And It Begins

Texas Nugget no.2, Paramilitary training means bootcamp.

Without a doubt this has been the toughest, most physically challenging week of my life. I suppose I kind of read the recruiting instructions and took them as 'if you can run a mile and a half in 10min, 30sec, do a good quantity of pushups and a few pull ups you're good.' In fact, those benchmarks are just to pass the performance standards - to excel in PT (personal training) you need to work until you collapse. We do calisthenics everyday as a unit. It's exhausting and intense but I think it's growing on me. Yesterday we had our first performance standards test. The goal is to work until collapse or two minutes elapse. My grades were: one mile in 7min 11sec (80%), 40 pushups (80%), 48 situps (90%) and 6 pullups (90%.) Although they were good, they were well below many of the others in my class. Most of them achieved over 100% in each requirement. Oh, and I'm the oldest. But I will get stronger, there is no way around it.

Our class is broken into four groups - Alpha, Bravo (I'm in Bravo), Charlie and Delta. Each consists of five or six guys. The fire department hierarchy is based on the military so each group has a captain who gives direction to his team. I was fortunate enough to be 'elected' class president (which is a long story and better recounted in person) which means I disseminate information to the captains. The Captains who teach us our lectures, personal training and eventually skills disseminate information to me. We are a unit.

We are all the same and we are required to look that way. We wear a navy blue recruit t-shirt tucked into navy blue work pants, a black belt, black polished boots and a name tag. After the first day it was impressed upon me that I may not wear a moustache and my hair may not be longer than 1 1/2". This week has been a change of pace to say the least.

Each day I wake up at 6am, shower, shave, make coffee, breakfast and drive out to the academy for 7:30am with my house mates (who are nice guys btw.) We sit for lectures for most of the day, break for lunch at 12:30pm and when we complete each chapter of the IFSTA Essentials of Fire Fighting we have a test. We fill out a Scantron card, receive our grade and discuss the answers. At around 3:30pm we break into our groups and clean the building from top to bottom. We change into our PT gear and hustle outside to be brought to attention in formation and begin our calisthenics. Rinse, repeat.

This is like nothing I have ever done.