I just got out of a 7 day field training exercise. It was some real good training. It was our final, if you will, for ibolc (infantry basic officer leadership course). I did fine, I had the first mission we did.

I'm going to write something further here, but I got a nasty cold and I need to sleep.

wow, egg on my face, updates fell off to the wayside.

I am almost done with infantry officer basic course. Amazing course, learned a lot and made some good friends.

When I go to the gym I watch people lift in a most discreet manner. I do this because I find it interesting the many different forms people use when lifting. Many of them are correct, some just slightly wrong, others very wrong. I also like to take inventory of how many people are doing the beach muscle lifts (i.e. bench press, bicep curl,...weirdly enough upright rows). You can bet that if you go into the gym >60% of the population is doing some workout combination of the aforementioned. It goes without saying that if you want to do one of those exercises you either have to queue up or beat the rush.

Today my buddy hurt himself doing rows, which is a shame. I don't know what he normally lifts but he was swinging his back into the row and pulled it. He probably won't be able to go to ranger school and if he really did pull it then he probably won't be able to finish the course.

If you have never pulled your back then let me fill you in, it's debilitating. I did it once and aside from the pain I would occasionally fall down as my back gave out. My roommates had to drag me to my bed because I couldn't move (Thanks John!).

I have always been a believer that you should learn the form of a lift prior to executing challenging weight but apparently I am a minority in thinking this.

wow!

Busy.

My how the time flies by? I finished up for bolc 2 last month and have since moved on to ibolc. I know what you're thinking, but Ben, what does that actually mean? It means I have moved on to another course in my professional officer development, this one is specific to the infantry.

Today (or tuesday morning) I was suppose to have land navigation but it got canceled on the account of the weather. We don't really have snow in georgia (yet?) but what we do have is lots and lots of rain, and dense London fog.

This is one of the better courses I have been to. The cadre (instructors) are really amazing. I'm only on week two and have already done one all-nighter for an order I had to write and brief.

I should be back in ohio around the 22-27 of december.

My computer died last week. More specifically my operating system died. I went ahead and bought windows 7. It works great. It has a very different feel from windows xp.

Going to take my car into the shop this friday, something about smoking coming out from under the hood.

Got to get some sleep, this time not in a poncho hooch in the middle of the woods

you stay classy!

10/22

Bolc 2.

So far its been a busy day, a busy couple of days. I haven't made a post in a while because I haven't just haven't had time to even hit the on button to my computer. Bolc 2 is going great, I just finished basic rifle marksmanship with my m4 with the close quarters optic (red dot sight), peq-15 (visible and infrared laser), and night vision. Today I got to wear my full kit around (helmet, body armor, loading bearing equipment, rifle, pack), I really felt like a real soldier. We have done all sorts of m4 marksmanship this week which included some day-time and night-time shooting. All really great. I can't believe I get paid to do this.

land nav

Howdy,

What a week(end)! Two weddings (3 if you count the one on the office), a trip to tennessee, and a membership to gold's gym. That has been my weekend, a lot of fun, a lot of driving (mostly on my roommate, mark), and equipment prep for tomorrow. I have to go to bed,...like an hour ago because I have to wake up at 1am to go into work and do duty, then its out to the land navigation course no later than 3 am and I should get home wednesday night or so.

Hope everyone is doing well.

-Ben

more training

So I thought I'd have some time off from training but boy was I wrong. Monday rolls around and I walked on to my next mandatory school. What fun, right? Week one is about over, I got some time off today to go see my buddy get married. Tomorrow I'm planning on driving up to cincinnati to see another one of my buddies get married.

The school I am in is bolc 2, stands for basic officer leadership course 2 (bolc 1 = rotc). It is a course designed to teach war fighting skills (warrior skills) to those leaders not in a combat arms branch, but just the same they send us combat guys too. It is seven weeks long, two of which are in the field. We get most nights off and weekends. Some tasks we will accomplish are land navigation, combat life saver certification, platoon patrolling, and m4 qualification (rifle) with a red dot sight.

We went to the central issuing facility on wednesday. I received all my equipment for my training here at ft. benning (finally!). I even got my own body armor with sapi plates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAPI_plates) and mich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MICH_TC-2000_Combat_Helmet). Very expensive stuff.

Time to go back to work.

End of mech leader

I graduated Mechanized Leader today. It was a really good six weeks and I learned a whole lot about the Bradley fighting vehicle.

I should be getting my new graphics card today, it should be sweet!

Got a phone call from my holding company, I am going to try and walk onto the BOLC2 class a month early, cross my fingers and hope so. I will try and report in this monday at 0545.

My favorite show The Office has started their new season. It is quite hiliarious if I do say so.

Lunch time! (more to follow later)