What Marines Are Made Of

Two weekends ago I participated in an event called Jane Wayne Day. What this day is all about is an opportunity for the wives to dress in their husbands camoflage (camis - not lacy though) uniform and do things the Marines do on a daily basis. I was super excited as only I can get because I sometimes can be a little dorky.

I planned my outfit for a week. Seriously. I made camoflage pants, boots and a green T-shirt difficult. I went and bought boots in my size* so that I could blouse my pants. I didn’t want to wear tennis shoes and be out of uniform. Then I went to Old Navy and bought a black and a green tank top so that I could do a cute layered look. I put a fake eagle tattoo on my arm so that I would look "hard". Never mind that it had glitter on it and was the size of a fifty cent piece. I wore the old style camis and a matching boonie cover. I was seriously cute.

So we get there at like 8:45 on a Saturday morning and do some stretches where we’re supposed to yell out the numbers and the wives? We maybe don’t know how to count and maybe we forgot what is our left and what is our right. It was before 10 on a Saturday. What did they expect?

Then we ran in formation** for10 miles*** over to the Obstacle Course (O Course) where we watched demonstrations for how to do each section. It looked easy enough...

1. Run, jump and grab "chin-up bar" that is 7-8 feet high and pull yourself up, "Chicken wing" your arm over, sling a leg over and drop down on other side.
What I did: Ran up the little ramp (guys don’t get this, short girls do) jumped and missed the bar by oh um..2 feet. Looked helplessly at Chris who then grabbed my legs, lifted me to where I could just put my arm over and then he pushed on my ass until I flipped over.

2. Run, and jump over a telephone pole that is about 4 feet off the ground.
I rolled over it on my stomach.

3. More telephone poles
More rolling over them.

4. On the last telephone pole thingy**** crawl up on it, and jump to grab a hold of another "pull up bar" that has 5 other bars attached that go are attached to another telephone pole thing. Wrap your legs around one of the sloped bars and shimmy across.
Chris lifted me again (I seriously can’t jump half my height) and I shimmied pretty good.

5. Stand on telephone pole and run across downward sloping telephone poles and jump onto another really high telephone pole and drop down on other side.
Scooted on my ass across the pole - skipped the high one and jumped off.

6. Run (seriously, haven’t we run enough?) To ANOTHER pull up bar that is 6 feet in the air with another bar about 1.5 feet above it. You have to go over them both and jump down on the other side.
Chris lifted me again...ass on his shoulder style and I chicken winged it, threw my legs over, snaked around them both and got tangled up. Snaked my way back down with Chris telling me to just jump, but I am pretty sure I was supposed to snake around on those bars a little longer with a death grip. What does he know?

7. MORE freaking telephone poles that horizontal and 5 feet off the grouund. There’s like 8 of them. And you are supposed to vault yourself over each one hurdley style.
Belly rolled over the first two, walked around the others. Although my friend "K" did them all belly roll style.

8. The wall. Crawl up the 20*****foot high wall and jump down on other side.
Chris pushed my ass until I was sitting on the wall and then I got scared and sat there for a little while. I’m not too big on the jumping. Things break when you jump. I sat there for a bit and admired the view. It was nice.

9. Run to a rope and go up it.
Looked at the rope, wrapped my legs around it, grabbed it with my hands and all the sudden we’d run out of time and had to go. Darn.

OK, so yeah. The guys? They do all that crap in 1 minute 30 seconds. It took me at least 20 minutes and I didn’t do it all.

Then we loaded up with some packs that had weights in them and "humped" down to the swamp. The swamp that stunk like old rotten shoes that an old man took a dump in. Seriously. Then we walked through the swamp with the guys hoping we’d fall in. It was disgusting, but fun. Didn’t even mess up my boots too much.

The rest of the day, was NBC training, some gun play and tug of war. My battle wounds were huge sexy bruises on the underside of my arm and a blister the size of Canada****** on my right heel that the skin came off of and it oozed for a week and another little blister on my left foot. I ended the day in cami pants rolled into capris and bright green crocs.

I was hot.

I’ll post the link for pics when the guys get them up and running.

* As close as I could get and yet this still didn't prevent blisters.
** If by formation I mean a pack of chatty girls
*** maybe 3/4 a mile?
**** Seriously? Another damn pole?
***** Seven
****** It seriously was huge, actual size was fifty-cent piece size