Episode 1

I received a 5 on my AP Environmental Science Exam.

I will now begin an account of my training with as much detail as is reasonable.

When Aaron and I arrived at the airport I discovered that my flight had actually left two hours earlier than his. My mistake was assuming that the government would put two people from the same town going to the same place at the same time on the same flight. I will never again make the mistake of thinking that the government has common sense. In my defense there was confusion between the times 1500 and 5pm, resulting in my late arrival. Fortunately, there was a later flight leaving for the same destination. It actually saved the government $45. However, it also resulted in my late arrival to GMC.

When I arrived I was issued a bunch of crap, the list of which is unimportant. Then I went up to my room and crashed. I was in a room by myself. We woke up early and went through some in-processing. The rest of the days at GMC involved: an assesment physical fitness test, land nav training, rope bridge construction training, squad tactics training (very brief), laser tag, rappeling, Combat Water Survival Test, PT, barbecues, Wal-Mart, class scheduling, briefs from the national guard, and probably several things that I'm forgetting.

The flight to LTC was uneventful. When we arrived in Louisville, they issued us government food vouchers, so we got to eat wherever we wanted in the airport, as long as it was within the 30 minute time window we had. Then we all piled onto busses and shipped out to Knox.

When we arrived, we all threw our bags onto a bunch of pallets under a tent and went inside for some in-processing. We got to send a postcard home and a copy of the LTC newspaper. There was also various other paperwork. Then we went back outside and I headed up a team of about 3 other cadets that loaded up a 5 ton truck with all of our bags. Then we walked over to the real in-processing building where we spent much of the day going through stations. Here I was issued my I.D., made tentative return travel plans, had my medical qualification reviewed, and made a phone call home among other things. Finally, we exited that building and loaded up on busses.

When we arrived at the barracks, there was a huge pile of random bags sitting next to the bus. We all had to grab some bags and run to stand in formation in what was going to become our company formation area. It was an amusing fiasco to see this huge group of civilians try and figure out what a formation was, and then get into it, with all of these huge bags. There were some extra bags left by the bus, so I ran back with a few other cadets and grabbed those and brought them back to the formation. Then we all had to find our own bags. After all of that was over, we grounded our gear and headed into DFAC (the old dining facility connected to our barracks), where we were assigned to our platoons and squads. The rest of that day is kind of a blur, I remember that we were up until about 0200 filling out paperwork in the squad bay before we had lights out. Our squad bay was the designated female bay, so all of the males from our platoon were dispersed throughout the barracks in side rooms with 4 bunks each. Alas... reveille was at 0500.