Part 2

To continue on the last post, after dinner the night navigation section of the exercise began. By this point, a rugby injury to my knee I had sustained had began to act up, conveniently when we had to march 5 kilometres to the next training area for the night exercise. As twilight set in, I gritted my teeth against the pain and made it to the final event for the day. We began to navigate to our points in the pitch dark through farmers fields, looking for everything from dead trees to hay bails. For me who navigated early in the rotation, this exercise consisted of me trailing at the rear, consistently stopping, taking a knee, and keeping an eye out for "threats" through the scope of my weapon. This lasted for hours as the head navigator attempted to locate a black sign in the dark, one of our last points. Craving water and sleep, we pressed on looking for this sign in the dark of the night. To our joy at around 1 am we saw our pickup on the way. We had done enough to reach the forces standard for navigation, now we were headed back to base for the most joyous moment that can be experienced by a soldier. Sleep.

Training Excercise

If I were to recall one of the most vivid memories I have so far experienced from my training, it would be my second field exercise in the woods at the Connaught Range training area. We arrived on the weekend our rucksacks filled with what we would need to survive the next two days in the woods. After being bussed out to the training area in the pitch dark around 11pm we were told to "go to ground" we set up our shelters and slept. We awoke around 5:30 am, received breakfast and began to march 3 kilometers to the training area where we would start our navigation exercise. In the forest, it became our mission to navigate ourselves using a compass and map to 12 different locations during the day and 12 at night. We patrolled through the forest, sometimes encountering knee deep swamps that spanned for hundreds of meters. 3 hours into the exercise, we ran out of water with 7 points remaining to be found. Under the heat and weight of our vest and weapons we trudged on. Dehydration began to inch closer as we did to finding out final points. After our last point was found, we speed marched 2 kilometers to the area where there was dinner. After 7 hours of patrolling we finally got to drink water. Water had never tasted so good in my life.

Closure

My year is essentially done now, nothing big to look forward to as my time in the Armed Forces is taking me away for the summer. It is heart wrenching in a way, to not have a final goodbye with all my faithful friends that I have enjoyed the company of for the past 4 years. Many I will never see again and this in itself makes me sad. I know the ones I have been closest with will keep in touch I have no doubt, but the people im friends with that I do not see out of school I fear I will lose touch with. In the end that is all that matters though. But I will miss all my friends dearly.

Summatives

How can one project summarize all the knowledge you have been privileged to receive in a semester? Over the course of a semester we just learn so much and there is such a significant amount of material covered. To fit such an impressive amount of work into one summarizing assignment cannot be done as the amount of material covered cannot be justified in merely one project. I am not saying there should be more summatives, but I feel they should not be as heavily weighted as they are, because they do not get the results they are aiming for. Just a thought.

18!

Happy Birthday to me!

Yesterday was my birthday and I finally turned 18. Usually, and I have always believed this, birthdays do not hold much significance and you generally dont feel any differnt. Despite this, 18 feels incredibly different. I am viewed as an adult in many ways. I can vote, and if I lived in Quebec, drink legally, I can sign myself out of school and even need to change my bank account. With being 18, there is an added responsibility I feel, I am viewed as more responsible as more things are heaped upon me, as my "coming of age" has happened. But at the end of the day, I am still the same old Conrad, but he is getting really old now!

Okay, here we go boys and girls. Lets get down to blogging.

For the past four months, I have been training to become a soldier in the Canadian Military. This weekend I go for my seventh 3 day block of the Basic Military Qualification Course. And let me tell you something, its damn hard. But in a way that may seem peculiar to some, I relish the difficulty of Army life. There is some sort of grim satisfaction when going for a run in the freezing cold at 5:00 AM whilst the rest of the world sleeps. The knowledge that you are doing something unique and challenging is in my eyes a gift that keeps on giving. The job will never get easier, and I feel that is something I am going to like. Cant wait to inform you all how this weekend goes!

Test Post

Hello good internet. This is a test post. It is a test post because I do not know what to post. I am concerned with my internet ability and that this will not be posted when I attempt to publish it. Oh well. You could say that this is the first of many Conradical Notions that will emerge from this blog. I also picked out a pretty city background, looks nice don't it? ;)

Sorry for the winkface, bad habit ;) oops did it again. Anyways I hope you enjoyed this first post not because of the content, but because of the fact I did it.

Enjoy your day.