Friday, May 25, 2012

Greetings from Ft. McHenry

  Hello everyone, sorry for posting this so late, I will try to be more prompt with my posts in the future.  I arrived at Ft. McHenry on May 12th after a little difficulty because there is a section of Fort Avenue that is currently closed and I was paying too much attention to my GPS and not enough attention to the detour signs.  Since then everything has gone very smoothly, I went to an Orioles game on the 12th with a couple of the seasonals who also live in park housing. 

    On our first day at the park Amy Borch and I helped Ranger Shane Stinedurf practice his handcuffing techniques and his techniques for searching suspects which was fun and very informative as well.  It was good to know how to get items out of someone's pocket without putting your hand in there if you are afraid you might be cut or poked by a needle.
  The rest of the week mainly consisted of meeting some of the people in the other divisions and getting familiarized with the park.  We watched the movie about the battle which inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner which was very good, I highly recommend seeing it for anyone who hasn't been to FOMC yet.  We also spent some time with interp and were able to witness a few flag changing ceremonies as well as a very good interpretive program afterwards. 
  Last Thursday we were also able to go out to the firing range with some of the rangers and we received instruction on the pistol, shotgun, and m-16/m-4 from Ranger Rick Apfel who was very knowledgeable and an excellent instructor.  While on the range we had the opportunity to fire both the shotgun and the m-16, as a veteran I am well aquainted with the m-16, however this was my first time firing a shotgun and it was a lot of fun.  I had a very good first week here and I am looking forward to the rest of the summer being just as good.

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