A little Brandon update (with videos)

Some of you might be wondering what Brandon has been up to while the kids and I have been away.
Well, mostly he's been swimming.  For the past 5 or so weeks he's been trying to pass a 25 meter swim test.

Now you may not think that swimming 25 meters is that hard, but imagine trying to do it in your full army uniform including a helmet and boots.  Add in the fact that Brandon has never been a strong swimmer and you can start to understand why this has been such a struggle for him.

Here's a little video with details about the test.



He quickly learned how to tread water and how to float, but he still had trouble swimming.

Every morning Brandon tried to pass the test. After he failed it he'd get a swim lesson. He also took swimming lessons twice a week at a different pool. He gradually made progress, but he still continued to fail the test over and over and over again.  To say that was frustrating would be an understatement. But he kept at it.

He finally passed the test on Wednesday.  I was so excited to be woken up by his phone call and hear him say that he'd passed.

He wasn't out of the woods or rather the pool yet.  After he passed the swim test he had to do HOST training.  HOST stands for Helicopter Overwater Survival Training.  That's where he would learn what to do if he was ever in a helicopter that crashed into the water.

He started and finished HOST training on Thursday.  Here's a quick video that gives you a glimpse of what HOST training is like.  It's less than two minutes long so you should totally take the time to watch it.  It will make you really appreciate what a tough guy Brandon is.  I'm glad I didn't watch this video until I knew that he'd passed.  I can't believe the stuff that he had to do.



And here is a longer video of what it was like.  Brandon said that everything was very procedural.  He said he would slightly panic and try to get out of the cockpit as fast as possible.  That wasn't what they wanted him to do.  They wanted him to think though the steps and follow the procedures.



Brandon got dunked probably 9 or 10 times during the day.  Sometimes he would have to hold his breath and other times he'd have to use and oxygen tank for a little bit.

Brandon finally passed everything at the end of Thursday.  He says that the guy in charge of the pool jokingly told him, "get out of my pool."  Brandon was pretty happy that he didn't have to go back to that pool anymore.

Now that he is done with the swim test and with HOST he can finally move on to SERE school.  And when that is over he will finally get a start date for actual flight school which should be sometime this fall.  I know there are some intense things still to come in this process, but in some ways I think Brandon has already finished the hardest part.