Up Even Earlier!

Today I got up earlier than usual.  Not by much.  I got up at 3:48 a.m. instead of 4:07 a.m.  But in the sad world of Zero-Dark-30, every minute counts. Today I was on the duty desk for 4:30 to 6:30 a.m.  Some of my classmates were jealous.  Being on duty on weekday mornings means you are not doing fitness training. 

So while they did pushups, situps, pullups and the other morning exercises, I was checking my email and checking ID cards of everyone who went in and out of the building. 

I am way behind on email so the time was kind of nice.  We are not allowed to have any personal items on the desk, especially personal electronics, but I can check email on the Army computer. 

At 6:30 a.m. I was released to go to class--which starts at 7:55 a.m.  I went straight to the chow hall.  Although the food here is not as lavish as the food in Iraq, breakfast is by far the best meal.  Every morning the cook who makes the eggs, Anna, sees me and makes an omelet with ham, cheese and green peppers.  Depending on the day, I  get either a biscuit and bacon or a biscuit and sausage gravy.  Sometimes home fries, sometimes grits, French toast when they have it, juice and coffee.

And for the environmental folks who read this, like my wife, we eat with metal silverware on plates and trays with cups and mugs.  Everything gets washed, not tossed.

Weakly Working the Weekly Publishing Schedule

In 1979 I was a staff writer for the Wiesbaden Post newspaper, published by the Wiesbaden Military Community in Germany.  In that era every base and fort had a weekly newspaper which went to press on Wednesday and had a publication date of Thursday.

The following two years I worked for the Elizabethtown (Pa.) Chronicle also a weekly newspaper that was published every Thursday.

Today, the Post, the Chronicle and many other weekly newspapers have disappeared, replaced by web sites.  As late as the military is to all electronic and social media, base newspapers are disappearing faster than ice cubes in Algeria, but we are writing our news leads holding to the weekly publication calendar.  As a teaching aid, I can understand it because it is a small puzzle to solve, and some of us may go to the half-dozen posts that still publish a weekly.

But it is strange to have this weekly calendar back in my head so long after I used it in as part of my daily work.

Weekend Off: Day 2

Today was a real day off.  I was one of more than a thousand cyclists who rode 100 kilometers and around Lancaster County, Pa.  Originally, my wife and I were supposed to be part of a group of math professors from here department doing the ride.  One professor was injured, her husband stayed home with her, so our group was us.

We rode a steady pace of just over 16 mph and finished the ride close to noon.  We rode to and from the event so the total ride for the day was 76 miles, a new distance record for my wife. 

When we were two miles from home, Annalisa said "Let's run three miles when we get back."  At first I said no way, but I knew she was right, we need to practice transitions.  So when we got home, I changed clothes, she just changed shoes, and we ran.  We only ran two miles, mostly because I was so sore.

After the run, I did one more load of laundry and headed back to school.

Weekend Off: National Guard Style

I went home this weekend and had two very different days.  Today, I took two of my kids and drove to Philadelphia.  They saw the Liberty Bell, ate at the Bourse food court, and played on computers in my office.  I stayed at my desk and caught up on work I did not finish before I left to play Army.

National Guard soldiers with civilian jobs in management get stretched trying to fulfill their obligations to their work and their unit, not to mention family and the rest of their lives.  So a day off from the Army meant an afternoon at work for this soldier.

At the end of the day, I got a lot of work done and my kids were full of greasy food.  Everbody wins!

Real Fitness Training at School

Those of you who have read this blog for a while know I have to work out on drill weekends because our training is mostly attending classes and other equally strenuous activities.

Not at the Defense Information School.  We are up every day at 4 a.m. and do an hour of PT from 5 to 6 a.m.  In that hour this week I have run 7 miles, done 240 pushups, 220 situps and five pullups in addition to the dozens of other exercises I don't keep track of.

As you would expect, I ride everywhere, so I also rode 105 miles, much of it one mile at a time on the single speed bike.  I managed to get to the pool for three workouts.  Twice I swam a kilometer, once a quarter mile.

This weekend I won't be exercising at all on Saturday and riding about 70 miles on Sunday.  And at this school, I will not be complaining about a lack of exercise.

Not My Job

In any government organization the people in charge have a defined area of responsibility.  Go beyond that area and someone will be on you like dung beetles on a manure pile.

When I went through job training as an armor (M60A1 tank) crewman, the drill sergeants who were responsible for our daily life also taught our classes.  When we did fitness training, a tank commander was in front of us.  When we learned how to align the sights of our 105mm cannon, it was a drill sergeant who was also an armor crewman who taught the class.

With academic courses like DINFOS, the cadre who are in charge of housing, food, fitness training and our lives outside the class are different than the instructors inside the class.  If there is anything that will keep me from succeeding in a journalism course, it will be lack of sleep.  We get up at 4 a.m. every day.  We are in class from 7:55 a.m. to 4 p.m.  We have a formation at 4:30 p.m., then we do homework until we go to bed.

Our instructors at the school made clear they have no influence on the detachment that is in charge of the rest of the schedule--and reminded us we better not fall asleep in class.  They teach us, the detachment trains us.  Neither group can tell the other what to do.  And they don't.

So we struggle to stay awake in class, stay up late to finish our homework, and roll out of bed at 4 a.m. for fitness training.  Both the detachment and the school say "Time management is the key to success."  They are right.  But it is clear that the two groups work independently.  Could more students succeed if the detachment and the school worked together?  We'll never know.

My Army, My Military

Our group of 27 soldiers got divided into three classes on Monday.  I am in a group of eight: two airmen, a Marine and five soldiers.
[NOTE:  Marine is always capitalized.  You can look up the fact in the AP Style Guide.  You can look up the reason on line if you are curious.]
During the first class we had an "ice-breaker" exercise.  During that exercise, I knew I was in the the part of the Army where I belong.
We each took a Post-It poster-size sheet, stuck it on the wall, and divided it in fours quadrants: Bio, Likes, Dislikes, Goals

Our class student leader is Ben.  Here is some of his answers:

LIKES:

Norrin Radd

Clubber Lang

Vita Sackville West

The Saturn myth

DISLIKES:

Fox News

The Lord of the Rings movies

Crossfit (as religion)

Ideology, particularly American pragmatism

Wynton Marsalis as representing all of Jazz

 

BIO:

31 

from Connecticut

Grad student at Trinity College

GOALS:

fulfilling employment

personal writing

learning to play the upright bass or speak a new languauge

develop more capacity empathy

Ben is a tall quiet staff sergeant who lifts weights and is a very fast runner.  

I like being in the Army, but I like it a lot more in a room of soldiers like Ben.