Masa Bunker: AKA most boring masa ever

After a few fairly slow weeks of missing out on exercises in the tank this week was full of practicing in the tank. It all culminated in one exercise that combined everything we have done. We still haven't done anything with ammunition yet, but we have our final test next week which involves ammo. The exercise involved loading shells, jumping up on the chair to fire from the loader's MAG, which is outside the tank, fixing gun jams, and switching the MAG outside the tank to the one inside. This lasted about half an hour - constantly jumping back and forth from inside loading shells to jumping on the chair and once more to grab the MAG which is just out of reach. To add to the craziness the commander was swinging and jerking the turret around so it was pretty difficult to stand, yet alone load 50 pound shells and jump from one place to another.

We had our second to last masa which was 20km. I managed to get to carry the 20 liter jerrycan of water on my back to make the masa more challenging and therefore more fun. The masa was just under 4 hours long and it would have been fun if it were not sooooooooo boring.I am the crazy person who enjoys the masaot even though you are not allowed to talk or pretty much do anything but walk. In general the terrain isn't very interesting - just walking in the fairly flat desert. To think that the Jews wandered the desert for 40 years makes 20 km seem like nothing. I don't know which part of the punishment is worse - wandering the desert for 40 years or wandering the desert with nagging Jewish mothers. And to think that if you had someone nagging you the entire way you would pick up your pace - so there is no knowing how long the Jews would have been wandering the desert for. The way the masa works is that we start walking, and once we get halfway we turn around and walk back - its not that complicated. That was not the case for this masa. This time we walked in circles. We did laps around the bunker. The bunker is part of the base where ammunition is stored. There is always someone on guard duty in the bunker. We walked 2km laps on the paved road. The masa was so long and boring that I thought of 2 different ways to try and convey just how boring it was:

Firstly the masa felt more like guard duty than a masa. The only difference from what I did from actually guarding the bunker was that I had a 20 liter jerrycan on my back. I have already detailed just how boring guard duty can be here. When you guard the bunker its 2 people walking together for 2 hours doing laps around the bunker. You are allowed to talk and walk at your own leisurely pace. We walked in silence for twice as long at a fairly quick constant pace. If I was to be the person on guard duty I would have been fairly pissed off to see an entire company of almost 100 soldiers in essence guarding the bunker and doing the job for me.

I also felt like I was participating in the human version of a NASCAR race. To drive in circles turning left for hundreds of kilometers seems very stupid to me - even though it is a race. The masa wasn't a race and I finished in the same spot I started. Essentially I was the race car turning left for hours on end.

Here is my thought process during the masa:
Lap 1 - This is odd, why are we walking a lap around the bunker?
Lap 2 - What the heck? Why are we doing this again?!
End of lap 2 - wow that was boring. Now we can continue onwards now that the lap is finally over.
Lap 3 - Shit, I don't believe it - we are doing this again - another 25 minutes and we will finally leave the bunker.
Lap 4 - You have got to be kidding me. This is where I gave up hope that we would leave the bunker since we had just started kilometers 7 and 8 of 20
Lap 5 until the next day around mid afternoon - ow, my everything aches. In a way it helped that everything hurt so it kept my mind off of the boredom.