Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Back to the Confidence Course

Today we returned to the Confidence Course. I was one of the safeties for the course--which is something like being a condom: Everybody around me is breathing hard and having a good time, but I am just there to prevent accidents.

The Confidence course is an imposing array of high, tough obstacles. Groups of soldiers move from obstacle to obstacle, some require teams, some are individual efforts. Throughout the day, soldiers surprised each other--good and bad--with what they could complete with easy and what they found tough or impossible. A soldier who was scrambling up and down all kinds of obstacles had to be pushed off the the platform on the Flight to Freedom (ride down a Zip line) and another soldier who climbed to the top of the vertical ladder while several other soldiers could not make it.

All morning I unhooked soldiers zooming down the Zip line. In the afternoon, I went over some of the obstacles. After stressing my shoulder at the PT Test, I did not do anything crazy, just these:

I am the one on the right, crawling over the top.

I don't think this one is me, but this is one obstacle I went down, until I dropped into the net.



And this one. Easier to get up than down.

"Blindness" by Jose Saramago--terrifying look at society falling apart

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