Eisenhower ("Ike") Hall provided a frequent source of leisure-time activities for us West Point cadets. As firsties (seniors) we enjoyed the Firstie Club, where we were allowed to consume beer, and as upper classmen on Saturday evenings we enjoyed the cafeteria area, stripped of many of its tables, with dance floor laid out and tunes a'jammin'. And then there was the theater--the second-largest theater in terms of seating capacity on the East Coast--where we were presented speeches by Vietnam POWs and U.S. Secretaries of Defense and other dignitaries, and also Broadway shows.
Oh, and there were concerts.
The first concert of my plebe year was The Kinks. Now, The Kinks were a big group at that time, having experienced a major come-back. They'd recently released Come Dancing and Destroyer, and they were reveling in the Second British Invasion. They were the Justin Bieb.... the Justin B.... the Just....
*ahem* Sorry, my fingies figure out where my brain is going with that and won't let me finish such a ridiculous phrase.
They were quite popular. How's that?
Now, I knew none of that. I wasn't into that type of music at the time; I wouldn't acquire a taste for the sounds of Rush and Whitesnake and so on till my yearling (sophomore) year when I got roomed up with Emory, a truly eclectic music fan who could follow an LP of Metallica with one by Bob Marley without missing a beat. As a plebe, though, my music world centered on Duran Duran (the English boys my girlfriend wanted to sleep with more than me), Wham!, Michael Jackson, and The Bangles, to name a few.
Sad, ain't it?
Still, there was no way I was missing The Kinks concert. No way. The academic year had begun, and so the grind of Beast Barracks had given way to a weird combination of memorizing The Days and learning calculus. I needed a break.
Thus I found myself seated with a skosh over 5,000 other fans in a concert presented by a band I'd never heard. And they were good. In fact, that concert prompted me to buy several of their albums on the ancient medium we used to call a "cassette."
Yes, the music was good, but what I saw at the concert shocked me.
I saw cadets taking off their shirts and swinging them around over their heads in time to the music.
How do I know it was cadets doing it? Well, the "White" part of "White Over Gray" (our typical evening out uniform) was pretty unmistakable, even in the dim lighting of the concert. For one thing, it's really really white, and for another, everybody but us plebes had shiny stuff--rank, year shield, etc.--pinned to their shirts. When spun overhead, all that flair flashed in the spotlights.
There were hundreds of little flashes of undisciplined celebration going on in front of me. I was--floored. Flabbergasted. Shocked.
You've gotta understand--these were the same folks, or at least classmates of the same folks, who just that same week had been yelling at me and at my classmates for putting four ice cubes in a firstie's cup when he'd asked specifically for only three ice cubes. Or for taking a bite that was bigger than a pinky fingernail. Or for missing a spot on the glass in the medicine cabinet. Or, closer to home, for having a sloppy dress-off (the funky West Point tradition of folding uniform shirts back and tucking them in so that it's molded to your stomach). Or for the gig line being off (the button edge on the shirt had to align with the zipper edge on the pants and the "in" edge of the belt buckle).
Hell, this was the place where just a few months prior I'd spent the first week of Beast too scared to go number two. There weren't any stalls, after all, and I feared the amount of punishment I'd have to endure once they knew that it was my crap which stank.
And there they were, taking off their shirts in public. Taking them off, and whipping them over their heads like wild men.
Scaaaaaannnnnn-dalous!
Okay, so once I calmed down, I realized that I wouldn't have even noticed the shirts being slung about overhead if it hadn't been for the shiny things attached. Nor would it have made a difference anywhere else at any other concert. Shirts coming off, in fact, was really rather tame on the scale of Lawrence Welk to Ozzy Osbourne.
It was hard to bring the two dichotomies together at first, but I got it. The United States Military Academy Corps of Cadets always had been and still was one of the most disciplined groups of 18 to 21 year old men and women on the planet (now, I'm not so sure--I hear they even let the plebes walk down the middle of the hallways--but that's a topic for another post sometime if I dare open that worm-can). But there's a time and a place for discipline, and there's a time and a place for letting your hair down, assuming you have hair to let down after meeting with Big Jim in the barber shop.
- TOSK
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
Lasagna
"Lasagna: the world's most perfect food!" - Garfield
"The country is ready for the 5-day week. It is bound to come through all industry. In adopting it ourselves, we are putting it into effect in about 50 industries, for we are coal miners, iron miners, lumbermen, and so on. The short week is bound to come, because without it the country will not be able to absorb its production and stay prosperous." - Henry Ford
Henry Ford, the pioneer of auto production, is also known as the father of the five day work week, having pulled his factory workers down to only working five days per week while still paying them as though they were working six days. He's also known for paying his workers more. His theory, apparently, was that the more his workers made, the better able they were to afford their own products, which of course they would then purchase and show off to their friends.
Whether the practice achieved Ford's aims is open to debate, as is true with all controversial moves when viewed through the grand mirrors of hindsight. Regardless, his gamble paid off well in two ways: first, he prospered as an auto manufacturer; and second, his practice of limiting the workers to five days of work per week stuck.
It's thanks to Ford, then, that we get two entire days of blissful leisure (and excruciating writing) before we launch back into another hard week.
A week that starts, as nearly all do, with Monday.
You could say that Monday sucks twice as much thanks to Ford.
That Monday sucks is a truth of legendary proportions. Songs have been made of its extreme badness. Bards have told tales of the suckage of Monday. There's even a cute Youtube video about how "Monday sucks."
But you know what makes it suck a whole lot less? Lasagna. Coming home to the smell in the house of lasagna baking, to sit down on the couch and watch an old movie (Breakfast Club, actually) while enjoying steaming goopy cheesy goodness.
Given that, Monday ain't half so bad, is it?
- TOSK
"The country is ready for the 5-day week. It is bound to come through all industry. In adopting it ourselves, we are putting it into effect in about 50 industries, for we are coal miners, iron miners, lumbermen, and so on. The short week is bound to come, because without it the country will not be able to absorb its production and stay prosperous." - Henry Ford
Henry Ford, the pioneer of auto production, is also known as the father of the five day work week, having pulled his factory workers down to only working five days per week while still paying them as though they were working six days. He's also known for paying his workers more. His theory, apparently, was that the more his workers made, the better able they were to afford their own products, which of course they would then purchase and show off to their friends.
