Oregon Dispatch, Part I

I’m back! My plan is to do what I did last time, to make a whole bunch of posts that recount my time on dispatch. Sit back and enjoy!

9/18/08 8:35 AM
So here we are again. After work yesterday, we got home early. So Nikki, Jo and I were having a snack when the phone rang. Jo answered and it was Chad. He said that they were on a conference call and Travis and I should make sure we’re ready to go as early as that night (though he doubted it, he said the next morning was far more likely).

I woke up at 4:30 am, showered and got ready. While I was eating breakfast, Travis told me that he was gonna try and get out of the role for family reasons. Won’t go into it, not my place. So Mary, a FS person, and I ended up driving an AmeriCorps truck (Alpha) to the Boulder office to meet up with Squad 1-2 and drive to the work center in Fort Collins. Jane, from the North Zone AmeriCorps team, is going in his place. Jared (originally from Earth 4) and Kira are also along for the role. We’ll be riding in Alpha on the way to Oregon. JT is crew boss again, yay! There’s also another guy on the crew from North Zone who went on my California dispatch as well. We have Egan, George and Diana from South Zone, our work center.

I’m going to try my damndest to improve on last time. I complained a lot. I don’t want that, I left last role feeling like I disappointed people by whining about my oak. Not this time. I’m going to try and stay as positive as possible.

And now … for the fire info:
Rattle Fire, Umpqua National Forest, Oregon
Tuesday, Sept 16: 11,200 acres, 25% contained
Spot fires up to 2 miles
Boulder Creek Wilderness, mostly
COLD at night, 20s (70s during the day)

-11:01 AM
We just stopped in Rollins, WY and we stopped at the same rest stop as we did on the way home last time!

-12:09 PM
We’re stopping in Rock Springs, WY for lunch. I’ve been reading A People’s History of the United States lately and I just came across a passage … "In Rock Springs, WY, in the summer of 1885, whites attacked five hundred Chinese miners, massacring twenty-eight of them in cold blood." (p.266) Now, all we’re doing is stopping for lunch in Rock Springs, so we’re not touring the town or anything. But my guess is that there’s probably no acknowledgement of this incident anywhere in the town. I guess it just made me wonder how many other events of that nature have been passed over in our nation’s history. I mean, the point of Zinn’s book is to bring such things out into the open. But, still … there’s probably a lot of history that residents don’t know about their own communities, myself included.

-9:41 PM
So Kira’s parents found the SIT report online – they were kind of amazed that they found it, haha – and the fire as of today is 14,000 acres, 30% contained (mostly dozer line), 1000+ people working it.

9/19/08 6:41 PM
Fire camp!! So, for the last 30 minutes of the drive, we listened to any song on any iPod that had the word "fire" in it. Lame, I know, but still fun. I’m not on the saw squad, I’m on one of the regular, hand crew type squads. Diana is my squad boss. Kira’s on my team. No info on the fire yet. I don’t have a cell signal at camp, what’s that all about? For once, Verizon works but AT&T doesn’t. Usually I’m the one with the signal and no one else. Oh well.
We had dinner, the tent is set up. We’ve got an assignment tomorrow, 5:30 am wake up.

9/20/08 7:18 AM
Gear is all set. I woke up feeling like I have camp crud. What the heck? It’s a scratchy throat and a runny nose. I must have caught something before we left Ned. It better clear up!

Fire info: 14,227 acres, 28% contained

So we may just be mopping up and digging contingency lines (augh!) or we’ll be doing direct attack with a bunch of other crews. Apparently there are 8 hand crews like us so the work could be nice and spread out. I’m still dreading the hike, though, from the looks of the terrain around us.

-10:07 PM
We ended up mopping up along a line, after spending half the day in the rigs, driving around trying to find our task force leader. We’re working in an old growth forest area, we’re surrounded by colossal trees. I got to work the hose a bit toward the end of the mop up, had to dart up the hill (it’s steep) after a few little flames. The hike wasn’t so bad, but then it’s Day 1 and we didn’t work for half the day, so …

I’ve yet to shower, we’ll see how long that lasts.

