Ok, I must admit that there doesn't seem to be all that much that is interesting about a plane ride. But this one, well, things just don't ever go as planned, do they?
I got to the Airport in the wee hours of the morning, my mom kissing me goodbye in what would be the last time i saw any member of my family for six months. The girl I enlisted with was also there, along with two guys, and we headed onto the plane for the unexpected.
Plane Rides are somewhat boring, I slept most of the way to Chicago, on that frigid cold January morning. It had been snowing so we had hit delays on getting the plane off the ground, but I just stared out the window and into the clouds, wondering what lay before me.
Turns out, once we got to Chicago, it seemed like every flight in the entire airport had been canceled on account of snow. We meandered about Chicago O'hair for the next seven hours, trying to find another plane ride to St. Louis, when we finally found one. We had to travel to another terminal to reach it, and O'hair is Huge! Once we got there, we just layed out and slept in turns, waiting for the plane to deice so that we could get back in the air and on to Ft. Leonard Wood.
I think we finally made it to St. Louis at ten or something, and found our way over to the USO where everyone else that was attending Basic Training met. I think that was the first time I really suddenly felt out of place. I had always been in the west, and have rarely met anyone from any other part of the nation. Here was every walk of life from every where in the country one can think of. It was really my first experience with the outside world, out of the protective arms of my parents, who had sheltered me all of my life. Yes, this was truly a wake up call.
We boarded a bus around 11:30ish at night, and were shipped out to Ft. Lost in the woods, where we were told to try to get some sleep. There was no way I could sleep when the excitement finally built up inside, as I was on the final straightway to the beginning of another life. I knew this experience would change me in some way, and I was ready for it, hoping that perhaps this would make me into a better person.
Of course, when I got to FLW, as the bus crawled to a stop in front of the reception station, that was the first time I saw a drill Sergeant up close. Seeing that Brown Round then suddenly shot a chill up my spine, as I realized what I was in for.
of course, it would have helped make this more interesting if I wasn't writing about the experience almost a year after the fact, when I get more time, I will try to sharpen my writing skills and make the plane ride more interesting.
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