Can't wait for the Boot Camp + Captain's Mast story.

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That night, it did pour down on us. Several people got sick, which I assume was from the water. I (luckily) had not had any real "bug" trouble on the trip, probably because I have never been very worried about being germ free in my regular life and teaching makes you sort of immune to illness after the first couple of years.

We hid under trees for the rest of the night and waited for the morning. It was a long night, but we were all focused on being able to go home the next day, so we just sat and talked about our experience. We started running the next day and the time went very fast. We were all commenting on how much easier it was to run because we had lost so much weight. Our clothes just hung on us and I thought it was funny that I hadn't noticed it until then.

The last five miles were downhill and in no time we were there. There was a truck with food and drink waiting for us, but we were disappointed that it was just bread and peanut butter with water. They told us that we should only eat very bland food for a week and slowly add regular food in. The most embarrassing thing about being at the truck was that they had a small puppy with them. Each of us looked at that puppy and I knew we were all thinking the same thing, it took me about two weeks to get past that...

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The first weeks back were not good. Before we left we had to have a doctor sign a form that explained the rigors of the trip and that they felt that because we were in great physical shape we could handle it. We also signed another form explaining that we knew that we might die out there on the desert (and couldn't sue).

I had lost thirty-two pounds and couldn't really eat normal food for about a month. I had dreamed of Hagan Daaz ice cream while on the desert, so of course went straight there after I returned. After one spoonful I got really sick and couldn't eat anything for the rest of the day. The intestinal problems started shortly after I got back and lasted for months. I would get lost walking into stores, because the overhead lighting confused me and I would randomly break into tears just sitting on the couch. That lasted about a week.

Prickly pear cactus have little spines left in them after you pull off the large ones. These tore my throat up so much, that when I returned. my throat closed up completely (very scary) and a massive course of antibiotics were required to clear it up. It took me three months of power lifting to get my weight back.

People always ask if I would do it again and the answer seems to change with age. For many years, I said I would only do it if I had all the water I could drink. As I got older, I would tell people that I would like to do the training part, but be able to eat and drink all I wanted. At my age now, I'd probably need a huge private RV and I would still complain, lol. I do know that it was the suffering that taught me so much so fast and it was the constant want that enabled me to say that if I had to, I could survive.

Top stuff.

Let me get this straight. You were thinking about the dog as food? Lol. Damn that's scary.

Looks tasty imo

Good thing they didn't have a baby with them.

LOL, I'm still embarrassed about those feelings. I'm into various animal rescue orgs and have never killed anything again.

(No, I'm not a vegetarian, but I am going to become one eventually...)

How does that work? You're sitting there eating a tasty burger and think to yourself, "It's too bad a cow had to die for this, but, damn, this is one delicious burger. I guess I'll start feeling guilty enough about it in 10 years to quit meat. Maybe, 'cause it sure is tasty now!"

A title! We need a title! Well, if it must have a title...

TYLERTWO's BRAVE QUEST FOR FREEDOM AND THE AMERICAN WAY (or, The Domino Theory and How It Fell Flat)

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I told the draft board that they REALLY did not want me, but would they listen, oh no. By the time I turned eighteen, I had been through far more physical punishment than they could ever deal out and nothing had broken me yet. But they had made up their minds and they insisted that I was going to 'Nam.

Even though I liked college (hated HS), I had it in my head that I was the next great Roller Derby star. For years, as a kid, I would stick out my thumb and end up in Oakland, practicing with the Junior Bombers. I skated next to Charlie O'Connell and Joan Weston (the blonde Amazon.), feeling sure that at any minute I was going to get a contract. So I stopped going to college and began practicing full time. That caused me to lose my 2S student deferment and the draft board came calling.

To stave off the army, I began looking for options. I heard about a program that the Navy was offering, where you could sign up for four months in the future, get the draft board off your back and give me some time to think. I knew that my being in the service was not an option, I am almost pathologically incapable of taking orders. Two friends and I decided we would head off to the New York Rock Festival (being held in Woodstock, NY), head into Canada to check out jobs and then return to get our things and move back before I was due to report.

Canada, as nice as they were about it, did not really want three more eighteen year old boys looking for work. They politely asked us to move on. After I came back from the festival I went to Sunnyslope, AZ to hide out, but the FBI quickly followed and I was on my way to boot camp. While I've always been up for an adventure, this was one that I felt was not going to go very well.

I ended up in San Diego in October of 1969, a rarely serious, very young, completely free thinker, who had no intention of being told what to do. The leaders in boot camp seemed to have other plans. It didn't bother me that they hit me once in awhile or even all the hollering, it was all that negative energy that they kept pushing on everybody, it made me just wander away from the group and that was the start of the problem for all of us.

