Linda Maye Adams's Blog, page 97

A Tall Ship and Humidty to Sail Her By

This week, the Hermione was docked in Alexandria, Virginia for tours and picture taking and lots and lots of people:

Hermione, an exact replica of the ship that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington with news of full French aid in 1780, turning the tide of the American Revolution.

I was hoping to get a ticket for a tour on board, so I left home at 7:30 and got there probably about eightish.  There were already 200 people in line for the stand-by tickets.

It was also headed into the eighties and very humid.  So I walked around and took pictures of the ship.

It was a lot bigger than I expected.  There is truth to John Masefield’s poem line, “And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.”  The masts were easily three stories tall.

It was so big I was having trouble getting a picture of the whole ship.

Filed under: Photos, Travel Tagged: Alexandria, George Washington, Hermione, Northern Virginia, Tall ship

Covers, Covers, and More Covers

It’s a lot of fun putting together the covers.  I like hunting down the images and playing around with them.  The only danger is that I have to be careful not spending too much time working on them (like research disease, only graphics disease).

My first cover for June is for a steampunk short story called “Curse of the Cat” (coming out in July).  The was inspired by a very old story I ran across about a painting of a cat that caused men to commit suicide.

A Writer’s Guide to Military Culture started life as a workshop I did on Forward Motion about three years ago (yes, I like color!).  That’s on tap for the next copy edit, so it’ll be out later in June.

 

Filed under: Thoughts, Writing Tagged: Book Covers, Military Culture, Short Stories, Steampunk

Daily Life in the Military: The Workday Starts

We went back out for another formation at 9:00. Usually the first sergeant or the company commander will put out some information, then send us on our way to work. We were a transportation company, so most of the soldiers would head out to the motor pool to work on trucks. Some would go on missions to haul equipment or supplies. I worked as a training clerk, so I stayed in the company area.

Training is pretty serious business in the Army. The Army’s primary mission is to train for war, so we lived and breathed training every week.

When I first stated in the training office, we kept the records on 5×7 index cards, one for each soldier. Had their name, when they last went to the rifle range, etc. Computers were just starting to come out then, so my squad leader, who was also the training sergeant, bought one and we used DBase IV on that to keep track.

One of my duties was helping to maintain all the training records. In those days, the Army put social security on everything. If you had a sign in sheet to prove you attended a class, your SSN was on it. If you took a PT test, your SSN was on the form. It was just everywhere, and, in hindsight, really didn’t need to be. Towards the end of my time in the service, the Army started removing it from forms unless it was really needed.

I also prepared training schedules. We did one for every week–I think we did it two weeks out. It was a Fort Lewis form on legal size paper and had to be typed (electric typewriter; we weren’t that behind the rest of the world). The schedule planned out every part of the day. We started with “Morning Parade,” which was about 5 minutes at 0600, led by the first sergeant, then went into PT. Even breakfast and lunch went on there.

We also get the planned training for that schedule from the platoon sergeants. We did training on Wednesday, which usually meant going out to a training area. The platoon sergeants would scribble the training on a sheet of paper or in a notebook, tear it out, and give it to us. So we’d get all these different sizes of paper, something with the torn paper hanging off, and try to translate the writing.

Everything had to include the location in case the battalion commander or group commander wanted to inspect us. So if we were going out to a training area, I usually had to drive around during the week and do coordinations. Coordinations were for sites that we shared we other units. It was to keep us from having artillery fired on us, though that did happen once anyway.

I’d make copies and deliver it to the battalion, and we post a copy up on a bulletin board for everyone to read.

I also had to do the quarterly training briefing, which was known as the QTB. Briefings weren’t like they are today where you can keep changing it and changing it until the last minute because it’s all electronic. While we had software to build the briefings–this was initially even before Microsoft PowerPoint–everything had to be printed, and then copied onto transparencies.

That was always a nightmare because the copier would get very hot and start melting the transparencies. If the melting wasn’t too bad, we went with it. Sometimes we ran into problems because the copier at battalion had a set number of copies per month it could run, and we always seemed to run out about a week early!

The slides themselves consisted of what the world refers today as metrics. How many people were qualified on the rifle, how many people needed to do deployment preparation (i.e., make sure shots were up to date, review their emergency contact information, etc.). We did anything specifically training related, and the orderly room (the administration office that handle awards, evaluations, and mail) did the deployment preparation numbers.

