Last week was supposed to be the start of our Navigation training, however, due to some unforseen problems our navigation training was pushed back. Instead, we spent the first half of the week at the shooting range. We are going to be moving to a new base in a few weeks, where the Special Forces are stationed, and we needed to calibrate all of the new guns and sights that we got from our new base.
Wednesday and Thursday we had a 50 km hike that is supposed to be a hike to prepare us for an even longer hike we will be doing on Ocotber the 15th/16th. We have done several hikes in the past, each one gradually increasing the distance (our previous hike was 38 km). In the beginning the hikes were fairly difficult. In addition to the quick pace, everyone walks with their vests, ammo, and guns. There are also two people who carry a stretcher, two people carry 8 liters of water, two people carry a 20lb. radio, and myself and one other guy carry the light machine gun and all of the ammo. The end of each hike there is also a period in which we carry someone (or two someones) on a stretcher. The last two hikes the pace has been less of a factor and the real difficulty has been the boredom. It takes us about an hour to walk 6km (close to 4 miles), and every hour we take a short break. This means that our 50km hike that we did last Wednesday took us almost 11 hours.
We left at 6 PM on Wednesday, and we finished at 4:45 AM on Thursday. You would be amazed at the things that go through your mind during that time. For instance, in the time it took me to walk 50 km I could have watched all three Lord of the Rings Movies (extended addition), or I thought about maybe trying to sneak my iPod with me (but I realized even if I got away with it the battery would probably die before the hike was over). Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, by the end of the hike my vest was rubbing me so bad that it took my mind off of the boredom.
Our next hike in 2 weeks is going to be about 80 km...if anybody has any suggestions as to how to kill 20 hours of walking I am all ears!
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Sorry, I have no idea how to help on that kind of hike. I would be a body you had to carry. :). Please do keep the blog up. I am Harrison's Aunt Melisa (married to Uncle Tommy) and this helps me to have a bird's eye view of what his life is like also.
Melisa Bailey
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