Whether the practice achieved Ford's aims is open to debate, as is true with all controversial moves when viewed through the grand mirrors of hindsight. Regardless, his gamble paid off well in two ways: first, he prospered as an auto manufacturer; and second, his practice of limiting the workers to five days of work per week stuck.
It's thanks to Ford, then, that we get two entire days of blissful leisure (and excruciating writing) before we launch back into another hard week.
A week that starts, as nearly all do, with Monday.
You could say that Monday sucks twice as much thanks to Ford.
That Monday sucks is a truth of legendary proportions. Songs have been made of its extreme badness. Bards have told tales of the suckage of Monday. There's even a cute Youtube video about how "Monday sucks."
But you know what makes it suck a whole lot less? Lasagna. Coming home to the smell in the house of lasagna baking, to sit down on the couch and watch an old movie (Breakfast Club, actually) while enjoying steaming goopy cheesy goodness.
Given that, Monday ain't half so bad, is it?
- TOSK
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Airborne School
"Airborne School is only three weeks long. You can do anything for three weeks. You can stand on your head for three weeks." - Black hat (instructor) at Airborne School
To tell the truth, I can't stand on my head for three weeks. I can't stand on my head for three seconds. I was one of those few, the not-so-proud, the cadets who failed Handstands in plebe gymspastics class. Every time I tried, my feet quite explicitly informed me that they they do not appreciate being asked to inhabit the space above my head. I tried--spent hours, in fact, up against the wall of the gym, head on the floor, repeatedly pushing up with my feet, only to fall over. Up, oof. Up, oof. Up, oof. Nope.
I couldn't do the feet-over-head vault, either, for that matter. Was fine on the sideways and lengthwise horses, both from running jumps and off of the spring boards. I was even one of the guys who took the twisty-scissor vault just fine (no, that wasn't what they called it, but I can't recall the actual term; we guys called it the "ball-buster vault" though, for the obvious, painful, and way too frequently demonstrated reason). But feet over head? Nope, can't do it. I couldn't in the prime of my life, and I still can't.
Nevertheless, the message from the black hats was pretty clear. Just keep at it. Keep going, no matter how much you want to quit. You can do it.
And they're right.
Airborne school is one of the first bits of training that many military folks attempt after their basic stuff. It's also got quite a mixture of people attempting the class--it was mostly Army folks when I attended, but there were several Marines and even a few Zoomies (Air Force people). That last worried me a bit--why would Air Force officers want to be qualified to jump out of a plane on purpose? Hmm? Secret plans? Do they know something I don't?
Regardless, there was quite a variety of people in the class, some of whom hadn't been through the rigors of West Point, and so I figured perhaps such cajolings were appropriate. As, I guess, were the prudent warnings about avoiding the night life on Victory Drive, the road right outside Fort Benning, called "VD Drive" for a reason other than its acronym, as well as not attempting to swim across the Chattahoochee, a river running right by/through Ft. Benning, one that's quite deep, cold, fast-running, and muddy, a fact I know from, um, some--well, experience.
But they were right. Airborne school wasn't really all that hard to deal with for just a few weeks. Oh, we did a lot of pushups, to be certain. I stopped counting when it hit several hundred in a day. But doing pushups in formation was a curious activity, since there were so many people packed into the quads that the formations were quite tight. You didn't have time to skip off to find a nice open space. Instead, we all angled our bodies to the right and dropped to the ground when ordered, and those of us who weren't in the front row would find our chests right above the boots of the guy to our oblique front, our hands between his and his neighbor's boots. Regular pushups involved hitting your chest on boot heels. Airborne pushups, then, became an exercise in neck bobbing.
Sawdust was our primary enemy. It was everywhere, and we exercised in it on the theory that it was softer to hit the ground in a sawdust pit than on hard Georgia clay (probably a true theory, honestly). And we hit the ground often, since the focus in Airborne school is less on the majority of the jump time, floating down through the air, and more on the terrifying few seconds taken up by exiting the plane and, later, hitting the ground. There's a certain type of fall they wanted to teach us, one that would absorb our energy and keep us from breaking anything important, and so we practiced it over, and over, and over. Each time we did, the sawdust would make its way deeper, and deeper, and deeper into our private places, and this would cause our nighttime showers to be rather interesting rituals. The fact that it was June, in Georgia, didn't help--sweat just pulls sawdust to it like metal filings to a magnet.
And that was just the first week!
The second week was more interesting. Having learned all about how to drop down to the ground in a sawdust pit--and how to, later, clean sawdust out of our hoo-haws--we graduated to the more advanced activities. Part of that was learning to exit the plane, which must be done in a specific and rather vigorous manner if you don't wish to exemplify what happens when turbulence slams a paratrooper into the metallic side of a transport plane.
And then there was the enhanced falling practice. Part of learning to fall from greater heights than that presented by a wooden block placed in sawdust involved climbing up into a tower and peeling down a zip line, releasing when you were told in order to slam into the ground, roll up, and race to do it again. Don't tell anybody wearing a black hat, but that part was actually rather fun. It's akin to what I used to do as a Mississippi boy, except that they were smart enough to actually secure both ends of the zip line. That securing of the line is probably the key to why I didn't break my arm again, but--well, yeah.
Then there was a particularly sadistic (I thought) exercise. The black hats led us into a barn-like structure and had us put on harnesses. We'd then climb into the loft and hook the harness to a rope that dangled from a ceiling pulley. At the special command to jump ("Jump!" I think it was) we'd leap from the edge of the loft and swing back and forth, dangling from the rope that was secured in a black hat's hand until he got tired of holding on or saw us in a particularly dangerous pose. Zzzzip! Bam! Ow! Repeat....
Hey, we learned to land safely, out of self-preservation if nothing else.
The third week of Airborne School was the one everybody was looking forward to: Jump Week. In order to wear the wings of an Airborne Trooper, you have to make five jumps. I don't recall anybody saying they all had to be successful, mind you, but the first four had to leave you sufficiently whole to jump the fifth time. That was the goal: Jump Five. The wonderful and much-looked-forward-to I'm done with this crap landing. Zzzzip! Bam! Ow! Bye!
There weren't any normal exams for the course. All it took was one jump per day for five days. If you did your five jumps, you passed. If you didn't, you failed.
The first day of Jump Week dawned overcast and rainy. They won't ask new people to jump in the rain; it's too dangerous. Thus, we got the day off, if sitting around in the jump house wearing 60-pound parachutes hoping for it to clear up counts as a day off in anybody's book.
