The Weaver

Last week, we completed the obstacle course, or "confidence course" as they call it. It was just like on tv except it didn't have any mud puddles to splash through. Most of the obstacles were pretty easy, but "The Weaver" kicked my butt. The Weaver consists of a bunch of beams about three feet apart in a pyramid shape. Like it's name suggests, you have to weave your way through, going over one beam and under the next. The trick is to wrap your body around the beam, then use your momentum to kick your leg over the next beam as you go under the first (look at the guy on the right in the picture). It left me with some pretty nasty bruises on my legs. We also did "The Tough One" and the "Inverted Rope Descent." The Inverted Rope was tricky because you have to climb up the ladder to the platform, but the ladder rungs are about four feet apart. So, you have to pull yourself up to each rung, which gets kinda scary when you're 40 feet up in the air. Unlike the picture, though, they had us descend the rope upside down and feet first.

We were also issued M-16s for the first time. It's pretty crappy because you have to always be holding them, and they get heavy real quick. Plus, you have to be super careful about not accidentally waiving the barrel past someone and always keeping it pointed at the ground. Luckily we turn them in every night, so we don't have to sleep with them. We did get to practice some firing positions, i.e. prone, kneeling, and standing, but we won't actually get to shoot until next week.
This week is land navigation. We spent today learning how to read topographic maps, how to plot points on a grid, and how to measure the angle and distance between two points. Tomorrow, we'll spend all day traipsing around practicing and then we form up Wednesday morning at 0200 to do it at night. I think we're up at 0200 Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. In order to pass the land nav portion, we have to correctly arrive at at least 5 of 8 points in a certain period of time. If I have the energy in one of these coming days, maybe I'll tell you how it went.:)