Playing Army

Hey all,

Just a quick post, today has been pretty mellow, a matter of recovering from yesterday, then this evening I started the 20-day class in conversational Spanish. We'll see how that turns out.

The bulk of yesterday was spent at the gun range here. I wanted to fire the M-16 rifle, which I had never fired before. It was a long hot morning. We started out having to "zero" the weapon, which means getting a sight picture, then adjusting the weapon's sights so that with your sight picture you are hitting the target dead on. The target, by the way, was a paper target that was only 25 meters (81 feet) away, but was so small that it was meant to simulate a target 300 meters away, the figure was only about 3-4 inches tall. For zeroing, we would get into the prone position, laying on the ground, one leg cocked, up on both elbows, with the muzzle resting on sandbags. We would fire three rounds, then get up to look at the target, adjust the sights, then fire three more rounds. This was painfully long, it took me 27 rounds (that was nine times up and to the target).

Once we finished zeroing, we finally got to shoot the qualification round, which was 20 rounds supported (on the sandbags), ten rounds unsupported, and ten rounds kneeling. The target was another paper target 25 meters away simulating 10 different targets at ranges from 50 meters to 300 meters. Qualification was 26, I made 27. I want to go back and try again for a higher score.

It was exhausting, in the sun and heat, I drank a little over 2 liters of water and didn't use the bathroom once, it was all sweated out. Today I was still sore, in the back, arms and legs; it was all the prone position and then getting up, back down, shoot, up, down, etc. Just some major usage of muscles in different ways than usuall.

That was my last couple of days, the rest of the week will be paperwork, yeah!!! (just kidding)

Evan