This week like all weeks was physically draining. A lack of sleep and vigorous physical activity really wears you down.
On Monday people started having their interviews with staffing to help determine where they are placed once we are done. No concrete answers were given, most people have an idea of where they are going, but the final answer will come next Monday.
I had my interview and the staffing Sgt. said that the chances of me going to Saskatchewan are pretty good, but again nothing was confirmed.
We are fully into ground fighting in PDT now. I have been waiting for this for a while now. I have several years experience in ground fighting so now I get a chance to practice it again. Some of the moves are similar but when you are fighting for your life like we do you are allowed some moves that would be shunned in competition fighting. We are allowed to eye gouge, grab the groin and anything else you can do to win, the bottom line is if you lose you have a good chance of dying. So anything goes.
I am glad to say that I made it through the week bozo free. We didn't have parade as much this week so it made it easier to get through. I did however get it on Friday last week for having dust in the wells of my boots. Now since that is number three for myself I had to write an essay for drill. It wasn't too bad is was 500 words, but it took time away from other things that I could of been working on.
Tuesday was the day that the troop was looking to get through the most this week. It was Patrol drive 4. The final test in patrol drives. I went to the test not feeling all that nervous, I had practiced a fair bit each week and was feeling pretty confident that I could make it. This is the drive where the corporal will simply sit beside you in the front seat and say nothing to you except when he wants you to do something. Unlike other drives where they would tell you when you screwed up and help you with it, they would simply mark in their book the time and street of where you screwed up. The test is out of 100, small errors such as not shoulder checking, or hitting the curb when you are turning are worth one point. Big errors such as not letting a pedestrian cross the street are worth 5 points and major errors such as running a red light or turning down the wrong way of a one way street are automatic failures. If you get below 85 you fail. You fail it a second time, bye bye.
The good news is that I passed!! I was one mark away from getting a superior, I got a 95% on it, you need a 96% or higher to get a superior. But I was just glad to get that out of the way, now the driving tests are not so stressful.
Then on Friday we had a long exhausting day. We started out bright and early with our five mile run. I finished it in 40:43 which is quite good for me, I was happy with the time. Then off to PDT where we had ground fighting. After lunch was what really finished me off for the day, tear gas.
People speak of tear gas and say that it is not as bad as the pepper spray because once you are out of it, it is over. This is true but still I did not have much fun in the chamber.
You first put on your gas mask and enter the staging area where you test and be sure the mask is working. No problem. Then you enter the actual gas chamber where you have to stand infront of a window and the drill corporal (yes drill corporals get to gas you, that must make their week!) tells you to take off the mask and answer a few questions. So the first guy in our group went and did it, the second guy did it, and then it was my turn. When I got up to the glass the drill corporal said on the microphone "Fisher, turn around and look." So I did and I saw that the hotplate where the tear gas pellets where smoking lightly were now pouring out gas like you wouldn't beleive.