I'm Here

I finally made it to the great state of Alabama. I don't have much time to write but i thought that I'd give everyone an update. I reported to meps on Monday morning at 0600 and was on a plane at 1500 (thats 300 p.m.). After a mechanical delay in Atlanta I arrived in Dothan around midnight. It was a long day. We drew linen and were shown to our temporary living quarters. The heat was stuck on. Someone was supposedly supposed to put in a work order to have it fixed before Christmas but never got around to it. My room was easily 90 degrees. I opened the window and slept with my head up to it. Luckily I was exhausted and it wasn't too hard to fall asleep.
This morning was a mess. They weren't prepared to have anyone check in and people are arriving from all over the country. Luckily I have talked to a bunch of the Officers here on the phone while doing the distance learning and they knew what was going on with me so I got in on everything first so they make sure that I get in a class on Monday.
Thats the short hand version of everything. Still running around like a chicken with my head cut off but it looks like I'll get into the class on monday if Brenna overnights a bunch of stuff to me.
Gotta go. I'll keep everyone posted.

On My Way

This is just a quick post. I finished my distance learning and am ready to go to Alabama. I hope I never have to read a pdf. file again. I took the first test and got an 84 percent and then went on to the second test. The rules state that you have 50 minutes to do the test. If you go over you fail. I finished the second test and just went back to review some of my answers. I got carried away and lost track of the time and finished at 51 minutes 25 seconds. I thought that I had failed but it wouldn't let me retake the test. Come to find out I had an hour to do it in and got a 96 percent. Now I'm ready to go to Alabama for the last 4 weeks of WOCS. Merry Christmas.

Just a Taste

My mom is the greatest. I'd just like to tell everyone. Most people that know my mom know its true. I got a sweet early Christmas present this morning. Mom knows a few people in the law enforcement community around here and managed to set up a ride for me on the Sheriff's helicopter this morning. For a while I didn't think it was going to happen. When I went to bed the forecast was for a huge snow storm to cover the state in the morning. It held off long enough to let us fly though. We went down to KMart on 90th south early this morning to watch Santa fly in for the Shop with a Cop program. Kids get to go Christmas shopping with a cop. We are standing in the parking lot and in comes 130 cop cars with their sirens blaring and lights flashing. Each car has a kid in it. It was pretty cool. So here comes Santa. He lands, runs to greet the kids and mom and I run and jump in and off we go. It was awesome to be in the air again. Its been since last January since I flew. No I didn't get to fly it but that was OK for me all I wanted was to be up in the air again. Visibility wasn't the greatest cause of the dust from all the wind but it didn't matter to me. Now I cant wait even more to get to Ft. Rucker and start school. Merry Christmas to me!

Its Official

So tonight was the first real test for me to go to school. Yes, I know I passed the board, and got selected, and have a ship date. However, tonight I had to pass an official PT test done by my recruiters so that they would allow me to go. Picture this, I show up at the recruiter station at 1630 ( I have to start getting used to military time again). Here I am surrounded by high school students. Only 3 of the 15-20 of us are out of high school. I'm thinking my butt is about to get kicked and I'll be stuck wheezing around the track with all these young bucks cheering me on telling me I can do it. Fortunately for me that's not how it happened.
We pulled into Hillcrest High about quarter after five just as the sun is going down. This cold air sucks to run in. Everyone but me is pre basic so they have to pass some 1 min push up, 1 min sit up, and run 1 mile in just under 9 minutes. Most of them are dropping like flies at like 40 push ups and can barely stay in the push up position for the full minute. Yours truly pops out 66. Huge improvement for me. I'm feeling pretty good about myself at this point. Next comes the sit ups. Again most are passing their minimum but still only getting like 30 sit ups. I end up with 61. Again not the greatest but better than anyone else in the group. Then comes the run. We line up immediately after I finish doing my sit ups. I'm still breathing hard, my heart is beating out of my chest and I have cotton mouth with no water. I need a rest. Nope, not going to get it. Off we go with all the young bucks breaking great strides in the distance. Here I come at a nice jog to warm my legs up. Keep in mind I'm still reeling from the sit ups. One kid decides to pace me. Smart kid. Maybe not real smart cause my pace wont pass his one minute time limit but I assume he will speed up after a lap or two. Eight laps around is my goal. I settle into my long distance pace of 8 min 30 second mile for the first 2 laps then I'll pick it up. Only there is one big problem. The cold air is sucking my will to live. Finally on the fourth lap I tell the kid pacing me he has to pick it up or he won't pass. This I think was morally defeating to him and he dropped back. I yelled at him and he picked it up and made it in time. On to 4 more laps for me. Still keeping at the 8:30 pace but feeling like my lungs are getting ripped out. Midway into lap 6 I feel like I've got to puke. Ended up that I just needed to cough and it went away. My last lap and I was still in line to pass but not with much of a grace period so SSG Young got up and pushed me my last lap. Final time: 16:19. A full minute and 11 seconds slower than my self administered test 2 weeks ago. At least now I know I can pass under crappy circumstances. Final PT score: 233. I want it higher but I'm happy going in with what I have. Just got to keep working on it.

