She's doing fine...

Another letter... dated 20 October 2005, postmarked the 21st:

Everybody,
Hey guys! Well, I'm on personal time right now. I just got out of the shower, so sorry if I get water drops from my hair on the paper. I had to write because I just realized that I haven't really written telling you what I've done.

Let's see... two days ago we did the water training course. They had you stand in full military gear (M-16 and all) on a 10/15ft. high diving board with a hat over your face and pushed you off AFTER spinning you around five times! I was so scared. We also made a flotation device our of our pants. That was fun, haha. A couple days before that we went on the Warrior Tower. It was SO FUN! I repelled off a 45 ft. high wall. I loved it! I can't wait to go again.

After the swimming course (the next day), we went into THE GAS CHAMBER!!!!! HAHA, IT WAS AWESOME! I gagged, coughed, snotted and almost hyperventilated, but it was so sweet! They had us in there doing the stupidest stuff. Kind of like left faces, clapping, yelling, running in place for 20 seconds. Dude, I was in there for six minutes or more. They said my squad (15 people, third group in) were the most motivated group in there. We were all yelling and screaming "HECK YES WARRIORS!!! WE OWN LIFE!!!" I was putting up a "rock on" hand sign and coughing and snotting all over the place, haha. They said we were liking it too much so they put seven cans of CS gas in there instead of the regular four, haha! It was nasty. I literally had a HUGE SNOT going from my nose to my stomach, HAHA! GROSS!

I ordered a video DVD of the whole Boot Camp thing, a graduation cycle book with everyone's picture in it and a platoon picture. Yeah, I know it's a little bit of money, but how many times do you get to go through BASIC TRAINING?! LOL. Hopefully only ONCE.

We're starting combative training soon. My drill sgts. keep telling all the males that the females will totally kick their butts because we have more heart & motivation than they do combined. We had our second PT test today. I ran my mile in 8:52 but it's a resistance track, so I really ran it in like seven something.

Dang, the lights just went out. Sorry if my handwriting is hard to read. It's supposed to be around 30 degrees tomorrow. Mom (or dad) print off as many pictures as you can send to me from the website. All us girls want to see how SWEET we look, lol. Print off the ones with girls in it. We're better! Keep sending letters every day. I get in a sad/bad mood when I don't get one. I mean, it's easier for me to get sad if I don't have any encouragement. If you can, send cough drops. Like three packs worth. I'm really sick. Some of the guys have pneumonia or whatever, and that sucks.

We start shooting our weapons soon. I can take apart and put together an M-16 rifle in like five minutes. It's awesome! Tomorrow is the first day of our 3rd week in basic. Woooooo! Hopefully we'll advance to white phase. The drill sgts. decide if we're ready to go or not. They've kept people in red phase for the whole nine weeks before. Hopefully we get it together.

I gotta go. Sleep time. Don't stop sending letters. I love you guys. Send more pictures!

Love,
Lindsay

p.s. Mary/Jennifer, I got your letters!