A few days ago we had land navigation training.  We learned how to find our way from one point to another over land using a map, compass and protractor.  It was actually a lot of fun, the only thing that sucked is that we had to do it in full battle rattle.  We paired up in teams of two and they gave us a list of coordinates and a starting point and we had to find 3 of the 5 locations and make it back to the start in 3 hours.  The locations were about 1km apart on average and were marked with an orange and white sign with a number on it.  We had to write down the number on the sign at each point we went to and that’s how they knew we found the correct spot or not.  Then that night we had to come back and do it again in the dark.  It’s a little harder to keep your heading in the dark because you can’t see very far to pick out a waypoint, but the locations were close together and we only had to find 2 out of 3 to pass.

We’ve also started our combat patrol training learning how to conduct convoys.  It was pretty fun training too, mostly focusing on how to spot and avoid IEDs.  The first part of it was classroom, then we went out and walked a road pretending we were in vehicles.  We got blew up a couple times, some of the IEDs were really hard to see.  The next day we did it again but in real vehicles.  We spotted all the IEDs but they still told us we got blown up so we could practice towing a disabled vehicle out of the kill zone.

The other interesting training we had was Army combatives training.  We had 8 hours of it out in a pit filled with rubber mulch.  They taught us different takedowns and holds, but if it gets to the point we have to use it we’re already in big trouble.  It was fun though, we got to do some live sparring too.  We couldn’t punch or kick or anything, only submissions and chokes.  And we couldn’t stand up farther than our knees just to keep people from getting hurt.

Now we’ll be in these barracks for a couple days then we’ll head back to the tent city.  Today and tomorrow are supposed to be easy days with no training scheduled which will be really nice.  For the last couple weeks our days started before 6am and ended around 10:30 or 11pm.  That doesn’t leave much time for any personal stuff at all so I’m really looking forward to taking it easy today and tomorrow!

I’ve been putting up pictures at www.picasaweb.com/mbrameld/CST

We have a chow hall about a 5 minute walk away from the barracks and the food is pretty darn good.  I’d always heard that Army chow halls sucked but it’s just as good as any AF chow hall I’ve eaten in.  Food’s free while we’re in training and while we’re deployed, so that makes it taste that much better.  We’re moving out to a mock Forward Operating Base (FOB) in a week or so and the food situation will be a little different there.  We’ll get hot food for breakfast and dinner, but lunch will be MREs which I haven’t had since basic.  Supposedly they’ve improved a ton since back then, but I’ll let you know after I’ve had a few.

We’ve been issued a ton of equipment and I have a whole box of crap that I brought from Lackland that I don’t need that I’ll be sending home.  We’re getting all Army gear and it’s all brand new, top of the line stuff.  It’s way better than what the Air Force is using.  I’m not sure how much of it we’ll get to keep, but I’m going to keep as much as I can.  Friday is our final equipment issue, we get our body armor (brand new stuff) and our weapons.  It’ll be nice to get our weapons but it adds an extra layer of ass-pain to the daily routine.  We can’t take our weapons anywhere until we get out to the FOB, so whenever we’re not in the barracks (which is the majority of the day) we have to leave our weapons and a guard.

The weather’s been about as great as I could hope for.  It’s been pretty cool with a couple of mornings that were down right chilly.  It was rainy all day today, but I’ll take that over 90 – 100 degree days any time.

I uploaded a few more pictures to the CST album too.

So far everybody I’ve met has been cool.  We have a van for our team and we’ve been to the BX a couple times to kill time.  Tomorrow’s the first real day of training, so I’ll post an update tomorrow evening.  I found out I could connect my phone to my laptop to get internet access for an extra $10 a month, so I added that to my plan and now I have internet access in the barracks.

I took a few pics, they’re up HERE.  I’ll be adding more to that CST album as I take ‘em.