is complain among ourselves.

Internet is very slow here, but I will try to post a little more about my current training.