Lots Of Ground To Cover

Out on B-yard again today. Another hot and humid son of a buck. Almost made me feel like I was back in Central America again.

The other night I had asked KP if he knew how large the B side yard was. He suggested that I step it off and find out.

So today I did.

B side yard, which is the largest of the three yards we have on this camp, is about 160 yards wide and somewhere around 330 yards long. That comes out to 52,800 square yards, or a little over 10 acres.

Give or take a little, as I was constantly interrupted in my pacing and I'm not really all that good at math.

But those of you in real estate or who have farms might have an idea of how large ten acres is.

Now imagine this: There are over a thousand convicted felons loose and spread all over that ten acres. Some of them are behaving themselves, and some of them are not.

Your job is to catch the ones who are not.

At most there are three of you. One Sergeant and two CO's. And if there is anything going on anywhere in one of the six housing units abutting that yard, then there is probably only one of you out there to keep order.

And there is one spot you can stand in where you can see most, but not all of the yard. There is nowhere that you can see all of it.

So we spend our time moving. Either walking or riding in a golf cart. They keep making me take the golf cart because they know that I am susceptible to heat injuries, having had heat stroke once before.

And you go around and around and make loops and try to vary your path so they don't know for sure when you are coming. And while you are doing that you try to keep an eye out toward the wobblehead yard (because you never know with those wacky wobbleheads) and down at the dining hall and up in the gym and those coming and going from both the library and medical.

But hey, only eight hours of that then you can go home!

What could be simpler?