Day two of Jump Week dawned equally overcast and rainy. I don't think I've ever prayed for sunshine as heavily as I did then. Remember, I can't do a handstand for three seconds, much less three weeks due to rain.
Day three dawned just like day two. We really started to worry.
The fourth day dawned--sunny! Partly sunny, if you must be specific, but at that point I really didn't give a crap. Nobody did. It wasn't raining, and so we were going. I excitedly put on my chute and the reserve and stumbled along in line with everybody else into the old musty C-130 transport.
If you've never ridden on a C-130--well, count your blessings, for one thing--think darkness and noise. There are a series of round portholes along each side, and so you get a line of round spotlights piercing the darkness, but that only heightens the effect of the dark. The C-130s used at Airborne School at the time were older than Methuselah, too, so they creaked and groaned and roared and vibrated while they were taking off, and then it got worse when they were in the air. A light wispy smoke trailed through the dusky air, which seemed just perfect--the scary cherry on our terror sundae. We were all jammed in hip-to-hip, unable to move much thanks to the size of our chutes and the reserves in our laps, but at least we were able to grin through the darkness to the person sitting across from us, whoever they were; it was tough to tell in the dank light and in our combat gear. Didn't matter. We were jumping!
There's a certain surrealism that happens when you jump, Army-style, out of a perfectly good, if ancient, airplane. The Army way of doing Airborne assaults has been perfected over the years to ensure a certain economy of movement and effort while giving dozens of people jumping out of potentially hundreds of transports the greatest possible chance each of hitting the ground uninjured. It's a process, one you've practiced many times by that point. You stand up. You connect your pull line to the metal cable that runs through the length of the plane. You check your buddy's cable to make sure it's okay. You repeat the Jumpmaster's calls like an automaton in one of Stephen King's books as he warns you of six minutes, and then one minute, and then thirty seconds to impending jump time. Then the light turns green, and one by one you move to the open door, take up the jumping position, and with everything you have spring out and into the air, with or without a horizontal assist from the Jumpmaster's boot.
And--then it's silent.
No, I mean it's really, incredibly, totally, astoundingly, silent.
First off, you're coming from a noisy as hell aircraft in which the Jumpmaster has to scream just to be heard over the rumbles and the vibrations. But after the leap, you're carried along by rather than fighting the wind, and so you don't even hear that. In that one spring you transition magically from dark, dank, noisy, and stressful, into silent daylight, floating above the world blissfully.
It's incredible. It's amazing. They weren't kidding when they said on the first day that it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
And then, you hit the ground. Hopefully you remember what they taught you about safe landings, preferably not too late to use it.
As we were celebrating Jump #1, the black hats were furiously pushing us onto the buses to return to the airfield to do the next jump. Remember, we were on Thursday and still had four more jumps to do. They succeeded, and so we did another, and then we did another. Three jumps, one day. Not bad, eh?
The next day was more of the same. It was Friday, after all, and we all had planes to catch to parts unknown. At least, I did. I was flying home for vacation.
Jump number four: no problem. No problem for me, anyway. Did I mention that once we were on the ground we got to watch others jumping and landing? It was kinda fun, kinda cool, and, in one case, kinda heart-stopping.
Two guys coming down after me collided.
That really is a big deal. It doesn't seem like it should be, but it is. See, the only thing keeping those big green parachutes open is the fact that the air pressure on the inside is greater than it is on the outside. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense, because our weight is pulling us down and as it does so is gathering air inside the parachute. But if you add the pressure of another, equally-pressurized, parachute pressing against yours, the equations change drastically.
Both parachutes often collapse.
There we stood, watching the two soldiers involved plummet to the earth, each of us who was already there rising onto the tippy-toes of our combat boots. There were black hats all around the jump zone, and every single one of them was screaming into his megaphone words to the effect of "deploy your reserve!"
Now, nobody wants to deploy the reserve parachute. It's attached at the hips rather than the shoulders, so making a good, healthy, landing with reserve deployed is pretty much impossible. Granted, it's still going to be a better landing than one with no parachute, so we were relieved to see one of the endangered soldiers deployed his reserve fairly quickly. His main chute also re-opened within a few yards, which gave him two to float down with. It caused an awkward landing, but it worked. For him.
The other guy nearly killed all of us as our hearts rose into our throats the closer he fell to the surface of the earth. I still remember hearing the collective intake of air as he got to 100, and then 50 yards from the Alabama turf that was every bit as hard as the Georgia clay and would likely end his life.
Then, with a mere 25 or so yards to go, his main parachute reopened. Poof! Float....
Everybody breathed a sigh of relief at the same time, simultaneously sinking back onto our heels. I don't know if you've ever been in a several-dozen-member company that's watched a member pull a life-saving miracle out of his hind quarters, but it's quite a feeling. We all erupted in cheers.
The black hats, meanwhile, spoke of roasting the guy over an open pit.
That left jump number five.
I have no idea how anybody else landed on Jump Number Five. I don't care. For me, it was the worst landing of all the jumps: instead of rolling down the meaty body parts, as in feet, shins, thighs, that landing went heels, butt, head, with the back of my head bouncing a few times off of the hardened Alabama soil. I remember looking up into the sunshine, watching stars swivel around, thinking, "Hell, that hurt. That hurt a lot. But I don't care. I'm done."
Graduation was quick. They pinned wings on all of us. Some people, despite it being against Army regulations, asked for "blood wings"--the posts being driven forcefully into the skin of the chest. One of the women in the class ran up to us, wanting us to see her chest after she'd gotten blood wings--nope, sorry. I wasn't a guy who normally turned down looking at women's chests, but I had a plane to catch.
I'll never forget the feeling of boarding an airplane that I wouldn't have to jump out of. It's--profound.
I still can't stand on my head for three weeks. But Airborne School did prove to me that I can put up with nearly anything else for that long.
- TOSK
To tell the truth, I can't stand on my head for three weeks. I can't stand on my head for three seconds. I was one of those few, the not-so-proud, the cadets who failed Handstands in plebe gymspastics class. Every time I tried, my feet quite explicitly informed me that they they do not appreciate being asked to inhabit the space above my head. I tried--spent hours, in fact, up against the wall of the gym, head on the floor, repeatedly pushing up with my feet, only to fall over. Up, oof. Up, oof. Up, oof. Nope.