What a joke

So I've been doing some research online to try to find out when my class starts when I get out to Ft. Rucker at the end of the month. No one here seems to be able to tell me. I ended up getting the phone number to Headquarters Company out there and gave them a call. Sounds like the MEPS was setting me up for failure. Doing the minimum as usual. It turns out that I need to do some distance learning programs on the internet if I want to attend only the 4 week WOC class instead of the 6 week class. I was going to show up thinking I had the condensed version only to find out that I needed to wait for 2 weeks for the regular class to start. Luckily things are on track and hopefully I can get everything done before I go. I'm going nuts waiting.

New Update

Not too bad I must say. After almost killing myself running a two miler in almost 18 minutes I decided to wait a few days and make sure I was better. After taking the week off and getting through turkey day I figured I would give myself a PT test to see what damage was done. I did 60 sit-ups (by far my worst event), 51 push-ups, and ran the two miles in 15:08. Not bad at all. Its not where I was in basic but its better. I just want to cut at least 30 seconds off the run and add at least 5-10 push-ups and sit-ups and I'll be happy. I'll keep you posted.

Slowly Improving

Not much has happened since the last post. I've been sick and haven't bee able to run much. I cut about 20 seconds off of my 5 mile pace of last time but that's pretty negligible. I felt better after the weekend so I decided to run on Tuesday. After 2 miles I was sucking wind pretty bad. It felt like I was running at 10,000 feet. I figured I should stop so I didn't make myself sick again. Now its just about getting my momentum going again to work out everyday. My new shoes make running a bit more enjoyable and for that i'm greatful.

The Begining

After looking at some of the other blogs around I have decided to document my flight school and military experience on this blog. I won't go back and tell the backstory of the past year because Brenna has documented it pretty well over the past few months. You can read her blog if you want to know the fun that has been presented to us over the last 10 months trying to get into flight school.

About 4 weeks ago I found out that I was accepted into the Army Warrant Officer Flight Training program. Since then I have been hard at work making sure that I don't fail the school right as I get there. The first trial is the Physical Fitness Test otherwise known as the PT test. Situps have always been my main trial. My core strenght has been terrible over the past few years. Life, marriage, food, and school have all come together to keep me from working out and as a result I have gone from 155 pounds and 10 percent body fat when I got married 4 years ago to 175 pounds and 27 percent body fat. The goal is to get rid of as much of this extra fat as possible before shipping out December 29. So far we're doing pretty decent. At first I lost 5 pounds but gained it back again on a climbing trip two weeks ago, however, I have continued to lose the body fat and am now down to 20 percent. Hopefully it will keep coming off before I leave. I couldn't have asked for a worse season to try it with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. All I know is that I need to run.

Four weeks ago I started running again and almost died running 9 minute miles for two miles. Now I can hold about an 8:45 minute mile for 5 miles. The goal is to get that down to 8 minutes before I leave. Its time to start running every day. I hate running. Did I mension that.

Here are some pictures of me this summer. It shows the sad state of affairs my body is in. Yes I did finish an Olympic distance triathlon but not in as good of time as I did a year ago.

Yes that is my gut hanging out the bottom of my shirt.