aggienaut | Letter From Bootcamp

   Gas prices at the local nice cheap gas station were at $1.91 /gal this morning and $2.01 /gal this evening. Compare that to $1.63 a week ago. Needless to say, I intend to hide in my cave here As Much As Possible (AMAP) now.
   With that in mind I don't intend to go out tonight, so this is as good as its gonna get.. soo I might as well update the livejournal.

   So whats new? Well, I don't think I've mentioned work that much lately... I do work pretty much every day though. Still just picking up people's unwanted shifts. Its pretty cool. Have barely hung out at the Diedrichs at all these last two weeks. Once everyone got banned it just wasn't the same. The banned people were still there of course, they just hung out at the nearby courtyard... but its just not the same.

   And now.. to change things up, I shall transcribe the latest letter from my younger brother Eric in bootcamp. (To get the full Fricke experience you can compare to my older brother's livejournal: nibot)

   Dear Mom & Dad, This week has been the most action packed so far. Many crazy things to report. First off on Tuesday when we were on the rifle range practicing firing with full gear on, someone decided boot camp sucked and he put the barrel in his mouth and killed himself. That was pretty nuts because I saw the whole thing happen. I don't think you really want details. That kind of messed up the training schedule because we had to leave the range.
   After that we hiked up into the bush to begin field week. We set up "hooches" and everything which reminded me of boyscouts or something. Then we are told they aren't lined up correctly so we had to relocate 81 hooches. They like doing that kind of stuff.
   Anyway the next day was the gas chamber. This had to be the most miserable experience of my entire life. The only thing that it can even begin to compare to is getting a puff of smoke from the bee smoker in your eyes. As I recall when we burned burlap in there it stung pretty bad. Well anywho imagine that feeling on every piece of exposed skin and inside your lungs. We were stuck in there for about 7-8 minutes taking off our mask and clearing it several times. Hey at least my sinuses were clear when it was done. It was cool tho, I'm glad we did it.
   Other things we did include the assault course (not sure of exact name) that was just a whole load of low crawling under barbed wire and climbing over walls and trenches. They also had these propane machines that made extremely loud gun shot blasts to make things feel more real. It scraped me up pretty bad, but was really cool. I think it has been one of the most physically challenging things so far. Low crawling with full gear and a rifle gets pretty tough. Especially when you're running and the DI yells "incoming!" and you have to hit the deck fast. They did that about a million times to me... get up, run, dive, get up, run, dive, etc., etc.
   Next we had more rifle range for moving targets and multiple targets and also shooting with a gas mask on. That night ... or maybe it was Thursday night ... anyway we had night fire. It was awesome. We all got tracer rounds and blasted the hell out of targets when the DIs shot off illum grenades out of M203s. I dare say it was cooler than the [Mission Viejo] Lake fireworks show. We also had a night infiltration course. Basically, we walked through a valley in groups of 4 (fireteams) and practiced booby trap detection techniques and stuff like that. They also had illum nades and when they went off you had to hit the deck and freeze. The hike to this course was very dark except for the moon and stars which was pretty pleasant. Nice temp. There was also quite a few shooting stars. We also had an unknown distance shooting course. They taught us methods of estimating the distance to targets. That's basically all the major stuff I think.
   Crucible starts on Tuesday at 0200. That should suck pretty bad. 54 miles, 2.5 days, 3 MREs, lots of crazy mountains.
   Speaking of MREs, that's what we lived off all week. They taste pretty damn good, but I could honestly eat 5 in one sitting and be about satisfied. I'm sure I lost some weight this week (more so than other weeks, I'm always hungry). It's a strange thing because sometimes there's plenty of food so I stuff myself to the gills at the chow hall. So you go from stuffed to starving 3 times a day. My stomach must be confused. Other times you get out of the chow hall and you're still hungry. Oh, oh, you were asking about what I wanted when I get home. Have the frig stocked with UFOs and York paddies and Reeses too. As far as meals go, I'm thinking the standard LAN pizza. Things from the MREs that I want are fig newtons (extremely tasty when hungry and when not) and short bread cookies. Everything else in the MRE I'd rather never eat again. And most importantly I want the Mom's world famous hamburgers and hmm.. Any other home cooked by Mom meal would be excellent. Be sure to bring some candy with you to Visitor's Thursday (day before we grad I think). Will write again next Sunday... And maybe get a phone call soon after... We'll see...
      Love, Eric

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