The One Where 41-E Gets 44-Dingo's Truck Stuck (Ouch!)

Subtitle: And has to get rescued by the EXFOR. Double ouch!

Let me translate the title in case you're already lost with the call signs and abbreviations: The One Where I Get A Truck Stuck (today driven by our Australian Army "exchange" coyote, call sign 44-Dingo), and has to be rescued by the Marines who are there to do the training. Ouch, and double-ouch. Title a la Friends because I like how it sounds and because I love my sister, who introduced me to Friends. Not that I watch it much. Or at all, really, I just find the episode titles amusing. So warning: this post is not about the great things I am doing for the Marine Corps, it's a story about something embarrassing I did at work today, and I'm telling it to you because I think it's funny.

Today we were out assessing the second Motorized Operations Course, and it was fun aside from the fact that I didn't get lunch until 1330 (after eating breakfast at 0400--no snacks either). Near the end, the Captain I was shadowing for the day asked me to go get the truck (a dodge extended cab pick-up) and bring it around while he observed the rest of the exercise. By the time I had brought the truck up, I was behind tactical vehicles that the EXFOR was using, so first I tried to drive down a side street. Well, I failed to notice that there was some deep sand right at the turn, didn't take enough momentum going into the turn, and soon found myself without any more forward progress.

I got out of the truck, got back in, tried reverse, got out, noticed that the wheels were turned and that they might be negatively affecting my ability to get out of the sand, turn the wheel, and got myself un-stuck. This time I went around the EXFOR vehicle right in front of me, only to encounter EXFOR vehicle #2. Well, all the other trucks were up on an elevated flat section just off to the right, so I decided to park there. There were a couple sets of tire tracks up the hill onto the berm, so I chose to follow the less steep ones. Utterly failing to notice that the tracks went through soft sand. Fail.

This time I was really stuck. Dug one of the rear tires in, and knew I wasn't getting out of there. I turned the truck off, put my bright orange coyote camelbak on, and looked around. Just then, my boss drove over in his truck, safely up on the berm. I started walking towards him.

"No, no," he said, laughing, "stay there." I did, and he pulled out his iphone and aimed the camera at me. I just laughed, then stood there next to the truck while he took the picture. He had been escorting the exercise force's Battalion Commander and Sergeant Major around for the day, so while he was taking the picture, the CO was getting out of the truck. He held his hand out for the key and told me to get in the other side.

"You see this knob here?" he asked, pointing to a wheel on the dash.

"Yes, sir."

"You see how it says "4wd lo"?"

"Yes, sir." He turned the knob.

Sigh. Double fail. I hadn't even realized the truck had 4 wheel drive, much less how to get it there. It did take him a minute to get the truck un-stuck, as it didn't go into 4wd the first time he turned the knob. One of the other coyotes came over and told him how to do it, and we were soon also safely up on the berm.

We got out, he handed the keys back, I parked the truck, and walked back over to my boss, who was still sitting in his truck where he had watched the whole process.

"You realize that's a beer foul, right?" he asked. My first day on the range, some two weeks ago, beer fouls were explained to me. Basically, when a coyote does something wrong, they're assigned a beer foul, and must buy a beer for every coyote on the range that day at the end of the training evolution, which is a month long. These are announced over the radio as "Bravo Foxtrots" and must be called by another coyote to be valid. Typically they're for things like forgetting to put your kevlar on while driving in a golf cart, forgetting your camelbak while running around on the range (both of which happened today), saying over the radio something to the effect of "this run is going well", or any similar offense decided upon by a quorum of coyotes on the range. So today was my first beer foul. If I get the picture from my boss, I'll post it, and you all can stand witness to my complete inability to drive.

Side note. One of the things I'm enjoying the most about being down here is my ability to cook again. I finally have a kitchen, and I don't have a lot of free time, but eating healthy food is a priority for me, so a lot of my free time is spent cooking. I made a dish this past weekend that consisted of chicken in a cream cheese sauce over red cabbage that was (1) a complete experiment, and (2) actually quite good and thought that some of you might enjoy reading about my kitchen experiments, even though cooking is none of building, writing, biking, or leading Marines. So consider this an informal poll whether y'all want to read about cooking or no. Feel free to answer by comment, e-mail, text, facebook, or whatever method suits your fancy.

In the near future, you will probably also end up reading about all the hiking and bouldering I'm planning on doing this spring/summer/fall, but I'm not going to throw up a poll, I'm just going to subject you to it.