Secret Ninja Stuff

The last two days have been pretty interesting for me. Our platoon commander has brought in an old friend of his who is a wilderness/survival/mixed martial arts/tracking/primitive living expert. This guy is basically the dude that every kid that grew up anywhere near some woods wanted to be when they grew up. He's only 27, but when your stories begin with, "Last year when I was doing a survival course in Nepal," or "So I was sparring this monk in Thailand," or "By week two I had lost 22 pounds," your age doesn't really matter.

Essentially he has been teaching super secret ninja stuff that you didn't even know was possible. Like starting a fire with two sticks. Okay, so maybe you knew that was possible, but I know you've tried, and I'm sure you failed. Well, we learned how to do it, and after shaping some tools with a pocket knife for about 30 minutes, we did it. We've done a lot of martial arts training. Today we even did a 3 hour manhunt style tracking course that he had set up the night before by running around through our desert area, pretending like he was evading police. We had to pick up and follow his trail, as well as determine which direction he felt that he was being followed from by analyzing how his steps would drift, determine his rate of speed, whether he was wounded (he was limping), etc. We also learned all kinds of wilderness survival stuff, you know, like Castaway meets Robinson Crusoe. It was pretty awesome.

The guys gonna be here for one more day. I'm kind of hoping that he can teach me invisibility or something cool like that. Maybe the force.