Oops

Well, today was interesting. This morning, after PT, we were getting ready to load up and go somewhere. I went into the back of the truck I always ride in to get my gloves and my sunglasses from inside my helmet. When I looked in the truck bed, I couldn't see it. Then I looked at the line gear and it seemed like we had fewer bags than usual. So I hopped into the truck and I discovered that my line gear wasn't there. I checked the back of our other truck just to make sure it hadn't been moved over to there instead -- no luck. So I asked Ervin if he knew of anyone taking my line gear. He said he had pulled it from the truck yesterday. It was back at the house in Boulder. Oh, brother. I explained that I had left my gear in the truck because I knew a few of us would be driving it up to Ned that night to hang out. But he had pulled my gear into the house when we got back from work and never mentioned it to me.

So now I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. No helmet, no ear protection, no eye protection, no gloves, no yellow Nomex shirt, nada. Ervin went and told Chad and explained the situation, which is why I think I didn't get in trouble for not having my line gear. Chad had me throw a new bag together from spare stuff in the AmeriCorps cache at the work center. Unfortunately, that took up enough time that both teams had to leave without me for whatever assignment they were going on. So I hung around the work center until around noon when the teams came back. In Ervin's defense, I should have checked the back of the truck. Ultimately, it was just a miscommunication, so it was no one's fault really. Still, it was embarrassing because I know I'm more responsible than that. It's kind of ironic because the day before, Ervin had recounted a story to us about one of his dispatch experiences last year in which someone else was left in charge of his gear while traveling and that person left his helmet behind. He said that the moral of the story was to stay in charge of your own gear and not pass the responsibility on to anyone else.

But it was certainly the right day to not have my gear: apparently, all the teams did was drive around for about an hour and a half before getting word that the smoke report they were following was a false alarm. So they came back to the work center, we all had lunch and then we rehabbed saws for a little while. Our team followed Chad's rig down to Boulder and waited around for him while they ran errands. Around 4:30, he let us go as long as we stayed at the ready until 5:30. So we went home, did our Weekly Progress Report and chilled out until we were officially off the clock.

In other news, I'm looking forward to this weekend because I have friends in town. Jamie, Jenna and Ana, girls I worked with at Tortillas! back home have spent part of their summer on a road trip across the US. They called me when they were in L.A. and told me they'd be coming through the Boulder/Denver area soon. They're getting in tonight and they'll be here until Sunday or Monday. I have a packed weekend ahead of me. We're planning on hanging out the whole weekend. On Saturday, I've invited them to join me and some of my teammates in Nederland. The town is having its Mining Days festival, in which they celebrate the mining history of the town with chainsaw competitions, rock breaking competitions and setting of dynamite (so I've heard). It sounds like a fun time and I want to show the girls around the town because it's definitely a memorable place.