Fort Benning, Georgia...

Is colder than a well diggers butt, right now.

I'm attending CRC. It's a readiness program that prepares you for deployment (health/dental, shots, paperwork, paperwork and more paperwork). The process isn't bad but the conditions are, well... undesirable. Four men in a 12'x12' room with four wall lockers and 2sets of bunk beds. It is CRAMPED to say the least. I played soldier for 12 years and was used to those kinds of conditions... Back then!! I'm 40 now and have been out of the Army for 13 years. I'm calling shennanigans!!!

The one bright spot of today occured when we started to "march" to our next location down the road and up a hill. In our class we have roughly 100 +/- soldiers/airmen/seamen, 100+/- DA/DOD Civilians and exactly 150 of us "lowly" contractors. Anyway, we started to march at what the Army refers to as a "route step." It simply means that no one calls cadence and you don't have to stay in step, just stay behind the person in front of you. More than 75% of the contractors are prior military like myself. Well, one of them starts half-heartedly calling an old Army cadence, he got a few small laughs and then I spoke up, "You're doing it all wrong... There she was just a-walkin' down the street singin' (at this point everyone is hysterical but quickly caught their compsures to follow up with) Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do." I followed with, "Snappin' her fingers and shufflin' her feet, singin' (and everyone joined in again) "Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do." Someone else jumped in with, "She looked good (looked good), she looked fine (looked fine) She looked good, she looked fine and I nearly lost my mind..." At this point it fell apart into random "Stripes" quotes for the rest of the march.

Very cool.
Also, thanks to all of you with the well wishes.