Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage Day - (Germany) Day 150

SPC Whirlwind getting a kimono put on during the Asian/Pacific Islander event.

This morning PT was IBA PT. Everyone was told to bring their IBA (Body Armor) to PT and wear their ACUs instead of normal PT uniform. Luckily today was the last day of my temporary profile stating that I cannot wear body armor or a ruck sack. If I had to do it, I would have had a horrendous headache the rest of the day. So everyone without a profile ended up running around a couple laps (almost a half mile), then doing 25 push-ups. They did this again and did 25 sit-ups. I instead did a fast walk and did the push-ups, but did not do the sit-ups. I know sit-ups are causing me headaches too and I don't want to do anything to further hurt myself until I figure out what is wrong with me.

After PT I headed back home and got ready as usual. Today is Thursday, so we have our sergeant's time training. Everyone was supposed to come back with their full battle rattle for this training. For me, SPC Whirlwind and a couple others…we just came back in regular uniform because we were tasked out for a special event. We did attend the first half hour of training and I'm glad we didn't have to stay. The first part was about convoys and was being taught by someone who hadn't even deployed yet. I also really don't understand why we don't do more job specific training. Why have a strategic unit that does not deploy spend any time on stuff like this when we can be learning more about the job we actually do. Help us be better at our current job instead of stupid crap like this. One of the reasons the army drives me nuts sometimes.

Another reason is what we had to do next for our special tasking. It seems like I get tasked out to do everything under the sun except our job. Anyways…we headed over to the theatre to help setup for the EO (Equal Opportunity) Asian/Pacific Islander Event. After setup which included unloading and setting up tables and also folding brochures, I stood at the front door and greeted the people that decided to attend. The event consisted of some speakers, then some song and dance, and finally food. We all had some of the food and for a bit it seemed like I was back in Korea. I was doing my old job (standing and holding a door open) and I was eating some tasty Korean food!

Once the event was over, we cleaned up and then actually followed the MWR van over to PHV and helped them unload the tables and other equipment. Once finished we headed back to the office where I went through my customer's folders to double and triple check…making sure their files were all in order. By about 1630 everything was done and everyone was sitting around looking at each other…waiting…..looking…waiting…looking…waiting. It wasn't until SPC DubYa got up and asked our NCOIC if we could leave at 1715 that she finally came out and gave us our lame safety briefing, then released us. Why…especially on a four day weekend…she always has to wait and wait before releasing us, I have no idea. A power trip? Who knows? All I know is that I have a trip to Spain that I needed to get to and every second we were in the office just sitting and waiting was time that was taken from me eating dinner and leaving.

Once out of the office, I picked up my wife and some fast food then headed home. We had everything packed, so we loaded up the car and headed to the park and ride outside the gate. We had booked a trip to Spain through a travel company as did SPC DubYa from our office. This particular travel company (United European Airlines) offers various trip packages and has flyers posted in our office and many others throughout the post. They put together some great packages to places all over Europe on each of our 4-day holidays. The particular one is going to Llorett De Mar with a day trip to Barcelona. We also opted for a dinner show and a flamenco show. I'm looking forward to it…but not the bus ride there.

We loaded the bus at 1730 and headed off to Spain. Ironically Pretty Ricky from my last FTX was sitting right behind us. The bus had picked up folks from Wiesbaden before coming to Heidelberg. Once on the road I tried to sleep as much as possible…I'll tell you the rest of the story with the weekend-wrap up in my next post…along with some photos as well.

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