This week was a fun week for me and for Troop 35 at least the last couple days of it.
The week began with our 30 minute timed run, which is to see how far you can run in 30 minutes. I made it to about 3 3/4 miles, which isn't too shabby. At least this week we didn't have to get pepper sprayed after our run like last week.
Then I had my learning assistance for my firearms benchmark that I didn't pass last week. We went over the basics and I shot a lot better. When it came time to do the benchmark again, I shot well enough to pass!
We had a series of lectures on handling prisoners this week. The fun in that was when half the class left the room and planted various objects on themselves. The other half had to search them and find the objects. I found all the items in my search but there was a few creative hiders in the group who managed to conceal various items from their searchers. I tried to conceal two guns, a knife, a paint scrapper, a handcuff key and a crack pipe from my searcher. He found everything except the crack pipe.
The real fun of the week started on Thursday when we started to do our advanced driving. This is where we get to push the police cars and our driving abilities to the edge. There is a track with various cones and stations setup and your goal is to get through them as quickly as you can. The best is the straight away, where you put the gas to the floor and hold on for dear life. So we practiced that all morning and went for lunch. When we got back we had to drive the course in the opposite direction while holding our radio microphone in one hand while answering questions that our facilitator is asking us. Multitasking like you wouldn't believe.
You have to complete the course in 4 minutes and you can hit a maximum of 2 cones during that run. Like all the other skills course you have to do it twice, but unlike the other skills you don't have to do it back to back. I did my runs in 4:00 and 3:55 and I only hit one cone on the last run so I passed.
We also got to try out the spike belts that we can expect to use when we are working. Throwing those things is more challenging then it looks. You have to do it right or it flips over or doesn't go out right. Then you have to be sure you get it out of the way of the police cars that are chasing the bad guy. They put on a demonstration with a couple of cars and when you have cars coming at you at high speeds it gets your adrenaline pumping.
On Friday there was our obstacle avoidance course. We start at one end of the skills course and floor it, get up to 70 km an hour and then a traffic signal tells us which way to go around a set of cones. There were a few 180's and a lot of screeching tires that day but it was a lot of fun.
Unfortunately for me on Friday I was sent to learning assistance for having my hair too long. During our morning parade the drill corporal came inspecting, when I heard him nail a few guys in the troop ahead of me for having hair too long I knew I was in trouble. I had been avoiding a hair cut because we had Cops for Cancer on Friday night where I was going to get my head shaved. But me and two other guys from my troop didn't pass the grade so we have to report at 7:30 on Monday morning for Bozo parade. D'OH.
Then on Friday night we had our Cops for Cancer headshaving. The goal for Depot was to shave 200 heads, and they met that goal. Even my drill corporal got shaved, his eyebrows too. I had never had my head shaved, but it is for a good cause, plus it will save me time during the day so I thought why not. It is a new feeling, but it should keep me from getting bozoed for my hair for a while.
Well, one more week down and I am still here. Keep going strong 35!!