April Drill Sunday

Again, sorry this took so long, we didn't have a computer for the first three weeks after drill due to a bad RAM card and this last week has been really busy. However, tomorrow's senior skip day so I have no homework and have time to finish tonight.
So Sunday morning I had an alarm set for 0345 since our wake up time was 0430. However, I found myself so anxious that I woke up 3 times between 0100 and 0230 and could not fall back to sleep after 0230 and instead just lay in bed trying to rest until it wast time for me to wake up. At 0345 I hopped out of bed, showered, shaved and quietly started dressing and had my bed stripped and was halfway in ACUs by 0430. This made the morning go very smooth. I was able to have spots set for each of the linens before anyone had stripped their beds and I was able to get my bay's linens squared away very quickly and efficiently and we were able to move on to helping the other bays. We were among the first people to have our bay swept and cleaned up and my squad was one of the first out despite being split between two bays. I believe that part of my leadership went very well and I hope the other men in my bay agreed.
After we formed up outside and our leadership arrived we moved out to chow. I have to mention that at the beginning of our march we performed what I believed was a very successful counter column especially for having our packs on. I had never led one before so it was a new experience and I was relieved to have pulled it off.
We then moved into our final stations of the weekend. My group had a very good class on setting up hasty checkpoints and searching detainees and cars. One thing that I didn't realize was how little equipment and how few troops you actually need to make a checkpoint. I hadn't realized they would leave one humvee as a checkpoint. The detainee searching class was cool as well. We learned the proper way to search and how to find things hidden on someone without putting yourself at risk although the butt and crotch searches were a little awkward to perform. The car search was entertaining to me. We used Drill Sergeant Zupancic's truck to search which was cool. It's a sweet truck. It kinda made me laugh though because PFC Schreiber had bet Sgt Lammers 50 pushups that he could find everything that Sgt Lammers put in the car since he goes to the tech school like me and knows what a car should look like. However, I knew he was hosed from the beginning, he works on diesels all day and this was a 4 cylinder Toyota and it's impossible to find everything in all of the nooks and crannies in a car if the person is smart. I'd bet money that I could build a car bomb nobody could pick out if I had a desire to. It was still good training though since it gives you the best chance possible of finding a problem.
After our last classes we cleaned up the drill hall and the halls and offices so that we could be presentable for an officer that came and spoke to us. He was a Lieutenant Colonel and was talking to us about college programs through the Guard and specifically the ROTC program and the benefits of becoming an officer. He was very cool and gave a good speech. I think that could be a good route to go for me as it is a very promising and obviously honorable route in general but I still believe I would be best off as a warrant officer instead of a commissioned officer. Nonetheless it was good to hear from him and it gave us a chance to practice how to behave around a commissioned officer.
After this we went and had the opportunity to do PT for the first time as a group at drill. We were a couple of hours ahead of schedule so we had time to do organized PT which was great. Some of us really needed it as we're not as fit as a unit as we should be. We started out be getting smoked because there was trash left in the barracks. We had to touch our arms above our heads and bring them back to level with our shoulders while keeping our arms straight and then he would have us hold them there as long as he felt like it. I believe we did 75 of these and if anyone had dropped we would have started over. One of the guys next to me was struggling and I was sure he would so I had my hand a few inches below his to catch it if he did but everyone was able to stay up which was good.
After being smoked we moved into what Drill Sergeant Stace referred to as muscle failure training. This simply meant lots of pushups and lots of situps and was not bad at all. I've found I need to work on strengthening my chest because I can do more tricep pushups than most of the guys in our battalion but I'm terrible at wide grip pushups.
After our strength training Drill Sergeant Stace gave us a quick lesson on loyalty then we moved into cardio training. We did a run that I really liked where we walked for 40 seconds and then sprinted for 20. We did this four times and I found it to be a pretty good run although rather mild as it was tailored to be doable by all of us. It was good though because the sprint was something where we could be competitive and work ourselves to our maximum for that time.
We still had time after this and decided to have some fun. We played ultimate frisbee which is always a good time. It was pretty windy which made it interesting. Unfortunately I've never been an amazing catch and I've always been even worse with a frisbee than with a ball. This time was even worse than normal. I missed a few catches and my only redemption was ripping it way from a guy when we both got it at the same time and had to fight it down to the ground. It was kind of a sad game for me though and I felt better when I played it the next weekend for MORP and did outstanding. I don't know if it's better to have my good game in front of my girlfriend or in front of my battalion and my Drill Sergeant.
After our PT session we went back to the drill hall and had our AAR and went home. I hurried out much faster than normal as I was still a bit embarrassed by my less than spectacular performance. I soon wished I hadn't though because I was reminded of one of the reasons I love drill. You're so pumped the whole time that nothing hurts and everything feels far better than normal. My arm felt great all of drill but as soon as I got off post and cooled down a bit it began to throb like crazy and my sinus headache at least doubled. Then I got home to a dead computer as well. I also only managed 8 pullups in a pullup contest some marines were doing before the vein structure in my left arm literally felt like it was going to explode. I wish I could keep that drill feeling all the time and I'm super excited to go back.