Settling in for Training

Well, now we're in lovely Washington State with a great view of Mt. Ranier...

That is, when it isn't raining. Today the clouds cleared out and we were able to see it in all of it's "Hi, I'm a mountain ALL BY MYSELF OUT HERE" glory.

Was nice for it to not rain, but the tradeoff is warm and muggy. Not the biggest fan of muggy, myself.

My time in San Antonio was all right. I stayed at this place called the Drury Inn. I liked it, was pretty nice for a hotel overlooking a scribble of highway intersections. My time in San Antonio was well spent, getting all of my paperwork sorted and my gear issued so that I could integrate with the unit.

OK, I'm lying. I didn't do ANY of that. Most of the Unit wasn't around and along with the 5 who were, I was tasked with loading up all the gear onto palettes for shipment. It was great, hauling Army gear in 100 degree heat. We cleared out an entire supply room with no air conditioning and moved the stuff into another building. Then we 'palettized' it.

The unit arrived just before we came out to Lewis and I had to move Hotels. The Crown Plaza isn't quite as nice as the Drury Inn. When shopping around for a cheap hotel, I'm going to recommend the latter.

It was neat watching everyone come in and the unit just kind of go nuts trying to sort out everyone's last minute stuff. The best was watching them try to build the schedule to accommodate everybody. In a lot of cases they double booked folks, with so little time for so much training. Then, when we went to one thing over another, what ended up happening in a few cases was that a trainer or training materials never arrived, so we weren't able to do it. In this way, we happily missed out on both required events.

The flight to Lewis was a fun time. We loaded buses and drove off to the Airport. Instead of going through security like a normal schlub, we just drove onto the tarmac. Then we got to watch while they loaded out bags. Of course, I didn't have any nice government issue equipment, so I kind of stood out from the crowd.

Hey, Tactical Red is certainly an approved combat color!

Or not.

So now we're landed and settling in. Our schedule is very haphazard. We learn what we need to do in the hours just before it, and it changes about a zillion times. What ends up happening is a lot of downtime between events where we chill out in the bay and nap or play card or write in our blogs.

So far I can't really complain. The everchanging 'hey you' nature of it is pretty annoying, but mostly it just means a lot of time to chill out.

Accommodations are FIRST RATE! Single bay with a load of bunk beds. We've got about 20 people in our bay. Only 5 of them are snorers, so that's exciting.

It's fairly primitive, bathrooms include a big open shower bay, so we don't lose that lovely 'wide open spaces' feeling when we need to get clean.However, we DO get internet for a moderate price, so I can stay connected, and that's really important.

In other news, Congratulations, Cousin Maureen on your marriage. I wish you the best of luck and send my love.

That's all for now. You'll have to excuse the picture quality because I'm using my crappy cell phone to take the pictures.

See you all later!