Leadership Obstacle Course and the end of the third week

As my week as squad leader drew to a close, my company went to the Leadership Obstacle Course (LRC). We also had our Ethics / Law of War / Leadership (including coaching, mentoring, and counseling) classes and exam. I won't talk much about that here because it's interesting to me but boring to most other people. The course was a blast, though.

I was rated for my leadership abilities on the course pictured below. My squad finished quickly and later half my squad formed a "super squad" and set the OCS record for time on this obstacle.

My squad wasn't rated here, but this obstacle was one I did in Basic. There was one other obstacle that also appeared first in my Basic course.

Ah-ha! Here it is:

I spent a lot of time transmitting instructions while "hanging out" in a precarious position. This is a photo of the next team. I didn't have my camera while hanging over water from a metal pipe. Oh, on all obstacles you are not allowed to touch red areas. That cement pillar in the foreground is about 10 feet out and only a third of the way through the obstacle puzzle. On a photography note, I should have fixed the framing.  Note the vertical lines and the frame lines. Pity.

This is what I call "Kohlmetz's Adventure" (or what I've called it for 10 seconds since writing this sentence) because nobody else ever made it even halfway through the puzzle.

OC Trevino guides the heavy steel beam...

Now what?

Alright, but I'll have to use my teeth!

This is splendid...

I think I have it! Quick! Scamper across! Don't mind me; I'm part of the bridge now.

At the cross portion of the obstacle below, a battle buddy was falling, holding on by one hand, and losing his glove. I bounded up, across, grabbed him by his uniform and heaved him back up to the horizontal bar. It was pretty dramatic, but the story has grown and someone just approached me and said, "Hey! I heard the story about your bionic super hero save of Spinali's life!"

This obstacle puzzle was time consuming. I think we delivered our "ammo" but ran out of time to get everyone across. The cadre said we did the best job he's seen on this obstacle.

When my group did this obstacle, we sacrificed our bodies as a bridge. Very noble, I know.

This bridge is stable, thanks to our belts. No really! I'm serious!

Old Videos (of me) That Embarass Me

Alright, so... I don't know why I'm posting these, but I showed them to other people who will one day serve with me as officers in the US Army, so I suppose I can show them to anyone. The first video is a goofy response video to Shanno Wanno's "Dear Sunshine". The second video is a video of me being interviewed about founding the GVSU Swing Dance Club. The first is embarrassing because we're wearing goofy outfits, singing a goofy homemade song, and well... dancing around! The second video is a few years old and I was interviewed without any preparation. Basically I had to talk for five minutes about Swing off the top of my head.

Combatives (movie and pictures)

I'm going to get certified in level 1 combatives if my unit stays on schedule. This will mean 40 hours of training spread out over Thursdays, I think. My subcompact camera cannot get great night pictures, but I will post some anyway. But first! ...a video of my getting stacked by OC Kohlmetz. He explains the move well.



This is OC Overly about to throw OC Hill off of him. If someone anchors their arm like that (at your neck), they become easy to flip.

Once you break a the footlock of someone guarding against you, you can stack them quite easily. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you still need to watch the video above.Notice our tennis shoes with the Army Combat Uniform (ACU). Stylish.
 

These guys sparred against each other without mouth guards (le gasp!) and the smaller guy won. What you can't tell in this picture is that the smaller guy is only 3% body fat and could probably crush a coconut with his bare hands if such a feat of strength were required. 

OC Edwards has stacked Kohlmetz, gained side control, and is now repositioning to perform a mount. From that position she will be able to pummel his face! I mean... if we were allowed to do such things. In reality, she'll probably "try" to choke him, he'll flip her off, she'll guard, and then he'll reverse the guard into a stack, thus perpetuation the circle of moves we've learned so far.

That's all for now on Combatives. Once I have my new Canon G11 (any day--it arrived on base a week and a half ago, after all), I'll have a better low light camera and be able to take pictures of night road marches and more physical training stuff.

