Ya know what really grinds my gears?

I found out today that Sea Trials is no longer going to contain the river passage and the barbed wire evolutions. Instead the plebes might be playing dodgeball. Apparently someone important felt that these activities were "safety hazards".

In case you dont know what theseevolutions consist of: during the river passage half of a plebe company runs something like a 2-3 mile course with rubber duckies (rubber M-16s) and half go the other way. Around half way through this running through the forest with logs in the way and trees and hills and all of that stuff, there is a river. You put on a life jacket to make sure you dont drown and wade across it with the rubber duckie over your head, ensuring that it stays out of the water. When I did it halfway across I could barely touch and had water up to my mid-nose. It was tough, but fun and a terrribly rewarding experience.

The barbed wire stuff is nothing more than doing lots of PT at Hospital Point and then crawling through nasty sand and mud while detailers are yelling at you. Lots of fun actually.

I dont understand why anyone would want to take the evolutions out. They took plenty of precautions when we did these to ensure that everyone was safe. And I mean seriously . . . we are in the military. In boot camp, guys crawl under barbed wire while live machine gun fire flies overhead. If someone stood up they would die. We should be being trained to endure hardships, not coddled so that when we get into the Fleet we are soft.

and thats what really grinds my gears

on a lighter note we found out that Three Doors Down is coming for our concert on April 8th. Thats gonna be awesome