Today DS Grabener and I got a little taste of what Minneapolis does on a college football Saturday. We started the day off early at 0600 we walked over to the Golden Gophers stadium and already the streets were showing signs of life. We met up Mr. Ken Plant from the Army’s public affairs office for the Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota and Iowa region. He had all of the equipment we needed to set up an Army Strong Physical Fitness Challenge where anyone could test their abilities in push-ups, sit-ups and pull-ups. Many students and fans coming to support their team started showing up around 0700. DS Grabener and I immediately went around to start talking to everyone and encouraging them to try their best at our challenge. We even had a 60 year old retired kindergarten teacher do 16 pushups and 40 sit-ups. After a while we noticed that we needed to track who was doing the best of each event. We didn’t have a whiteboard to mark on so we used the side of Mr. Plant’s trailer (luckily dry-erase markers come off of most substances easily). We marked down the highest repetitions for each event for both males and females and also wrote down their names and age. When our time was up, shortly after the game started, we got to watch the game. We stayed until halftime then decided to finish watching the game while grabbing a bite to eat. Unfortunately Minnesota didn’t win the game. All in all we had a very productive day and everyone I met was very hospitable, making Minneapolis a must visit area if you ever get the opportunity to visit. Great food, beautiful city and friendly people.

DS Grabener and I went to Thomas Edison High School outside Minneapolis to teach the physical education students how the Army conducts its physical training. We had five classes to teach and we included physical activities like, how to stretch, running, push-ups, sit-ups and the new Army Physical Readiness Training Preparation Drill. We did an introduction starting with ourselves and what we did, followed by the students from each class.  Every student told us who they were and what their favorite food, movie or TV show was. It was a good ice breaker for us and the students. The high school had four values they strive for every student to embrace, Responsibility, Opportunity, Achievement and Respect. We told the students that the Army isn’t that different in this respect and discussed what the Army Values were and why they are so important to a soldier. Many of the students did a great job participating and had fun. After we were through with the physical portion of our instruction we took about ten minutes to allow the students to ask questions. We answered questions about education in the Army, what a typical day is like as a soldier and what can be expected of soldiers in Basic Combat Training. I had a good time working with DS Grabener and talking to the students of Thomas Edison High School. DS Grabener and I will be heading to Grand Forks, ND on the 15^th of September to visit more surrounding area high schools and students of the University of North Dakota. I will keep you posted.