I spent 10 years spread across 3 different states (CA, SC, OH) and worked in a straight line tank battalion, eHSB TK BN, and a BDE HQ.
We had 1-2 "BS" drills each year: Xmas party, and usually some form of community open house to support recruiting.
We also routinely had 3-5 extra training events every year, and while the entire unit might not have been at all of them, by the end of the year, pretty much everyone in any of those units had pulled at least 2 of them.
In SC, we were in a train-up cycle for NTC (pre-9/11), and just the NTC train-up had us pulling double weekends for 6 months leading up to it, plus a 3-week AT, instead of the normal 2, on the ground at FICA. You don't want to know what the training schedules looked like for the mobilization just to support Op Noble Eagle... checking ID cards at gates resulted in 6 months of 2-3 drills per month
From CA, we deployed to Yakima one year, which added extra drills to rail-load vehicles at both ends, plus the leaders' recon, coordination meetings, etc. And another year most of us pulled double-AT b/c the BN/BDE staffs all went to FLKS for a DIV warfighter.
In Ohio, there was always at least 1 unit downrange, so we never had a full BDE to train in the field, but the ramp-up for the '08 Kuwait deployment might as well have been an active duty train-up, once they put 300+ people on full-time orders one year out and had the rest pulling double-drills, plus a total of 5 weeks of AT before they ever hit the mob station.
Three states.
10 years.
No one was wasting time painting rocks.
Can't say that about any of the 4 years I was on active duty.
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