We also ended up with this weekly slide that became a horror for a while. The slide was called “ups and downs” and was due to the group commander once a week. We had to put in three good things about the last week’s training, and also three bad things, the downs. The way it was explained was that it was to help figure out how to improve training.

We had to have three each. We couldn’t put down on or two, or leave anything blank. So for the downs, I think we put down something like “Instructor wasn’t prepared for training,” which was true. The sergeant had blown it off and half-assed through it.

We got nuked by the group commander. He pounded his fist and demanded to know why that sergeant had not been prepared. Anything on that down list was trouble coming for us.

And we were required to have three downs each week.

So it was Washington State, and we put used “It rained during training” as a down. I think it was only nearly every week’s slide. We were also constantly trying out different downs, guessing at what the group commander was going to have a melt down over. We were positively elated if the Training and Audio Visual Support Center screwed up with the equipment because we had a great down that no one could nuke us on!

Apparently the group commander got tired of seeing “it rained” from all the companies under him, and the requirement for three went away. We started leaving off the downs entirely, and then the slide was discontinued.

In addition to slides and training schedules, we had a steady stream of people coming in every day, asking for help on something training-related.

Which made it most annoying when the soldiers from the other platoons said we never did any work. I guess they thought paperwork was easy …

We’d break at 11:30 for lunch, so back to the mess hall, then my room to watch TV. Formation was 1:00, then back to work until formation at 5:00, and then I was done for the day. Wednesday of each week was the only day that was different, because it was training day.

Filed under: Military Tagged: Army, PowePoint, Training, Washington

Writing Mis-Advice Reported as Facts #3

Number three in my mis-advice, and this one’s probably going to be a bit controversial. But all five relate to each in some way.

Give yourself permission to write crap.

First, I do get the principle behind his particular piece of advice. It’s “Don’t let yourself get bogged down by trying to be perfect.” Some writers will write the first chapter, think it sucks, toss it away, and start a new chapter, then toss that away, too because it isn’t perfect. I saw a writer do exactly this and never write anything.

The problem with the advice is the word “crap.” Most writers start out thinking their writing is terrible. It’s hard thing to overcome because we’re bombarded with so many messages about not being good enough. I had to get off the writing message boards because I kept hearing the negativity of “you’re going to screw it up anyway” and every other writer saying, “My writing is crap.”

If anyone starts typing in the comments that their writing IS terrible, stop and think why you’re saying that

Open with a hook.

This is focusing on the words and not on the story. Story is what sells.

Your first sentence has to stand out.

Also is focusing on the words and not on the story. Story is what sells.

Leave out the boring parts.

What does that mean?! Unfortunately, it tends to mean to leave the description out, which causing the next problem …

Revise, revise, revise. It’s where the true book comes out.

First, I’m defining revision as it applies to this piece of advice as finishing the book, and then going back and taking it apart by piece by piece, fixing big picture items like the entire plot, messed up characterization, or that the setting has been completely left out.

I’ve found that this is a terrible piece of advice. If the true book doesn’t come out on the first draft, I really screwed it up and no amount of revision will fix it. Worse, if I left something as major as setting out of the entire book, then the book is unrecoverable (I’ve had one like that).

The problem, I think, is computers.

I was in the Army right went we first got computers. We printed slides on paper and then copied them on transparencies. We learned to get it right on those slides. Now, because the slides are shown live, presenters continually tweak and make changes to those slides, even five minutes before giving the presentation.

So, with a novel, it’s easy to say, “I can’t figure how to do this, so I’ll leave it for the revision.” Because the computer makes it easy to go back and tweak files. I know. I remember saying that on a novel instead of stopping to work through the problem or go back and try something different. That single decision made a massive revision because it connected to other parts of the story.

So, picture this then, borrowing old technology: You’re on a manual typewriter, and you can only do one draft because it’s awful typing and takes forever. How would you change your approach to writing so you didn’t have to make major revisions like what I described above?

This is what the pulp writers did, by the way. They got so much per word and didn’t get paid for the revisions.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: Perfection, revision

Daily Life in the Military: Morning Cleanup

After breakfast, we returned to the barracks to shower and change for the workday. For the female soldiers, we had our own section of the building, and later, after we moved, our own building. During the time after PT, men were not allowed in the barracks at all. It was kind of an unspoken rule, because all the women were getting changed. It wasn’t like we had private bathrooms in our rooms; women were going down to the showers in various states of undress.