Little did I realize that Woodstock itself would hold the answer to my problem. The concert had engendered huge publicity and the Navy was acting as if it were the end of civilization itself. I had heard in the grapevine that if they found out that you had dropped acid even once, they considered you unfit for service for life. Why didn't they ask me that before?! Once the Chief Petty Officer found out that I had been at Woodstock and had tripped many, many times, I was on my way back to freedom!

But, in the service nothing is made easy and so the story begins...

Exactly like that. I have a sister who is switching now and another sister (on the opposite side of the political spectrum) who is planning on it. I think we are trying to attain Buddha before we die, lol.

(Actually, I'm sort of with Temple Grandin and it's the cruelty of the industry that I can't accept. Who knows?)

I'm scared to watch any of the food industry docs in case it flicks a switch and my morality stops me from enjoying burgers. If it's morally wrong to eat burgers i don't want to have morals.

Looking forward to the next section tyler. keep em coming

I was a vegetarian for about 10 years for the not killing animals/environmental reasons. Ate meat pretty regularly for a few years. Now, eat meat like once a week or so at most. Maybe will go full veg again at some point.

So, I feel you Tyler.

Didace, there are lots of things where people have conflicting feelings: I want it vs. I shouldn't for whatever reason and regarding what we eat, pretty much everyone has some things they think are ok to eat some that aren't for ethical reasons. People don't have to be perfect or perfectly consistent in this area imho.

Oh I understand that. I have tons of internal contradictions. I just thought "I'm not a vegetarian, but I am going to become one eventually" was a slightly bizarre definitive statement.

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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT -

A clarification is in order. Without going into a long drawn out story about scorpions (oddly named Herr Clapper...) riding on the backs of innocent toads, the truth must out...

Tylertwo is no more guilty of a crime that those many storied grinders who were made criminals overnight with the advent of "Black Friday". Because, deep in the past, in a time now known as BEFORE the Second Dark Ages, there was a happening; an event so powerful that it defies description. It was when one's mind was actually free to explore the universe. Yes, good neighbors, LSD was completely legal in 1969! But, the power behind the throne realized that, to control the populace, they must begin with our minds.

"Excuse me while I kiss the sky..."

I now return you to the previously scheduled programming.

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It wasn't that big of a deal, I was just taking a nap. After the people in charge found out that I would be leaving, they left me back in the barracks with one of my friends as a guard. With all those push-ups and marching around, who wouldn't be tired? I awoke to some guy yelling that, "I shouldn't be sleeping on the floor and why wasn't I with my unit?" I tried to explain that we weren't supposed to be in our beds, so of course the floor was the next best option, but he wasn't listening.

He kept hollering at the guard (oh, those officers...), while I laid back down and tried to sleep. Within a few minutes, I was being escorted across the bridge to the main camp and then to building 191, where I was to spend the rest of my time in the service of my country.

191 was a special unit for those servicemen who had "danced from star to star" and were waiting their time to go back to the unreal life and carry on. It was run by the Navy and the Marines, to house what they considered to be the unrepentant "insane by their own hand" and, because we had not actually done anything wrong, they weren't sure whether to discipline us or just let us float through our time.

After arriving at the front door, it became apparent that my escorts were afraid to knock. They pushed me forward and when I opened the door I was greeted with complete bedlam. It was the exact opposite of the rest of the armed service that I had seen. People running around screaming, others toking in the corner, some playing cards and others just talking loudly to themselves. I was home!

I NEED A SAGA! WHAT's THE SAGA????

IT'S PURE AWESOME. YEESSSSS FINALLY!

It's songs for the deaf.

After I checked in with the Petty Officer in charge, I was given a bunk and a locker, then pretty much left alone for the day. The guys who were messing around when I got there had not been assigned work, so they could do whatever they wanted to. We chatted about the unit and I started to hear about some of the extracurricular activities that went on at night.

I was given hard labor as my duty, so I was taken out the next day and handed a pick axe and told to break up this little plot of ground. The guard that escorted me there said that he would be back at the end of the day, so of course, after he left, I laid down and took a nap. I messed around all day and when he got back, he saw that I had not done any of the work. Instead of getting mad he just smiled and didn't say a thing. It was then that I knew my time in the Navy was going to be easier than I had first thought.

They didn't have the manpower to watch a bunch of hippies, who really hadn't done anything wrong, so I quickly found out that if you didn't get caught causing any trouble they would treat you pretty well. They especially don't like trouble that appears to be a breakdown in respect, if you didn't act out to their face, they didn't seem to care. Each day, I would take a book out to the site, lay down and read counter culture classics and then they would come and get me at the end of the day.

