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

The Last Week

Hey all,

It's been a little while since I've posted anything, we had a major multinational airborne operation the first week of May that consumed a lot of time and energy, we were rewarded with a three day weekend, however, that friday evening, I started feeling a bit of a sore throat. That sore throat turned into a cold that ruined my weekend, slept a lot, blew my nose a lot, etc. For me the last week was a three day work week, thanks to having duty on Thursday evening (Friday was off, but I slept until 1400).

I have learned that duty in the Army is a far different creature. I think it is wasteful of time and badly managed. They had put out the May duty roster at the end of April, so I knew that I had the weekends off. For Memorial Day, we have a four day weekend, so I signed up for a trip to Copan, where there are Mayan ruins. Last Thursday I opened a revised duty roster showing that I was supposed to have duty on Memorial Day, I was like, NO WAY! I was not a happy camper. The change was really due to an error by the Duty roster coordinator, which in they Navy would mean the watchbill coordinator would be standing that duty, but no, the Army just says stick it to the next available person. The Army actually has a regulation addressing duty rotations. It is kinda stupid, the Navy actually troubles to differ between duty that falls on regular weekends, vice duty that falls on holiday weekends...

This last weekend, we spent Saturday at the orphanage. Some little girl was trying to teach me a spanish version of patty-cake. Given that I am so overwhelmingly coordinated, it didn't work too well. Sunday was a trip to Valley of Angels, a souvenir town about 2 hours away, followed by stop at the Mall in the capital, Tegucigalpa. I bought a couple of knick-nacks and then at the mall I looked in the bookstore before we went to eat a TGI Fridays, actually a decent meal that was a welcome break from the Dining Facility here on base. Below are a couple of pictures.

The group I was with, L to R, Eduardo (CIV), Sureisa (USAF) Gwendolyn (USA), Lilija (USA).

A nice representation of the base composition.

The town is a little country, as evidence by the horses.