Lower 48

well ive got afire assingment. it seems as though cali is burning up so they are sending resources from Alaska down there to help. I am going down as a crew boss trainee with a crew of 20 people from the villages here. It should be a fun time and being that it rained cats and dogs here yesterday I am not to worried that I am going to miss out on things here.

hopefully we get assinged to a good fire and have a good time......

dont miss me to much while I am gone

Finally

Here are the photos from the fire I was on.....yes it took me a while but here they are. Most of them are from when we were on the helicopter or watching the "ducks or helicopter drop water on the fire!!

Things

Here are some things that I have realized are of great importance to me currently


1. Music....my ipod is my new best friend. I listen to it when I run, work, after work, on the way to and from work and just about anytime......it helps that I got all of steve's (helicopter pilot) music from him so I have new things to listen to. IF anyone has any suggestions about good music let me know or send me cd's I can always use more

2. Boxed wine.....I never thought I would say that I am a fan of boxed wine, but in reality I am. once you don't have the ability to go out and just buy whatever you want you find the beauty in other things....boxed wine is easy to transport, you don't have to drink the whole bottle all at once, it doesn't go bad and it taste good....yes wine is important in my life currently.

3. light and sun....it is amazing how much it being light all the time affects you...when it is cloudy and rainy it is kind of derpressing because the sun isn't shining....actually it is only depressing when it has been nice for a couple of days

4. internet......Tonight I figured out that the helicopter that just got here now has internet and they have a wireless router that for the time being works in my room...whohooo.....it is slower than crap but it is internet and gives me something to do at night as long as it keeps working

5. running...it seems like I run or work out quite a bit these days...gotta occupy my time somehow

6. mail.......it makes me think I have some sort of contact with the outside world...sometimes I send myself some just to get stuff



Things I want to go away......

1. the rain...how are we ever going to get fires if it doesn't stop raining....yes I know that there are fires down south but there is still fire danger here so I don't think that I will be able to go down south quite yet

2. the crazy kids that are staying at my house...my one roommate has her daughter and grandkids staying here...dont get me wrong I love kids, but these people just don't pay attention to their kids and let them cry all night and then don't get up with them in the morning

3. false alarm fires...tonight we had a false alarm fire...we got in the helicopter and headed out to a reported fire...we found it but it was just the dump burning....we turned around and came home.

4. the crazies here at work.....people are bored and sometimes get crazy...it would be nice if the FMO (person in charge) here like smokejumpers...then we could have some stagged here and it would give me something to look at during the day



ok for those of you who are wondering about it being light here is what I can tell you

yes it is pretty much light 24/7
I am used to it now and can sleep no problem...one trick is that you have to close all your blinds like and hour before you want to go to sleep so that you can make yourseld think it is dark
you end up staying up or out way longer than you had planned if you aren't paying attention.....staying out till 5 in the morning is no big deal here beacause it is light out the whole time and you don't know if it is 10pm or 5 am
plants and stuff grow like crazy right now because of the light.......it is a short growing season if you count the days but it is almost like each day is 2 because of the light

Here are 2

Here are two photos of the 2 fires I found last week.....

Midnight Sun

This weekend was the summer solstice which is a pretty big deal here in AK......in a way it is sad to me because that means that the days are only going to get shorter now....just when I was used to it being light all day.

Any way there was a big softball tournament here on Friday and Saturday. I went over with a couple of people and watched some games on friday night....the last game being at midnight.....there were two girls that I know playing on that team so it was fun to watch.

Afterwards we went to the bar for a little while nothing to to exciting

I found out that there was a race on saturday. It was a race around the dike, which is the road that I run almost everyday so I figured why not go and do it.....so it started at 11:00 and I wake up and was trying to decide if I wanted to go....I had stayed up late the night before and had had a couple of beers so I wasn't sure if I wanted to race or not.....well I couldn't fall back asleep so I decided to ride over there and do it.....

I ended up getting second in the woman's divsion.....and the prize for that was $50.00

So I was excited about getting 50 bucks for doing something I do everyday anyway.....I think I could have gotten 1st if I hadn't been up till the wee hours the night before

Later in the afternoon I got ropped into playing on a softball team...it was ok...I think I would have enjoyed it more if it had been with more people that I knew. We lost miserably but it oh well. It was a beautiful day out so it was nice to be outside.

today I am work, hopefully we get a fire today...there was lots of lightning so we will see

Fire

I got my first fire here in Alaska.

on Friday I went out and flew a detection flight, which is where someone goes up in the airplane looking for fires. we had a report from a comercial airplane that they had seen a fire. so I go up and fly around looking for fires and we found 2 of them.

the airplane then dropped me off at a village's airport and then the helicopter came and picked me up and we went to the fire.

it wasn't to much of a fire but I got to experience having wet feet in alaksa...the minute I stepped off the helicopter I was up to my knees in water. it looked like a solid place to land but it was a floating bog..

I was on the fire for 3 days and then back here to Galena

the best part was that I got to work my weekend and that is always a good thing.

It is back to being cold and rainy here well today is a little bit nicer.

The best thing is that I was one of only a few firefighters here who have actually been on a fire this summer. The other fire that we had a bunch of jumpers jumped it. I wish I could have seen them jumping that would have been pretty cool.

I will try to post some pictures later of the fire... I just have to download them from my camera first

Town

I got to go to town last night

it was only for one night but it was nice to hang out with some other people

and for those of you wondering no I have not been hanging out with anyone in particular (if only that was the case) just not much computer access time here

Please

Make the rain go away!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I need there to be fires!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If there aren't any soon I will have to go the extreme and think about having to work in the winter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


ok that is the extreme extreme scenario....but we need dry weather so that we can get some fires and I can be less bored

I know I have been slacking on posting these days but I don't have much time to be on the computer...ok I have tons of time but I am not really supposed to sit around the office and mess around on the computer but today it is raining so I am updating both sites!!

whats up

so what have I been doing you ask?

a whole lot of nothing....just trying to stay busy at work until we get some fires, whenever that may be...who knows. it was super nice over the weekend and I thought we might be on our way to having a fire season...well today it is cloudy and cooler again.

at least we got our garden planted yesterday....ok not our garden...it is more one of our dispatcher hilary's garden but it is in front of my house and I helped her plant it. She will be here most of the summer so she will be able to care for it more than me. I hopefully will be off fighting fires and not here.


here are a few things that I have been doing since I have been here in Galena

working out...I work out 2 sometimes 3 times a day....a run in the morning, lifting weights in the afternoons and sometimes after work when I have nothing to do I go over to the old airforce gym with a couple of people and workout somemore. I figure in order to avoid going insane from having nothing to do I might as well be in shape..right

I have not had any carbonated beverages...ok I take that back I have had beer....but no soda since I have been here....I am trying to see how long I can go without soda

Fast food...it does not exist here in galena so I do not eat it

My bed time is much later now than it has been in the past.....being that it doesn't get dark anymore..the sunsets but it doesn't get dark. you forget what time it is and if you aren't paying attention to the time you end up staying up later than you had planned.

The mosquitoes are out now and so are the leaves on the trees..it is super pretty with the leaves and the river here, but the I can tell that the bugs could get bad fast and then I will be retreating indoors

I thought about more for this post on my run this morning but now I just can't seem to remember what that was.