We did have one time where one of the male sergeants tried to get in. He was up to no good, and I happened to be the one who stopped him outside and told him, “You know you’re not supposed to be here now.”  He slunk off, and I reported it to my squad leader.

It was a lot of bustling of activity during that 90 minutes. When we had our own barracks, it was something like twenty women sharing three showers, sinks, and toilets. No privacy – the shower was an open bay with three showerheads and an older style floor that always smelled like mildew. We had to wear flip flips – we called them shower shoes – because the floor would give us athlete’s foot.

After showers, it was off to get dressed. The uniform was typically the BDU—Battle Dress Uniforms. That’s the older style green camouflage ones, called woodland camouflage. The uniform was a set standard for the time of the year, so we couldn’t change it up any like wear a field jacket because it was chilly that day. We could change up the boots a little and instead of wearing issue boots, wearing jump boots (wide toe and very stiff sole) or jungle boots (green canvas sides). We could also use a polyester/wool blend sock instead of the issued wool sock (very scratchy), green, of course. Everything else was standard, though.

The hair for the women then was always a challenge. Then we just had to keep our hair off the collar with a rubber band or barrette that was similar to our hair color. I have really thick hair, so it was always hard to put up my hair. Initially, I tried cutting it short, but that’s surprisingly high maintenance. I had to be really on-time getting it cut, and there was a point where if it got just long enough, I was in violation of the regulations but it was also too short to put up.

What I ended up doing was put it in a pony tail or a French braid. Then I folded it up, then folded it down and put a barrette on it. That wasn’t the far off from what the other women were doing. My roommate had hair down to her butt, and she braided it and folded it up, too.

There were women there who would use every minute of that 90 minutes to get dressed and do their hair. I was like ten minutes, and then I could chill out for a while before doing any clean up.

Cleaning had to be done every morning. Two areas needed cleaning: The bathroom and the hallway. One of the women made up a rotating schedule, so everyone got it every few weeks. One of the women typically volunteered to come up with a roster of assignments for the week, so we could go two weeks without cleaning the common areas, the bathroom and the hallway. We still had to do our rooms as well, though.

The hallway consisted of stripping down the floor (usually on the weekend), and then waxing it. After that, sweeping with a mustache broom and then a quick buff. Sometimes we had to go chasing after the buffer – the guys would sneak in and steal it.   The buffer was quite heavy, had bike handles, and was like a bucking bronco – tough to control.

The bathroom was cleaning the floors, cleaning the showers, dumping pine oil in the toilets, cleaning the sinks. If I did it, I dumped bleach on that floor so it smelled clean.

Then we had to clean up our individual rooms. Sometimes that was buffing the floor, but it was also sweeping up, cleaning out the seal on the refrigerator, making the bed, etc. I was never very good at cleaning. The Army wanted us to learn attention to detail by cleaning, but I was terrible with details. Where the first sergeant would bark about cleaning the cracks in the seal on the fridge and expect us to pick up details like that, I simply added “crack in seal” to my mental blackboard of things the first sergeant wanted me to look for. For me, it never translated into how to look for other details like that.

About once every week or two, the first sergeant would make random inspections during the day, checking for cleanliness, so the rooms always had to be pristine.  When I got out of the Army, I practically exploded with junkiness! Staying that obsessively neat was too much for right-brained creative me!

At 15 minutes to 9:00, it was off for another formation.

Filed under: Fashion, Military Tagged: Barracks, BDUs, Hair, Uniforms, Women Soldiers

Writing Mis-Advice Reported as Facts #2

This is the second part of some of the writing Mis-Advice I’ve heard all over the years. The scary part about all of these is that sound absolutely reasonable if you don’t dig deeper. Check out Part I.

All description is boring.

Usually when I heard this one, it was accompanied by another piece of advice “Get rid of the boring parts.” I think it probably comes out of doing writer’s exercises, description is taken out of the context of the story and character. So all you’re doing is describing something like you’re doing homework.

Worse, writers repeat this mantra in critiques. A few years ago when I was doing reviews, I read a book where the writer said in the back he’d made changes at the recommendation of his critique group. It was really obvious they’d told him to take out the boring descriptions (in a fantasy where descriptions are part of the world building!), instead of telling him to work on his descriptive skills.

Description is only boring if it’s written that way.

All writers need developmental editing

This is a recent one I’m hearing. Developmental editing is treated as if it were a one-size fits all thing for indie writers. It’s also the most expensive of all the editing choices, and, in my opinion, is essentially a paid critique.

