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| I don't know if I ever showed ya'll where I'm staying...this is my house. My room is all the way to the right behind that big tree. |
Thursday – Had a Little Help From My Friends
Today started off with a scare. My phone didn’t ring but I woke up to a voicemail from Laura saying that she left work because her dad was rushed to the ER but she didn’t know why. My phone continued being a turd and I couldn’t get in touch with her, neither by calling or by texting. Days like this, and there have been a handful, make being away from her very difficult. One of my texts eventually got through, to which she responded he wasn’t looking good.
I was up and waiting by my phone with my brain scrambling all kinds of thoughts at 88mph. I paced up and down the hallway for a little bit then returned to bed. It was getting close to class time and I wanted check out some box options for sending my clothes back home so I got dressed for class, packed up my laptop, and headed out the door. I was just about to call Laura when she texted me saying it was appendicitis and surgery would be required. I was definitely relieved but I still wished there was something I could do.
Ticked about the way shipping my clothes out here with the UPS Store transpired (check it out in my 1st blog if you’re bored, it’s great), I wanted to check out the flat rate shipping boxes that the post office has…so off I went. I took some back roads to get there…not bad for a guy that didn’t know how to get to school for the first 2.5 weeks he was here ey? The roads weren’t the issue, the parking lot was. I traveled the fairly long driveway that is bordered by all kinds of landscape until I came to a circle that runs under an awning which I thought was the main entrance. There was a traffic sign that said keep right at the end of the driveway, so I did. I saw a parking lot just behind it so I went in, parked, and headed back to the awning. Yes I did think it was strange that all of the mail trucks were backing up to bay doors and yes I didn’t think it was the safest thing in the world to be traveling past the big tan concrete walls back into oncoming traffic to get to the front door…but I’ve given up trying to figure this town out.
I got to the awning…no door. I continued walking along the “front” of the building, there was a shady looking employee door so I kept walking. I got to the corner where I saw a big flagpole, windows, doors, and lots more cars….ahh the entrance…on the complete opposite side of the building from where I parked. All of this only to see that the biggest flat rate box that they sell wouldn’t even fit one of my giant shoes. FAIL! Back to the car I go. I get to the unwelcoming looking wall and that’s where I see it, “Authorized Vehicles Only.” I was so embarrassed that I jogged to my car and booked it out of there before even fastening my seatbelt all the way. When I worked at Holmdel Park, I used to get so pissed off at the picnickers that would drive on this trail to unload their picnic stuff at the picnic area that was located right next to the road. I’d get pissed because they’d drive by a sign that reads “Park System Vehicles Only”. Every single ranger used to ask them, “didn’t you see the sign?” before kicking them out. Their lack of common sense aside, they were parked on a walking trail but we had to drive on it to get equipment places and for patrol purposes, they may honestly have not seen the sign. I didn’t in this case.
With over an hour before class began, I had to come up with a plan on the fly. I originally was going to give up on boxes for the day and just get to class SUPER early…then I remembered that Walmart was right by that area of campus, they sells boxes & stuff, AND Laura just sent me a $100 gift card…let’s check it out. I picked up 3 boxes that were 2 inches smaller than the ones I used to ship my stuff out here and two giant rolls of packing tape for a grand total of $9.38. That’s how much one box costs at the UPS Store. Victory – J~DuB! The only snafu in this glorious victory was the very nice cashier whom I had to explain how successfully run the gift card. The card kept coming up invalid and I was getting embarrassed but kept my cool…even when the cashier said my suggestions for fixing the problem were wrong. As usual, I was right. It took 5 minutes to finally swipe the card through, and that’s no exaggeration people. Off to class I go.
I was the second person in class, a new achievement for me. The only person to beat me was my partner in crime, EKV. Today’s lesson dealt with abused & illegal drugs. We had actual DEA agents come in & teach it and they had A LOT of visual aids. They had a trophy case of drug paraphernalia, all kinds of loose homemade drug paraphernalia, and some officer field testing kits; the last two were passed around class for closer observations….then we got up close and personal with another form of passing. A common phrase associated with marijuana is “puff, puff, pass”, right? Well in order to be a credible witness in court, we had to implement our own phrase; “light, smell, pass.” We passed around a small piece of tinfoil with some weed on it which we lit directly with a lighter, wafted the stench toward our faces for three seconds, and then passed the foil and lighter.
