Day the 1st at Fort McCoy

[aadler]

 

Yes, this begins a new assignment, a school in Wisconsin. As usual, I had all my belongings packed and prepared the day before; as usual, I didn’t sleep well. I almost never have trouble sleeping, and facing a long-distance trip the next day is the most common cause. I don’t even fight it any more, I just do what I can and then sleep on the plane.

As today. There are actually four people from my unit attending this school. I met two at the airport, and the last man joined us at the connecting flight from Chicago-O’Hare. I’d brought four Laurence Sanders paperbacks to keep me occupied, and read one to pass the time when I wasn’t snoozing.

Beginnings weren’t auspicious. Too many soldiers had arrived at the airport for the bus from Fort McCoy to hold them all (a new contractor had taken over the busing service, and tried to do it with fewer personnel on the blithe assumption that they could make up the difference in efficiency, which so far, no). Fortunately, I was among the favored group that got a seat for the first trip. Mine was one of the last bags to unload from the bus, by which time everyone I knew had moved on; I did what everyone else was doing, approached the two soldiers stationed out front of the building where we’d been delivered and asked them where I was to report. They pointed out a nearby building, I went over, changed into PTs for height/weight measurements … got to the front of the line before being told I needed to sign in at the door of the building, and on going to the sign-in spot was informed that I was supposed to be at a different building. Three blocks away.

This was common. There are different phases of the school I’m attending. I did the first phase in Washington state four years ago. Throughout our continued processing, once I’d arrived at the proper place, people from the first phase would show up and we’d have to send them to the place where I’d started. You’d think, since the people here run these schools thirteen times a year (that was the number quoted me), they’d have a system for sending their arriving students to the proper spot to begin with.

I didn’t quite make weight. A problem, but a minor one, I’ll be re-weighed in ten days. That’s more than enough time for me to lose the excess, though that’s going to be a lean ten days. Once I got past that part, though … a fairly robust thunderstorm passed through while we were in-processing, and a blown transformer knocked out power to the entire base for what turned out to be five hours. After the first two hours they turned us loose. I dragged my sixty-pound bag — wheeled, fortunately — back to where I’d begun in order to draw linens, then moved over to the assigned barracks. Good news: at my level, we get private rooms. Not-so-good news: I set up without lights or power; I didn’t bother to unpack more than the absolute necessities because I couldn’t be positive we wouldn’t be moved around tomorrow once we got the in-processing system back into gear. (Also, as I eventually discovered when the power finally came back and I could plug in my laptop: no Ethernet connection, and there’s an available wireless signal but for some reason my laptop, after connecting to it, tells me it can’t open the Web pages I try to call up.)

I went for a quick two-mile run, hung around outside to cool off. After changing to non-sweaty clothes, I walked back down to the PX, which I’d passed during the run, but found that they hadn’t bothered to open it back up again after the power outage. No big deal, I should have time in the next several days to drop by.

They ran us pretty hard during the first phase, back in ’04. This phase is higher-level stuff, but by now we’re higher-level people. Theoretically they’ll expect more of us, but also expect us to supervise ourselves. I’ll find out how it goes over the next few days.