Side view of house, Sharon, Courtney
Our front yard with Mississippi in background!
View from the River....the cottage in the background and nice sandy beach!!
The Mississippi is unbelievably wide, the land on the left are just islands!
Jim Sr. and the nearly ancient shed....
Come Visit!
Alright Aunt Liz, per your request, here is my weak attempt at a follow up to E-mon. I apologize for my tardiness, but I needed to let Eamonn’s brief moment as favorite nephew run its course as I am not selfish with my favored standing, before I regain my rightful place in your eyes. However, while we are on the subject of favorites, Aunt Mary earns that distinction as she was the only one who took the time to write me a letter. (zing Aunt Liz)
As most of you know I spent roughly the past month, 29 days to be exact, running and sunning on the beaches of the Gulf Coast of Florida. Well not quite. Disclaimer: This will be filled with needless acronyms that might not be explained, whose only purpose seems to be to look official, as I don’t even know what they mean. In addition this does not reflect the views of the United States Air Force, its parent company, the Department of Defense or any of its various subsidiaries or entities. This may not be reproduced or retransmitted without the express written consent of ME. …Just kidding, but seriously.
So I got to the Air Force base at about 10pm on 17 May 2006 (as I will forever write the date from now on) which was called TD 0. Apparently for reasons of national security, the first day is actually the zeroith (word? sp?) day so as to confuse terrorists who might be monitoring our training exercises. But I digress. We got off the plane, transferred to buses, and then reached headquarters where a very scary woman MTI (this one I know stands for Mean Terrible Individual) proceeded to berate and belittle us by calling us *sensored version for all my little cousins* crackheads and crack eaters and every possible derivative of these -- timeout; I have already made a mistake and “failed Field Training” as we were told from the first moment which doesn’t make sense because there was nothing to fail yet and that we were already being sent home which suited me fine. Anyway, “Correction please Ladies and Gentlemen”, I should have said 2200 hours instead of 10 pm. “No excuse”. Finally, lights out came about midnight after our brief introduction to the methods of leadership and team building (read brainwashing and indoctrination).
A few basics about my Field Training – the official title for boot camp.
- 332 cadets started, 311 finished; the rest were either sent home due to injuries that occurred at camp or SIE’d which again stands for something I don’t know but means that they were wussy (Reillys words)
- there were 12 groups called flights of roughly 27 cadets each. I was L or
- now I wouldn’t say there were many lookers there but there were some cute ones. Cute of course being a relative term here. Cute to a blind person in a dark room with a paper bag over his face (and hers). Cute to someone who has been removed from society for a month. Okay perhaps a bit severe but 75% true which is more true than Al Gore’s claim that he invented the internet. Okay I just added that bit to string out the earlier blogs between Kevin and John. It was a stretch.
Alright back to the training. We woke up every morning at 0430 and went to bed at 2130 meaning a 17 hour day. In between was yelling, physical training, food, marching, yelling, leadership exercises, marching, food, yelling, marching, yelling, marching, yelling, yelling, food, yelling…you get the idea.
Some of the things we did: warrior runs (which is running and chanting), inspections – uniform and room (lame), marching competitions (lamer), academic sessions, watched movies to evaluate leadership, shot M9 pistols which I missed qualifying as expert by 1 head shot, and obstacle courses which were pretty fun.
Eating was itself an experience. We had 10 minutes to eat, no talking, feet together at 45 degrees, sitting on the front six inches of the chair, eyes on our plate. When we finished, we bused our trays and walked through the snakepit which is where the officers sat. Every one of them had to be greeted but the kicker was we had to look straight ahead as we walked by so essentially you guessed and hoped to God that you did not mess up because all hell would be unleashed if you did.
Showering was another (I tried to come up with an adjective here but nothing would do it justice) experience. I forgot to mention that there were 2 flights per building. That meant 40 guys sharing a small bathroom – 2 urinals, 3 stalls, 4 showerheads. Now usually we had a good 10, sometimes 15 minutes to shower. For everyone. Now that leaves a lot of naked guys in a tight space. In order to keep a G rating, enter your own favorite joke regarding dropped soap, sausage, or anything else that enters the mind. Apparently these tight spaces make people do crazy things as I was asked on several occasions by guys if they could share my shower with me or use my towel. It definitely made for awkward situations even to tell them to take a hike.
There are many other little nuances and experiences that I could tell you about but I am sure I have bored you already and wasted enough time and space on the blog. One specific experience I would like to mention. So at the end of FT they rank each cadet within the flight. I was given a bottom third ranking because I took a picture with 2 girls and in the picture we had our arms around each other like you would in any picture you take but apparently that is unprofessional and yada yada. One good thing that came out of this was the CTA’s (who are cadets a year older than us who help with the training) proceeded to approach me and call me ladies’ man, as if that was going to bother me or “burn” me (Reilly’s words again), which seemed more like a compliment. Needless to say, I don’t think they worried about the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy with me.
Some other little things. I never want to hear the words or phrases latrine, lock it up (phrase meaning time to get serious), 8 canteens (quarts) of water before dinner (which is impossible to do), or drop.
Reflections
- not a very difficult experience, physically or even mentally/emotionally, in my opinion but definitely frustrating and very annoying
- well tailored to teach leadership and team building
- finally, DO NOT touch a female under any circumstance as this 10 second touch, regardless of situation, supersedes the other 28 days, 23 hours, etc, of effort and performance, automatically relegating you to the worst person as they like to remind you over and over.
- actually one more thing, the people I met are the best part. for the most part everyone was very likable and driven.
So I hope this propels me back to the top Aunt Liz. Questions, comments, criticisms, concerns, and otherwise are welcome but they will not get me the month of my life back. Just kidding, but seriously, I would love to answer any questions on things that I may have missed and expand on any topic that was not fully explained.
Hope everyone has a great rest of the summer and that we all get together soon, as everyone keeps growing up.
GO IRISH
Colin
P.S. Will someone other than John who already has plans please come out and visit me for a Notre Dame football game. Aunts, uncles, cousins; all are welcome. You won’t regret it.
llowing are some photos of the celebration. Hope you like them.