When I say being a credible witness in court I mean that if I ever arrest somebody and go to court based on the fact that I could smell marijuana emitting from their person, vehicle, etc., the DA can’t make me look stupid by asking me how I know what marijuana smells like; my training is now documented. I’ve smelled marijuana a bagillion times at concerts and living in F Court at Stockton my junior & senior years…but I’ve never touched the shit before. I was so happy to see at least a handful of my classmates were on the same boat. Some of them were worse than me; I participated in the exercise…they just passed the foil along hahaha. It smelled as awful as I remembered and I think I may have felt it a little bit by the time everybody had their exposure to it. Not even feeling the effects could make the class any less boring. We were bombarded by a PowerPoint presentation that was basically a high school drug awareness program combined with an intro to Criminal Justice class in college. The presentation was long, they jacked up our breaks, and they flew through the material so I couldn’t keep up with the notes.
The only cool thing about this class was when we actually got a break, we saw somebody from Arizona Game & Fish in the hallway and she was holding a Great Horned Owl. I’ve never seen an owl in person so this was super awesome. We had a bit of a staring contest, I won. The lady, who looked very much like my doctor out here, waved us down and told us right off the bat that we could take pictures. TOUCHDOWN. After class my group for our next presentation/paper was supposed to figure out the topics we were each going to cover in dealing with “water resource issues in the Southwest”, but it got chaotic and we decided we’d look up some possible topics and then stay after class again tomorrow to break it up. I was totally fine with bouncing because a bunch of us were gonna meet at The Plex for some BBall in an hour.
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| Demonstrated how quiet her wing flapping is...mice have no chance |
Before Tuesday night I’ve never actually played basketball out at The Plex. I mentioned something to some of the guys about playing when we were in PT…I was pleasantly surprised when they told me this afternoon that they actually wanted to play. So the Park Ranger PT Allstars were coming to take over the BBall courts. I couldn’t get the Monstars theme song from Space Jam out of my head all day; it was on my 8th grade bball warm-up tape hahaha.
Every Thursday night The Aquaplex hosts a 5-on-5 winner stays on “open gym” on 2 courts that I would later dub the JV Court & the Varsity Court (the talent level was obvious). I couldn’t believe what I saw when I walked in; the gym was packed! We had to put our names on a waiting list and I had no idea who was actually coming. I reserved our spot, only like 4 games before ours. As my teammates strolled in they had a concerned look on their faces and asked me, “what did you get us in to?” We had a very solid group of 5 hoopsters: Travis, Josh, Alex, Forrest, & myself. Three of us over 6 foot and we could all play & move very well but haven’t really played anybody that knows what they’re doing…these players we were watching definitely knew how to play.
As our game drew nearer, their anxiety lessened. I started talking to them about other things and got some laughs out of them to keep them lose and make them forget that we were the only white dudes about to play on the Varsity Court. Just as I’ve seen MANY times on the bball court, a guy tries to poke the ball away from a guy who just got a rebound and accidentally hits the rebounder…shoving and tough guy trash talk ensues that is never backed up. At the same time, 3 of my teammates got excited and concerned simultaneously. “So since we’re law enforcement now, if they fight does that mean we have to break it up?” one of them asked. I responded, “I’m not breaking up anything, I’m watching. If it’s any of you then I’m jumping in. I figured 2 weeks left in the program is a good time to get thrown out. Besides, they won’t fight; none of them are wearing belts.” I then had to explain how gentlemen of that appear to be of this specific ethnicity generally “fight” each other by taking off their belts and whipping each other with the belt buckles and what not; at least that’s what they do at concerts and other places according to stories I’ve heard on the backlines at Chili’s. Little did I know that I’d be close to eating my words.
