Reservist-Traveling

[Stevs70]

First time posting, so i hope i am in the right area.

I am in the Reserves and I took a job away from my unit. Here is the problem, My job is a traveling job, working for a construction company in remote locations. I am based out of West Iowa, but will be spending most of my time in North Dakota for the next year, and no clue about the following years after that. I know about transferring units, but it is a 21 hour drive to my unit in michigan, it would be a 14 hour drive to a unit in iowa, and the only unit in ND would be 9 hours away from the job site I will be on (not to mention I might not be in ND for longer than a year). Is there a way to get help paying for air fare back and forth. I don't mind driving a couple hours to drill, Like I have been doing before I got the job. The problem is for me to go to drill, Flying or Driving, I have to take a 1-2 days off work and spend more on travel than I actually make during my reserve time. It has always evened out in the past because I had to drive only a couple hours, but I am talking bout spending hundreds of dollars on travel alone. What can I do??

Thanks.

[hussaf]

You typically aren't going to get reimbursement for travel unless you are TAD. The SMCR is broken in this way.

You can try to courtesy drill at the closest unit while traveling. Bring this up with your command and see if they can work something out for you. Maybe you can pre-drill at your HTC for a few weeks. A lot depends how cool your command is. Some are, but some are terrible and lazy as hell. Concerns you may have to address is completion of your annual greenside training; medical, weigh ins, PFT, CFT, rifle, pistol, PME, BST, gas chamber, and whatever other classes your CO wants checked off on his Xcell spreadsheet by the end of the year (some of these are fiscal reqs, some annual). Give this some thought, talk to your command, and hopefully you will have some suggestions or ideas how to get these done, and get them done int he least painful manner for you command, and they will think you are mature and worth working with.