Another Chapter Ends

18 March 2010

So for those of you who diligently check my blog and see another two almost three months go by, don't be worried, not only am I still alive, but I do very non-exciting things during those silent days. You haven't missed much.

But just a quick not on Fairbanks in the last 3 months. In January we hit our lows, -40. It stayed in the -30s for about a week or so. It was cold but honestly it's not unbearable. You don't stay outside very long, but with the correct number of layers and proper motivation to run to your car and sit in an ice box while it warms up, it's totally enjoyable. We do run in the morning up to -25. You build up a heck of a lot of frost, but again with the right layers and right pace you're not cold. The past month it's gotten into the +30s. It's also very sunny now. We passed 12 hours of light about 2 weeks ago I think. It's sunnier now at 6 in the evening than it was at noon in December. In January there was literally a day where I walked out side, squinted and thought 'dang, it's sunny!' We're close to break up which is the special time of year that leads to mud season, so that should be fun.

Today another chapter in my life ended, I am no longer in the 1/25 Stryker Brigade. Today was officially my last day in the combat brigade. It's been two years and starting on Tuesday I will begin transitioning with the outgoing company commander of the hospital here on Ft. Wainwright. That's right, I'm going to be the company commander of a hospital. For those of you non-military people you might be asking yourself, 'neat, but what does is a hospital company commander?' Well lucky you I don't know either so we'll learn together! I have an idea based on the fact that I am in the Army, but I'm a child of the combat side of life and the hospital is what we call 'garrison'. They do things a little differently and a hospital is it's own deal anyways. So more on that once I know what's going on.

To recap my time in the brigade, since yes I am a little sad, but I'll tell you in a bit why I'm not too sad, here we go. No *&#$ there I was, signing in to Ft. Wainwright Alaska back in April 2008. I was coming off a year in Korea lost as a second lieutenant can be (and yes for those of you NCOs out there I put the LT in LOST). I was on my own in my shop for about 3 weeks while everyone else was out preparing for deployment. Then I spent 7 glorious weeks at Ft. Irwin California pretending I was in Iraq. And I promise you California is nothing like Iraq. After California I spent almost a month back in Fairbanks doing all the final prep for Iraq. Then within five days of leaving Alaska I was in Iraq, learning first hand all the different types of bombs humans have discovered they can make. Iraq was honestly a very good learning experience, I learned you can miss port-o-potties and the fact that in Iraq you couldn't go more than about 50 feet without having one near by...sometimes that's not close enough. Meals always taste better on holidays because there's nothing like eating the same thing you've had the past year with a lot of ugly decorations and non-alcoholic bubbly. Smoke detectors are completely worthless because the copious amounts of dust set them off in the middle of the night making you the worlds fastest dresser/sprinter to the bunker person EVER!! (No my roommie and I never sprinted to the bunkers but our smoke detector did meet its doom one night when it decided it was too dusty) And most importantly I learned (or rather it was re enforced) that it's not what you do or where you are, it's who you're with that makes life worth while. I worked in a section of 18 people and I would challenge anyone to find 18 people with 18 different backgrounds who have the differences in rank, social status, jobs, education, etc, that we had who got along as well as we did. People literally want to be us. I loved (almost) everyone in my section (almost) every day. The greatest thing about our section is that none of us are directly competing with each other for evaluations, awards, positions, etc, so we are able to learn and teach each other with no reservation. I'm sad to leave just about everyone in this section because I know I wont work with such a great group again. But that leads me to why I'm not really sad to be leaving the section...they're all leaving me first!!!! I'm a late arrival to the section as far as time goes. I still have a year in Alaska while just about everyone else had to extend to remain in Alaska until the end of our deployment. After this May there won't be a single person left in that section who's been there since I got there. That was one of my main reasons for switching to the hospital, I didn't want to be left alone, and yes that's childish but I don't care.

So there you have it, two years in the 1/25 SBCT Ft. Wainwright Alaska. Good times. I have never laughed so hard as I have with my coworkers. Which leads me to today. Today I went Skeet shooting. That's right, I shot clay pigeons. And by 'pigeons' I mean neon orange disks. I'd never shot a shot gun before so I was a little nervous but I shot 4 out of 4 on my first try. But before you go thinking I'm this amazing skeet shooter, there are 24 targets in skeet and you have 25 shots. There are 8 stations where you shoot 2-4 targets. We did the 8 stations twice, so out of 50 shots I hit a grand total of 7. Yes that's right, after my amazing 4 out of 4 I managed to hit just 3 more in 46 attempts. Am I good or what! And I even managed to miss 'the beer shot' 4 times. It is so named because 'it's so easy you have to buy a round of beers if you miss it'. Yeah, real easy.

The reason we went skeet shooting (during duty hours) was because it's all part of our redeployment integration. The Army has decided that Soldiers do not mix back into society well after combat. We have done survey after survey for the Army to gauge where we stand mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically, etc, since the deployment. We did surveys before we went and now we do surveys after we're back. One of the areas that the Army feels the need to improve on is making sure that Soldiers have a way to deal with stress and that they are aware of the opportunities available. The Army is like it's own little world. On post we have everything a city would have, and just about everything is free to Soldiers. Some of those free events include outdoor recreation, some aren't free, but some are. Skeet shooting, along with SCUBA diving, rock climbing, skiing, snowboarding, snowshoeing, and a bunch of other out door activities were provided to the Soldiers at no cost as part of our Warrior Adventure Quest which was the Army's way of showing us what types of out door recreation opportunities there are on Ft. Wainwright. One of our surveys we had to fill out during our skeet shooting adventure (and yes we had to fill out more than one survey) was asking about how our group got along and if we developed interpersonal skills. Well our group was 4 people from my job, all 4 of us have worked together for a long time and I can honestly say we had a lot of fun, we sucked at skeet, but we had a lot of fun. We laughed, we cried, we developed many colorful ways to express our disappointment that we missed yet another flying neon orange disk. But most importantly we had a lot of fun. I'm truly going to miss the people in my section, but it's the Army, we all move on eventually and there's a good chance we'll run into each other again.

Like this weekend! I'm going to go see Jamie (from ROTC) at the Bataan Death March Memorial Marathon. This is the same marathon we did in collage. Jamie and I did it our junior year. We haven't seen each other since graduation so it's going to be great to see an old friend, even if we are hiking 26.2 miles through sand and up a mountain.