I didn’t expect the team that we ended up playing to win, in fact I was hoping they wouldn’t because I think the tallest guy on their team was MAYBE 6 foot; they were all short & we were all tall. Good thing we could all move extremely well for our sizes. It was a hustle fest. With hustle comes playing hard. Well my boy Josh went up for a rebound hard, got it, and then pivoted to find an outlet so we could break back on offense. The guy that was guarding me reached in on Josh as he was pivoting and caught an elbow to his head…uh oh, here we go. The dude did NOT like getting hit and he fired back…deliberately hitting Josh in the throat with a forearm shot. I’m glad I was close enough, Josh is a great dude but I had no idea how he was going to react…what happened next was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard on a basketball court.
Josh initially got in the guy’s face, as he was making his move close to him I came over calmly saying relax. Josh dropped the ball between their chests as like a “don’t cross this line” barrier. They exchanged words and nudged the other guy’s hip telling him to backup. All I remember him saying was “don’t f_cking” elbow me…then Josh went off and turned into Dr. Basketball. We’ve been taught all semester long to be able to articulate our actions in the field…well Josh applied that here. He gave like a truck driver’s (cuz of the language) encyclopedia-esque explanation about the move he made, why it’s legal, and who the first basketball player to ever do it was…all while walking down the court next to the guy so we could check the ball in & start up again. By the time I got to our foul line I was almost dying from laughing so hard. They were both so pissed but Josh just schooled this tatted up gang banger looking wannabe. His only response, “well I don’t play that way.” I of course had to throw my 2 cents in with something about learning fundamentals or something…the guy apologized to Josh over & over again throughout & after the game. It was awesome. We lost the game by 1 but this was way better than any victory; we were riled up like Josh just won a boxing championship haha.
After our 1 & only game we hit the pool. Something I’ve only done once out here. We chilled in the hot tub and then everybody wanted to ride the waterslide…something I’ve wanted to do since joining the gym but never have because I’d feel like a goon going by myself. A bunch of us raced each other, 2 at a time. It was wild. Then the 5 of us & Alex’s girlfriend played 3-on-3 pool basketball…which was basically just foul each other like crazy and hope you get close enough to dunk or lay the ball up…or else it was getting swatted into the kiddie pool...no score was kept. I felt like a kid again. WHY HAVEN’T WE BEEN DOING THIS ALL SEMESTER LONG!?!?!?!
I got riding the waterslide & playing some real & pool basketball crossed off my Flagstaff Bucket List and I was able to do so with a little help from my friends.
Friday – Finally a Break
I’m pumped it’s Friday. Tomorrow is our last day off which means we only have 12 more days until GRADUATION. The word quickly spread about Josh’s encounter at the Aquaplex and it was still as funny as it was when I witnessed it last night. I wasn’t feeling too hot in the morning, my back was bothering me and it felt like it was getting hit when I tried doing some of the warm-up moves, so I sat out and stretched instead. Once warm-ups were over, the class was split in half and was told that we’d be killing our chests today in order to get ready for the PEB. My group was sent to the weight room with strict orders to not stand around unless you were spotting. Stan & I jumped on the incline bench for like the 3rd time all year. All of the other benches were taken so we jumped into some dynamic pushups (lower your body all the way to the ground, pick your hands up off the ground, then explode your body upwards so that your hands come of the ground and land in the pushup position…do it again.) By time we got on the bench my arms & boobs were JELL-O. We switched locations with the other group and were about to be tortured. We were about to do an insane amount of pushups for time. The first type of pushup involved 1 of those plastic aerobic step class step things.
You & your PT partner (Stan Seals, aka Man Wheels) are on opposite ends in the pushup position with one hand on the step & the other on the ground. You each go down with the pushup and when you come up you explode to the other side of the step, alternating hands in the air. This soon grew too difficult so you had to walk your hands over instead of exploding. Once that was done, we each had to do 30 of those dynamic push-ups. We were all hurting and spent more times lying on our faces than exploding in the air. At one point I was trying to stretch & losing up my shoulders & chest, Mike (instructor) gave me like a don’t give up slap on my shoulder and I jumped right back into the mix. Cool we got 30 done…do both exercises again…CRAP! Once those were done we had a small break and then broke into 4 groups…TEAM AMRAP TIME! We had 10 minutes to get in an AMRAP (as many rounds as possible) as a team and we would bounce from station to station. I started my team off with running the 3 down & backs across the tennis courts. The next station was jumping rope, then pushups, then box jumps onto those aerobic steps, and then standing squats that I felt were too easy so I turned them into squat jumps. Everybody in your group is going at the same time and once the runners are done they tag the next station, take over whatever that station was doing, and the domino effect ensues. It was over too fast and I wasn’t even tired at the end of 1 round. Something ain’t right.
