[SFgrunt]

WARNING: Huge wall of text to follow. This is a pretty long intro about myself. I blame it on part boredom and part missing the military life.

I was born and raised mostly in Utah, spent a few years in different places as a kid like Puerto Rico, Mexico and Argentina. Was a runner in High School and got a scholarship to run in college which was a great way to pay for a degree. Got my teaching credentials and was in my 1st year teaching High School Spanish in Colorado when 9/11 happened. It rocked my world and I knew I had to do something different with my life than try to baby-sit other people's kids and teach them how to say, "Donde esta el baño?" and "Otra cerveza porfavor."

I had always wanted to join the military during college, but figured since school was already paid for I should stick it out and get my degree, and that there would always be time for that sort of thing later. Well, that fateful and tragic morning was my wake up call. I got online and did quite a bit of research into what I was going to do. As I saw the footage on the news of the Rangers waddling up a ramp in all their gear getting ready for a jump into A-stan in October '01, it clicked that I wanted to go Airborne. So I looked up all the different ways to be Airborne. I came across SOCNET.com, registered and was inundated with tons of info from the guys on there. (I'm Stampee on those forums btw).

It didn't take long before I found exactly what I wanted to do, I was going to be an SF Medic, that job had everything I wanted. I contacted the local recruiter for the 5/19th, he hooked me up with a REP-63, I drilled with the REC out at Watkins for several months while still teaching, and then marched off to start the long road to earning my place on the teams.

The next few years were awesome. I made some great friends along the way. Had a blast through every phase of training. My favorite was by far Selection. Guys were dropping like flies, and every time someone would tap out, it was like a big boost of endorphins and adrenaline to me. I would get more excited and motivated knowing that I was going to make it. I had a close call in Phase II during the final day of testing, I broke my ankle when I stepped on a log that gave way while being the RTO and deciding it would be a good idea to throw a downed battle buddy over my heavy ass ruck full of radio equipment and breaking contact. Because I had already passed, they let me move on to the Phase III on crutches since we would be spending most of the time sitting on our posteriors being tortured by power points and rectal exams. I enjoyed that year of medical training, and to this day, think it's the best high speed medical training in all the world. Robin Sage, oh man, good times. In retrospect, the highlight had to be leading patrols and figuring out some unconventional ways to pull off some pretty silly missions and earning the praise of the cadre for thinking outside the box. As a huge fan of cold war era spy stories and Tom Clancy novels, I lucked out and got to learn русский язык during language training. Just too bad I didn't get to use it all that much and now have forgotten 90% of what I learned. SERE...ugh, that was some crazy stuff, but man did those tears pour as Old Glory stood there and the music blared.

Anyway, I was supposed to head back to 5/19th, but had no job prospects that interested me. My biggest grief with the Q-course at that time, was that even with all my cool medical training, I didn't have any civilian credentials except for a worthless EMT-B certification to use. My options were to go back to teaching, or go back to school. But I didn't want to teach. So I chose to work my way into getting into PA school. In order to do so, I needed to move back closer to family, so I went back to Utah and transferred to 1/19th.

The unit had just come back from A-stan I think about a year before I joined them. I got placed on a great team as a new junior medic and we hit it off. Spent some time in Thailand and Bangladesh for some JCET action. Got accepted to the UofU PA program and at the same time found out our unit was getting deployed to the Philippines. Thankfully the program allowed me to put PA school off a year and saved a spot for me in the next year's class. Although the PI deployment was technically considered part of OEF and it was pretty cool, and we did some great work there, I was still hungering for what I had signed up for, taking the fight to those that did us harm. I wanted A-stan. After we got back, I finished PA school and started working full time. That's when things started to wind down. We kept hearing empty promises of us going to A-stan, and I wanted to stay with my team, not strap-hang with other units to get there. One postponement after another and finally they said, if we really wanted to, we could join another unit to go to Iraq as it was winding down. By this time, I have a great full-time job with ever-expanding responsibilities, a wife and 4 kids to support, and I realized I wasn't a kid anymore and wasn't going to be able to go gallivanting off to exotic places to fight bad guys anymore. So after some subtle pressure from the little lady, I ETS'd in '11.

I look back with fond memories of team life, had a blast, did some amazing training, and even had a little bit of action. But there's a little bit of an empty feeling too.

For those of you still on the teams, enjoy your experiences, there is nothing else like it in all the world.