I couldn't do the feet-over-head vault, either, for that matter. Was fine on the sideways and lengthwise horses, both from running jumps and off of the spring boards. I was even one of the guys who took the twisty-scissor vault just fine (no, that wasn't what they called it, but I can't recall the actual term; we guys called it the "ball-buster vault" though, for the obvious, painful, and way too frequently demonstrated reason). But feet over head? Nope, can't do it. I couldn't in the prime of my life, and I still can't.
Nevertheless, the message from the black hats was pretty clear. Just keep at it. Keep going, no matter how much you want to quit. You can do it.
And they're right.
Airborne school is one of the first bits of training that many military folks attempt after their basic stuff. It's also got quite a mixture of people attempting the class--it was mostly Army folks when I attended, but there were several Marines and even a few Zoomies (Air Force people). That last worried me a bit--why would Air Force officers want to be qualified to jump out of a plane on purpose? Hmm? Secret plans? Do they know something I don't?
Regardless, there was quite a variety of people in the class, some of whom hadn't been through the rigors of West Point, and so I figured perhaps such cajolings were appropriate. As, I guess, were the prudent warnings about avoiding the night life on Victory Drive, the road right outside Fort Benning, called "VD Drive" for a reason other than its acronym, as well as not attempting to swim across the Chattahoochee, a river running right by/through Ft. Benning, one that's quite deep, cold, fast-running, and muddy, a fact I know from, um, some--well, experience.
But they were right. Airborne school wasn't really all that hard to deal with for just a few weeks. Oh, we did a lot of pushups, to be certain. I stopped counting when it hit several hundred in a day. But doing pushups in formation was a curious activity, since there were so many people packed into the quads that the formations were quite tight. You didn't have time to skip off to find a nice open space. Instead, we all angled our bodies to the right and dropped to the ground when ordered, and those of us who weren't in the front row would find our chests right above the boots of the guy to our oblique front, our hands between his and his neighbor's boots. Regular pushups involved hitting your chest on boot heels. Airborne pushups, then, became an exercise in neck bobbing.
Sawdust was our primary enemy. It was everywhere, and we exercised in it on the theory that it was softer to hit the ground in a sawdust pit than on hard Georgia clay (probably a true theory, honestly). And we hit the ground often, since the focus in Airborne school is less on the majority of the jump time, floating down through the air, and more on the terrifying few seconds taken up by exiting the plane and, later, hitting the ground. There's a certain type of fall they wanted to teach us, one that would absorb our energy and keep us from breaking anything important, and so we practiced it over, and over, and over. Each time we did, the sawdust would make its way deeper, and deeper, and deeper into our private places, and this would cause our nighttime showers to be rather interesting rituals. The fact that it was June, in Georgia, didn't help--sweat just pulls sawdust to it like metal filings to a magnet.
And that was just the first week!
The second week was more interesting. Having learned all about how to drop down to the ground in a sawdust pit--and how to, later, clean sawdust out of our hoo-haws--we graduated to the more advanced activities. Part of that was learning to exit the plane, which must be done in a specific and rather vigorous manner if you don't wish to exemplify what happens when turbulence slams a paratrooper into the metallic side of a transport plane.
And then there was the enhanced falling practice. Part of learning to fall from greater heights than that presented by a wooden block placed in sawdust involved climbing up into a tower and peeling down a zip line, releasing when you were told in order to slam into the ground, roll up, and race to do it again. Don't tell anybody wearing a black hat, but that part was actually rather fun. It's akin to what I used to do as a Mississippi boy, except that they were smart enough to actually secure both ends of the zip line. That securing of the line is probably the key to why I didn't break my arm again, but--well, yeah.
Then there was a particularly sadistic (I thought) exercise. The black hats led us into a barn-like structure and had us put on harnesses. We'd then climb into the loft and hook the harness to a rope that dangled from a ceiling pulley. At the special command to jump ("Jump!" I think it was) we'd leap from the edge of the loft and swing back and forth, dangling from the rope that was secured in a black hat's hand until he got tired of holding on or saw us in a particularly dangerous pose. Zzzzip! Bam! Ow! Repeat....
Hey, we learned to land safely, out of self-preservation if nothing else.
The third week of Airborne School was the one everybody was looking forward to: Jump Week. In order to wear the wings of an Airborne Trooper, you have to make five jumps. I don't recall anybody saying they all had to be successful, mind you, but the first four had to leave you sufficiently whole to jump the fifth time. That was the goal: Jump Five. The wonderful and much-looked-forward-to I'm done with this crap landing. Zzzzip! Bam! Ow! Bye!
There weren't any normal exams for the course. All it took was one jump per day for five days. If you did your five jumps, you passed. If you didn't, you failed.
The first day of Jump Week dawned overcast and rainy. They won't ask new people to jump in the rain; it's too dangerous. Thus, we got the day off, if sitting around in the jump house wearing 60-pound parachutes hoping for it to clear up counts as a day off in anybody's book.
Day two of Jump Week dawned equally overcast and rainy. I don't think I've ever prayed for sunshine as heavily as I did then. Remember, I can't do a handstand for three seconds, much less three weeks due to rain.
Day three dawned just like day two. We really started to worry.
The fourth day dawned--sunny! Partly sunny, if you must be specific, but at that point I really didn't give a crap. Nobody did. It wasn't raining, and so we were going. I excitedly put on my chute and the reserve and stumbled along in line with everybody else into the old musty C-130 transport.
If you've never ridden on a C-130--well, count your blessings, for one thing--think darkness and noise. There are a series of round portholes along each side, and so you get a line of round spotlights piercing the darkness, but that only heightens the effect of the dark. The C-130s used at Airborne School at the time were older than Methuselah, too, so they creaked and groaned and roared and vibrated while they were taking off, and then it got worse when they were in the air. A light wispy smoke trailed through the dusky air, which seemed just perfect--the scary cherry on our terror sundae. We were all jammed in hip-to-hip, unable to move much thanks to the size of our chutes and the reserves in our laps, but at least we were able to grin through the darkness to the person sitting across from us, whoever they were; it was tough to tell in the dank light and in our combat gear. Didn't matter. We were jumping!