Class was pretty cool. The Sheriff’s officers that taught us DUI were supposed to come in but hadn’t shown up yet. There were 2 groups who still hadn’t done their presentations on their park visits so they filled in the gap until the instructors’ arrival…which took an hour. When the last group was done, Kathy announced that those instructors already covered everything they needed to so we took a break and then Kathy & the instructor that is taking over the program next semester chatted with us about this Federal Government budget crisis and how it effects our potential employment status. For our sake, basically they had until midnight to pass a budget or they’d shutdown…which meant National Parks, aka where I’m trying to get a job, would be closed to the public and all “nonessential” employees go byebye. Since the forum opened up, I expressed some of my classmates’ concerns about the PEB. It turns out that you DON’T need to pass the PEB in order to get your certificate; you just need to do pass it when you’re brought on at a park. That’s such a huge stress reliever for so many but isn’t an excuse to slack off now. Once the conversation ended, Kathy let us loose 2 hours early. WOO HOOO! We quickly divided up the workload for our group project & we were on our way for our day plus 2 hours off.
Fiona does this thing when Mama Jane isn’t around to pay her any attention…or at least she just started doing it. She knows where my room is and she basically has my routine down…so sometimes when I come home, she cries while walking down the hallway and waits for me at my door. I get changed into something I can wear in bed and that’s where I watch my movies and mess around on my computer most times. When I do that, she jumps on my bed, climbs on my chest, lies down, and falls asleep. What can I say? I’m a sucker for cuddly animals. There are still some things I want to do before leaving this town for good and just as I was about to see if I could start crossing them off of my list, the powers of Facebook spoke and some Unstoppables were making plans for the evening that included pizza and then TBD. I’ve mentioned the pizza place Fratelli’s before. Well the plan was to meet there, hang for a bit and then do whatever. I was too tired to do the then whatever for too long but I was down for pizza. There are 2 Fratelli’s places around us; one is about 3 blocks from my house and the other is in town by campus…where most of my classmates live. I picked Travis up & headed there…it was packed & none of our crew was there. Travis believed they’d go to the one by my house. I told him no way but when nobody answered my phone calls I had to try it out. Surprise surprise, nobody there either. When I came outside I saw some dude creeping around my car, looking in my windows. I left Travis in there so he could talk to his girlfriend in peace but I turned off the car, locked him in, & took the keys while I checked on the status of our group. Knowing Travis was in the car and believing that everybody out here is afraid that everybody is carrying a gun (its legal here), I wasn’t too worried about what the guy was doing but when I saw he wouldn’t leave Travis alone, I quickly picked up speed and almost belted out “Get the F_CK away from my car.” Why do I always feel like I have to protect my friends out here? Hahahaha. Travis said the guy only asked him if he drank and when Travis said no, the guy walked away. That area is notorious for dirtbags…its right across the street from the Circle K where the guy asked me for bus fare & the other guy asked me for $10 so he & his girl cud eat at Sonic after some old dude bought them cigarettes & handed them cash right in front of me. Damn I can’t wait to go home! Where do these people come from?
