So Frustrated

Sorry I need to vent....How can it be that states are in a state of emergencey because of fires and here I am on one of the best fire crews in the nation and and I am sitting at home.... I don't get it. Everyone I work with is frustrated with us not being on a fire....we are sitting around doing nothing..... I just don't get it. I have a feeling that we are being kept in Southern CA because they don't have any other crews here right now but they also DONT have any fires burning either. But the stupid celeberties have there super houses that need to be saved if a fire by chance starts so we stay here stuck.....grrrrrrrr I hate the politics of my job I hate it.

I just keep sitting waiting for the pager to go off and it doesn't. So frustrating. It makes your days off not even enjoyable because you are always waiting for a fire call and you think one is coming becauses they have called in the military, crews from australia, new zeeland and canada so you think that they would use american crews.

ok I am stopping now because if I don't I will go on for hours because I am so sick of the politcal BS that goes on.

ok So I think I will post a couple random pictures to make this entry better

First picture is of my nephew and me last christmas. He has grown a ton since then and he keeps asking me when I am going to come home everytime I call him. He says that it is time for the fires to be over. He should be starting Kindergarden here any day now. Funny thing is that is will probably have the same kindergarden teacher as his dad did. crazy!!!!




The last two are photos that I have taken here in the park. One is a black and white of a waterfall...I can't remember its name and the other is of a sequoia grove during a perscribed burn.

grrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!!

I am sitting here waiting and waiting to get a fire call. it is frustrating to be sitting around while you know that there is work out there that needs to be done and you want to get in on some of it. I have no prob sitting on my rear all winter but this is day #3 in a row off and I am running out of things to keep me busy.

We all thought we were available for fires yesterday but it turns out we weren't. It would have been nice to have been informed of this so we could have gone farther away than 2hours but whatever.

Last night some of the guys and I watched Clockwise Orange or at least that is what I think it was called. anyway it was this way weird movie from the early 70's very weird. I am not sure what I thought of it.

Well hopefully we get a fire call soon otherwise I may be living in one of your garages this winter so that I don't have to live in a cardboard box cuz I haven't made anymoney.

Holy Marijuana!!

So where I work has one of the largest ilegal pot productions in the country and that is because there are a lot of steep drainages and other places the growers can hide it. But the park has a huge force that is there to try to find the gardens and then get rid of them. They Find the gardens. law enforcement goes in they cut down all the plants, haul it out and then burn it somewhere.

Anyway before we left for our last run the engine crew came down with a truck of ours and said there was a tarp in the back that we could keep. So I tell my boss and he tells me to go ahead fold it up and store it with all the others. So I walk down to the truck start to pull the tarp and notice this smell........I was like I smell pot wtf so I pull the tarp more and all these leaves start falling out and I can see where there is residue on the tarp. Im like what did they use the truck for. So I fold it up tease some of the guys with it and come tp the conclsion that they used our truck for a drug bust. Turns out there were a lot o plants in this garden.

So that was interesting. Then we head up to N. Cal to a fire and Northern CA is known for having a large production of legal marijuana for medicinal use. So there was a spike camp (which is a fire camp that isnt the main camp of the fire but has food, portapottys ect) in this town way up the mountian so we drive up there and our boss tells us pretty much everyone in the town has a perscription for pot and sure enough it was growing in just about everybody's yards....it was pretty crazy to see

in other things the guy that died in the car accident wasn't on my crew and I didn't really know him that well just met him in passing

I ended up being lazy on my day off and going down to the lake with the wife of one of my bosses. We tuck here little girl sarah down the water and it was tuns of fun. Sarah is almost 2 and loves the water. she is also a very pink baby I will have to get a picture of her to post cuz she is super cute

Tommorow we go back on the board for fires I am hoping to end up in the northwest or montana I have never been on a fire in Montana so I want to go there

Its Been Awhile

But I am back...actually I have been back for a couple of days but haven't had a chance to update. We went up to a fire in Northern CA, which I will talk about later, but ended up leaving our assingment early because a guy that works on the fuels crew in the park was killed in a car accident last week. We came home so that we could attend his memorial service and there is one thing that I ask of everybody.....please please always were your seatbelt. If "Q" had been wearing his seatbelt he could possibly still be here with us rather than ending his life at 22.

Anyway all of you that read this are very important to me and I don't want anything to happen to any of you and days like to day make me kind of sad.