Speaking of marches and PT, I ran a 23:08 three mile run yesterday. While mediocre for OCS, I was pleased. It's pretty decent for someone without a running background, and I'll only get better. When I can run 3 consecutive 6-minute miles, I'll be very happy indeed... and very fit! I don't have any goals to ever run faster than that. There's a guy in my company who ran 2 miles in 8 minutes, but he also represented Alabama in the Olympic tryouts. I do not aspire for that sort of speed. It's superhuman.

A blog of a battle buddy!

Holy cow! OC Galarza has a sharp looking blog! He as in IT / technical writing / marketing before coming to the OCS program too. Like others in my company, he's pretty sharp.

http://blog.andresgalarza.com/

OCS Week Two Complete: Leadership Position Next Week!

OCS week two is complete! This last week was pretty fun. We had weapons, detainment, combat lifesaver, and troop leading procedures (TLP) briefs. The really dark picture below includes three members of my squad rapidly assembling a 249, 240 bravo, and M16 after a relay run which included a nine line med evac.

My favorite weapon is the M-249, frequently called "The Saw". It's really slick, spews rounds rapidly, and best of all, it's light for a chain gun! I also appreciate being able to use the same rounds as my M-16 or M-40. The M-240B, by comparison, is clunky and heavy.

We also had a call for fire exam. Artillery bombardment seems simple (Hey mans! Throw some bombs dis way!) but in reality there's a bit to it. I only got 94 / 100 points on the exam, which was disappointing. This was not the highlight of my week, but I was happy to complete it.

Leadership!

Next week (Monday morning) I'll be a squad leader. I'll be absolutely responsible for anything done right or wrong by my team leaders and their teams. I'll be in charge of accountability for equipment and personnel. I probably won't have any personal time, but I knew I'd get this eventually, so that's okay. This evening I'll begin counselling my team leaders on how I expect them to perform their duties. I'm selecting all college ops for team leaders because they need the experience. Hopefully this won't magnify the challenges I face, ha... we'll see. They're good guys.

Address corrected

My street address in the recent entry was wrong. I corrected it in the original post. Email is still effective for contacting me (but less so in the coming week).

Delta Company OCS: Week One in Brief

I'm a week late summarizing week one, but there is only so much free time in a week, and I like to write my dear friends at home when I can. Here goes it!

Below you can see a small clip from our water survival course. We had to jump off a high platform without losing any equipment, swim 35 meters (still holding our rifle), and the last station was an underwater equipment ditch. That last task was only difficult because some people took a while to remove their load bearing vest (LBV). You can't really make it out in my picture, but it also carries some attached water bottles.

This is my roommate Trevino. He's pretty sharp. He's from the Marine core originally (7 years enlisted) and doesn't ever have anything out of place. He's 29 years old, and he has a fair bit of experience in deployments. I was at first expecting that prior service candidates would stick to themselves and either help us college ops as mentors or not at all. To the contrary, Trevino has been extraordinarily helpful, has asked for assistance / advice from me as well, and he's become a good friend. I'm happy to have him as a roommate. Overall, I'm serving with some pretty good soldiers in Delta Company.

Every single personal space area needs to look the same from one soldier to the next. This is true across the Army, but in OCS, we set our own Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) on things like this. For issues like laundry room usage, cleaning tasks, and other small things, I wrote the official memorandums (basically simple SOPs) and people were thrilled, saying I did a very good job. I'm embarrassed to say I actually enjoy paperwork and procedure.

Overall, the first week is somewhat boring. Nothing unexpected or avoidable, though... mostly we had safety briefs, sexual assault briefs, financial briefs (they make pay really complex here), and other really really long meetings. We also had an initial physical fitness assessment. I wore myself out over the weekend in the gym and didn't do so well. That was disappointing.

