WHEW!!! I've now made it through three weeks of ALETA, which feels like a lifetime. I apologize, faithful readers, for not posting last weekend - I had the crud and spent every spare moment on the couch or in bed. So, I'll recap:
Week #2 - Qualifications
I was kind of nervous about qualification week. To "qualify", you must score at least 400 out of 500 points on two different targets in one day.
In our little preliminary State Park qualification rounds I did pretty well, but that was with nice, friendly, and familiar instructors and with targets that didn't move. I was really nervous to see how scary it would be to have to shoot on a real range, in timed conditions, with instructions coming from a disembodied voice over the loud speaker, and with about 30 other shooters...all under timed conditions with targets that actually ROTATE toward you to signal when to draw.
I started out shooting like crap. It IS intimidating hearing a voice saying "SHOOTERS ON THE LINE....AT THE 25 YARD LINE FROM THE BARRICADE POSITION FROM THE HOLSTER, TWO ROUNDS IN TWO SECONDS...WATCH YOUR TARGETS" while I have an instructor behind me threatening to cut off my finger if I don't quit jerking the trigger. So here I am, standing on the line watching my target, and hear a loud "PSSSHHHHHHHT!", which was my target turning toward me. Scared the bejezus out of me, so needless to say those first two shots went a little wild and didn't even HIT the target. I think one might have hit my neighbor's target...as for the other round, the clip holding my cardboard target on the rack turned out to be slightly damaged. Well, it had a big hole in it.
It took me a few rounds, but I finally pulled it together and shot not just a qualifying score, but (shines fingernails on shirt) qualified Sharpshooter. Not quite as good as Travis's almighty Expert qualification, but I'm the only female in the class to shoot Sharpshooter. All state park people got qualified...matter of fact, the whole class got qualified save one, but she was having other troubles.
Week #3
This week we were back in the classroom, again fighting to stay awake. We had lectures on domestic violence, arson, and I'm not sure what all else because I spent a fair amount of time doodling. We watched some videos, too. I'm pretty sure it's a law that all law enforcement insturctional videos had to be made in 1987.
Finally late in the week we got to do some scenarios and we started on defensive tactics. Defensive tactics was pretty cool - I now know how to properly handcuff a felon, so beware. Scenarios were interesting, and that's pretty much all I'm going to say. With the extreme lack of professionalism going on down there, I'm not sure what purpose they really served.
I'm most unhappy to report that the food is getting no better. It seems necessary to serve something breaded, fried, and covered in gravy for every meal...and the alternative of a salad bar is nearly as bad. I finally started taking my own food, and Marden bought me a little refrig for my room so Kendra and I can have some decent sustinance.
*sigh*...well, 9 more weeks and I'll officially be Officer Hooter...can I make it? More importantly, can I make it without shooting several classmates? :)
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