Monday, September 6, 2010

Day 16 - Picnics and IED's

Today was a busy day but at least it went remotely fast. In the morning we went through the counter-ied lanes. Basically what the purpose of the lanes are to prepare for the threat of IED's. You load up in your vehicles and roll down the road until you either A) Spot the IED, B) Have an IED blow up, or C) have some OPFOR (Opposing Force) roll up and throw a wrench in you plans.

We've done lanes like this before so it went fairly well, no real issues. Luckily today was fairly cool out so we didn't bake. This was the first time that I got to do some physically demanding activity in all the new gear we were issued.

The Army does this thing called RFI, that's Rapid Fielding Initiative. Basically what that means is they put you through an equipment issue before you deploy. They load you up on what's supposed to be the latest and greatest equipment. It's absurd the amount of gear that they give you, and some of it will be brought all the way to Afghanistan and never be used, but some of it will come in handy.

Anyways, after our IED lanes we came back and washed up. We had our team photos. I'm not too confident on how the pictures will turn out. Typically when I've had group photos for the military there is a professional photographer but this felt like an amateur job. I guess we'll see how they turn out.

After the pictures we went to a little picnic area. It was nice to get away from the area we've spent the past two plus weeks.

At the picnic area we had typical picnic food along with corn hole, horse shoes, etc. I played a couple games and talked to some of the team. I really didn't have high hopes for this picnic, but it turned out to be a nice time. I think that being away from the barracks did everyone a lot of good. We also managed to have our nightly leadership meeting in the picnic pavilion. The meeting was unbelievably short so that was great.

I took some pictures today, so I'll try to get them up tomorrow.

Nothing earth shattering going on tomorrow, just another day closer to the end.

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