They say you do the first event for yourself. That you want to know if you can do it. The next one you do is for the people to your left and your right. You want to see them succeed. You want them to get the feeling of accomplishment you get (well, I got it, don’t know about you) when you finish your first event and say “fuck that I’m never doing that again!” You want them to learn something about themselves by going through the stress of the event, just like you learned something about yourself by repeatedly going through that process. Now, I’ve had allergies since forever but my first one I learned about was that if I’m cold and wet for a long time, I break out in hives. In college, I learned about mountain cedar and broke out in naps by taking benadryl all the time. In OKC I learned that I am allergic to crab walks and break out in a sweat just uh, well, being alive.
The Welcome Party was pretty easy except for all that damned exercising that we had to do. My friend Jim was and I were up for being team lead and I deferred to him with the “age before beauty” line. I was feeling bad and all we did was stand there. I don’t know if it was being out of shape, the McDonald’s I had 2 hours prior or the 4 beers I drank but I wanted to throw up. I actually haven’t had that feeling in quite some time so I guess that’s good. We did lots of PT but it doesn’t matter what we did because I wasn’t any good at it but that’s not a PT problem, that’s a Bee Yang problem.
At the end of the Welcome Party we’re allowed to drink and refill water so all I did was lay my ass on the ground and try to not be a bitch – unsuccessfully I might add. We then formed ranks and this is where I was separated from Jenks and G. To back it up, Jenks is the only reason I came out to do the event. He kept going on and on about doing a Challenge together so we try to and I end up right on the dividing line between the two teams. Oh well, I didn’t want to carry him anyway.
In our new teams, we had to bundle up our rucks into the tarps the team was to bring and try to waterproof them as best as we could. This was a somewhat fun/scary part of the event as we were to swim across the river with our supposedly waterproofed rucks. I am not a good swimmer (can’t swim at all really) but since there were so many of us, I wasn’t in danger of going anytime soon. This ended up taking forever and we sat on the edge of the river getting cold and I wanted to nap but it’s not that kind of event so I just sat there being cold.
Since this was taking so long we had to ruck up, cross over the bridge and onto the other side of the river to link up with those who did make it across. Here we got to fill up sandbags and we learned how to create makeshift stretchers/litters by using our tarps, poles and paracord to frap and wrap the shit out of each other. Then we had a movement with a time hack we ended up missing by 30 seconds. Into the canal which weaves through Bricktown we went. Everyone local was talking about how dirty it was but I’ve been in worse water. For our first time hack, we had 20 seconds to get across as a team and on the first shot we crushed it by taking 30+ seconds. I love it when a time hack is like “hahhaah nope.”
As we are going in and out of the water several times, the other team shows up with their apparatus. We switch equipment, build an apparatus while they learn to wrap and frap the shit out of some litters and they move out way ahead of us. As I am standing there being “as useful as teats on a breast plate,” I start shivering so hard my right pec starts to cramp. Because of this cramp, I can’t shiver! LMAO “it’s cold but I can’t shiver!” Best part of my night I think. As a team we fail at apparatus building but as a team we are fucking pros at carrrying the disassembled apparatus. If you can’t be a smart Ranger, you learn to be a strong Ranger. This turns out to be awesome as we end up making the time hack by 10 minutes.
As we are strolling into the park, we see the other team already there so I think we lost but they missed their time hack by seconds and got to bear crawl, duck walk, crab walk and bitch a lot while doing it. For our next event, we have to race to the Memorial. This seemed to be an exercise in futility but we all channeled our inner Rocky montage and we win somehow. I guess that’s not Rocky 1 but maybe one of the other ones where he does end up winning.
This was one of the finer events I’ve been a part of. People were sharing stories and I don’t think there was a dry eye on the team. When you talk about adults dying, I’m kind of callous and think “yeah, that sucks” and I’m not typically moved to tears but when you throw kids dying into the mix, it just kinda hits you. Our cadre got one of the park rangers to come by and tell us about the memorial, 9:01 – 9:03, and how the community came together immediately after. The Memorial itself is a neat affair. They have empty chairs there signifying that 168 (171) people that were murdered there. As you walk around, you see names and mementos left there make you think of your kids (in my case, nieces and nephews) mortality. I had to stop looking at names after a while just to make it through. I recommend taking a trip there if you’re ever in the area.
We reassemble in the parking lot just east of the Memorial and luckily we get patched right there because that was just about 2 miles away from where we started. The GORUCK Bus strikes again! In this case, it was a caravan of cars and trucks that came back to get us so I just sat around being in pain. We covered 7-8 miles and while not a total beat down like some other events, the difficult parts were just as difficult as any other event. HCL is up there next year but I’m busy then, what a shame.
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