fire and first responder class photographs
some bits and bobs from training in the two weeks before leaving for new zealand. just click the link below for the start.
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some bits and bobs from training in the two weeks before leaving for new zealand. just click the link below for the start.
as a general rule, when i walk city streets, i avoid putting in headphones. i’d rather skip the music and drink in the cacophony of human existence. i would rather listen to the laughter and shouts of children, the sounds of traffic, pieces of conversation floating by. tonight, for a change, i tossed in some new music and went for a walk in an old familiar place.
christchurch, new zealand, seems like a stopover to me - the point of transition between the states and antarctica. it has history, however; weeks of it. as i walked the city with a heavy indy rock beat and hopeless romantic lyrics in my ears, my memories played out like a movie.
it’s a simple process, available to all of us, to separate out our self from reality with the wall that music can provide. my observer role felt that much more removed as conversations between passing couples disappeared into silently moving mouths. looking up to the taller buildings or into restaurants and former haunts felt like i was directing a camera, ordering the most appropriate artistic movement and color choice to frame an old memory.
this city, like many other spaces, is alive with the presence of friendships and story, held fast together with equal parts nostalgia, hope, and dream. so what does it all boil down to? that a good walk is just that, and that the stars of the southern hemisphere hold an ancient comfort.
it’s a late day after trauma school training (basic first responder medical) and i won’t be putting together a full post before i head to the world o’ dream.
in the mean, some quick photos from my fire school training:
reviewing a search and attack in the burn house.
the gang’s all here. actually, it’s only one half of us. there’s one professional firefighter in the picture. can you tell the difference?
a couple of good sayings popped up this week. for starters, from fire school:
“when you’re going into a fire, don’t make a fuel of yourself or you’ll turn out to be an ash.”
and, as i wait for final confirmation on my travel to antarctica one week before my supposed departure date:
“semper gumby,” translated, “always flexible.”
nothing in this program is set until it actually happens.
now, off to more burning buildings!
i was raised, by society and family, to trust and look for an authoritative voice to dictate my actions and decisions. as a young adult and adult, i have made choices dictating my life frequently. i have not had or taken authoritative direction for many, many years. still, i search for the easy comfort in that voice, something or someone telling you what the “right” choice or the “right” path is. that is not a position of self-reliance. it is a position that abdicates responsibility to the voice of another, freeing you to perform the consequences of a limiting decision. it is accepting comfort and ease in exchange for a smaller available world.
we are not always fortunate to have a complete picture when we need it. vital pieces of information often elude our grasp when the time comes to choose which fork to take in the road. it would be easier to wait for more information to come to us or for an answer from the outside. the world continues to move, however, and so must we, lest we lose the ability to dictate our own fate.
life, then, is less often about making the “right” decision, as it is about doing right with the decisions that we have already made.
laughter does wonders. that is a lesson i’ll not forget soon.
the peanut gallery got together today, a collection of folk i’ve spent time with in antarctica before. they’re a great group, and sarcasm flows thick when we’re around one another.
we gathered up a collection of south pole winter over candidates, both primary and alternate, for our first day of fire school. though many of us expect to be spending our next year in the deep south, we are all technically “candidates” until the last flight leaves south pole on february 15 of 2008. at that time, whoever is left on station (there should be 65 of us) will be considered the “successful” candidates.
what this means in reality is that the people we will get to know over the next two weeks may or may not be spending the eight months of winter with us. some people simply drop out first, others encounter medical, psychological, or familial difficulties, some get better offers, and some never have a job materialize. still, we all travel through a set of training that includes structural firefighting, incident and crisis management, and medical first responder training. we do this because we will need to be a self-supporting, self-reliant, and self-sustaining group for the eight months of isolation over winter.
in effect, we are getting the first taste of the family that we will spend eight months of our lives with and some of them might not make it to the start.
lessons today included an introduction to the incident command structure, basic radio protocol, how to don and doff our bunker gear, and team building.
the ICS (incendent command structure) is a scalable way to deal with an emergency situation so simple as requiring one or two people up to the size and management necessary for an event the size of the I-35 bridge collapse or 9-11. it’s a hierarchical structure designed so that any one person in charge of other persons never has to speak with more than 3-7 groups. it came out of wildland firefighting, where the numbers of people fighting the fire can balloon from several to several hundred in a day. the need, in that situation, for a coordinated front to prevent confusion, loss of communication, and overlapping areas of responsibility is immense. this setup creates the ability to minimize and mitigate issues that arise in coordinating large groups. being more a-type than i would care to admit, i ate it up.
as for our bunker gear (the protective clothing that all members of a fire brigade wear), we took some time to fit the various bits (hoodie, helmet, boots, pants, coat, and gloves), and then practiced getting all of it on and checking our neighbors to see if they were dressed correctly and safely. we kept at the practice until we were all able to do this in under a minute.
