Entered on 17 June 2003 at 8:46 a.m..
Yesterday with the Army
So spending yesterday with the army was a lot of fun. In the morning we did your usual mental challenges where you rope off an area and call it a mine field, with strategic safe spots. Your job is to get your entire group across it without getting anyone killed. This involves crawling, hefting and and hauling one another over varous obstacles. My group did well, and we managed to complete both challenges and only lose one person.
Then we got to go out paintballing on a range. This meant that they'd set up some targets, hidden in some woodland. Then they marched us through one by one and let us shoot at the "bad guys" we saw. I was actually a pretty good shot, and quite please with myself.
Then we broke for lunch. It was a hot day (mid 80s) which would be lovely if you weren't sitting out in direct sunlight wearing fatigue trousers and jackets. Next we went back out to the wooded grass lands for some camaflague training (someone took pictures so I'll post them when I get coppies). We painted ourselves up, decorated our helmets with folliage and hid while waiting for others to find us.
The pollen count was really bad yesterday and it seemed as if everyone was suffering. Everyone that is except me (yeah alegra), which was a strange experience because normally I'm the one with watery eyes and runny nose. Anyway we had to cut short the field experience because everyone was so miserable and people were starting to break out in rashes.
Because it was so hot, we weren't allowed to run the assault corse. Instead they decided to just walk us through all of the obstacles. Now this was really fun, and I was having a good time, until I convinced myself that I could climb a 5 foot wall by running at it. Let's just say my left knee wasn't up for the jumping part. It came out of joint again and I ended up re-spraining it. The good news it that I was wearing my brace at the time, so the sprain isn't as bad this time and I'm hobbling around slowly. Sigh. No more running or jumping for Karen until August.