9/21/08 7:12 AM
Fire: 16,225 acres, 28% contained

I am super congested this morning, but then George gave me some Sudafed that he got from the med tent (apparently we’re both sick). It worked wonders! I feel pretty good, still congested a little but not worn down. It also probably has something to do with the fact that I got seven hours of sleep last night. Amazing! I’m not showering for the rest of the dispatch! I actually don’t feel too dirty. But then, it’s just the beginning of Day 2.

-6:33 PM
We mopped up all day, had to remop a few areas (a little bitter about that but there’s a lot of stuff on the ground). The echoing thud of massive trees falling surrounded us for the day, a few snags sounded a little close. Some of the very distant ones sounded like waves crashing when they fell.

There was lots of disorganized gridding. We wold start out in a nice line and then just kind of scatter because some hot spots that we found would take longer than others to snuff out. We also had to stand around a bit to wait for the sawyers to take care of some of the snags and smaller trees.

It sprinkled on and off throughout the day. We left early because it started to rain steady and get cold and the task force leader didn’t want anyone getting too wet and chilled.
I am filthy. I feel okay, but I really hope I start to get better. Today was a pain, constantly having to blow my nose. George stayed back today to see if it could help his condition improve faster. I’m definitely not the only one sick, then.

-9:12 PM
We got off so early from work that I’m in bed! I was going to shower but I decided against it. A hot shower might help how I feel but 1) it might not help that much, 2) it takes time and 3) sleep might help more.

9/22/08 7:28 AM
I got eight hours of sleep! I feel pretty good. Still a little congested, but good. I was gonna go to med this morning but it wasn’t open, or I went to the wrong tent. I’ll try again tonight because I also want to swing by information and get free stamped postcards! Sweet!

We have the same assignment as yesterday (mop up) but higher up in the same area.

Fire info: 16,907 acres, 48% contained

I’m coughing a little more today.

-9:12 PM
We mopped up, cold trailed and gridded a little today but it pretty much turned into Seek and Destroy. The weather warmed up a little today, the sun actually came out. Around 3:00 pm, we started digging line along the black where the burn out stopped. We heard that there was a bet placed between JT and the task force leader as to whether we could finish the line today. We ended up digging a line that stretched pretty far, but we still fell short. We never did hear what the terms were.

The hike as we dug the line sucked a little, my feet are feeling it. We dug for about four hours.

I got my free, stamped postcards with Kira, I’ll probably write them now.

I can feel my Sudafed wearing off, ack! More people are getting sick.

The grapevine ...

Today was another day on the trails in Left Hand. We installed more posts today. Tomorrow is running cable through the posts. Chad had us hike to the installation locations with our packs on, so in addition to doing a very quick and intense work out this morning, we also did a little PT hike. I'd like to think that I redeemed myself for Monday and Tuesday today because I stayed on the heels of the person in front of me the whole time. But, then again, Chad didn't really hike us too hard. Soooo ... I dunno. Improvement, but I'm not going to relax about it.

When we got back, Nikki, Jo and I were sitting around the kitchen table sharing a snack when the phone rang. It was Chad and he said that they were having a conference call at the moment. It's nothing to get too excited about but Travis and I need to make sure we're ready to leave for a dispatch as early as tonight, though he said it's more likely to happen tomorrow. We may be doing that hurricane relief call, but he didn't really specify, he just said to be ready.

So that's it. Just wanted to give fair warning in case my blog doesn't show any updates for three weeks.

I am sucking air big time

Well, it was probably for the best that I missed the hike on Sunday morning. Yesterday we skipped PT and left early for Evergreen, as per usual. But when we arrived, Owens (a FS guy) led us on a PT hike before beginning cutting for the day. Oof! I was totally sucking air. I haven't done a PT hike in a while but I haven't fallen behind since the very first hike we ever did. It sucked. Well ... it was more like I sucked. But anyway, yeah. It was rough.

And then we had all sorts of issues while cutting. Well, not really. It was more just that Nikki and I were exhausted after the hike so we were moving pretty slowly. She took two trees and I swamped them and then she had me take a tree because she's not too comfortable with the bigger ones. I dropped that one and then I moved on to another which not only sat back on me, but the holding wood snapped and it twisted and got hung up opposite from the direction I was trying to drop it. It ended up pinching the bar, so we had to unscrew the power head from the saw and wrench the bar out, which led to the tree falling. Oy. It was just one of those days that I wanted to forget as soon as possible.

