Henry's Web Log

Our friends, neighbors, coworkers, scouts and school parents have been very supportive of this unexpected deployment, and two very common responses Lisa and I hear all the time are, “Oh. I’m so sorry to hear about your husband.” And “let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” While the former might be appropriate for a tragic accident or debilitating illness, it’s just the opposite: I’ve been called to serve my country with the skills and leadership the Army has trained me for. I’m honored to serve. And there’s not much I could want, except to be back with my family. The food, equipment, accommodations are all fine. The biggest issue is that I’m not there for my family. Because as intense as the Army is, it’s got nothing on the Bass family! Lisa expertly handles teaching several classes at the Christiansburg Recreation Center, Den Leader for 13 Cub Scouts, Cubmaster for the Pack of 80 Christiansburg Cub Scouts , organizer for the school “Reflections” creative art contest, organizer for the school’s “Just Run” morning fitness program, serves as the Red Cross’ only volunteer instructor, usually serves in some water sports work (she managed the Meadow’s pool for the last 3 summers, has taught water aerobics and baby aquatics for many years but gave that up when I was ordered to duty). She also substitute teaches, and she was taking a theater class to maintain her teaching certifications and add additional endorsements: Lisa recently took an incomplete so that she can finish some of these other events... Like the Lego contest: Lisa single-handedly coached a team of six 4th graders through the intricacies of programming Lego-NXT robots, plus a research-presentation project on climate changes, a mystery teamwork challenge, and technical judging.

Their team, “The Blizzards” did so well under her leadership that they were crowned regional champions, and darn it all if they aren’t going to the Virginia state competition now: December 6th and 7th at James Madison University in Lexington. It’s a great honor for Ethan, age 9, and the only team member who has competed before. A second team at Ethan’s school also won a spot at the State competition: 7 out of Southwest Virginia’s 30 competing teams were selected to move up, and it’s a great reflection that Christiansburg Elementary School owns two of those seven outstanding teams!
Speaking of honors, she also led the Pack to be top in Popcorn sales for the entire Cub Scout District, possibly the council, beating last year’s record sales by 50%. She’s raising our two magnificent boys, AND taking care of her Grandmother in a managed-care facility. Without a doubt, I’m super proud of her, and if we had a platoon of Lisas in Operation Iraqi Freedom, you would see Iraq as a global economic powerhouse within 6 months! I did nominate her for the “Freedom Team Salute” as a program that supports and recognizes the spouses, employers and supporters of our deployed forces. I understand that their certificate and recognition recently arrived and brightened her day!

The biggest challenge now facing Lisa is pulling off this state Lego Robotics competition. Lexington is 2.5 hours away, and the competition is an intense 2-day event amongst 70 teams dominated by top Northern Virginia/DC area schools. She needs to get the kids hotel rooms, keep them secure, fed and rested, then get to competition first thing Saturday, stress the day-long events, and repeat Sunday. I understand that several of the team parents either don’t want to pay for the event, don’t have the resources, or have schedule conflicts. And the big bombshell: our training unit was just approved for a 3-day pass, starting that Sunday. On a good night, Lisa gets 6 hours sleep. So that second phrase, the “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help” could be any number of simple things to just let her breathe. If I can be so bold, here are a few ideas I have. Ideas that give her time might be a 3:1 ratio to ideas that take time. Maybe you can add some thoughts in the comments?

Ideas that give her time--

• A freezable dinner


• A ready-to-eat dinner on a planned night.


• Invite Eric & Ethan to play at your house.


• Take Ethan & Eric to the new movies being released.


• Take Eric & Ethan bowling.


• Take the boys swimming at the Blacksburg Aquatic Center.


• Go with Lisa to visit her Grandmother.


• Pick up or drop off the boys at scouts, band or birthday parties ( thanks lots for those who do this already!!)


• Be the guest speaker/planner for the next Den meeting.


• “YouTube” the videos and photos Lisa has accumulated, and wants to share with me but gets bogged down in the subtleties of video transfer or Picasa upload.

Ideas that take time --

• Take Lisa with you to a day spa (a birthday present I didn’t get to fulfill before Uncle Sam visited)


• The long January weekend (5 day school holiday) is coming up- team up for a group vacation.


• Meet Lisa for coffee or lunch.


• Join Lisa for a workout before or after a class she teaches.

One of the other Majors with us actually manages an OfficeMax warehouse. So I thought it would be appropriate to tip my hat to him and use the OfficeMax "Elf Yourself" tool. We had fun with it last year, and this year they've got more features built in. Cool. But it just goes to show you can't leave Majors idle around an Internet connection!

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.