Blue Thunder

Blog Post – Blue Thunder

BLUE THUNDER!

Not sure why they called it that…but this week  we went to blue thunder. It’s a weekend of FUN STUFF in the HOT SUN, basically.

We were supposed to leaved Wednesday night but they ended up splitting our class in half and half went Wednesday night, left Thursday and came back Friday, while my half left Thursday morning and stayed through Friday.  We woke up to leave at 4:30 and marched for way too long with giant filled duffel bags strapped to our backs. Serious disadvantage for the short people who can’t get the bag high enough to rest on my back where I wanted it. But the motto for the weekend was “embrace the suck” (which really applies to all of COT but especially this weekend) So we arrived and ate our MREs for breakfast…yum. I had something called “maple sausage” for breakfast and I had heard that it was super nasty, and it was. So I ate the peanut butter and crackers and trail mix that came with it and threw the sausage away. The whole pack is like 3000 calories anyway so it was all good.

Then we did the most awesome thing ever – the high ropes course! We strapped on helmets and harnesses and ropes and climbed progressively higher up poles and along ropes until we got to a suspension bridge we had to jump across (AAH!) and then we zip-lined down to the ground. Then came a 50-ft rock climbing wall, followed by walking out on a limb (literally) they call “the toothpick” and then rappelling down the side of the tower. It. Was. Awesome.

Then ,y flight all sat together in the gravel and did NOTHING for like 2 hours while we waited for everyone else to go through the course. Sounds boring but it was actually pretty awesome. We don’t have very much downtime so sitting and doing nothing in the morning before the sun got hot, throwing rocks at each other’s’ boots and sharing cheese spread, “osmotic cranberries” (dried cranberries) and crackers some people saved from breakfast was one of the most fun things I’ve done all week (sad) but I really liked just hanging out.

After everyone was done we did a little more sitting and then went to get our lunch MREs. I had beef ravioli (one of the better MREs but obviously not good quality ravioli…). Next it was time for the EMRIC (emergency medical something something) which was where we setup a field clinic (the tents were already set up) and assign people to run each department, some to be patients, some to be insurgents trying to infiltrate, and run the clinic for an hour. I was assigned to be a patient. They asked who wanted to “get messy” and pretend to be a trauma patient so of course I volunteered. I put on an old pair of ABU pants they had and we cut up the leg, splattered fake blood on it, and put on a rubber open tibia fracture thing. They had a BUNCH of fake wounds and stage makeup so we kind of went all out. It was aaaawesome. So we ran outside and threw ourselves on the ground and pretended to be people who’d been in an explosion and they came and put us on stretchers and ran us through the clinic and it was pretty fun stuff!

After about an hour of that we reset and faked a mass casualty incident where I was again in an explosion and ran through the whole thing again.

Then the dfac brought us a hot meal and we ate it in the bleachers, and we basically had nothing to do so we took showers and went to bed. We slept in pretty nice acocmodations, especially considering. They had several huge, permanent-ish tents that were air conditioned, with a bunch of plywood bunk beds. Uncomfortable, but better than the other option of sleeping on the ground. They had issued us foam pads and sleeping bags so that’s what we slept on.

In the morning we ate more MRE breakfast (Asian beef strips!) and then did a litter carry course. They taught us the different carries for 4 people, 2 people, uphill, downhill, rough terrain, and low crawl. We got in groups of 5 to practice and since I am of course the shortest person in any random group of 5 people, I was the patient. I’m not sure I learned anything from being carried around but it was fun to bounce around and it was basically a nice nap. Then we did some more very nice sitting around before returning to campus in a BUS this time, thankfully. Then we all scrambled to get to the laundry machines before everyone else and took some showers and we are back!

Tonight we had very little to do, just a meeting for the HPSP students and then dinner, so I think when some people get back from the gym we’re going to watch a movie together.

This week is supposed to have a LOT of downtime so I’m looking forward to that. Flight bonding time and a LOT of dinners out next week. And then GRADUATION! And mY FAMILY IS COMING TO SEE MEEEEEEE I can’t wait!