OCS Day One complete & Postal Address

Day one in Delta Company is complete! Technically HHC still owns me, but in practice, I'm now in an Officer Candidate School (OCS) class. I'm class 01-10 since it's the first class of fiscal year 2010. That means our branching should be pretty good. There are more selections available for early classes.

Address

Officer Candidate Daniel C. Wolf
Class #: 01-10, Co D, Plt 3
3rd Bn (OCS) 11th IN
7480 Riodorn Street
Fort Benning, GA 31905-4410

My cell

616-634-5114

Responses to comments

@Anna: No, but the MRE is what the Army is known for, I guess. :) If we ate an MRE for every meal, we'd all get fat. An MRE has 1500 to 2300 calories... that's in one MRE. Therefore, an MRE is actually meant for when we're out in the field and burning an insane number of calories. Right now I probably burn less than 3000 calories. Maybe less than 2300 on days I don't do my 5 mile run (my run is Monday, Wednesday, Friday). In the field I'll need two MREs plus one field chow each day to supply my body with energy. It's intense.

Do you use Blogger too?

@Henry: Thanks for the photo tips. I appreciate it a lot! Upon examining my camera documentation, I discovered that it doesn't center-focus by default. Instead it picks the highest contrast vertical line. In my airborne jump towers picture, it probably didn't see enough contrast in the towers so the focus went to infinity. I cannot adjust my focus manually on an SD850 IS. However, I can set it to use normal center-focus, and I did. Hopefully now it will be a lot sharper in shots like that.

I also got a notice today about when my G11 will arrive. The answer? October 28 to November 5th... I guess Canon is swamped with demand. It is a gorgeous sounding camera, after all. :) When this arrives, I'll be able to adjust my ISO and focus, etc and edit RAW images, which means a lot more learning for me... er, in and around OCS which will take 26+ hours each day.

@Mdog: All you need is some Bacon salt. :-D

Please don't urinate on the sauna rocks... really! I mean it this time!

As spotted in the Fort Benning recreation center. @Lady readers: I'll bet you don't see signs like this in your areas.

The picture below is actually something I took a picture of in London, but this reminded me and it fits the wall hanging / signage theme of this post:

Finally, the silver shovel that dug the first hole for the rec center. I hope our tax dollars bought a silver shovel and display case for every building on this base. Oh... snap... never mind. It won't upload tonight.

A Typical Army Breakfast

Orange juice, water, sports drink, coffee, yogurt, 2 biscuits, lots of sausage gravy, 2 tablespoons peanut butter, 2 waffles, raisins, grapes, tomato, and strawberries.

Learning to use photography.

As my posts have already hinted, I want to learn to use photography. I've loved photography and adored the pictures taken by Joe for a long time. I have not, however, taken many pictures of my own. Sometimes many months pass without me taking a single picture. Sometimes I think I'm simply insecure about taking pictures next to a roommate whose pictures are so incredible. Usually, however, I think it's linked to a more practical problem. That is, if I were to buy a nice SLR, I would need to carry around a bag and lenses. In the Army, that's impossible. In social situations, it can be awkward. In athletic activities, it's difficult. However, I'm now set on taking a step forward and buying a Canon G11. It has much of the manual power of an SLR, a seizable fraction of the sensor power, and low light / low noise performance never before seen on a point and shoot.

While I await its arrival, I am enjoying my Canon SD850 IS. It's a pocket camera but very nice. I took a couple pictures today and then walked home to charge the battery--something I should have checked long before embarking in the first place. No matter! I will take more later. Meanwhile, I will critique my couple photos below:

Camera: Canon SD 850 IS
Mode: Auto
ISO: 400
I tried to use the rule of thirds by aligning the canon on the bottom horizontal third line and left vertical third line. I also envisioned the right pillar on the right third line. None of these things really happened. I think I was too distracted with trying to get the frame edge parallel with the edge of the frame.

I hoped the sign, canon, and climbing rope might give good context to the building (a barracks just like mine--only this one is attached to the dining facility). I think the idea was good (a centered face-on building pic would be very boring), but the canon would have been much better if it was brighter, the sign is hard to read, and the mass of grass is boring.

