Navy Boot Camp ( Second letter home)

UPDATE... My son John is out of Boot Camp and has his own Blog here http://navygeek.blogspot.com/ I still post allot about what he is up to but he also does quite a bit.

My son is in Boot camp with the Navy and asked me to post this for his friends and family to read. This is his second letter home.

Hi Dad and Vicki,
I am going to write this letter one day at a time.

Monday,
We marched to the other side of RTC in order to fill out some paperwork on insurance / taxes and get our ID's. I picked you and Vicki for the $400,000 insurance if I die ( Which will never happen ) Then we had to march all the way back ( about 7 or 8 miles total ) The Petty Officer told us we were impressive. From there we went to lunch then back to our rooms where we practiced making beds, we have 12 minutes to make our bed perfect, which is not easy, but I can get it done in about 10 minutes and use the rest of the time for anything and make it look better. We then had to go to the room across the hall with our sister division ( division 260 I think ) and the ships officer LT. Summa (sp) made us official divisions. For the marching I wanted to hold one of the flags, but I am too tall. They want the short people in the front and the tall people in the back and flags are the front two rows. Anyway after the thing in the other room we went to dinner, did a fire drill, made our beds some more and then did intensive training ( exercise ) where they go until someone need to go to medical but this time after one guy passed out they kept going. Don't worry I made it through. After that we took showers, got mail and went to bed. We get mail every day. Any info you have about Battle Stations would be great. Wish I could see pictures of you guys and stuff. We are not suppose to talk to each other most of the time but we do anyway and then have to do intensive training because of it. But Yeah I made friends here. I think the division is about 80 people today but will go to 77 tomorrow. How's the weather?

Tuesday
We got up around 7 or 8am and ate breakfast then went to the pool to take the swim test. I passed it. We had to jump off a ten foot platform and swim to the far side of the pool using one of four different strokes. I ended up just using the one where your on your back, it's more relaxing. Then we had to do a thing where we used coveralls under the water ( while wearing them ) which means your head has to go under too then bring the arm up out of the water 3 times, this brings air into the coveralls which you use to float, then we had to do a dead mans float where you take a breath and hold it then put your face in the water and just float for 1 minute. Your allow to bring your face up to breath from time to time. After that we went to a speech which was suppose to be done by the Captain of RTC, but she was not there so a Commander did it instead. From there we went to dinner and came back to our rooms to clean and learn to do the Watch Logs correctly. I then helped with Laundry. I pass it out and clean it. I have also removed stains from peoples shirts for them ( ink stains, we stamp a lot of stuff) We have a stain remover that's made for putting on the stain right before you wash the clothing, but I figured out a way to use it without using a washer. I just put the stuff on the stain then rub it in and let it sit for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes I use cold water and rinse the stuff out while rubbing out the stain. This worked with dry ink stains and a tomato sauce stain so far.

When you write me letters write down everything that happens, it gives me something to read. I expect 20 letters a day :) Oh by the way, you know that rope thing that divides the pool that has round floats on it. There are 386 of those floats on the rope in the pool here, that should give you some idea of the pool size. Oh yeah, we lost two people from our division and gained one from another division. Another thing, if you see anything that I will care about in the newspaper cut the article out and send it with the letters you write. That will give me more to read. Crap, I keep forgetting things, before the Commanders Speech we watched a video about the Navy and it had ""Come Sail Away"" by STYX playing through the whole thing which I really enjoyed.

Wednesday
I actually don't remember what happened Wednesday. I think that was the day we made our beds a bunch of time and got yelled at...

Thursday
We did the first Fitness test . I did
47 push-ups
71 Sit-ups
Ran 1.5 miles in 12:04
then we did inspection practice.

Friday
We did a 5 mile run in the morning, from there we went to breakfast. We had guest at our meals they included Senor Chiefs, Chiefs, Master Chiefs, a few Sergeants from the Marines and a few First Sergeants from the Air Force sitting right around me. They were all really nice and talked about when they were in boot camp 20+ years ago. Lunch and dinner was more of the same.

Saturday
We did B.A.S.E.S. or ( Balance Agility Strength Explosion and Stamina ) is a weekly exercise routine which incorpoarates shipboard required skills with aerobic and strength training.
That includes a bunch of different things, like pull-ups, pulling a 200lb bag on a rope with a team of 6. Jump rope, running, push-ups, and so on. From there we went back to our room to prepare for inspection. I passed the fake inspection. I also went to Medical on Saturday because I have a cold and I wanted to get a "Cold Pack", It has pain killers, stuff for stuffy nose and cough drops. Besides having a cold I feel pretty good.

The Division is down to 77 people, we lost a bunch and gained 4 from other Divisions. Most of the people left for medical reasons. Our Oldest person is 28 years old now. We did have a 33 yo but something happened to him, people are saying they heard he has a Stroke, but I am not really sure. All I know is he couldn't read anymore and kept yelling in Korean in his sleep.

Well, we have inspection tomorrow so I am going to do laundry, remove stains, shine my shoes, and clean up my locker.

Please write more!

Love you both, John

Oh yeah, I had to stand watch from 4-6am this morning ( Sunday). Some idiot decided they wanted to sneak in food from dinner and and other guy on watch and I discovered the food on the guys bed so we had to report it " to report all violations of orders I am instructed to enforce" I think that person may get kicked out. Not sure yet. ( Update: He didn't get kicked out. In fact allot of the guys had food in their bunks and this guy took the fall for all of them. He is in "A" School now with my son and doing great... ) ( Update Sept 6, 2007 That guy Graduated "A" School last Friday and left today for his next assignment )

I have to get ready for inspection now.

UPDATE: Allot of people come to this Post from Google search looking for information about Navy Boot Camp. If you click on "Navy" in the Labels section below this post you can read all his letters home" We'll you should be able too anyway but Blogger does not do this well yet. You can also go to the Archives on the right side of this page and start with June. Or you can just click here to see the first letter home. If you have any questions feel free to ask me. You can either leave a comment on any post, or sign the guestbook ( there is a link to it on the right side of the page ) . If you don't want your message public just mark the guestbook entry as Private. You can also e-mail me at Kansasdad@gmail.com I will respond to all comments. When you are done go to the main Blog page here and you can see where he and his sister Cindy are now. They are both doing well and love the Navy.

You also might want to look at these two videos that I posted earlier that show some of what they do in Boot camp with the Navy.