It assumes that you don’t know how to write and need to be told how to fix it.

Think about how that infantilizes the writer. If I do something at work, I don’t send it to my boss to make sure I’ve done it right (not to mention my boss would have utterly no time to do her work!). So why on earth would I pay someone to tell me how to fix my story?

But some of this came out of the early indie stories where people were throwing up stories without even proofreading. Everyone starting saying, “You need editing,” and few thought that they might just need a copy edit to clean up the typos, grammatical errors, and style issues.

All I can say is try the copy editing first.

Don’t use passive voice, usually based on using the word ‘was.’

This one’s always puzzled me. Are writers really writing in passive voice THAT much? Or are writers misidentifying it because “was” seems like an easier way to “identify” passive voice? I remember a writer using one of these programs that identified was as being passive voice, so he removed ALL the instances of it. Like it or not, was is an important word. It helps sentences make sense!

In my opinion, you have to work to get passive voice in the story. It doesn’t even seem like fiction would lend itself to passive voice as well.

Seriously, would you write the following in a story:

My breakfast was eaten this morning by the cat.

Or would you write something like:

By the time I got out to the kitchen, the silver tabby cat had jumped on the table and was lapping up the milk from my cereal with quick swipes of a pink tongue.

No dream sequences.

Another one that comes out writers doing it badly. Dream sequences are often used by writers to info dump backstory they can’t figure out how to get into story proper. Why is that if writers do something badly, everyone says, “Don’t” instead of “Learn how to do it right”?

I remember asking other writers on a message board what would make up a good dream sequence. They admonished me that it was a Really Bad Idea, and then started backing slowly away like I was catching. No one even wanted to try it. At all.

Kind of sad that writers are limiting themselves. I’ve seen some wonderful dream sequences in books, wonderful because they added another level of characterization to the main character. It’s a given as a potential topic for science fiction. Star Trek—The Next Generation has done in twice, one great, one not. Anyone remember the Deanna cake?

You can’t break the rules without knowing the rules first.

I saw this one on message boards, and really, really hated it. The problem was that there was no actual answer to this. There’s no rule book for writing fiction, no definitive source that everyone must go to so they can write fiction. Everything is just opinion.

Rules are a safety net. They make people feel better. But we’re not filling out forms to a picky bureucrat’s standard. We’re creating stories, and sometime the rules are the worst thing for that. Sometimes it’s important to try breaking the rules, if it means learning something new, or seeing how something doesn’t work.

—

I had to write all these out so I could be aware of all everything I’d heard over the years. These pieces of mid-advice were one of the reaosns I had to stop reading message boards cold turkey. Way too many writers repeat everything as if it were precious treasure that must be used, instead of thinking on their own. Even knowing that some of these really weren’t true, I found some of them creeping into my writing anyway, like the description one.

Filed under: Opinion, Thoughts, Writing Tagged: Copy Editing, description, Developmental Editing, Dream Sequences, Passive Voice, Writing Rules

New Covers: “Booby-Trap” and “Layers”

I’ve been working on my cover for my short story, “Booby-Trap,” which turned out to take longer than I thought it would.  The image itself was hard to find because most of the images of women in fantasy involve clothing that wouldn’t even count as a bikini.

I finally settled on an image that I thought would do the job for the setting.  However, when I started building the cover, I couldn’t sample any of the colors to do the titles.  Sampling is when you use a color already in the image.  In this case, I couldn’t get enough contrast on any of the colors.  The titles and my name were hard to read!

So back to the drawing board to find a different image.  Since the story is steampunk, I looked at a lot of images.  Most involved women in garter belts.  I finally flipped it to Photos only and found the one below.

And I still ended up with the same problem — getting enough of the contrast.  I finally expanded the picture bigger and then cloned the spots to a darker color where I was having the most trouble.

Cover is below, finally!

The second one was more difficult simply because of the topic, September 11.  The original article was published by Holly Lisle in Together We Stand on the first year anniversary. I was in Washington, DC when the plane crashed into the Pentagon, and Iived close enough to see the smoke from the fires.  So I wasn’t sure when the call was put out that I could actually write it, and yet, it just came out.

It’s time now that it be resurrected.

For the cover, I started by looking at other 911 books.  Most featured the New York skyline or the twin towers.  Since mine was about Washington, DC, NY skyline was out.  I also didn’t like a lot of the options when I searched for 911 and September 11.  All of those choices were clearly NY, and I didn’t want to put a rose on the cover.  So I went with a Washington DC skyline.

