CAST Details

As I got ready to go to Combat Airman Skills Training (CAST), I really appreciated a couple bloggers who had shared some of the details of their experience. Accordingly, I figured I'd pass along some info and suggestions, based on my two weeks at Camp Bullis, in lovely San Antonio TX (I can't speak for Ft. Guernsey or Dix).

Meals: Let's start with the most important aspect of any military experience: the food. We had hot chow for breakfast and dinner, but got MRE's for lunch every day. That's an improvement over previous sessions, who got MRE's three times a day (yikes!). 

The hot food was actually pretty good most days, although there was an almost disturbing quantity of gravy available. I tried the biscuits and gravy for breakfast  twice... then figured I'd hit my annual quota of breakfast gravy. We took turns as servers in the chow lines - don't forget to bring your hat when it's your turn to ladle the gravy!

As for the MRE's, my "favorites" (if there's such a thing) were the vegetarian entrees. The cheese tortellini got pretty high reviews from several of us. Some of the MRE's come with M&M's or Skittles... but somehow I never managed to pick one with candy in it. I wish I'd brought a water bottle so I could have mixed up some of the drink powders that come in each MRE. The drinking bags they provide are pretty hard to drink out of. 

As you might expect, the first few MRE's weren't so bad. The first couple of days were also some of the most physically demanding, so we ate everything but the matches out of those bags. By day 7 or 8, we were getting pretty picky - partly due to MRE fatigue and partly 'cause when you spend all day driving around in a humvee, you don't build up quite the appetite as when you're running through the woods wearing body armor.

Hours: Breakfast started at 0600 - which meant I rolled out of bed right around 0559 most days. After eating, it was time for a quick shower & shave, then we had some time to check email before class started at 0800. Lunch started somewhere between 1100 to 1400, depending on the day and whether they remembered to bring the MRE's with them out to the shooting range. 

Class generally ended by 1700 (sometimes earlier!), and dinner was at 1800. I almost always was able to catch a shower before dinner... and I almost always needed one! I was able to call home in time to tuck the kids in every night, and was in bed myself by 9pm most nights... and asleep by 9:05. Maybe the younger troops stayed up later - I wouldn't know. Which leads me to...

Sleeping: We bunked in tents - I shared one with 5 other Lt Col's. We called it the Old Folk's Home, and although it didn't have wifi, it did have electricity and the most powerful air conditioner in the world. Because the tent isn't exactly insulated, it was either freezing cold in there or hot and stuffy. Mostly we froze, which was great - Camp Bullis is in Texas, after all. One night a massive storm blew through and it sounded like we'd camped under a waterfall. Pretty hard to sleep through that, so I was awake almost all night. There was a little bit of leakage, but we mostly stayed dry.

 Training: The training was outstanding and the instructors were all top-notch. It was some of the most physically demanding stuff I've ever done - running around in the woods wearing body armor, dragging "wounded" people around while getting shot at with blanks (and sometimes paintballs), navigating through the dry Texas scrub. Running the AF Half Marathon was a piece of cake compared to this - at least the half marathon only took 2 hours. CAST went on for 10 days.

I'd spent a lot of time in the gym prior to CAST, which definitely made a difference. I highly recommend getting into shape before reporting in. I just wish I'd done more sprints rather than just focusing on long runs, although I'm sure my endurance training paid off.

Other Stuff: One of the highlights of CAST (aside from getting Sunday off!) was meeting the other trainees. Several had been to Kabul before, so I got a first-hand account of life at ISAF HQ. Several others are going there at the same time as me, so we'll all have some familiar faces when we get there.

All in all, I feel about as ready as I can be. Several of us agreed that we'd like to get our deployment started asap, so we can get it done with. Just four more weeks to go...