At any rate, Travis got in touch with the coordinator of the evening; they went decided on another pizza joint just around the corner from the in town Fratelli’s…which meant I was driving back into town. We met up with EJP, his lady, her friend from home (pretty funny that HER friend from Michigan came out to visit), Pat, & Brad, had some grub, (bleu cheese sticks = awesome), and then headed over to Brews & Cues…our favorite bar spot. No drinking for me but I did play a lot of that buzztime or whatever TV trivia game. I basically sat and played EJP in that game for like 2.5 hours. In the beginning he was crushing me but then I came back and somebody uttered the words “don’t call it a comeback.” I finished rapping the rest of the song, Mama Said Knock You Out…which Michigan friend recorded a portion of, beat EJP in trivia, and then headed to the jukebox to play my new theme song. Little did I know that nobody, and this was the most packed I’ve seen this place, had picked any of the songs that were currently playing and the song came on instantly…with me still standing at the box. LL belts out “Don’t call it a comeback”…a group of girls repeated the line but then I could feel everybody’s eyeballs on me as I frantically tried to find songs to use up the rest of my credits and get away from them country loving, sad drunk music blasting hippy Eskimos as fast as I could. I took so long that I stood in front of that machine for the entire song…worthless…I couldn’t even gloat. Some other rangers met up with us but soon half of our crew left to meet up with another half of our crew at some other bar while I played more trivia with Josh. I did a good deed for the day. I saw that 1 of our table neighbors left their scarf when they left...remembering my work experience at Chili’s, I gave the bartender the scarf, when I came back…some little turd tried taking my table and joining it with his friends. LOSER! I left a little while after that, but what a fart knocker.
When I got home, I skimmed through a bunch of episodes of Glee on Netflix and hit the sack.
Saturday – Kicking the Bucket…List
I had been waiting for Saturday, our last day off, for quite some time now. I had every intention of picking up pants, a shirt, & tie to wear to graduation, going to the gym, and getting a massage with the GC I got for my birthday back in October…it was going to be glorious. The rumor of snow forced me to wake up hastily. There was a bright white glow radiating through my blinds. I made my way to the window and….CRAP! There was something like 6 inches on the ground already and more was coming. Having to work in some horrible snow storms the past 2 years at Holmdel Park, I quickly changed my plans to having an inside day. I’d be productive in another way by making a review sheet for our exam on Tuesday, work on my portion of the group project, and start packing up clothes for shipping. Those plans also went out the window when my buddy Forrest sent me 3 simple words. Aquaplex. Basketball. Noon. It was 10:45 and shoveling snow was the last thing I wanted to do. I told Travis about the plan and he offered to pick me up. SWEET!
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| Not what I wanna see when I 1st wake up |
After the shenanigans that kicked off our night last night, I was worried than only Travis & I would show up to play ball. Forrest did not disappoint. He strolled in with all of his roommates. Alex showed up with his lady, and Travis’ friend from a previous life or something came as well…we had enough for some 5-on-5 full court action. We ended up playing for over 2 hours. My team kept losing so I wouldn’t let anybody take breaks; I wanted to start back up right away. Yeah me, the guy that in some people’s eyes has been “dogging” PT. I wasn’t stopping until I won…that took 5 games. I’m somewhat competitive but I’m a very good sport…but I don’t know what it is about basketball that just flips a switch in my head.
If I’m competitive about anything…it’s basketball. I love to play and I don’t mind losing but I can’t stand playing with a bunch of guys that don’t know how to play because then it just turns into a circus. At one point during our second game I actually hollered, “what the hell is going on?” We were just throwing the ball away. This one kid on our team would shoot in a crowd of 3 defenders every time he touched the ball & would never pass. That same kid never called out screens on defense so I kept getting blindsided no matter how many times I told him to call them out & watch my back. I finally had enough. John (Travis’ friend) has bball experience and we started to take over as a 3 man team with Forrest who was always in the right place at the right time but couldn’t get the ball to drop. We would get the games close again and then include the other two…and end up losing. Very frustrating. I yelled so loud at one point that people in the gym overhead were looking over the ledge to see what was going on. At another point I used the mantra “there are children present” to prevent myself from going ballistic after another blown lead resulting in a loss. I love still having that competitive spirit hahaha. We finally won a game but I walked away from it with a 1inch wide gash from Travis’ fingernails from when he was trying to steal one of my passes. It’s a pretty nasty cut. Everybody else got changed and then headed to the pool while I tried stopping the bleeding.