Those are getting ready to go to the copy editor as soon as they come up for air from the holiday.

 

Filed under: Books Tagged: fantasy, September 11, Short Stories, Steampunk

Daily Life in the Military: Breakfast

Even with something like breakfast, which seems simple, the Army had its own way of doing things. Once we got done with physical training (PT), we had 90 minutes to eat and get dressed. Some of the married soldiers went home to eat and change. For the soldiers living in the barracks, we came back all sweaty and hot from the run and went straight to the mess hall.

To get our food, we had to sign in with the “headcount.” That was a soldier detailed for the day to sign people in and take money from the officers. I did that on occasion. Got to miss PT, which I didn’t mind, but was pretty much boring duty. The headcount reports in at meal time, sits in a chair as the soldiers file in, flash a meal card, and then sign their name.

They probably have an electronic version of this today, but the headcount was to help the mess sergeant (head cook) get an idea of how many soldiers he had to plan to feed.

The mess hall was a small room with a serving line and tables to eat at. The room didn’t look nice at all. Think cafeteria, and then knock it off a couple notches on the quality scale. Well, maybe more than a couple of notches. The Army made no effort to try to make it better. Functional. That was it.

The trays were like what you’d find in a cafeteria, with the top corners cut off so four can fit on a table. The plates were white, though I doubt if the Army was thinking of using the color to make the food look better.

One of the shifts of the cooks served the food on the line. The eggs would already be cracked and sitting out on the line in bowls, waiting to be used. Most of the food was pretty standard to what you’d find. One of the typical Army breakfasts was chipped beef, which was beef in a creamy gravy. It didn’t look very good, but actually wasn’t too bad. The nickname for it was “Shit on a Shingle.”

Fruit was usually bananas and Red Delicious apples. There was also had a small section of bagels, but very limited choices on what do with them. At one point, I was on the Dining Facility Council and got the mess sergeant to add things like cream cheese. One day we got a new mess sergeant and all of that was gone overnight. Disappointing.

Drinks were coffee, tea, water and juice. The juice was usually in a pitcher on ice. No sweet rolls, donuts, pastries, or anything like that.

We didn’t have to race through the food like we did in Basic Training (there, we were often headed to the washing line still eating our food!). Once we were finished, we took the trays to a rack next to the kitchen. Soldiers did not work in the back on kitchen duty. Contractors — usually women — did that. The only time I did kitchen duty was while I was at Reception Station before Basic Training. Never saw that again while I was in the Army.

After breakfast, a walk back to the barracks to clean up and get ready for the next formation.

Filed under: Food, Military Tagged: Army, Barracks, Basic Training, Mess Hall

Writing Mis-Advice Reported as Facts #1

Earlier this year, I took a class on writing produtivity, and one of the parts was listing all the writing junk that I’d heard over the years. You know, those things that get passed around by writers, sound reasonable, and yet may not actually be true. Here are five of them:

You can’t make money writing

I’ve heard this one back since the 1970s. My uncle wrote during the pulp era and could never make enough money to write full time. What it tends to say is “You’ll never be successful” with the implication not to try too hard.

Granted, if I wrote one book every few years, I probably wouldn’t make a whole lot of money unless it hit the best seller list. A lot of indie authors are making money simply by producing a lot of stories.

Build up your writing credits by writing for free

I also heard this one probably as early as the 1970s, but definitely into the 1980s. I remember looking at a Writer’s Market and seeing the percentages of writers submitting to pro-rate versus the non-paying. Then I’d think, “I’ll never have a chance, so I’ll try the easier one.”

I got a really rude shock when I applied to be a charter member of Interntional Thriller Writer, and they pretty much told me that none of it counted. Even submitting to the agents, I started finding that a lot of it didn’t count because it was non-paying, which, unfortunately, also said something about my writing that I wasn’t aware of.

What I also didn’t realize I was doing was that I telling myself that I was never going to be good enough to be professionally published and I wrote to that level. Once I started only submitting to professional paying magazines (.05 or more a word), I started improving dramatically and have been getting personal comments.

I wish I’d understood this one earlier.

Delete the first fifty pages

I heard this one back in the 1980s I think. It assumes all writers spend the first fifty pages doing backstory and not story.

Of course, I was a writer who didn’t start with backstory. What listening to this gem of advice got me was starting a book in the middle, rather than where it needed to start. It’s not a good thing to start in the middle, especially for a pantser. Things came into the story out of order and distorted it into a mess.

