"Army training sir"

I will now backdate a few things here. I arrived here a week and a half ago and have had zero internet connectivity. 7 miles from the capital of South Carolina and I am already in a technological vacuum. I'm sure if I needed 4X4 parts or a gun I could find those with ease, but reliable internet may be a pipe dream.

So I arrived here in early June and was issued my Army Desert Camouflage uniforms and a 70 pound hunk of kevlar called an IBA.

Great Pic of me looking ready to take on the Taliban.

We live in Open Bay Barracks, for those of you with no military experience think summer camp cabins. 126 sweaty dudes all bunking up together in a room the size of a large hallway. The bad thing is the smell, the good thing is the camaraderie you build when you spend 24 hours a day with the same group of dudes. Troy is a Personnel Chief from Kauai who sleeps on the bunk above me, I spend most of my time hanging out with him. He is deploying to Djibouti so next week we will go our seperate ways. Hopefully we can keep in touch.

My rack mate Troy sneaking up on one of the rats that share our barracks with us. I don't think he was really going to shoot it. But who knows.


Every morning we wake @ 4:00 to cram into a bus that takes us to the range for that days live fire event.

Live fire can be anything from a M-16 rifle shoot to a .50 Caliber machine gun with armor piercing tracer rounds. By the end of this training I will have fired almost a thousand live rounds and countless others in the weapon simulators we use to make sure we dont shoot each other, or ourselves for that matter, when we are on the range.

Tanks and targets on the machine gun range.

Typical M-16 range. If I never see another one, it will be too soon..