I warned everybody that Saturday’s at this place were like grammar school recess…today was no exception. Overheated from all of the hooping, we spent most of our time setting up shop in the lazy river. Little kids bumped into us at the apex of the river in their tubes. Travis & Forrest would joke around with them and then send them on their way. The hot tub was crowded so that wasn’t happening. Travis & I raced down the waterslide which made feel nauseated…we needed food. We cleaned up and then headed to the CHINESE BUFFET! Finally! Somebody will go with me! I cross this off of my Flagstaff Bucket List as well!!! I can tell you now, unfortunately, I wish I didn’t.
This place’s dinner price is cheaper than the one we frequently visit back in NJ which was cool, even though they charged us the dinner price an hour before their posted dinner time, but they didn’t have crab legs, a stir-fry station, and only had 4 stations or whatever of food. It was cool that you paid when you entered but other than that…this place SUCKED! The food tasted so bizarre and has been killing my stomach ever since. Freehold, NJ dominates Flagstaff, AZ as far as Chinese food goes. Good thing I’ll be seeing my chums there the day after I get back! Woo!
Not much else got accomplished today, minus packing up a box of clothes for shipping and doing some laundry. I finally shoveled behind my car around 9PM and ran to Walmart to get some things for lunch for our final range day in Sedona tomorrow. I’ve been to 2 Walmarts in 2 days and I’ve noticed that neither of them carry the NFL McFarlane collectible figures anymore but they did when I first got out here (I collect them)…I wonder if they have to stop selling them because of the NFL lockout. When I got home, Nick & I tried figuring out travel plans for the range that would include leaving a half hour earlier than we normally do…ugh.
Too much going on in my head to go to sleep at a decent hour.
Sunday – Cold Lead
Waking up wasn’t as bad as I thought I’d be today considering I got less than 4 hours of sleep. My stomach was still killing me yet it didn’t want any help in feeling better…if you catch my drift. We were a little delayed in getting out of the door but what else is new? Nick drove & we picked up Travis. Considering the recent winter storm Nick wasn’t sure if he should take the scenic yet dangerous Switchbacks but we saw 3 other cars from our class going that way so we followed behind that way; I’m so glad we did. It was such a gorgeous ride; the snow blanketed the trees & mountains perfectly…as if somebody painted it on.
At one point during the drive it was 10 degrees outside…it’ll be 80 in NJ tomorrow! It didn’t warm up much once we got to the range either which made loading magazines extremely difficult. We took some time mastering our draw and dry firing and then it was time to complete our day course qualifications. Little did we know, we already qualified. We shot the course a couple of weeks ago for a score, I guess it was a means of having us shoot the course without all of us psyching ourselves out, so we already had a qualifying score but we had to shoot the qualifying course 3 times today so our lowest of the 5 scores would be dropped and we could get an average score for the course. Somewhat similar to the night course, we shoot from the 3, 7, & 15 yard lines but for the day quals we add some rounds from the 25 yard line. There are different stages in the course that include weak hand only shooting, kneeling, and shooting from cover. The best score you can get is a 30, I shot a 26, 28, & a 26. I was feeling good about the 28 haha.
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| At one point in the morning, my shooting partner ChrisPING got hold of 1 of these guys, I put my arm out to save him from her and he climbed up me...AWESOME |
With all of our qualifications behind us, we got to have some fun time. Each student got to shoot 20 rounds out of an AR-15 rifle. That gun is soooooo loud. Most of the class shot it as a semi-automatic but my line got to blast a couple of automatic rounds…me likey a lot. Naturally, everybody wanted their picture shooting this bad boy…if I by some chance missed them shooting then they made sure to pose for pictures afterwards hahahaha. LUNCH TIME!