Camera: Canon SD 850 IS

Mode: Auto

ISO: 400

This mass of people is less impressive than in person. In person you could tell that a lot of them had very large weapons. The phone booth is over emphasized by it's placement, but there really isn't anything interesting enough to emphasize.

Maybe the material is boring and I would have been better off focusing on one person holding a saw (nickname for a certain type of chain gun) instead of making this half group shot (there are more soldiers on the near side of the sidewalk).

Camera: Canon SD 850 IS

Mode: Auto

ISO: 250

ISO 250, Canon's anti-shake, and still this blur? Do I need a tripod for even a normal snapshot? I didn't think I was so shakey, and I even have training to fire an M-16 without trigger squeeze and breathing affecting my shot. I would have thought that would help a lot. Now I DID think the screen said ISO 600, but the pic info on my computer says 250. I'll pay close attention next time.

Nevermind the crooked frame. That's easy to fix if the picture was worth processing. If I'd been able to get a clear picture, I would have also turned the ISO to 400 since it's a bit dark. I think that's easy to fix in processing too. I need more clarity though. I don't know why this is so bad. Maybe my camera isn't working so well anymore. I'll look forward to my G11 for comparison purposes.

Oh, and these are the airborne jump towers where Doug just finished training (now he's in mortar leadership training). I took this without leaving my battalion area. They're literally RIGHT next door. We have airborne stuff on three sides of us. These jump towers are used in week 2 of jump school.

Next time I'll have more than 5 minutes reserved fro taking shots, better light (45 minutes earlier in the day would help), and in a couple weeks I'll have a sweet camera too... Goodnight all!

Bacon Salt

I want to try Bacon Salt. It's just what it sounds like--bacon flavored salt. The advertising on the site makes me hungry. It'd be magical on homemade fries... There's even campaign to send bacon salt to soldiers serving overseas. Fantastic! Bacon Salt.

Pondering Remote Business Opportunities

Alright... as expected, I cannot stay away from the entrepreneurial cravings bound to my persona for long. Today I slept in till 7:30 (lazy! I know!), ate a relaxed breakfast (though I was disgruntled by the lack of peanut butter), and left for the community center (two whole blocks away from the battalion area--adventurous, I know) to ponder expansion of Wolfsteps. For those of you who don't know what this is (I'm not really sure who visits this blog since half the time I am simply using it to mark things for myself that I want to remember later), Wolfsteps is my wedding deejay services company. I have superior JBL sound, recording studio and stage mics, dance floor lighting (never used my strobe or fog since I'm not a fan, but I have those things too), and all that jazz.

Expansion is actually possible with very little investment at all. You see, without me present, there will probably be no Wolfsteps weddings next season at all! However, this need not be the case, and I'm sure my staff would like some work... especially my staff that happens to be expecting a new baby. This initiative has some prerequisites to really get rolling and some extras might be in order if my peoples are up to the task!

