| Febuary 7, 2003 |
 |
|
| And then there were five.... I now have five weeks under my belt. Its really hard to summarize the last week into a page. There is so much that goes on here. This week we earned the right to wear our black boots all the time. Now we look a little like police officers and not big goofs with running shoes. We had a very physical week this week. I hurt my arm on Tuesday after PT(physical training). Not bad, it was just a bit sore. Then during PDT (police defence tactics) we were learning take downs which involved twisting the crap out of your arm. The instructor says �you want to keep them on the threshold of pain�. After an hour of PDT you have felt the threshold quite a bit. Anyhow, after my third PDT class this week my arm was REALLY sore. It just so happened that the next class after PDT on Thursday was a trip to the medical centre for innoculations. While I was there I slipped in to see the doctor. He said that I have the most common injury that he sees at Depot. To make a long story short I basically have over used a muscle in my arm. Too much rope climbing too may chin ups and to much arm curling too soon. The PDT just aggravated it . So now I am what�s called �MOD B� or modified behaviour. That means that I do not have to do any chinups or upper body exercise for two weeks. The doctor says that it is very common and that he rarely sees people in for this condition twice. Off that now. I had my PDU (police driving unit) skills track testing all morning yesterday. We had five stations of cones each with a different pattern in which you have to drive around. You are timed on this and you have to do two consecutive runs without hitting any cones. I PASSED.. I think I did rather well. Station 2 aka the serpentine was the one that most people were worried about. You have 2 min to drive between tightly spaced cones weaving left and right with a horseshoe turn in the middle. Once you get to the end then you have to do the whole thing again in reverse. My first time was 1:26 and then on my 2nd run I bumped the 2nd last cone with my bumper. DOH... I had to start all over again. They want two consecutive runs. I hit one more cone on the next 2nd run and then took a break while another troop mate went. Third times a charm I nailed it fastest time was 1:14. I was told by the CPL that time didn�t matter much as long as I kept it under the 2 min I would be fine. That was the speed that I was practising at and I knew that I could do it. At the end of the day I received a P for professional. That�s all that matters. I now have that behind me and I can concentrate on my next benchmark. We had another dorm inspection from drill the other day. I was better than last time and for a 2nd time in a row my bed making skills stood up to an RCMP drill cpls inspection. My shirts, again, did not. I had been having my shirts dry-cleaned. So to save money I thought last week that I could iron shirts so I washed and ironed all my shirts. Well even with an iron they don�t come out looking as nicely pressed as the drycleaner. I found them all tossed on my bed. I didn�t have my Stetson in the correct order but this was a mistake that most of the troop made. And of course the dusty sock. Where he digs up the dust we still haven�t been able to find. We have gone over the room with a box of swiffers and he still finds dust. Today was a really cool day. We had a full day of scenarios. They brought in actors from outside Depot and sent us in two at a time to solve the problem. We were basically told that we were responding to a domestic dispute or a noise complaint and we had to respond as police. All the while the troop was sitting in another trailer watching your every move on a big screen. It made for some good laughs. We have our little brother/sister troop coming in starting today. I am one of the volunteers meeting with some of the new people and showing them to their rooms and around Depot. Then through the rest of training we will have to help them out with skills or whatever they may need. Not much else that I can think of at the moment. I thought that we had the Coopers test this week but I guess I was wrong. I went out and ran it the other day just to check my time. I did the 1.5 miles in 9:15 sec. The guys benchmark is 10:40 so I have loads of time. I slowly jogged 3 miles last night with a troop mate and we plan to do it again on Sat. Its really cool (no pun intended) jogging in sub 0 temp. All your sweat and breath freezes to your clothing. When we got back to the gym our toques were covered in frost. That's it for this week Here comes week 6... |
 |
 |