finally, the team building didn’t take the usual route it might if you’ve experience doing team building with younger groups of folk. instead, we focused on discussing values, where conflict might arise in a group where values differ, what we held in common, and stories of why we were where we were, preparing to winter at the south pole. in a surprise, the stories that were told by our team members were heartfelt and truthful, much more so than i would have suspected. there was a leap of faith offered, trust given to a group that is still only one day old. what we have is a commitment and loyalty. each of us has chosen to spend a winter at the south pole. in effect, we have chosen to be a part of a family for those eight months - a very tight-nit, inter-dependent family that doesn’t get to go anywhere else to get away when frustrations rise. we will depend on each other for food, light, laughter, warmth, friendship, power… in essence, we will be depending on each other for life.
today was the start of that realization. a dependent truth that may or may not be spoken of, may or may not be present in thought or worry, but a truth that commitment and loyalty act toward, with, and upon.
tomorrow, we play with fire.
this weekend was spent on a visit with old college friends, playing in the foothills (mountains to me) outside of fort collins, colorado. luke, mark, and julie took me out for my first real run of mountain single track. 1800 feet of vertical climb and and a straight drop the first day, then a great cross country run on sunday. we finished the second ride on the front edge of a thunderstorm, the lightning framing the sky and the thunder driving us to move quickly.
it was a great ride. i had time to listen to the thunderstorm build, to feel the change in the air as it breached the mountains on the opposite side of the valley. there was no noise to interrupt it’s story as it spoke out over the plains.
it may have been the last storm i am able to experience for some time. i drank it in.
some pictures from the first day: I started out, trying to look tough. We took old logging roads up, for the most part, then hung out in the trees while mark goofed around with his helmet. From there, it was down the mountain, over the river, and through the woods.
tomorrow starts structural fire fighting class. i’ll be learning how well i deal with open flame and full protective gear (nomex, oxygen tanks, etc.). pictures and stories to follow…
let alone the acronyms that i am and will be flooded with througout life in the antarctic program (AOD,CDC, CHC, MCM, NPX, PQ, DEN, MSP, LAX, RPSC, NSF, SPSM, ACKBAR, SPUMONI, NYANG, just to name a few), the windows server 2003 class that i am currently taking is loading them up as well. a selection:
DHCP, DNS, A, PTR, SOA, SRV, NS, MX, CNAME, RR, SF, CF, ISP, NetBIOS, TTL, TCP/IP, RFC 1542, IXFR, AXFR, IPSec, NAT, PPTP, MPPE, UDP, L2TP, VPN, ICS, HTTP, LAN.
and that’s just acronyms. the terms easily bury that short list.
some are familiar, some i’m learning greater depth of.
mostly my brain just hurts.
so here i sit, in a hotel suite in denver, at the start of the long dark.
the “long dark,” by the by, sounds far more melodramatic than i take it to be, but i like how it denotes much of my upcoming year in antarctica, and i say it with a smile.
so here i sit, one day into the adventure, feeling a bit anti-climactic.
these last few weeks have been non-stop, a whirlwind process of many things. duluth and i finally came to terms with each other and i found a home there. i learned to appreciate the community of good folk that we developed on that lake. i (finally) quit the job that so many of my friends and family had listened to me struggle with for months. i managed to cram in visits and catch-ups and last minute drinks with so many people that i care for, yet missed many more. i played some frisbee, laughed awhile, learned something about love, something new about family, nearly got arrested at a ten year reunion, labored over farm chores, sold my car, found a last port of call at a hobo party, and began to understand the slow time of two weeks in southern minnesota.
i walked with my dad down a driveway he hasn’t walked down since last october.
there have been many good moments.
and then there were good byes. far too many, but all with a knowing of visits again soon. they are not easy, but they are part of the trade for the seasonal and wandering life.
so, a whirlwind of activity. then on to denver and the community of folk i’ve come to know and enjoy in the antarctic world.
except it turns out that i’m in a class in another part of town, by my lonesome, without time or transportation to see the offices and the folk i know.
seeing them, it seems, may not happen for a few more days or another week.
this has revealed another expectation - one of those hidden that crop up when we least expect them as we have developed them without awareness. a revealed expectation of the continuation of pace and experience of the last several weeks. a want for no downtime, just more uptime, more of the new rush of adventure and the familiar.
this time, then, wiling hours away on airplanes, classes, and in a denver hotel suite - it’s a touch anti-climactic. maybe, however, it’s just the recovery time needed. perspective before the storm, so to speak. if, by storms, one can mean the best of many things.
melancholy moods, those nights when you watch the ones you love struggle with weights they should not have to bear.
no good words or advice, just peace and warm thoughts to offer.
we’ll fight the pragmatic fight tomorrow. answers always seem to come easier in the daylight.