Back in Ned!

Well, I managed to get a cab from Englewood back to campus. All in all, transportation worked out smoothly.

I spent Monday down town in the city. A bunch of us just went to hang out and we ended up walking around the Taste of Colorado festival. We all go Amazon.com gift certificates for test driving some new Kia models (yeah, no thanks). And then, I found out from one of the event brochures that Big Bad Voodoo Daddy was playing on the main stage of the festival! So, we all hung out and listened. I got pretty close up to the stage, but then I needed some air so I enjoyed the music on the lawn with the rest of my group. There were several couples swing dancing near us and they were pretty darn good! It was like a swing class decided that the concert would be a good day to have practice outside.

On Tuesday, we managed to head back up to Nederland after dinner and room check out. Originally, Kevin was going to make us stay until Wednesday morning. Thankfully, we didn't have to. So I did a little grocery shopping with Joanna while everyone else unpacked. Once we got back, I unpacked my things and finally settled into my room.

We didn't do much at work the next day. We spent a lot of time just waiting to do something. Joanna, Scott and I pulled up some metal fence posts and then put more up and wired some plastic orange fencing to them. That was pretty much it.

Yesterday, we were going to a new cutting unit. Unit 1 was finished so we were off to Unit 35. We were driving up a pretty gnarly dirt road when Ervin decided to park in a little pull off. Scott was backing him up and the truck promptly bottomed out on a small mound of dirt. The rest of the day was spent digging out underneath the truck so the undercarriage wouldn't get damaged when we tried to get it unstuck. Since that took up the majority of our day, we didn't cut at all. One of the FS guys found a cave that was an old, abandoned mine shaft. So we all grabbed our head lamps for a little spelunking and discovered who had a good head lamp and who didn't. Mine is better than the one I was issued for my gear, but it's still not so great. Oh well, it will suffice.

Today was another wash out unfortunately. When we got to the work center in the morning to be ready for PT, I noticed some fog rolling around the mountains nearby. By the time we were ready to start PT, the fog was on us. It's chilly and damp out today, so Chad let us go early since we couldn't really cut and probably weren't going to get called to any smoke reports or fires or anything. Bah. I really wanted to cut, too.

Nikki, Blake and Chris come back tomorrow! Yay!

On Monday, we're all finally going to test for our A Faller certifications. The FS people said that we shouldn't be too worried, it's pretty impossible to not get certed. But I'm sure we're all still a little nervous. I know I am. I wish I could have had a day of cutting just to get back into the swing of things before the test on Monday. But, oh well.

That's all for now. I think in my next entry, I'll discuss the composite team and post about our new members, who aren't really new -- we're just all on the same team now. But I get the feeling I'll be mentioning them a lot more now as a result.