Welcome to another issue of
Life in the Swedish Army, the bi-weekly dump of entries from my
diary, being written as I go through
national service in the armed forces of
Sweden. See my wu in
this node if this is the first of the LitSA rants you've seen. It contains some background info which will be expanded later when I get to writing a proper LitSA
metanode.
As some may have noticed already, it's actually been three weeks since I posted last. Sorry about that, I was kind of busy last weekend - watching
anime, mostly. That, and I haven't been writing a lot in my diary, partly because I ran out of pages in my notebook and it took me a bit to find a new one, which I reinforced with duct tape to keep it from meeting a similar destiny to my first one, which was starting to look like it'd spent three months in
hell, rather than in my pants pocket. Though I suppose, the
environmental conditions are the same anyway ...
Anyway, these weeks have been rather interesting, though we've been doing pretty much the same every day: Driving and messing around with the internals of our trucks; I drive a
TGB30, (TGB meaning Terrängbil, or
All-Terrain Automobile) a 14 ton hunk of steel with lots of ground clearance, lots of
horsepower, and the esthetic appeal of a beautifully camoflague painted brick. Top speed: 85
kph, though we're limited to 70 kph for safety reasons. They can be made to go much faster than 85 kph, by the way, but don't tell anyone I told you that. Anyway, they're great fun to drive.
October 17, 2002 - 11:55
It's started snowing. The warm season is clearly over, leaving us with only cold and darkness to come. Today it's snowing (which I've already mentioned), but it's not very windy so being outdoors a lot isn't a problem. This week we've started driving our TGB30's - they're a kind of all-terrain motortruck which will be serving as our primary means of transportation during the remainder of
national service. We've spent this week studing them and learning to drive them, and we'll be spending the next two weeks doing that exact same thing.
October 30, 2002 - 12:52
Long since I last wrote something here. Three weeks of TGB30 training are coming to an end, and we're almost ready for new adventures, having now nearly mastered the skills required to handle and repair our trucks. Tomorrow is the final driving
examination, and then the rear compartments of our trucks will be loaded full of telecommunications equipment. Expensive stuff, I might add. After that, we'll be going on a field exercise to test everything out! Fun, fun, fun, I'm looking forward to it. Right now we're returning from a town called
Gävle, where we've slept after spending yesterday testing our inner-city driving skills.
Need I mention that I passed the driving exam? Nah :)
<--
day 99-112 | day 134-147 (
not yet noded) -->
UPDATE (20/6 2003): Don't hold your breath waiting for me to node the last 164 days of my national service. I stopped keeping the diary shortly after I stopped experiencing interesting things to write about. Thanks to all who read the first 133 days :)