All stories use the 3-Act Structure

When I started writing in the 1970s, not one writing book talked about 3-act structure. It appears to have surfaced because of Blake Edward’s book Save the Cat, which is very popular. It’s gotten so embedded, I hear writers say, “Three act structure has been around as long as they’ve been doing plays,” as if all plays were in exactly that structure.

Uh, well, no. I was a theater major, I knew better. Just look up Shakesphere’s plays. See how many acts they have. I’ve attended plays with a very long first act (due to set requirements) and two short acts; a one act play; a two act play. It just depends.

Three acts started out in the movie industry because that’s when the reel ran out.

I’m not an outliner, so when I tried the 3-act structure, it put an artificial structure on top of the structure already in my story and turned it into a mess. I started thinking of adding something to end the second act and writing to that instead of following the natural flow of the story.

To do (fantasy) world-building, you must start with a three-ring binder

Years ago, I was thinking of doing a fantasy novel. Then I heard the advice that to world build, I needed to do a tremendous amount of prep work. It was, “Start with a three ring binder and tabs.” Then I was supposed to answer a lengthy list of questions about the world.

I don’t outline at all, so I was so hugely turned off by this “requirement” that I never write the fantasy novel. Having to do all that prep work as described took all the fun of writing the story away.   It was years later that I discovered that the people giving that piece of advice were people who enjoyed building the world almost more than the story.

But it’s interesting that at a recent con I went to, the panelist in charge told a writer who asked what needed to do to world build was told “Write the story first.” No fussing about notebooks and tabs and tons of questions.

Any “facts” that you heard along the way that turned out to be really wrong?

Filed under: Opinion, Thoughts, Writing Tagged: 3 act structure, Backstory, world-building, Writing credits, writing for free

Daily Life in the Military: Physical Training

I picked up a book on what it’s like to be a sous chef, so I thought it would be interesting to follow through the “Daily Life in the Military.” Of course, this was a number of years ago, so some things may have changed and others may not have.

Mondays, we’d start the day with physical training, called PT, since the Army likes its acronyms. Normally we did it Monday, Wednesday and Friday, though later, the post commander decided everyone was going to do it five days a week.

Formation for PT was at 6:30. A few hardy souls would get up at 5:30 a.m. to get ready, banging doors and flushing toilets. The rest of us dragged our zombie selves out of bed and changed into PT uniforms.

The full uniform was gray sweat pants, gray, sweat jacket, gray t-shirt, gray shorts, black watch cap, calf high socks, leather gloves, and running shoes. During winter, we wore all of that, and some of the women who hadn’t styled their hair yet would hide it under the watch cap. During spring and summer, we went down to shorts and t-shirts.

It also didn’t matter if it was too cold, too hot, raining or snowing. We went out and did PT, no matter the weather conditions.

We’d get out to formation ten minutes prior and line up in our platoons. Most of us were still half asleep, so the designated PT instructor that day (usually one of the sergeants) would start out with some stretching and then warmup exercises.

The stretches were your basic ones like bending over and touching your toes or

The warmup exercises were the horrid things. We always had pushups and sit-ups. The guys could always knock out the pushups, but grunted, groaned, and strained for the sit-ups. The ones I hated were the side straddle hop and the flutter kick. The side straddle hop is a jumping jack, and it was always very hard for me to do, probably because of my flat feet. The guys were always making fun of me. The flutter kick was just plain hard. This is what it looks like (shirtless guy alert):

No fair! He makes it look easy!

It would take about half an hour to finish that part of PT. The last half hour was the run. We always did it in a formation, which was supposed to encourage to slow runners to run faster to keep up. Amy logic. That never worked.

We ran on the streets of Fort Lewis, as cars drove past us.   When I was on main post, we would run through the housing areas, where it was kind of nice, and definitely quiet. If it was hot out and the person leading the formation spotted a sprinkler, we took a trip through it.

But someone would always get the idea to go up to Engineer’s Bluff, which was a steep hill and a killer to run up it.

With my flat feet, I was such a clumsy runner that I probably took at least three times the effort to run and came back exhausted. Once we stumbled back to the company, all sweaty and hot, it was off to the next scheduled event of the day: Breakfast.

Filed under: Military Tagged: Army, Barracks, Engineer's Bluff, Fort Lewis, Physical Training, Running, Uniforms