Break-Dancing My Way to Freedom

I still haven’t moved anywhere, but at least we’re doing more training now. I talked before about playing video games at the Army’s expense. The last 2 days, I’ve been riding a carnival ride on the Army’s dime, also known as rollover training. In this training, they’ve got a few Humvees and MRAPs mounted on these huge motorized wheels that literally flip them upside down. So, we all climb into the vehicles, strap ourselves in with the normal seatbelts, and then they spin the vehicles around a few times (i.e. multiple times being completely upside down held in only by your seatbelt while you desparately try to hold onto the gunner's legs to prevent him from bounding around the inside of the vehicle like a ping pong ball) and then stop the vehicles while they’re upside down. The “ride” itself was kind of fun, but safely releasing yourself was interesting. I was the “driver” when I was in the Humvee, and there wasn’t a lot of room to maneuver on the ceiling, especially when you’re weighed down by body armor and your helmet. As soon as I released myself, I was stuck on my back on the ceiling with my feet towards the door and not enough clearance to sit up. I had to do some sort of turtle-spin move to get to where I could open the door. A nearby Major commented that “all those break-dancing classes finally paid off”… right. Either way, it’s nice to be doing stuff again.