The Big Red 1

So, here I am at Fort Riley starting to get ready for more training. I arrived here on Sat after a 3 hour flight from San Diego. I had the rest of Sat off and Sunday off. We started drawing gear on Monday. It will be a 3 day evolution. There are 25 Navy personnel here, and over 200 Air Force in our class. My team consists of doctors, nurses and MSC (Medical Service Corp - lab, pharmacy, hospital administration and others). It is all Officers.

The routine during the inprocessing is lots of hurry up and wait with lots of downtime. I have been to the gym on Mon & Tue during the normal work day due to all the downtime between sessions. I know that won't continue as we get further along in the training cycle.

Currently, I am living in a 2 man room. We have a common entrance and shared bathroom, but separate rooms. Each room has a bed, locker and desk. Later on this week, we will move into 40 man open bay berthing with bunk beds (don't be jealous).

Kansas weather has been interesting. When I got here on Saturday, it was almost 70 but very windy. Of course it got down below freezing and snowed on Sunday (didn't stick). The wind was still blowing up to 40mph and only in the low 30's. If you remember from my previous posts, we could only bring 1 seabag. In the 1 seabag is no warm clothes. We wear regular clothes here after the work day. I have 1 pair of jeans and 1 long sleeve shirt. No room for anything else. I did wear the Navy PT sweatshirt to try and stay warm on the walk to the chow hall. Oh, I can't say chow hall anymore. Now that I am on an Army base, it is the DFAC (dining facility). It has been down in the teens at night. It warmed up into the upper 50's today and will be warmer the rest of the week. Of course we will be issued the cold weather gear tomorrow after it warms up.

Sorry for not posting any new pictures. I will after I have all my gear. I will have 4 seabags of gear including IBA (Individual Body Armor). 

Look at Dave and Anne's blogs for comparison (under links). They have 3 weeks of training and I have over 60 days. As I progress through the training, I will post some of the various evolutions and training regimens.....