Early in the first week I heard about "operations" that were carried out at night designed to tweak the system. Three guys had gone out a couple of weeks before I had arrived and used poison to burn a huge peace sign in the middle of the parade field. The entire base was talking about it.

We listened in awe as the guys who did it told us about their bravery as they avoided the armed guards, spread the poison out and then hurried back to 191, avoiding detection. All of the people on base were sure that it was someone from our building who had done it, but they couldn't prove a thing. These young "radicals" would tell us how it could actually be seen from the air and every landing plane in San Diego got a glimpse of their work.

Those of us who were new were expected to live up to the standard they set. To make our mark, we would need to design and pull off a stunt that would match theirs and have the entire base talking about us for years to come. As I looked around at the faces that had just come in, I wasn't sure if we could even think up anything greater than that. Our hippy cred had been challenged.

Was supposed to work this past hour but I opened your thread instead. Gr8 story

God damn nothing I did or saw in basic is even half that entertaining.

Thank you!

That's probably the reason they got rid of the draft, lol. It has always amazed me that they didn't have more problems when they were forcing hundreds of thousands into the service against their will. The streets were going wild, but somehow most just went in and served even though they hated the war. The volunteer armed forces are a much better idea. I was doomed to live in interesting times...

It's funny, because I've since counseled many young people into the service and I'm currently developing/proofing a curriculum to be used to help transition service members back from the war. What a long strange trip it's been.

so in other words, you didn't learn anything. you sellout hippies were the worst generation.

"Better to try and lose, than to never try..." (lol)

As in everything, it's a bit more complicated than that. My counseling of young people into the service came well after the war. The draft had ended, the nation was at peace and we went through several economic downturns in the 80's where the only jobs available for the young were minimum wage.

With some students, I felt that they needed the self-discipline that the service could offer (I'm not foolish enough to believe that all young people think the same way I did.) and with others they just needed a job and a start in life. I'm not against the military, I'm well aware of the history of tyrants and the need to address bullies accordingly.

That said, I have personally opposed most wars since Vietnam and was radically opposed to Iraq. It is a moral complexity that might well be difficult for most to understand, but I did not come to this thinking without doing thousands of hours of reading and a considerable amount of deep thinking on the issue.

You can fault my generation (Although I caution those that do, to wait until they have proven themselves greater; there is another, even more critical group of young people waiting in the wings, lol.), because I have critiqued them viciously in my own writing. It is the nature of the young to want to bring about change, but that change will be incremental, not profound.

If I compare my generation to others, I look at the advances in civil rights, gay rights, voting rights (I couldn't even vote when I was being drafted.), the end of the draft and the war, gender equality (and yes, I realize there is more work to be done) and a host of other issues that are taken for granted today.

It's funny for me to be writing a defense of a group that in public settings, I'm usually raking over the coals, but in the end we have probably accomplished as much as any generation in history in changing institutions that are loathe to change. My dream for the future is that the young people of today bring about even more powerful change in the world. GL

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After a week of reading in the sunshine an officer walked by and asked what I was supposed to be doing. I don't remember the conversation, but two days later I was reassigned to some sort of cleaning duty all the way on the other side of the base. It took me half the day to walk there and when I explained that I had no intention of doing any cleaning, I knew that I would never be going back.

On my return from that idiotic assignment, I saw a lieutenant's uniform, covered in plastic, hanging on a tree. It looked like someone had forgotten it there, so of course I figured that it might come in handy in the future. I took it down and carried it back to the barracks. It was quite a hit back at 191 and when I tried it on, it fit pretty well. I began to formulate a plan where I could use it at some future date, but first I had to deal with a more pressing issue, two new guys assigned to our little club.

We had been having trouble with these two bullies in the barracks for several days after they came in. They would harass the weaker guys by taking their things and generally cause trouble. My friends and I decided that we would scare them by having a "black mass", make it real spooky and then trick them into believing we were possessed and were going to kill them in their sleep.

We elicited the help of the craziest person in the unit, a guy who would stand in the corner and laugh to himself all night long. He had been caught several times trying to light the barracks on fire and most people were afraid to get near him, fearing hat he might make it personal. With my friend Bart (who said he was a distant cousin of Timothy Leary) we got three hairs from the black cat that lived on the grounds, made little cloth dolls out of scraps and we covered ourselves with our pea coats and sheets.

We went into the communal shower and (while chanting gibberish) lit the dolls and black hairs on fire. With the whole unit thinking that we had lost our minds, we began running around screaming and then threw ourselves down on the floor. The poor crazy guy went nuts...