Posted by aaron on 5 May 2007 5:26 am. Filed under
military ,
rant.
Yesterday was “Company Fun Day”. The day consisted of running down to a lake, splitting up into Platoon “Teams”, one team would load up huge 400lbs tires into an FMTV, and then running around the lake to the other side.
While Team 1, yeah.. let’s call it Team 1 ran around the lake- Team 2 was racing to dispatch canoe’s into the lake, and paddle across to the other side, to pick up Team 1 and carry them back across the lake and complete the race.
I was a member of Team 2. As we were struggling to get our canoe into the lake, people just ahead of us had already flipped theirs. Bad sign. Traveling across the lake, for some reason the canoe kept veering to the left, making us correct a number of times, probably making us go twice as far as we would had we gone straight. Once we finally got to the other side, we had about 5 minutes before Team 1 made contact with us. We loaded everyone that we could up. Now, for a visual image- these are 3 man canoe’s we are using. Somehow we ended up getting 7 people on board.
About 20 yards out the new 1SG (also in our canoe) says that we should be careful, we were taking on water. Apparently the people in the middle, in trying to help getting us there faster had grabbed paddles and were also doing their part. Unfortunately since they were not on a seat, every time they went to paddle they would rock the canoe just enough to let a little water over the edge. Another 20 yards would make the water situation apparent to me, as I felt it on my ass, even though I was one sitting in an actual “seat”. 10 more yards, and someone would say “That’s it, I’m getting out”. That person stood up, and the whole canoe just dropped beneath us, sinking to the bottom of the lake.
The life vests were reserved for weak swimmers, and none of us in the boat had evidently considered ourselves weak at swimming. As soon as we hit the water, several people shouted expletives in remark to how cold the water was, and you could feel the adrenaline coursing through the veins. It may have been a beautiful 70 degree day out, but that water was still in the 40’s. We managed to retrieve the canoe from the bottom of the lake and heft it up, it was still capsized and barely was floating. The water was too deep to attempt flipping the canoe and getting the water out of it, let alone trying to get back into the damn thing. Two people swam ahead to the nearest shore, still about 200 yards away, while the other 5 of us held on to the canoe and began dragging it to the shore.
All of us were still in full uniform and running shoes, seeing how that was the uniform. I never liked swimming in shoes, let alone pants and a jacket. I think those life vests were on all our minds at this point. 1SG began freaking out, for lack of a better term and started talking about how this was a “safety issue” and we just needed to focus on getting to the other side. Meanwhile in my mind, legs going numb, shoes seeming heavy, drowning had become a reality. Everyone else on the lake was way too far to attempt to aid us.
Eventually we were able to get close enough to shore that we were able to stand up and flip the canoe over. 5 of us got back into it, and 2 decided they were going to run back. We managed to get back this time, without any more “incidents”, and by the time we got to the finishing point, we were definitely tired.
My shoes are looking pretty pathetic at this point, still wet and smelling like a combination of nasty pond-mud and dead fish, I’m debating just tossing them in the trash.
What a fun day, you say? My thoughts exactly.
