Rappelling & Drill Sergeants

Two words that can put fear into the heart of many people: 1. Rappelling 2. Drill Sergeants.

5 hours of my Saturday were taken up with these two things. First was rappelling. At MSU, ROTC has a rappelling tower. This tower has a 25 ft. fall and a 50 ft. fall. We were lucky enough to go down the 50 ft. fall :-). I was one of the first ones to go. If you don't know anything about rappelling I would strongly suggest you check out this rappelling video. I'll try to explain it here. You climb up a tower till you're at the top (50 ft in this case). It actually looks much higher when you're in the air then it does from the ground. BTW, the whole tower sways in the wind while you're climbing up it. So you get up and now your heart is racing because one wrong step and BAM you're smushed on the ground. You wear a harness around your waste (in basic it will be a rope not a harness) and they tie a rope to the harness.

Now comes the scary part. You stand on the ledge with your back to the drop and step down...yeah, step down off of the tower. About a foot below, attached to the side of the tower, is a 2x4. You step down and put both feet on the edge of the 2x4. While standing there you start to lower yourself until you are parallel with the tower. Your back is now facing the ground and your face is up towards the sky. ...take one step back and jump! ...in actuality you bound down the tower. The scary part is becoming vertical but once you're jumping down it's very fun. Check out the link I posted above. It does a fairly good job of showing the rappelling process and fear that many people face.

Ok so now the rappelling is over and we get the honor of spending the next 4 hours with drill sergeants. They taught us how to do drill and ceremony stuff then marched us around for quite a while. Towards the end we had a question and answer time. We ended with the "fun" part...yelling and push-ups. As a group we did push-ups while the Drill Sgts yelled at people who couldn't hold themselves up. When I say that they yelled I mean they really yelled. Thankfully I was not one of the ones they messed with...I didn't drop to my knees so they left me alone. :-)

My recruiter took pictures so when I get them I'll post some.