LDAC

This is me at the start of LDAC in the barracks before I shaved my own head because my hair was too long according to one of the members of our cadre.
This is me after I shaved my head. Notice I'm not smiling! LDAC stands for Leadership Development Accessions Course and it is pretty much the last step you must complete to become an army officer. The station is Fort Lewis, Washington.
This is me in my hooch which is created by two soldiers that button their ponchos together to form a triangular tunnel open at both ends. It doesn't really keep you any warmer but it does keep the rain off pretty well.
I am wearing protective eye wear that my generous brother Aaron gave me as a graduation present when I finished my Mandarin course at DLI. I'm not wearing these by my own choice though. Even though they are oakleys and really nice I usually only wear these clear ones when I am shooting. Do you see a rifle in the picture? That's because there isn't one, I am wearing protective eye wear so my eyes don't get poked out by branches, apparently that happened to some cadet that got his eye poked out by a branch and because the army is the way it is everyone was required to wear protective eye wear any time we were walking in the forest. The upside of walking through the forest is that at Fort Lewis blackberries grow like weeds and as I walked through the forest or pulled security I often picked and ate blackberries... Mmmmm blackberries!
You can barely see it in the background of this picture but if you look closely you can see mount Rainier-it is a truly majestic mountain and it's practically alone which makes me think it used to be a volcano.
This was our squad there were twelve of us and we took it in turns as assigned by our cadre to be the squad leader. Whoever was the squad leader at the time was being graded on their performance as a leader, so we did our best as a squad to make each other look good. Unfortunately some of the members of our squad were what our cadre called spotlight rangers-meaning they really only tried hard when they were in charge and being graded and pretty much dragged their feet and whined and complained when they were not the leader. "I don't want to carry the claymore." "I can't pick up my rucksack by myself can you help me." For the most part though we had a good squad.
This is me on the field of the land navigation course. Land navigation consists of a day and night time course where you have 5 (night course) -8 (day course) points that you have to find and you are given the 8 digit coordinates, a map, a compass, and a red flash light. For those of you that were scouts it's orienteering. Most of the course was in some dense forest vegetation but this open field was also a part of the course. In the past whenever I did land navigation I always did what's called dead reckoning which means you go straight from one point to another in a straight line. On this course the vegetation was so thick that we were encouraged to use the trails on the map to get as close as possible to our points and then calculate where we were at on the trail using our pace count (a method used to measure distance where you know how many steps it takes you to walk 100 meters) and shoot an azimuth (a direction between 0 and 360 degrees on your compass) to your point from the trail. Even though I had never used this method before I really liked it, it reminded me of my days working for phantom screens and being Aaron, Kurt, Nate, or Jarudd's (my brothers) co-pilot as I used a Thomas Guide to guide us to our next job.
I am proud to say that because my dad always took us hiking and taught us how to take care of our feet, I never got a single blister while I was at LDAC. Here I am airing out my feet before I put powder on my feet and some fresh clean socks.
This is me and Cadet Singleton, a happy moment because I taught her some things that helped her pass the night time land navigation course which she had previously failed and needed to pass to graduate.
This is the scary forest chimp that would come down and snatch away any unsuspecting soldiers that fell asleep during briefings. Being snatched away entailed a cadre member noticing you had fallen asleep, calling you out, and making you stand up in front of everyone as you held up the chimps head for the rest of the briefing. Fortunately I have the discipline to stay awake during a briefing but there were plenty of cadets found lacking.
This is me climbing down a rope from a tower on the confidence course-which is basically a giant obstacle course. Any time I get to do a confidence course I love it because it reminds of recess as a kid. There are monkey bars, swings, ropes, balance beams, you name it.
A Russian, an American, and a Mexican sounds like the start of a joke but it's the nationality of the three of us from left to right. Leonid Godonuv (we pronounced it good enough) me, and Miguel Urbina-he and I had fun speaking Spanish to make fun and cut up. I was really impressed by this soldier he was the best at everything he did but because the horrible subjectivity of the grading he was only rated third over all in our platoon when there's no question he should have been first. Especially when I knew the people that were rated first and second and they did not even earn the Recondo award (all around soldier award) which Miguel did earn. If it weren't for him I would not have the following LDAC highlight to share with you: The day before graduation as is customary in the army we were scheduled to do 5 hours of rehearsals. Those rehearsals were to consist of standing at attention, saluting, standing at attention, standing at parade rest and then repeating that process about 10 times. Because I knew how to properly get through a graduation ceremony already and the barracks were filthy, I asked Miguel (he was assigned as our platoon sergeant that day) if I could take two other soldiers and stay at the barracks to clean it for the full 5 hours so that we would be prepared for the barracks inspection that was scheduled at 1:00 pm to get our cell phones back (they take your cell phones away shortly after you arrive and they would not give them back to us until our barracks were shining. Being a leader and not only a manager like some cadets that only know how to micromanage-he said yes. I have never cleaned so hard and been so happy about it. I was on cloud nine knowing that if I wasn't cleaning I would be standing in one spot for five hours! We did such a good job cleaning that one of our Cadre members Master Sergeant Ramos called a formation and gave all three of us a coin (a custom coin made special to present during situations like these) and after the formation we all got our cell phones back. At our formation that night before chow Miguel told everyone to congratulate me for coming up with the idea that led to us all being able to relax and talk to our family and friends that night. He didn't have to do that but I really appreciated that he did-Thank you Miguel!
This was the easiest rope I've ever climbed. I enjoyed it so much I climbed it twice, which hopefully makes up for the fact that I couldn't climb the rope at Fort Huachuca, Arizona because I had recently had my shoulder surgery.
This is me on the Chinook (not sure if I spelled that right but it's a huge transport helicopter) Fun ride but after a lot of banking I was ready to get off at the end, it was also nice in helping me to decide I would never branch aviation and be a pilot.
Look closely and you'll see I'm pointing my rifle at a large heap that looks like a small mountain of pine needles. It is an ant hill! These thing are all over the forest at Fort Lewis! Sometimes when we were walking at night someone would step on one and those ants would go nuts!
This is me and my dear friend Matt Pettijohn. He just got back from south Korea. We were classmates at DLI and he was able to come see me because he was just stationed at Fort Lewis with his family.
These are my favorite people in the world who I missed so terribly for 5 weeks while we were separated. I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who serve our country and are often separated from their families for periods as long as 18 months. May God bless you and your families for all that you do!