I'm alive!

Okay, get comfy – this is gonna take a while. I have a lot of catching up to do. I have been absent for the past two weeks because I was on dispatch in California, working on the Big Sur fire in Los Padres National Park. While I was on dispatch, I took notes every day on the work we were doing. So my plan is to recount everything over the next few entries by backdating. A lot happened while I was gone so my writing may get a little scattered at times or it’ll mimic a Joseph Conrad novel and run on for lines and lines before you see a period. But I will do my best to recall and explain everything as comprehensively as possible.

First, let’s begin with how the dispatch came about. Second round had concluded and my team made its way back to campus in Denver on June 21, after doing a few hours of ISP in the morning at Ned’s community garden (which potentially completed my 80 required ISP hours, but I have to work that out with Ervin). After settling in to the dorms, everyone went out on the town in Englewood to catch up with other teams and spend time with everyone that we hadn’t seen since last transition week or CTI. The next morning, Nikki and I went down into Denver to just hang out and spend some time in the city. There was a Gay Pride festival that day near City Hall, so we mixed in with that party for a while. That was a lot of fun, things were crazy. It was a really hot, but beautiful day, a great day to be in the city. Then Nikki and split off – I wanted to take care of some things on the internet and she had to go buy some birthday gifts for friends that she would see when she went home on break. So I was wandering downtown, got online at a Starbucks, etc.

At one point, I decided to call Nikki to see how she was doing and if she wanted to head back to campus or do something else. I picked up my phone to call her but it was off (my phone has recently acquired the habit of shutting itself off at random moments, regardless of whether or not I’m using it at the time). When I turned it back on, it practically blew up. I had five text messages, two voicemails, three missed calls between Joanna (from Earth 4), Ervin and Nikki. Ervin’s voicemail and Nikki’s text only said, “Call me!” pretty much. I was really concerned, so I immediately called Ervin. He asked where I was and I told him that I was downtown. He told me that I needed to get back to campus because I was getting dispatched to a fire in the North Zone (the northern part of the Arapaho/Roosevelt National Forest). I also called Nikki and Joanna and they had called me to relay the same message. So I hopped on the next Light Rail back to campus and Ervin, who turned out to be a stop ahead of me on the same line, waited for me in Englewood and drove me back to campus. On the ride back, he filled me with what little he knew – Joanna, Harrison and I would be going. We were to head up back up to the work center in Ned very early the next morning in order to be ready to leave for the fire. On our way up the road that leads to campus, he got a phone call. I heard him say, “Well, that changes everything.” When he hung up, he turned to me and said, “You’re going to California.” Whoa! I screamed as soon as he said that. When I first heard I was getting dispatched, I was super nervous but upon hearing that I was going to California, I was so ecstatic.

So I got back to campus and immediately met Joanna at the cafeteria for dinner. Plans changed again while we were eating dinner. We found out that Jordan (Earth 4) would be dispatched with us. We also found out that we were actually leaving after dinner and spending the night up in Ned to make leaving the next morning a little easier. So Jo and I finished dinner and got our stuff together in our rooms. I was really glad I had been too lazy to unpack earlier that day because I just zipped my suitcases back up and loaded them right back into the truck.
Once we got back to the bunkhouse, we double- and triple-checked our line gear and red bags. I called Laura to let her know we got there. I called Chad to do the same and I called Devin Steakly as well, who was going to be one of the Ned Forest Service guys getting dispatched with us. Patrick from the work center also swung by to just fill us in on when we’d be leaving and some things to expect the next day. He told us we’d be driving to California to work on the Basin Complex fire in Big Sur, Los Padres National Park.

I went to bed around 11:00 pm and woke up around 4:00 am to get everyone else up and have enough time to eat, load up and get up to the work center. We left the Ned work center around 5:15 and met up with the other crews at the Fort Collins work center. Our crew was considered an Interagency Handcrew because we were made up of people from different offices in the area. There was our work center, the South Zone for Arapaho/Roosevelt. We also had people from the North Zone, people from Parks and Services, and people from Boulder County Sheriff’s Department.

The amusing thing about all of this was that on Saturday night while we were all out in Englewood, I remember turning to someone at one point and saying, “Man, I just wish a fire would pop so I could get dispatched and just blow off transition week.” Lo and behold … =)

Okay, I hate to leave you in a state of suspense, but this will have to be continued later. I’ll post entries from the actual dispatch as soon as I can. I also hope to have more pictures up soon.