There's a certain surrealism that happens when you jump, Army-style, out of a perfectly good, if ancient, airplane. The Army way of doing Airborne assaults has been perfected over the years to ensure a certain economy of movement and effort while giving dozens of people jumping out of potentially hundreds of transports the greatest possible chance each of hitting the ground uninjured. It's a process, one you've practiced many times by that point. You stand up. You connect your pull line to the metal cable that runs through the length of the plane. You check your buddy's cable to make sure it's okay. You repeat the Jumpmaster's calls like an automaton in one of Stephen King's books as he warns you of six minutes, and then one minute, and then thirty seconds to impending jump time. Then the light turns green, and one by one you move to the open door, take up the jumping position, and with everything you have spring out and into the air, with or without a horizontal assist from the Jumpmaster's boot.
And--then it's silent.
No, I mean it's really, incredibly, totally, astoundingly, silent.
First off, you're coming from a noisy as hell aircraft in which the Jumpmaster has to scream just to be heard over the rumbles and the vibrations. But after the leap, you're carried along by rather than fighting the wind, and so you don't even hear that. In that one spring you transition magically from dark, dank, noisy, and stressful, into silent daylight, floating above the world blissfully.
It's incredible. It's amazing. They weren't kidding when they said on the first day that it's the most fun you can have with your clothes on.
And then, you hit the ground. Hopefully you remember what they taught you about safe landings, preferably not too late to use it.
As we were celebrating Jump #1, the black hats were furiously pushing us onto the buses to return to the airfield to do the next jump. Remember, we were on Thursday and still had four more jumps to do. They succeeded, and so we did another, and then we did another. Three jumps, one day. Not bad, eh?
The next day was more of the same. It was Friday, after all, and we all had planes to catch to parts unknown. At least, I did. I was flying home for vacation.
Jump number four: no problem. No problem for me, anyway. Did I mention that once we were on the ground we got to watch others jumping and landing? It was kinda fun, kinda cool, and, in one case, kinda heart-stopping.
Two guys coming down after me collided.
That really is a big deal. It doesn't seem like it should be, but it is. See, the only thing keeping those big green parachutes open is the fact that the air pressure on the inside is greater than it is on the outside. If you think about it, that makes perfect sense, because our weight is pulling us down and as it does so is gathering air inside the parachute. But if you add the pressure of another, equally-pressurized, parachute pressing against yours, the equations change drastically.
Both parachutes often collapse.
There we stood, watching the two soldiers involved plummet to the earth, each of us who was already there rising onto the tippy-toes of our combat boots. There were black hats all around the jump zone, and every single one of them was screaming into his megaphone words to the effect of "deploy your reserve!"
Now, nobody wants to deploy the reserve parachute. It's attached at the hips rather than the shoulders, so making a good, healthy, landing with reserve deployed is pretty much impossible. Granted, it's still going to be a better landing than one with no parachute, so we were relieved to see one of the endangered soldiers deployed his reserve fairly quickly. His main chute also re-opened within a few yards, which gave him two to float down with. It caused an awkward landing, but it worked. For him.
The other guy nearly killed all of us as our hearts rose into our throats the closer he fell to the surface of the earth. I still remember hearing the collective intake of air as he got to 100, and then 50 yards from the Alabama turf that was every bit as hard as the Georgia clay and would likely end his life.
Then, with a mere 25 or so yards to go, his main parachute reopened. Poof! Float....
Everybody breathed a sigh of relief at the same time, simultaneously sinking back onto our heels. I don't know if you've ever been in a several-dozen-member company that's watched a member pull a life-saving miracle out of his hind quarters, but it's quite a feeling. We all erupted in cheers.
The black hats, meanwhile, spoke of roasting the guy over an open pit.
That left jump number five.
I have no idea how anybody else landed on Jump Number Five. I don't care. For me, it was the worst landing of all the jumps: instead of rolling down the meaty body parts, as in feet, shins, thighs, that landing went heels, butt, head, with the back of my head bouncing a few times off of the hardened Alabama soil. I remember looking up into the sunshine, watching stars swivel around, thinking, "Hell, that hurt. That hurt a lot. But I don't care. I'm done."
Graduation was quick. They pinned wings on all of us. Some people, despite it being against Army regulations, asked for "blood wings"--the posts being driven forcefully into the skin of the chest. One of the women in the class ran up to us, wanting us to see her chest after she'd gotten blood wings--nope, sorry. I wasn't a guy who normally turned down looking at women's chests, but I had a plane to catch.
I'll never forget the feeling of boarding an airplane that I wouldn't have to jump out of. It's--profound.
I still can't stand on my head for three weeks. But Airborne School did prove to me that I can put up with nearly anything else for that long.
- TOSK
Saturday, March 9, 2013
How Not To Do PT (part 7) - Dread, aka IOCT
Okay, so I've finally worked my courage up to discuss what, to me, still represents one of the most dreaded experiences in my military service, if not my entire life.
No, I'm not talking about tear gas exposure, though that ranks up there on the list as well. During our first summer they marched us into a field on which a tent was set up. We were told to put on our gas masks and step into the tent, and upon doing so we encountered a thick, smoky environment. Then the cadre member inside the tent, who was wearing his mask, told us to take ours off and say something; for most of us, it was reciting some part of the plebe required knowledge base like "The Corps" or "The Days." That's when we learned not one, but two important lessons:
That really sucked, by the way. Really, really sucked. It sucked really, really bad. Did I mention that I dreaded the experience, having heard it was coming? Luckily they didn't tell us exactly what would happen, or I'd've probably dreaded it more.
And speaking of sucked....
...let me tell you about the Indoor Obstacle Course Test (IOCT).
See, apparently (and I kind of agree with this) the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) with its three events--pushups, situps, and two mile run--doesn't quite test physical fitness as fully as the West Point administration wanted it tested. There are plenty of physical things that soldiers are required to do on the battlefield, yet I can't think of a single combat situation where you'd need to show off your studly pushup count or even change into running shoes to dash two miles. Thus, while the APFT (as it was then--I understand it's changed recently) served as a quick and inexpensive way to measure a certain degree of basic physical fitness, it didn't serve to fully assess our athleticism.
Thus, the IOCT was born, and then pressed upon us like bamboo slivers beneath the fingernails.
There are numerous videos out there showing the IOCT these days, including this instructional video by one of the physical education professors. Go ahead, go, watch it, and then come back here convinced that I'm a big fat crybaby over what appears to be quite a fun way to challenge and assess a cadet's physical fitness.
