What a tease ...

Jeeze, the past twenty-four hours have been a little crazy. It all started, well … let’s start with Saturday. Saturday was my last day on call. I was in Boulder for a good part of the day. I ate lunch at a little deli on the main mall and got online for a bit. After we got back from Boulder, I went down to a pub in Ned in order to buy my plane tickets. I’m officially going home for break. I’ll be taking a string of buses to the airport. My flight is at 10:55 am on Saturday. Weee!

On Sunday, we tried a Sam’s Club for grocery shopping. Lo and behold, we got a ton of food and we spent $317. Two dollars over budget. I guess we know where we’re getting our food from now on.

Yesterday was just spent at a campsite, bucking and chipping a bunch of felled trees. Around 10:00 pm last night, everyone had settled in for the night. I was texting someone on Keenan’s team, all of whom had recently gotten dispatched. They asked how things were going with us and I responded, "Things have been quiet here. Chainsaw trainings, swamping campsites, fireline drills … stuff like that." Not fifteen minutes later, Ervin grabbed Travis and John and sent them up to the bunkhouse because a call had come in for a fire. They left and then promptly returned, only to have just John go out again. Then I remember waking up at 11:30 … or, I suppose I remember being woken up at 11:30 by Adrienne. Everyone had to get dressed and get their gear, the whole team was being called in. John was already out on an engine scouting the fire. Earth 4 was already on their way to the work center from Boulder. Despite being really jittery from anxiety, I managed to get dressed and we all walked up to the work center and started the waiting game.

We waited around for about an hour with some of the Forest Service people and Earth 4. Finally, Chad told us that the fire, which was originally estimated to be about one to two acres, was more like an out of control campfire measuring 50x100 feet. So he told us to all go back to the bunkhouse and we’d leave at 8:30 am the next morning to mop up. So Earth 4 came back to our bunkhouse and slept in the living room. When we woke up the next morning, John was still out with the engine from the night before.

So we gathered up at the work center and eventually found out that there just wasn’t enough damage at the site for all of us to spend the day mopping up. So we weren’t going. We returned to our original plan for the day, which started with a PT hike. We hiked in our Nomax, with our packs on and tools. Everyone carried a chainsaw for a part of the hike as well. We hiked for about an hour. My pack weighs about 37 lbs. And when I say "hike," I mean "power hike." We purposely went faster than we would on a fireline hike. It was more to work out and, in doing it faster, a line hike won’t feel so challenging. Words fail me. Intense doesn’t begin to cover it.

After we finished the hike, we loaded up the trucks and went to check on some campsites that apparently had been the hosts of some high school parties the night before. So I guess they wanted to make sure that all of the campfires were out? I don’t know. After that, we went to a park to see what trees needed to be felled. We ate lunch around that time and then waited for a while to see what the plan was. The plan ended up taking us back to the work center because … well, I’m not sure why. There weren’t any trees to take down or they were B-level or something? Not sure. So that was the day. While we were hanging out back at the work center, John finally came back from his little adventure. We’re still hearing bits and pieces.

So yeah. My legs are killing me, but I’m surprisingly not very tired. My arms hurt a little too. But things are good. I’ll be honest, I hated the hike while I was on it, but I just kept going. I felt better about it after it was over.
Tomorrow will be a day with Open Spaces. I have a few things on my mind, things to do before leaving after work on Friday. I want to do my laundry, repack everything. Hm. I thought I had more to do. I guess that’s it. Oh! Bake a birthday cake for Levi and maybe Travis. Levi’s birthday is on Friday and Travis’s is on Monday, so I’ll be missing them. But I can bake the cake tomorrow and have it for Thursday’s dinner. That should be fun and that way all the teammates going on first break will still be able to celebrate with them.