1. Wedding shows: I'll need to have Wolfsteps make an appearance at wedding shows. I'm thinking that Grand Rapids is a sure bet. Lansing and Ann Arbor might be alright too. Wedding shows can cost $600 to $2400 per show. A good display and good staff meeting a client in person is really the only way to win the confidence of an aspiring bride, so the price is necessary. It's also possible that the Sword of the Spirit Community would allow an advertisement in their newsletter. I'd have to ask someone before counting on that. I'm done with Facebook advertising, though.
2. Name change: Wolfsteps made a ton more sense when I thought I'd be teaching swing dance. Somehow the company morphed instantly into an event services category company. Maybe a name change is in order. Suggestions? Take my poll!
3. Videography services: I have a number of film and video friends who don't get enough work. Tom H. would be the most experience by far, and he read this blog the other day, so maybe he'll see this entry! I'd love to help my friends get some work, though I will need to own most of my equipment since being low on work generally means not having thousands to spend on video equipment. There's some very inexpensive video stuff out recently, and the quality is very high. 
1. I like this specific camcorder from Canon. I would probably need two. They're $600 each. I've read professional opinions that are very enthusiastic about using something like this instead of using a mammoth camera that costs 4 to 15 thousand dollars. This camera has great high definition resolution and works well in limited light due to the sensor quality. Larger cameras decrease mobility and bloat filesize more than necessary. http://www.amazon.com/Canon-VIXIA-Memory-Camcorder-Optical/dp/B001OI2Z2I/ref=pd_cp_p_3
2. I'd want one big fluff-coated shotgun mic ($145) to mount on top for guest interviews and that sort of thing. http://www.amazon.com/Canon-2591B002-Directional-Microphone-Camcorders/dp/B0012ILNK0/ref=pd_bxgy_p_img_a
3. I'd need a second tripod (already have one) for about $40.
4. I'd need a couple spare batteries at $95 each.
5. I'll need more memory for the camcorders. Maybe $30 to $100 worth. It depends on how long I wait to invest. Flash memory halves in price every few months it seems.
6. I'd like a wide angle lens as well, but I'd be timid to even comment on lenses without Ben's wisdom. These seem to range from $50 to $350 (or much higher since a company doesn't set maximum prices).
7. Total cost of investment: $1700 to $2000. Very reasonable! I might even want to throw in some lighting besides what I have for dance floor lighting. You never know when you'll need that for pictures or video.
4. Photography services: Ben is busy but also very talented. Joe is a prime potential photography, though when Josh moves to Bangladesh, Joe will need to be the primary audio tech as well. Jess H. and some old GV friends might be able to step up for some wedding photography gigs. Serious photographers with a marketable portfolio already have their own cameras, so there is no monetary investment here beside possibly helping photographers assemble portfolios for display at wedding shows.
5. Marketing materials: I need to have some marketing materials for wedding shows. I have prepaid graphic design due to a wedding I deejayed. I think I'll go with something postcard size. I like Digital Room for printing. Prices and quality are good there. Sometimes they send me offers for really great sales on postcard sized printing.
6. Printer: I should probably spend a little money on a working printer, though I'll let that wait till I have an apartment. It'd be bulky to move from barracks to barracks but will make more sense come next summer.

Eating Fido & Death By Anthill

I almost forgot to mention the little dog statue at the infantry museum where I moved the antique motorcycle. It was a statue of Furlough, the little doggie mascot of the unit that fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Furlough ran away during the battle, but what the plaque didn't mention (the curator filled me in) was that the Germans probably captured and ate the doggie because they were low on rations at the time. I was thrilled and amused to hear this.

Note: This is a major WWII battle. If you don't know about this battle, you should get on Wiki now!

Anthills are huge in the south! I see an ant hill the size of a small pancake in Michigan and I think, "Wow! Big ant hill." Here you actually need to mow around them. Doug fell into an ant hill several weeks ago and it had bad ramifications. Crazy. I smacked one with a shovel and some ground collapsed. I probably should have filled the hole with gravy.

We were released for the weekend around 4 PM civilian time (for my readers). I've run 4 miles, done some sprint drills, and practiced push ups and crunches today already, but I might try spinning or swimming this evening. We shall see! (wiggles eyebrows mischievously)

Cutting the Ornamental Grass

One of my duties yesterday morning was using a weed wacker to cut the grass islands in the parking lot. I did a very good job and even cut the ornamental grass to the regulation lawn height of 2 inches. I'm not actually sure there's a regulation lawn height, but if I'm asked about the ornamental grass, I'll know what to say.

The afternoon duties were to work out in the gym. I liked that. I'm also sore now. That's okay.

Ribs for dinner are pretty exciting. They get much less exciting when you realize the kitchen ran out of barbecue sauce and used tomato paste instead.