G'head.
It really isn't all that terrifying, honestly. Granted, now that I'm about 80 pounds heavier than I was last time I attempted it, I'm not sure I could complete it without an occasional vertical assist, but for cadets who'd completed the first-year gymspastics class there wasn't a station in the entire session that presented a challenge. First, you crawl under bars--no big deal, right? I'm not sure my belly would fit under there now, but then it was a piece of cake. The tire trip was easy peasy stuff. Vault? Still no big deal; we conquered the horses in class. Believe it or not, we practiced the next event, the shelf mount, enough times that we could almost do it in our sleep. The bar hop looks dangerous, but the vertical supports were close enough together that it didn't present a problem. Leaping through a hanging tire was kid's stuff, too.
Honestly, the part where I saw most people (including me) lose time was the balance beam. We'd hit that thing going a gazillion miles an hour and our pumping legs would spin right off of it, requiring us to loop around and repeat. Like the video says--slow down, build up momentum, or else you'll get to run right back and start it over.
So what's the problem? You're wondering that, aren't you? Why did a two or three minute fitness test involving such entertaining activities fill me with such dread?
One word: IOCT hack (technically, IOCT is an acronym, not a word, so there). The part that the instructional video glosses over is the easiest part--run around the track two and a half times. The first time, you run around it carrying a 9 pound medicine ball that magically increases in weight to about fifteen gajillion pounds by the end of the loop. Still, it's easy. Then you drop the ball and pick up a baton that weighs only a few ounces. One more loop, and you drop the baton and turn on the afterburners, because it's just simple running--and breathing--from then on.
See, it's the breathing that got me, every time. When we'd do the IOCT, we'd do it by entire regiment. That meant that several hundred cadets had just run around the same track I was running around, and their pounding feet had kicked up every particle of dust and debris that the track surface had ever accumulated since the days when dinosaurs roamed the Plain. Those particles then hung in the air right at nose and mouth level, aiming directly for our upper respiratory tracts. The ones that found their mark then sat there for a few days, burning, causing entire companies to sit at dinner practicing synchronized hacking. It was kind of like they'd taken the 5-minute torture of the CS chamber, doubled it, and spread it out over three or four days.
It sucked. But we did it, and endured the hack, and like everything else viewed through the lens of memory, it doesn't seem so bad now. Just--keep that CS stuff away from me, okay?
- TOSK
No, I'm not talking about tear gas exposure, though that ranks up there on the list as well. During our first summer they marched us into a field on which a tent was set up. We were told to put on our gas masks and step into the tent, and upon doing so we encountered a thick, smoky environment. Then the cadre member inside the tent, who was wearing his mask, told us to take ours off and say something; for most of us, it was reciting some part of the plebe required knowledge base like "The Corps" or "The Days." That's when we learned not one, but two important lessons:
- Gas masks are your friends in chemical environments, and
- CS gas sucks
That really sucked, by the way. Really, really sucked. It sucked really, really bad. Did I mention that I dreaded the experience, having heard it was coming? Luckily they didn't tell us exactly what would happen, or I'd've probably dreaded it more.
And speaking of sucked....
...let me tell you about the Indoor Obstacle Course Test (IOCT).
See, apparently (and I kind of agree with this) the Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) with its three events--pushups, situps, and two mile run--doesn't quite test physical fitness as fully as the West Point administration wanted it tested. There are plenty of physical things that soldiers are required to do on the battlefield, yet I can't think of a single combat situation where you'd need to show off your studly pushup count or even change into running shoes to dash two miles. Thus, while the APFT (as it was then--I understand it's changed recently) served as a quick and inexpensive way to measure a certain degree of basic physical fitness, it didn't serve to fully assess our athleticism.
Thus, the IOCT was born, and then pressed upon us like bamboo slivers beneath the fingernails.
There are numerous videos out there showing the IOCT these days, including this instructional video by one of the physical education professors. Go ahead, go, watch it, and then come back here convinced that I'm a big fat crybaby over what appears to be quite a fun way to challenge and assess a cadet's physical fitness.
G'head.
It really isn't all that terrifying, honestly. Granted, now that I'm about 80 pounds heavier than I was last time I attempted it, I'm not sure I could complete it without an occasional vertical assist, but for cadets who'd completed the first-year gymspastics class there wasn't a station in the entire session that presented a challenge. First, you crawl under bars--no big deal, right? I'm not sure my belly would fit under there now, but then it was a piece of cake. The tire trip was easy peasy stuff. Vault? Still no big deal; we conquered the horses in class. Believe it or not, we practiced the next event, the shelf mount, enough times that we could almost do it in our sleep. The bar hop looks dangerous, but the vertical supports were close enough together that it didn't present a problem. Leaping through a hanging tire was kid's stuff, too.
Honestly, the part where I saw most people (including me) lose time was the balance beam. We'd hit that thing going a gazillion miles an hour and our pumping legs would spin right off of it, requiring us to loop around and repeat. Like the video says--slow down, build up momentum, or else you'll get to run right back and start it over.
So what's the problem? You're wondering that, aren't you? Why did a two or three minute fitness test involving such entertaining activities fill me with such dread?
One word: IOCT hack (technically, IOCT is an acronym, not a word, so there). The part that the instructional video glosses over is the easiest part--run around the track two and a half times. The first time, you run around it carrying a 9 pound medicine ball that magically increases in weight to about fifteen gajillion pounds by the end of the loop. Still, it's easy. Then you drop the ball and pick up a baton that weighs only a few ounces. One more loop, and you drop the baton and turn on the afterburners, because it's just simple running--and breathing--from then on.
See, it's the breathing that got me, every time. When we'd do the IOCT, we'd do it by entire regiment. That meant that several hundred cadets had just run around the same track I was running around, and their pounding feet had kicked up every particle of dust and debris that the track surface had ever accumulated since the days when dinosaurs roamed the Plain. Those particles then hung in the air right at nose and mouth level, aiming directly for our upper respiratory tracts. The ones that found their mark then sat there for a few days, burning, causing entire companies to sit at dinner practicing synchronized hacking. It was kind of like they'd taken the 5-minute torture of the CS chamber, doubled it, and spread it out over three or four days.
It sucked. But we did it, and endured the hack, and like everything else viewed through the lens of memory, it doesn't seem so bad now. Just--keep that CS stuff away from me, okay?
