The inexorable grind of training

We have left the administrative world and are now transitioning to classes about more immediate concerns such as combat operations and how to move in the city.

Today we covered improvised explosive devices, or IEDs for short. I expect to see a lot of The Walk tomorrow as we should be doing convoy operations and later, military operations in urbanized terrain. I wasn't surprised to see either of those topics on the validation slate, but I'm in a training group that's lightly populated by folks in killing-people specialties.

There's a part of me that wants to do it because I think it'll be fun. There's also a part of me that desperately wants to spectate as I think it'll be funny. As a strategic planner, it's my firm belief that if I have to practice reflexive fire techniques and IMT, I'll have miserably failed in my job. In spite of that, there's an element of that tactical heritage that I just don't want to give up.

It echos an interesting observation from one of my classmates at CBKS, when he told me that of all the folks in the class, I was the one who would most regret leaving my basic branch. As I related to him later, I had no regrets leaving Armor Branch, but it wasn't for professional competency reasons. There were other inchoate factors behind my decision to career field designate Strategic Plans and Policy that were at work on that one.

In the meantime, I spent most of Sunday doing PT, eating, driving from place to place, and finally watching Serenity. One of the places I went before seeing the movie was McKelligon Canyon Park. I thought I'd walk to the top of one of the hills, and was quite unprepared for the gargantuan smoking that it entailed. The view was nice, but man, did that ascent hurt. Probably, though, not as much as it would've hurt to roll downhill hitting sharp (literally) rocks, cacti, and thorn bushes. Haha. But it was picturesque, and in the unlikely event that I'm ever in El Paso again, maybe I'll go back. Who knows.

Amazingly enough, I had some time to kill before the movie started, so I checked out a local sports store, in the vain hope that there was actually some lacrosse gear in El Paso. Amazingly, the local Big 5 Sporting Goods Store had a few deBeer/Gait sticks, some STX Fiddlestx (which are miniature Protons and Bionics), some STX AV8s (a poor man's Proton), and an amazingly cheap STX Bionic at 50% off. Not that I need a new lacrosse stick, but when was the last time I saw a first-line lacrosse stick (albeit with only an AL6000 shaft) at $50? Admittedly, it only had a soft mesh with power V, which is not the kind of mesh I'd want to have (Both of my active crosses, a STX Octane and an AV8, are strung with mid-monster mesh, with hockey laces for a V and shooting strings), but I digress. I intend to reassemble those two attack crosses once I get settled, in the vain hope that someone in my immediate work area might actually play lacrosse and have a vaguely congruent work schedule.

In the meantime, though, it's looking like I'll be getting reacquainted with a long gun again.