2 down, 16.5 to go
16 Aug 2008 
in the early evening 
Matt Winckler
Week two ended with the roughest PT/DT session yet. The running is still not bad–I think we went about 2.5-3 miles yesterday. But after the run we had the opportunity to begin using our rocks–the softball-sized ones they ordered us to select and paint last weekend. We did assorted upper-body exercises, walking lunges, and some exercise I can’t remember the name of (from standing position, drop to pushup position–a.k.a. the “forward-leaning rest” position–then draw legs in and jump up to standing position again). Then we left the asphalt and went into the gym, where the real torture could begin. That consisted primarily of abdominal exercises, from knee-to-elbow crunches to regular crunches to flutter kicks to a few other things I can’t recall, with pushups liberally sprinkled throughout. By the end of it I felt like somebody had shoved a knife into my right side, but I was still alive, which fact afforded me the opportunity to learn how to properly handcuff a compliant suspect. This would have been great fun, except that the instructors mandated that for the preservation of the gym floor mats, we must not drop any equipment–no dropping handcuffs or handcuff keys. I groaned inwardly, because I know that in a room with 30 people–15 of them handling equipment at any given time–this is a physical impossibility. Sure enough, over the course of the instruction we did another hundred or so punitive pushups due to people dropping their handcuff keys. At times the instructors would have “mercy”, saying: “Well, since we just did 20 pushups, this time we’ll only do 5.” And then the command would be given to go halfway down into a pushup, hold it there, slowly rotate the upper body around in a circle clockwise a few times, then counterclockwise, then back up. “One!” This grew very tiresome very quickly, even with variations thrown in–rocking forward/back/left/right, hands close together, hands far apart. I have a much greater appreciation for vanilla pushups now, even when there are four times as many.
After all this we had a class from the Department of Licensing, which turned out to be far more interesting than it sounds. I learned about the variety of security measures that are in place on our driver licenses, some of which I was explicitly told to keep secret and, being skeptical, was surprised to find do not seem to be generally known on the Internet. It was pretty fascinating learning about some of the hidden features and checksums in place that you can confirm at a glance if you know what to look for.
The last thing of the day was a class on public speaking, which was saved only by the charisma of its instructor. I must say that the instructors at the academy thus far have been almost unilaterally excellent. Very few that are dry or boring. (Liquor law, alas, was one such instance.) This helps quite a bit when it’s 1530 and you’re short on sleep after a morning of running around being subjected to physical torture.
They keep saying that the next 16 weeks are going to fly by even though it doesn’t seem like it right now, but I’ll sure say that it definitely doesn’t seem like it right now. I can scarcely believe that a little more than two weeks ago I was working at Battelle; it feels like an eternity. Every weekend I come home expecting there to be lots of news and changes, but in reality only five days have passed and not much happens. This is probably a function of the sheer number of classes and amount of information being shoved into my brain–it feels like much more time has passed. I’m still trying to get used to being addressed and introducing myself as “Officer Winckler”.
That’s about it for now. I got the pictures of the bomb-diffusing robot off of my phone, but the quality is so poor that I’m not even going to post them. I’ll have to find a better solution for taking photos in the future, particularly once we get into some of the more interesting stuff.