- TOSK
Barbecue
"Barbecue is the third rail of North Carolina politics." - John Shelton Reed
"Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes." - John Shelton Reed
Who's up for some barbecue? I know I am. I always am. But what kind? Well, there's the rub....
(I know--some day I'm going to literary hell, to hear Vogon poetry read for the rest of eternity, for puns like that)
It struck me the other day how iconic barbecue, as a way of preparing meat to be eaten, is of a way of life and a region. There's Kansas City-style barbecue, for example, which is what most people think of when they think of BBQ: meat, smoked if possible, grilled and/or boiled in sauce if not, with thick, sweet, tomato-based sauce covering it, permeating all the way through it with tasty, gloppy goodness. Mmm, there's nothing like diving into a plate of KC ribs and needing an entire bathroom towel set to clean the sauce out of your beard afterwards. The messier, the betterer!
Then there's the barbecue of the southern part of the nation's Eastern coast, commonly referred to as Carolina-style. It's delicious, too, but the sauce is different. Instead of sweet and thick, Carolina style sauce is thin and tangy, using a combination of vinegar and tomato as the base. Down farther south sometimes a mustard is used instead of a vinegar, but the idea is the same--tangy sauce for the plucky East Coast folks. Some slow-cooked pulled pork with Carolina-style BBQ sauce drizzled over--add some cole slaw on the side--and TOSK is one happy author.
Start naming anything for regions and, of course, Texas has to jump in. Being a fan of the spicy result, though, I can't complain. Granted, a lot of what makes Texas barbecue different is the type(s) of meat and the way it's cooked rather than the sauce, if sauce is used at all. West ("Cowboy") Texas style, ferinstance, is often cooked over direct mesquite-fired heat. Matter of fact, Texas is such a big place (you knew it was a big place already, right?) that "Texas style BBQ" is often subdivided into three or even four sub-categories, each with its own foodie goodness about it. Gotta love Texas!
No discussion of barbecue, of course, would be complete without mentioning Memphis. In part, that's because it was where I sat when the iconic nature of barbecue struck me--right there, bellied up to the bar in the famous original Corky's restaurant, downing what I must admit is my personal favorite style, Memphis dry rub ribs. See, in Memphis barbecue it's less about the sauce and more about the rub. The dry rub, a combination of salt and spices that goes onto the meat for flavor well before any sauce is allowed to touch it, is what makes the style both iconic and delicious. With all due respect to my friends (and their respective meats) in Texas, the Carolinas, and Kansas City, there is nothing else that gets my lips smacking as much as a spice-encrusted slow-roasted chunk of rib meat that pretty much dissolves in your mouth, leaving the complex and enhanced flavors tickling the taste buds. And what a complexity of flavors! The salt is just the base; add to that all sorts of herbal nuances along with garlic, onion, and so on. It's--well, it's good. It's really, really good.
Okay, now that I wiped the drool off of my keyboard and quit thinking about that beautiful rack of ribs that melted in my mouth....
Okay, okay, I'm not thinking about that any more. Having wiped my keyboard off twice now, I must remind my fellow Americans that though (as far as I know) we're the only place on the planet that makes a Nascar-level competition out of BBQ'ing, we're certainly not the only place that makes barbecue. Two well-known styles are Korean and Mongolian, but if look it up on Wikipedia you'll find that American BBQ styles only take up a very small portion of a rather diverse (and awfully yummy) field. Going to Jamaica to experience a true Jamaican Jerk is on my bucket list, to be certain. And there are more--so, so, so many more.
I was going to draw a connection from barbecue styles to varieties of books within certain genres, but right now I'm so hungry I really can't recall what I was going to say. Life is to be lived, not over-analyzed, right? So get some barbecue, and enjoy!
- TOSK
"Southern barbecue is the closest thing we have in the U.S. to Europe's wines or cheeses; drive a hundred miles and the barbecue changes." - John Shelton Reed
Who's up for some barbecue? I know I am. I always am. But what kind? Well, there's the rub....
(I know--some day I'm going to literary hell, to hear Vogon poetry read for the rest of eternity, for puns like that)
It struck me the other day how iconic barbecue, as a way of preparing meat to be eaten, is of a way of life and a region. There's Kansas City-style barbecue, for example, which is what most people think of when they think of BBQ: meat, smoked if possible, grilled and/or boiled in sauce if not, with thick, sweet, tomato-based sauce covering it, permeating all the way through it with tasty, gloppy goodness. Mmm, there's nothing like diving into a plate of KC ribs and needing an entire bathroom towel set to clean the sauce out of your beard afterwards. The messier, the betterer!
Then there's the barbecue of the southern part of the nation's Eastern coast, commonly referred to as Carolina-style. It's delicious, too, but the sauce is different. Instead of sweet and thick, Carolina style sauce is thin and tangy, using a combination of vinegar and tomato as the base. Down farther south sometimes a mustard is used instead of a vinegar, but the idea is the same--tangy sauce for the plucky East Coast folks. Some slow-cooked pulled pork with Carolina-style BBQ sauce drizzled over--add some cole slaw on the side--and TOSK is one happy author.
Start naming anything for regions and, of course, Texas has to jump in. Being a fan of the spicy result, though, I can't complain. Granted, a lot of what makes Texas barbecue different is the type(s) of meat and the way it's cooked rather than the sauce, if sauce is used at all. West ("Cowboy") Texas style, ferinstance, is often cooked over direct mesquite-fired heat. Matter of fact, Texas is such a big place (you knew it was a big place already, right?) that "Texas style BBQ" is often subdivided into three or even four sub-categories, each with its own foodie goodness about it. Gotta love Texas!
No discussion of barbecue, of course, would be complete without mentioning Memphis. In part, that's because it was where I sat when the iconic nature of barbecue struck me--right there, bellied up to the bar in the famous original Corky's restaurant, downing what I must admit is my personal favorite style, Memphis dry rub ribs. See, in Memphis barbecue it's less about the sauce and more about the rub. The dry rub, a combination of salt and spices that goes onto the meat for flavor well before any sauce is allowed to touch it, is what makes the style both iconic and delicious. With all due respect to my friends (and their respective meats) in Texas, the Carolinas, and Kansas City, there is nothing else that gets my lips smacking as much as a spice-encrusted slow-roasted chunk of rib meat that pretty much dissolves in your mouth, leaving the complex and enhanced flavors tickling the taste buds. And what a complexity of flavors! The salt is just the base; add to that all sorts of herbal nuances along with garlic, onion, and so on. It's--well, it's good. It's really, really good.