I get tommorow as a paid day off so hopefully I can get some pictures posted. The last run was interesting since we never even saw the fire that we were originally dispatched to. We saw fire came and spike camp and some cold black, but we never even worked a shift. Long story that I will tell later but we did see some interesting stuff which I will talk about when I post pictures

well Ill write more tommorow when it is light out and i can see my computer keys.

One little fire

Well we went to a little fire on Tuesday morning. it wasn't far from here well actually it took a while to drive there but by air miles it wasn't far. There wasn't much excitment except that I felt horrible. There as been some sort of Bug (cold/flu) thing going around our crew which we like to refer to as the hiv and well I just thought I was havinga bad day on mon and feeling sore from lifting weights the day before but on tuesday morning I realized that actually the hiv had hit me and it hit hard. It was kind of like the flu when your body just aches and you can tell you have a fever and you want to curl up and die. Then it turned into sore throat and a cough. but if I was smart I would have taken a day off work but I am not that smart so I toughed it out and felt like I was going down the whole time. but now I am feeling better

well we spent today in station and it is frusrtatin cuz there are a lot of fire burning out there and we want to be fighting them. Hopefully the call will come soon. But if it doesn't I have the next two days off.
well time to go hang out with some of the guys....a beer sounds tasty

Ever had one of those days .......

where all you want to do is cry.

Well today was one of them for me.......it started off when I slept like crap last night and just escalated from there. Nothing seemed to go my way and things just kept frustrating me all day. Then I was missing all of my friends and family and that made things worse. Sometimes I just hate being so far away from everyone and today was one of those days. I really wish that I could just go back to houghton or MN when I always had friends and someone to talk to around...yep that would make my day today.

I just don't know sometimes. I like my job but it is hard being far away. I wish I knew more people out here besides the people I work with but I guess when you work all the time it is hard to go out and meet anyone else. Plus it all guys at work except fot Maura (she helps keep me sane)so that makes days like today even worse since I don't really have anyone to talk to.

Ok enough of me venting. I just needed to get a couple of things out.

What made my day today

After working all day getting fire ready today our boss gave us a great suprise. He made PT optional in the morning. yipeee. Most of the time on mondays we run for 1.5 hours and I wasn't really looking forward to it since we hadn't been running much lately because of so many fires. So I won't have to die on a run up a big hill. Instead if I so choose I can run whatever I please. We will see if I decide to get up and run or not.....who know we may have a fire by the time I get up to run.

In other news I can't remeber if I mentioned it on here or not but my little sis passed he Physical therapy boards so that is a huge relief for her. Congrats Laura!!!!! hope the one on sat went as well.

In case you don't hear from me for a bit it means that I am out on a fire hopefully making myself a little money

Winters fire line cutting

here is a video clip of us constructing indirect fire line and then burning out the area. Enjoy. hope this works!!

I was driving the truck you see at the end so I wasn't actually cutting line with everyone else.

Fires o my

Well we have been pretty busy lately. I just hope that it keeps up. Anyway after a run to Nevada where we saw lots of cows, grass, sage brush, jackrabbits and fire oh yeah lots of thunderstorms and even some hail (although that was only at the beginging of the run). we just had three days off. I didn't do to much exciting...drank a couple of beers with some friends that I hadn't seen in awhile, watched me, you and dupree...good flick....I laughed a lot....and went to puppy classes with maura and her puppy lilly. It was a good few days off.

We become available for fires monday morning eventhough we have to work tomorrow we are unavailable so we can get a bunch of stuff done in the office. We are now at preparedness level 5 which is as high as it gets so basically it means that we should go right back out again on a fire becuase resources are limited.

lets see what highlights do I have from the last run....not many that I can think of right now it was a long run and I have forgotten everything in the last couple of days.

oh yea some of you may have heard a about a burnover that occured to some other hotshots. well they are all doing fine. We were on the way to that fire but we got turned around and sent to a new start....so we not involved in the accident, but we did spend the next two days on that fire.

Pictures

here are some pictures from this run to Nevada......I hope you enjoy


share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AbNGTVmzbNGGQ

Im back from nevada

Hey all!!! I have made it back from spending 16 days in nevada on a bunch of fires. It was a long run. we were on 4 fires during htat time oh wait I take it back it was five fires. anyway I will write more about all of them later. All I can say is that I saw a lot of sagebrush and grass burn up, and even got hailed on one day.....but hey it is all in a days work. Now I am on days off and not doing to much. I am spending the day today down in fresno I am thinking of seeing a movie but I am not sure which one...either me you and dupree or maybe the new will ferrell movie.

Anyway thats all I got for now I will update more later....heres one picture for now