Yes, I volunteered for this

This weekend I had drill.  This is the 1 weekend a month where I go down to the base in DC and fulfill my reserve obligation to the Marines.  My reserve unit sometimes does a lot on these weekends and other times does very little.  This weekend, we went down to Quantico.  We slept out in the field on Friday night, then woke up nice and early Saturday for a ~6 mile hike, then went to the gas chamber, had a couple of indoor classes, and did a patrolling exercise.  Normally, this would have been fun.  It's good training, and it sure beats sitting around doing nothing.  However, the temperature outside on Friday night was FREEZING.  It got down to around 22 degrees Friday night/Saturday morning.  I had firewatch from 0200-0300.  Towards the end of my shift, I thought to myself, "I should put my camelpak in my sleeping bag so the water doesn't freeze.  Nah, it's not THAT cold out here."  When I woke up at 0500 on Saturday, I realized that I was mistaken.  It was indeed THAT cold out.  The water in the tube part of my camelpak had frozen solid, and didn't end up thawing until about 4 miles into the hike.  The hike itself could have been enjoyable...we were hiking through the woods and the scenery was nice.  What made it not nice was the 70 pounds of gear plus 8 pounds of M16A2 service rifle plus the hills plus the water being frozen.  By the end, I was asking myself what on earth had motivated me to volunteer for this.  On Sunday, we went back to the reserve center.  While we were cleaning our weapons, we saw some police trainees getting trained on how to use pepper spray.  Part of the training for them was to go outside and get sprayed in the eyes, so they would know how it felt.  That made me feel a lot better.  At least I didn't volunteer for THAT.