I've mentioned the South's love of fat in my letters home but not here. I quickly learned that when you want rice, you need to say, "Rice, no gravy." The same goes for noodles. I would have thought that this would be the default assumption, but apparently gravy is supposed to go on everything here. Even the lima beans are mixed with chopped pork fat. I shouldn't have been surprised when the kitchen added gravy to the mixed vegetables. Gravy is part of each meal here if you don't specify against it: biscuits and gravy for breakfast and gravy on rice or potatoes for lunch or dinner. Nothing against gravy, mind you. I just don't know how one kills enough animals to make this much gravy.

My abs are starting to show a bit of a six pack. I'm kind of excited for that. I'm not sure I've had that level of ab definition before. I guess that's what happens when you run 4 miles every other morning and then go biking, swimming, or lifting afterwards. I miss non-stationary bikes... meaning normal bikes.

OCS: Comparison to BCT and My Adventures in HHC

Military life is a crash course in an alphabet soup of acronyms and form numbers. My prior work at Steelcase prepared me well for this adventure--at least in an acronym acclimatization sense. I'll try to be good with explaining things.

• BCT: Basic Combat Training, basic, or "boot camp" (nobody in the military calls it that)
• OCS: Officer Candidate School... this is where you go to train to be an officer. The only OCS location is Fort Benning, Georgia.
• HCC: The OCS "company" that houses people who are sick, injured, need paperwork, or who have been removed for "administrative" reasons (sometimes these are bad things). It's also the "reception battalion" more or less for new people before they class up (change their rank colors from gold to black and join an OCS training company).

Comparison

The biggest difference between BCT and OCS is... everything. See yesterday's entry for a description of basic. Additionally, I'd say that 70% of the people in basic were high school jocks that thought they'd go pro one day, didn't get accepted to college, realized they didn't have plans, and decided to join the Army. Oh, and most of them smoked pot before joining. In OCS, everyone is very talented, many led other successful careers (read on for more info on the types of backgrounds they come from), and I love talking to them.

Treatment is very different. You're not only treated like a human at OCS, but you're treated like a professional human! We can ask officers or training cadre for advice (which we need). We can relax a little and breathe. We aren't insulted. It's nice.

HHC: My Adventures

When I first arrived, I spent the weekend with Doug. It was great to spend time with a familiar friend who happens to have just graduated from the same program. He took me shopping for my hundreds of dollars in patches, pins, and required equipment. I would have been lost without him!

I was only in HHC for two days before classing up. It was quite exciting to be part of Echo Company. The cadre were exceptional and my classmates were very sharp. We had several engineers, some nurses, former embassy staff, a few lawyers, a couple pilots, and lots of other professionals in every field (military and private) from accounting through field artillery. However, I was pulled from the class before the end of the first week because I don't have a heart murmur on file. That meant I went back to HHC. At HHC I slept, did duties till dinner, worked out, and got the evenings off (that was written in past tense; I'm too lazy to go back, but note that I'm still in HHC doing just that) to shop, hang out with friends (like Doug for burgers on the weekend), etc.

The first sergeant called me in to tell me that I'd probably be barred from OCS and need to enlist with a job that fills "the needs of the Army" (scary phrase, but you'd need to be in the Armed Forces to understand what I mean). That would mean going 11B (Eleven Bravo is Infantry) which is not Signal Corps (IT and communications) at all... Signal being what I want.

Then the company commander called me into his office the next day. He told me he would have me discharged from the Army if I couldn't go to OCS because it wouldn't make sense to be able to do one but not the other. A couple hours later he called me back in and said he saw no reason I can't class up and serve since the cardiologist's memo from MEPS says I have no considerations, no risks, and am fit to serve. The next class, Delta Company, classes up on October 13th. I hear that Delta Company is pretty good. I told some Echos today and they were all extremely excited for me. It was cool to get such a warm reaction. They're really great guys, and I'll miss the ones with me during basic at Fort Knox.