Letter #23 (August 12, 2010 2230 hrs)

Lauren,

Well, it's been another loooooooong day. Luckily, it was the second day this week without P.T., but the "Meh" stuff first:

We got up at 0400, instead of 0445 as originally planned, and from there, we just dragged our feet all day, especially while marching to the obstacle course. That was probably the worst part of today, marching to and from the course, with a duffel bag filled with a set of ABGs amd boots and whatnot (all in all, about 20 lbs) The march was about 3 miles each way, and I wanted to stop at 1.

So, THE OBSTACLE COURSE! They say that the three things you will ALWAYS remember from BMT are your first night at Basic, walking down the bomb run (aka graduating), and the obstacle course, and I now understand why. I would not ever want to do it again, but it was one of the most rewarding experiences thus far. It really evolves working around a wingman.

There are 17 total obstacles, spaning 17 acres, with 1.5 miles of running in between. I wanted to stop by the 5th obstacle course, and I wanted to die by the 12th. There were about 5 obstacles that stretched across water, one of them being 30 feet of monkey bars, which was towards the very end of the course.I was sure that the monkey bars was where I was finally going to slip and fall into the water, but somehow, I managed to muster  up enough energy to go all the way, even though by the time I got there the bars were dripping wet. While only 5 wingmen managed to fall into the water at some point or another, I was glad that I was not one of them.

Now, onto the long march home... it sucked, what more needs to be said? Sadly, very little happened during the rest of the day. We may be losing two more trainees, one being Heckenbach (we call him Forrest Gump... he is, by far, the fastest runner in our flight, he is just... dumb).

Now, two last things:
1) Only 4 more weeks until I see you
2) Where would you like to eat on Friday during my town pass? I want your opinions!

But, it's now 2300 hrs, and PT is at 0445, so I should get going. I love you!

Bailey