Night Shoot

Here's a little video of us shooting vehicle mounted machine guns at night. This was, obviously, a lot of fun... even if it was 20 0r 30 degrees below freezing.

A Much Needed Reprieve

Over MLK, Jr. weekend, the staff at Fort Riley cut us loose for 4 days, and boy did we need the break! The training schedule has been very intense, and the conditions have been taxing to say the least.

Even before the day officially ended, I was headed for Lincoln, NE for a visit with family. Steph flew in from Santa Barbara, and my Dad picked her up. Despite drining snow and below-zero temperatures, we has a really good time visiting with family and just spending time together.

Touring the proprty at Dad's:

This was a cold, cold day!

Dang it!

Well dang it. A few days ago I was screwing around doing some shadow boxing when POP! I hit my bed frame and broke my left hand. Specifically, the neck of my 5th metacarpal (a.k.a., a "boxer's fracture"). I looked at my hand and saw the knuckle at the base of my pinkie was gone. I went straight to medical, where x-rays confirmed the fracture. I got stuck with a nice big fingers-to-elbow cast that I get to live with for a couple of weeks or so. I'm far enough along in training that it shouldn't get in the way too much or affect my training schedule. It has been quite a pain in the ass to live with already, though. As long as I keep it dry and avoid too much attention from the staff around here, I should stay right on track. It's a minor injury that will be healed well brfore my deployment date at any rate.

A late Christmas...

Well, Christmas came a little late here in Kansas. Today, I took my team over to the motorpool, where I signed out two humvees and a couple of really big guns... a .50 caliber M-2 machine gun and an M-240B 7.62mm machine gun. Each goes to one of the humvee turrets. I'll be the .50 cal gunner in my humvee.

The weather got cold last night, and we awoke before dawn to heavy, wet snow coming down. By mid-morning, it was all melting and leaving a muddy mess in its wake. Not a big deal, as most of our day today was spent indors, learning how to operate communications equipment ("commo") and taking Dari language classes.