The Beer is a Lie!

At least they didn't promise us cake...

Anyways, while at AT, the Brigade thankfully say the idiocy of attempting to cram 3,000 soldiers in the middle of nowhere for nearly a month without any sort of R&R. So about 9 days into it, all the squad leaders went around and asked if we wanted to go to this water park, Roaring Springs, in Boise. We were told that we would be authorized to have two beers each. Hot Damn! Needless to say, I threw my name in as willing to go.

The Brigade rented out this water park for several hours. All after the park would have normally closed, so the park wasn't loosing out on too much income. As we had our accountability formation and safety brief, the platoon sergeant dropped the bombshell on us. Unfortunately, there will be no beer at Roaring Springs, and those of us who volunteered to go, were required to go. Gee, thanks...

Now, the only thing uglier than a brigade with alcohol, is a brigade who had alcohol snatched away from them. The ride over there was hellish. People would not shut up, and they screwed up even the simplest of commands. Part of that was that we were sharing a bus with Alpha Company, and they are essentially the distilled essence of an XBox live chat during a round of Halo 3. Gibbering morons only begins to describe them.

We got to the water park, and a magical thing happened. Every surly and jaded soldier stuck against his will in this besotted desert, suddenly became a 10 year old kid. It was priceless. I saw platoon sergeants racing each other down the twin slides. I saw a captain flip an E-2 in the wave pool. I saw a lieutenant colonel come running up to the line for a slide and gleefully ask what this slide did. I watched 4 squad leaders jump onto a raft and get launched into the blackout tunnel. I watched an empty raft come out the other side of the tunnel, followed by 4 squad leaders one by one.

The lifeguards probably helped the situation out quite a bit. Granted, they were all straddling the jail bait line, but they were still by far the best looking females any of us had seen in almost two weeks. Four hours passed like lightning. Once we all loaded back onto the bus, we looked forward to a late wake up the next morning.

All in all, it was no where near the clusterfuck it could have been. After seeing the effect going from a desert to a water park had on us, I think we might have found the solution to the problems in Iraq. Build them a Wild Waves!