Okay, now that I wiped the drool off of my keyboard and quit thinking about that beautiful rack of ribs that melted in my mouth....
Okay, okay, I'm not thinking about that any more. Having wiped my keyboard off twice now, I must remind my fellow Americans that though (as far as I know) we're the only place on the planet that makes a Nascar-level competition out of BBQ'ing, we're certainly not the only place that makes barbecue. Two well-known styles are Korean and Mongolian, but if look it up on Wikipedia you'll find that American BBQ styles only take up a very small portion of a rather diverse (and awfully yummy) field. Going to Jamaica to experience a true Jamaican Jerk is on my bucket list, to be certain. And there are more--so, so, so many more.
I was going to draw a connection from barbecue styles to varieties of books within certain genres, but right now I'm so hungry I really can't recall what I was going to say. Life is to be lived, not over-analyzed, right? So get some barbecue, and enjoy!
- TOSK
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Myths and Facts
"Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fantasies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them." - Hypatia
"Myths which are believed in tend to become true." - George Orwell
---------------------
Once upon a time I believed that my mother's back actually would be hurt if I stepped on a crack in the sidewalk. No, I'm not particularly proud of that episode of childhood gullibility, but there it was.
I also believed at one point that if I ate more than an egg or two each week I'd die from a heart explosion. (eggs are actually not as bad for us as they were thought to be in the 70's)
I also believed that adding a pinch or two of salt to water on the stove would make it take much longer to boil. (it takes quite a concentration of salt in the solution to change the boiling point of water appreciably)
I also believed that it was possible, for an archer who was good enough, to split one wooden arrow with another. (it's not; an arrow striking another arrow will be deflected rather than follow the grain down the stationary projectile's shaft)
I used to believe that a Zippo lighter could stop a bullet. (hey, I read too many war comic books growing up, but MythBusters set me straight)
All of these things, of course, have been proven to be untrue myths. Bummer, right?
Thanks in part to such wonderful shows as MythBusters, I've been turned from myth-believer (and, sometimes, myth-behaver) to true skeptic. Still, I've held to certain truths about language because, well, unlike physical myths, it's hard to test linguistic myths. Thou shalt not, for example, begin sentences with conjunctions--who's available and ready to defend the poor conjunction as a worthy sentence starter? And there are other examples, too. Right?
That's why I was so tickled to find out that I can, in fact, select a preposition to end a sentence with. That, and the passive voice can be used. That, and it's acceptable for me to cleverly split my infinitives.
How did I find this all out? One of my fellow authors shared, using the power of Facebook, an article by Professor Ben Yagoda that dispells those and several other grammatical rumors. Now I can quit reading through what I write trying to insert "by zombies" after every verb (a tried-and-true way of detecting passive voice; if "by zombies" sounds okay then a passive case you have).
Ahhh, liberation. Pass the egg salad, would you?
- TOSK
"Myths which are believed in tend to become true." - George Orwell
---------------------
Once upon a time I believed that my mother's back actually would be hurt if I stepped on a crack in the sidewalk. No, I'm not particularly proud of that episode of childhood gullibility, but there it was.
I also believed at one point that if I ate more than an egg or two each week I'd die from a heart explosion. (eggs are actually not as bad for us as they were thought to be in the 70's)
I also believed that adding a pinch or two of salt to water on the stove would make it take much longer to boil. (it takes quite a concentration of salt in the solution to change the boiling point of water appreciably)
I also believed that it was possible, for an archer who was good enough, to split one wooden arrow with another. (it's not; an arrow striking another arrow will be deflected rather than follow the grain down the stationary projectile's shaft)
I used to believe that a Zippo lighter could stop a bullet. (hey, I read too many war comic books growing up, but MythBusters set me straight)
All of these things, of course, have been proven to be untrue myths. Bummer, right?
Thanks in part to such wonderful shows as MythBusters, I've been turned from myth-believer (and, sometimes, myth-behaver) to true skeptic. Still, I've held to certain truths about language because, well, unlike physical myths, it's hard to test linguistic myths. Thou shalt not, for example, begin sentences with conjunctions--who's available and ready to defend the poor conjunction as a worthy sentence starter? And there are other examples, too. Right?
That's why I was so tickled to find out that I can, in fact, select a preposition to end a sentence with. That, and the passive voice can be used. That, and it's acceptable for me to cleverly split my infinitives.
How did I find this all out? One of my fellow authors shared, using the power of Facebook, an article by Professor Ben Yagoda that dispells those and several other grammatical rumors. Now I can quit reading through what I write trying to insert "by zombies" after every verb (a tried-and-true way of detecting passive voice; if "by zombies" sounds okay then a passive case you have).
Ahhh, liberation. Pass the egg salad, would you?
- TOSK
Anticipation II
On the opposite side of every anticipation, there's a let-down.
Surely you've felt it. You've looked forward to a vacation/interview/life event for weeks. You walk into it with butterflies in the stomachs of the butterflies in your stomach. No matter what, you're ready for whatever.
And then it's over.
In my case, I leave exhausted. Getting the adrenaline going is tiring, it turns out. You don't feel it at the time, but once all is said and done and the adrenaline rush is well past, there's an overwhelming sense of weariness that settles in.
I used to look at the string of sensations with a degree of disgust. Why would I go getting myself all worked up, I wondered, when it would just blow away soon and leave me wiped out?
It's part of the process, though. If the exhilaration I spoke of yesterday is what makes us feel alive, the exhaustion after is its price.
And now--off to rest.
- TOSK
Surely you've felt it. You've looked forward to a vacation/interview/life event for weeks. You walk into it with butterflies in the stomachs of the butterflies in your stomach. No matter what, you're ready for whatever.
And then it's over.
In my case, I leave exhausted. Getting the adrenaline going is tiring, it turns out. You don't feel it at the time, but once all is said and done and the adrenaline rush is well past, there's an overwhelming sense of weariness that settles in.
I used to look at the string of sensations with a degree of disgust. Why would I go getting myself all worked up, I wondered, when it would just blow away soon and leave me wiped out?
It's part of the process, though. If the exhilaration I spoke of yesterday is what makes us feel alive, the exhaustion after is its price.
And now--off to rest.
- TOSK
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