Just a Short Ride to the Lake

When I don't have enough time to ride around the artillery range (28 miles) I ride to the lake recreation area and back, a 16-mile trip. I still; have not gotten used to the sights I see on these rides. At the end of the first mile I am riding past Medicine Bluff, legendary cliffs where Geronimo is supposed to have jumped with his horse 300 feet down into the river below and survived.

On the 2nd mile of today's ride I rode past a towed artillery battery with four guns under camouflage nets getting ready to fire. At mile 6 a rider blew past me without waving. I was riding with flat pedals in uniform with combat boots. The other rider had racing spandex on, but he had leg hair and looked a little too thick in the middle to be a racer. The steepest hill on was less than a mile ahead so I bent down and started riding after him. I also moved instinctively to the edge of the road to be fast as possible. A moment before the competitive brain turned on I was thinking this is the stretch of road where I saw the wild pigs and the rattlesnake. I rounded an uphill right turn and almost ran over an armadillo. It was dead at the edge of the road, but very big. So I moved back out to the middle of the road and kept pedaling. I caught the other rider just below the crest of the hill. He waved this time. I don't have to wonder if I still feel competitive.



On the way back, I heard the boom of a howitzer. The battery had just started to fire. As I rounded the corner to the clearing where the battery was set up, a towed 155mm howitzer fired a round. About 15 seconds later a gray cloud plumed on the hillside seven miles away--the same hillside where the rounds land in the "Fire Mission" (Click Click Boom) video. And about ten seconds after that the dull thud of impact echos back to where I am riding. I rode slowly and watched a couple more rounds go, then finished the ride and went to chow.

I am going to miss the sights of Oklahoma rides, but not the Oklahoma wind.

Zombie Film Review and the Formula 1 Racing Season

Just after 10 pm I went to the dayroom to see if it would be possible for me to watch the Grand Prix of Australia on the big-screen TV. There were a half-dozen watching a movie, but it did not look like any of them would be hanging around until 1 am when the race started.

NOTE: I am a devoted fan of the Formula 1 World Championship car racing and have been for many years. How much of a fan you ask? My favorite driver is 1992 champion Nigel Mansell. And my son's name is. . . Nigel.


NIGEL MANSELL 1992 FORMULA 1 CHAMPION


LEWIS HAMILTON--FORMULA 1 CHAMPION 2008
One of the people watching the movie was sergeant who let me know the movie the assembled group was watching was (I think) "28 Days." He said it is the best Zombie movie ever made. I left.

Later on, near midnight I was walking down the hallway toward the dayroom to watch the race. I ran into the sergeant who told repeated his high esteem of the Zombie movie. I told him I was glad to know there are ratings of every sort of human endeavor, but even the best Zombie movie was not something I could see myself watching. It was clear the fan of Zombie movies feels the same way about watching a car race.

The race broadcast live from Eastern Australia at 5pm local time, 1 am Oklahoma time. I watched the first hour, but could not hang in for the end. My son Nigel's favorite driver is Lewis Hamilton, a British driver of African descent who is the reigning world champion. Hamilton started 18th and finished fourth. Since the TV is gone at my house, I will be able to tell Nigel how his favorite driver did when we talk later today.

Suicide Prevention--Best Army Training Film I have Ever Seen

Every soldier here had to take a three-hour class on suicide prevention. Sad subject, but as the class progressed I could not help thinking this is the best Army video I have ever seen. For those who have not seen military instructional videos, imagine your least favorite safety video and then imagine the script and final production is reviewed by an 18-layer bureaucracy.

But this video was different. The subject clearly is so serious that whoever had responsibility for it, decided to go with Best Practices on making a video rather than taking a vague, edited message in four-syllable, Latin-derived words and trying to shoot a video around it.

This video was interactive. We saw a scenario, we talked about what the soldier should do next then watched where that course of action lead. One scenario could lead to a bad end, another to saving the soldier's life. We could see both the good and the bad play out.

But the real reason this video work is that everyone knew somewhere in the back of their mind the plot of this video. Whoever wrote the script was a soldier or knows our culture cold because the plot line of the script was following what happens to a soldier who is the victim of Jody.

Who is Jody? From the 1st day of basic training soldiers, airmen and marines sing about a mythical guy named Jody who was your best friend back home. As we march, we sing about how Jody is:
--sleeping with our girlfriend/spouse
--driving our car
--emptying our bank account
--living in our house
You get the idea.

In the video we see a good soldier who is going on combat patrols in Iraq turn progressively worse as he gets a dear John letter, finds out his girlfriend is pregnant with Jody's child, hears from home Jody is driving his car and living in his house, and Jody has emptied his bank account.

