Of Working Parties and Special Duty

We (my friends Witte, Jerousek and I) completed our check-in sheet to the best of our ability on Monday this week. That was when we got our security badges for the A school building. Right afterwords, they told us to check into the BPO (barracks petty officer) for an assignment in a working party. I was surprised they had us do this right away, because our sheets were not completely filled out, but I didn't mind doing actual work either. We ended up at the hotel on base for bachelor officers, moving pallets and old TV's around. The next couple days we had the same thing, except Witte and I volunteered for scraping and painting the sprinkler pipes. It was harder than it seemed... but again, good to do work.

I really love it here... we're encouraged to do PT most days, and I've kept up with it. I've run by the water in the setting sun with the wind blowing in my face, and there are two weight/cardio machine buildings very close by that make it easy to go do. One building has a very good lineup of weight machines. I use that and just go down the line... hardly anyone uses it. And today, I did the PRT run in Liberty Station across the street... very nice! Half of it is along the water and I watched shore birds as I jogged by.

But today! At muster IC1 asked for volunteers for something that sounded like being a road-guard... I checked my working party (it was the same- and it is overmanned) and went back to him and volunteered. Turns out I was the only one to do so, and it had nothing to do with what I thought. It was to be a part of the color guard for the change of command ceremony next Friday! And this will be at the base downtown in front of lots of people! Wow! They needed two more people as well as me, and at that moment Witte and Jerousek walked by... :) Since Witte is taller, us other two will carry the rifles on either side of the flags. STG3 organised it, and he'll take the US flag. So we practiced the shoulder arms, present arms, order arms movements... I've always wanted to do something like this!

Tomorrow we head down to 32nd street for a walk-though of what we'll be doing. We were given Tuesday off as a reward for volunteering, and then we'll have Wed & Thurs to practice before the big day. So excited!