P.T. Sucks ...

So Earl has been doing a lot for the past two weeks. Like I said before, he is currently in White Phase of his training, which only means that they are going to push him even harder and longer.

On the 19th Earl and his fellow soldiers were lucky enough to go on, what their Drill Sergent said was, a 5 mile road march. Some of the soldiers double checked the march length on a map afterward though and figured out that they had actually marched close to 8 miles. Earl and everyone else had to march 8 miles with 90lbs of gear on their backs.
Earl and his fellow soldier also got to fight against each other with pugil sticks (big q-tip like weapons). Earl won first in his weight class for his entire platoon and second in his entire company, which consists of about 250 other soldiers.
For some reason though, after all they went through for that day, Earl's platoon got smoked for 5 hours. So the Drill Sergents made everyone do hundreds of pushup's, situp's, flutter kicks, and so many other things that ... Everyone seriously thought the exercises would never end.

On the 20th Earl and his fellow soldiers in training got a wonderful chance to work on 3 hours of physical training (P.T.). The 3 hours included running up and down 40 feet of stairs 20 times in a row, carrying huge logs around a track, flipping 5 foot long tractor tires, carrying "wounded" soldiers, and running 3 miles to a shooting range.
The shooting range was nicknamed, "10 man" Location of hits and misses" (?). The soldiers have to shoot at pop up targets and are able to check where they hit the targets on a computer screen. Earl, of course, got a score of 38/40. Almost perfect.

Fun Random Fact: Earl's Drill Sergent Ward has taken to calling him "Obama" (it was only a matter of time ...) and everytime D.S. Ward shouts out "Obama", Earl has to answer back, "no new taxes!"

I got to talk to Earl on Thanksgiving, which was very nice. I would have talked to him for a good 20 minutes, but since I was in Bolinas and in a bad reception area, my cell phone cut out halfway through our conversation. I was happy to hear his voice though. He is doing good, he just talked about what he had written in his letters. They actually let the soldiers have a real meal for Thanksgiving. Earl was more than happy to be able to actually drink real coffee and eat real food. Earl even got a chance to eat non-dairy pumpkin ice cream!

So that's it for this week. For those of you who wrote letters to him, please continue to do that! He really does enjoy getting them, even if he doesn't always have the time to respond.
Thanks again to everyone for reading this.

Pugil Stick Fighting - Wikipedia