In the video we see the soldier deal with these things alone and how it could lead to suicide. Then we see what happens when he gets help. Then just when the Jody's victim is straightening his life out, his best buddy is killed on patrol. The soldier has to get control of his life without the guy who pulled him through the last crisis.

It has a happy ending, assuming you choose the right path.

If you want to know more about Jody, you can look him up on Wikipedia, or better yet, watch the movie Jarhead. As you read this, some formation of soldiers somewhere is marching down a road singing:
"Ain't no use in goin' home, Jody's got your girl and gone . . ."

I could not find a song about Jody on You Tube, but here's a marching song so you get the idea of the sound. Jarhead is still the best source for seeing how Jody fits in soldier's lives.

Here's excerpts from Full Metal Jacket--an awesome movie about Basic Training:

Worried About What?

Earlier this week we got a briefing on the two or three weeks we will spend in Kuwait before going to Iraq. During the briefing we found out we were likely to be living in 200-man tents, huge open spaces that will give us 199 roommates. That news barely raised a murmur. They told us it could be blazing hot, but that did raise much of a reaction. In fact, the average temps during our stay, according to Google weather is mid-90s for highs, 70s for lows. Arctic conditions compared to what everyone has been telling us.

So what got everyone buzzing? They told us we would get one phone call per week and have to stand in line three hours to get that call, and there would be little or no internet service for us. That got everyone upset. No internet!!! Only the few soldiers willing to pay $1+ per minute or more for AT&T service will have cell phones. It will be interesting to see just what everyone does without internet. . .and without text messages. Almost all the squad leaders text formation and other information. I just got one telling me to verify my weapon was cleaned and turned in.

Before we go to Iraq, we will have a three-week fast from internet, cell phones, text messaging and very limited phone access. I can't even guess what people will do instead.

Convoy Training--Age Shows After it's Over

Sometimes I feel good about my ability to keep up with the 20- and 30-year-olds. Then reality shows itself on the smiling face of a 20-year-old who is in shape. On the first day of convoy training, we did not do anything particularly strenuous. Mostly, we stood outside wearing more than 40 pounds of Kevlar vest and helmet, gas mask, weapon, and a Camel Back and walked about a mile. But it was a hot day, we were out in the sun and a 25mph wind in the afternoon. After the first day of convoy training ended, two soldiers went running. Me and the guy who used me to wipe up some of the dirt in the field where we did Combatives (hand-to-hand combat) last May.

I was so sore and tired I ran three minutes slower than Saturday for the fast two miles of a three-mile run. The 22-year-old's time was also off. He was 30 seconds slower than his last run, but he thought it might be the course. He ran two miles in just over 12 minutes. He could have run three miles and beat my two-mile time.

Now it's Wednesday. We just ended the longest day of convoy training. We actually did pretty well up until the last exercise today when the convoy commander got taken out of the exercise and the assistant commander (me) took his place. I'll try explain on Saturday when the training ends.

Goodbye Roomie

This morning at 3 am our roommate went home. He was a 22-year-old mechanic who joined us just three weeks ago, one of the later arrivals. He came here over the maximum weight, but his home unit sent him anyway. He was a great guy and we hoped he could lose weight fast enough to be able to deploy with us. But late last week the medical staff decided he could not lose weight fast enough to be ready to go and be healthy, so they sent him home.

So how overweight was our roommate? I don't know exactly because there is a complex formula called taping that takes into account the general size of a soldier's body to determine maximum weight. Specialist Big Dude weighed 335 pounds the day he arrived. He is a weightlifter. He has a size 19 neck and has trouble finding clothes in general and gloves in particular. Even Army XXLs are tight on him.

I only worked with him a few times in the motorpool, but it was clear he is a good mechanic. We were a team on the SAW (machine gun) range. I qualified. He was a sharpshooter and was one target away from expert (the best). He is also a sharpshooter with a rifle. But at his size, he can't run two miles at anything close to the maximum time. So he is back home now. I really will miss him when he is awake, but not when he is sleeping. He was in the bunk above me (Yes, we have very strong beds.) and snored so loud he made the bed shake. Some nights I would wait for the moment when he quit snoring and will myself to sleep before he started again.

Our first roommate lasted about a week before they sent him home. He had a previous back injury that was too severe for deployment. In a couple of days we get another roommate. I hope our room is not medical bad luck for him.

Convoy Training

Today we dressed up in all of our field gear and spent the day learning about how to avoid getting killed by Improvised Explosive Devices, better know as IEDs. This first day was all classes. The rest of the week we will be rolling in convoy and learning what to do to find and stop IED attacks. I'll write more later in the week when we are moving long distances and getting "attacked" on the road.