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| Learning the ropes |
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| This gun is loud |
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| Yup, I like it |
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| J~DuB & EJP |
The mood was light among the class…and a big snowball fight erupted. Snowball fight in the desert…what’ll they think of next? After lunch, we practiced some tactics for staying in a gunfight when you’re injured, how to clear double feed & other weapon malfunctions, and then did some badass drills involving shooting while moving towards, away from, and shuffling across the line of targets. My deadliest shooting came from crouching low and shooting while moving toward & away from the target. At some point during the day, our lead instructor informed me that I was going to be a TEAM LEADER when we broke into teams. Sweet! All I did was give him 1 of my full magazines when he was trying to help one of my classmates shoot. When we were getting instructions for the moving away from the targets, he compared it to moonwalking like Michael Jackson…so I spent the rest of the afternoon singing MJ songs & belting out loud “HEE-HEE”s. The class huddled up before one of our drills and I busted out one of my patented fill-in your name raps where every line rhymes. Instructor Shawn, of OC “What did I ever do to you Shawn?” Spray fame, overheard the song and asked the class if I was the rapper of the class. They said yes. He followed up with something along the lines of me being white but a couple of my classmates backed me up by saying I was “a little less white” because I am “very good”. I’ll miss these little ego boosters.
It was now time for our team activity. When we were waiting to hear instructions in our huddle, I walked up to the group, put my arms around CJ & Jake (I think) and sang the chorus to Michael Jackson’s “Heal the World” in front of 3 of the instructors. When I was done they were like…”yeah he’s a team leader.” I was like “I AM a team leader! “ They laughed. Shawn was still hating, “yeah, but he still has delusions that’s a good singer.” That’s not very nice hahaha.
For the team activity, the class was split in half. I was leading Group “A”, which I quickly changed to the A-Stoppables, and Josh had Group “B”….the 2 J~DuBs were squaring off. Basically this was a relay race but the instructors were having a little bit of fun with us. They told us the winning team could have beer & chips w salsa while the losers clean up the entire range and all of the guns. They sold it so well; limiting the # of beers we could have and double checking with each other to make sure they had limes for the Coronas….it was really funny. My team technically won but confusion amongst the instructors cost us the victory. It was so funny the way they broke the news to us about the prizes. “You can’t have alcohol on the range, what the f_ck is wrong with you?” Hahahaha. I don’t think anybody cared about the beer; nobody wanted to clean up the range….there were bullet casings everywhere. We cleaned everything up including our guns for the last time, snapped a rough looking class picture, and we were out.
Brad, Nick, John, LDC, & I stopped in downtown touristy Sedona for some ice cream. That’s right, ice cream. So what if it was 10 degrees this morning. We got some nice sunburns and it definitely warmed up as the day went on. Brad & I cruised through some cowboy store and then we headed to some fudge shop where I brought home some goodies that reminded me of the Jersey Shore…cookie dough & peanut butter fudge. Before I left I saw that they were selling lollipops with real scorpions inside them…which sparked my interest. The nice dude behind the counter was trying to sell me on how they are good for you and he pointed to a bunch of pictures on the wall of people eating them…gross. Not getting the hint that I wasn’t interested, he suggested another shop in town that had flavored cockroaches and other bugs. What is with this place!?!?!?! Before heading home for the night the 5 of us stopped and ate some crappy Pizza Hut.
Bed time for me now. Tomorrow is the 1st of the 3 PT classes that we have left.
Good Night
Final Stretch
I don’t have a calendar so I remember what I gotta do by sharing it with ya’ll.
Monday - PT, Class, Complete review sheet & study for test, work on project
Tuesday - Test at 10, class 1-5, new class picture somewhere in there, finish paper & project
Wednesday - PT, turn in papers, begin presenting projects
Thursday - Plex membership expires, class 1-5, any other presentations, 6-10 - building clearing/ searches
Friday - 10-12, classroom - vehicle stops, 1-5 - vehicle stops
Saturday - 730-430 - final weekend of scenarios
Sunday - 730-12 - high risk vehicle stops, 1-5 - Simunations - shooting each other with paint bullets out of real guns
Monday - Last day of PT, class 1-5
Tuesday - Field Trip, Elden Pueblo/ Walnut Canyon
Wednesday - PEB
Thursday - Final Exam, Resources Exam, Evaluate program, hand back in duty gear
Friday - Graduation!!! 12-2
Saturday - Last chance to cross off the Bucket List
Sunday - Fly out of Phoenix - 10AM, land in NJ sometime around 6pm.
MOUNT UP!!!
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