Henry's Web Log

Lisa and I made a promise before I left: we'd each try to loose 10 pounds. I've got a lot more than she does to loose, and I've gotten right to work on it.
One of our briefings on "battle mind" (or as a football coach would say, "getting your head into the game") was about coming back as a 300. It's your choice whether that's a 300 on your PT test (perfect score on Army Physical Fitness), or 300 pounds. Because there's considerable discretionary time, and lots of really good food. See an online calculator for the Army's PT test
So I'm working on my weight goal, and hopefully improving my PT score in the process. I started at 226 pounds on October 5th. I was within Army standards, but have to be body-fat measured. My goal is to be below the screening weight for body-fat testing ("tape test" - because they measure your girth and use various look-up tables to guesstimate your body fat percentage). So my goal is under 214 pounds. Right now, I'm 218! I was pretty frustrated last month as I was eating right, exercising more than most of my peers, and still not loosing anything. Well, I took a dramatic step last week: I stopped all caffeine and artificial sweetners. No Diet Coke, my favorite beverage! And within a week, about 4 pounds have come right off.

I want to stress that this is all self-imposed. The Army is really not enforcing body-fat except in extreme cases right now: seeing as how they're calling us old Individual Ready Reserve folks out of the woodwork. In fact, I'll go so far as to confess that no one has given us a physical fitness test or tape-test since we re-entered active duty. I do know they looked at this in the medical fitness review, but it wasn't a very close look!

I'm pretty excited about my progress, though, and I look forward to the benefits of dropping this extra weight: faster run times, easier to do push-ups, less stress on my knees, and above all, looking good for my Lisa!

We did the HEAT simulator this week. That's the HMMWV Egress Assistance Trainer (an acronym within an acronym- the very best kind!!)
The HEAT trainer lets you experience a rollover in an uparmored HUMMWV, then practice releasing your seatbelt while upside down, while taking on water, or under darkness. Then you're balanced on your head, so you need to get out without choking! Rollovers are a big cause of injury right now, so this is very relevant training for us.
Take a look!

In spite of running through a full range at Camp McCrady, we’ve done it again here at Ft. Lewis, only with more pain: a day of M16 preliminary marksmanship training, a day of M16 electronic simulation training (EST), and a very long day at the range.
I will say that the EST (not ElectroShock Therapy, but Electronic Simulation Training), was a very cool experience: a large motorpool had been converted into an electronic battlefield with converted M16 weapons (machine guns and anti-tank weapons, too, but not for us). The entire North wall was a computer-projected rifle range, and 18 of us at a time went through the process of zeroing our weapons, then engaging pop-up targets…just like what we’d do the next day on the live range. I’m sure it saves the Army a lot of ammunition, improves safety, and improves the scores of everyone who runs through it.
Our day on the range was Saturday. We got our weapons out of the vault at 7am, and were zeroing our weapons by 8am. That involves centering the sights and getting 6 shots in a row within a 2” circle at 25 meters. By 10am, we started moving to the qualification range where we had targets from 50 meters to 300 meters…similar to Camp McCrady, but a better range. We also put on our protective masks (the chemical agent breathing filters), and fired 20 rounds at 50 meter targets. Then we waited 3 hours for nightfall, and fired tracer rounds at 50 meter targets. That part was awesome! I wish I could have video taped it, but YouTube provides a good M16 nightfire reference . The bullets start really whizzing around 1:18 seconds in this 7 minute clip.

Seattle is known for rain, and has been true to form this first week here in Fort Lewis. We could easily see Mount Rainier the day we arrived, but I haven’t seen it since!
With an average annual rainfall of 37 inches, this is a far cry from the 4.1 inch average annual rainfall Nasiriya, Iraq. So I’ll be careful what I wish for!
Speaking of rain, Eric recently participated in the Christiansburg High School Marching Band recruitment night. Eric has played baritone for 2.5 years now, and said he had a great time at this wet event.

A FOB is a forward operating base. That's what we'll see in Iraq, and Fort Lewis has set up its own version of a FOB here.
That's me on the left, and Maj Thomas (Mark) Jadrich is helping hold my "We Support You" sign from Cub Pack 145. We're decked out in our new equipment, ready to go to our training. We thought we were headed to a range, but it turned out we took our gear off and sat in a classroom for the afternoon.