Today was also a little rough. For the rest of the week, we're doing project work on a trail in Left Hand Canyon. We're rerouting some road and so posts need to be installed through which cable will be strung for guard rails. We had to load about five pallets of concrete and then hike all the way up to the top of the road, where we then inserted the posts into the holes and set them with the concrete. Once again, I was sucking air on the hike up the hill. The work before and after the hike was fine, though.

I'm not sure what it is, but I hope I'll move beyond this really discouraging plateau of weakness that suddenly seems to have set in or I'll reacclaimate myself to the altitude (but I really don't think that's it).

Update: No hike for me

So ……….. yeah. I didn’t get a hike or a call. I woke Ervin up around 10:30 because I needed someone to go grocery shopping with me (there was a Red Sox game on so Travis was not about to go). While he took his time, the rest of the team came back from the hike. They didn’t make it to the summit because of the snow and ice, but they still had a good time. So Paul ended up going with me to Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart, but he slept in the truck. Birthday Boy has had a long weekend with not a whole lot of sleep.

On a positive note, I did a damn good job this week, we got a ton of good food. But still … I’m irritated that I didn’t get to go on the hike. I knew that would happen. At this point, I hope that, if there is a dispatch, I don’t get called until after this weekend because I want to hike a fourteener before I leave Colorado. Bah.

Just another week

Well, I’m sitting here not doing much when I could be hiking Long’s Peak with a bunch of my teammates. But I’ll get into that in a second.

On Tuesday, we went back to Unit 35 to do some more thinning around alpine clones. This is the same unit where, the week prior, we got the truck stuck and did some old mine spelunking. So we managed to start and finish our areas of the unit, leaving only one or two clones left and they were the hardest to get to. It was a bit of a rough hike in and out of the unit, but there wasn’t much to cut so it balanced out. Still, swamping kind of sucked, trying to make piles was a little challenging and dragging the stuff was also a bit difficult because of the hills.

We skipped PT on Wednesday and Thursday because our new cutting unit is an hour-long drive to Evergreen. It’s a clear cutting assignment, so we have big patches where we just cut down all the trees that are marked (and 99% of them are marked). I’ve been cutting partners with Ervin all week, with Fetsch (a FS guy) and Travis in patch and we’ve barely made a dent in it, it’s one of the bigger patches. But then, we’ve also had some technical difficulties that have slowed us down on both days. The first day, Ervin had a tough time with a few trees getting hung up and one that sat back on him to the point where we had to remove the power head of the chainsaw from the bar and try to pull the bar out of the tree. The next day, while I was using our saw, Virginia, it began to sputter and then stopped. I tried to start it again but it wouldn’t stay on, so we began to take it apart to see what happened. It was smoking when we took off the cover. We began to take it apart and then we realized, with Fetsch’s help, that the bearing had completely melted. Oops. We’re still not sure how it happened, but we suspect that the chain was tightened too much. Virginia’s chain had been spinning while idle for the whole week, so we would tighten the chain a lot and that would slow the spinning a bit. But I guess we didn’t realize how tight we had gone with the chain. Luckily, we had a spare saw in one of our trucks, so I grabbed her and we continued with the patch.

Friday was a saw rehab day. Virginia is okay, thank goodness. We replaced the bearing and a few other parts that had suffered as a result. Her chain still spins, but that’s beyond our expertise at this point. Chad let us out early, so we began celebrating Paul’s 21st birthday. We had cake when we got back to the bunkhouse. Later on, we went down into Ned and celebrated.

On Saturday, I went down to Boulder and got my phone situation taken care of (for the most part). My phone had acquired this wonderful habit of shutting off for no reason while I would be in the middle of a text or phone call. It was never the battery, it would just turn off suddenly. So I got a replacement phone and I went to the AT&T store in Boulder to get all of my stuff transferred. They managed to transfer all of my pictures but they couldn’t get my ringtones to switch to the new phone. So I’ll have to call customer service again and figure that out. Whatever. I also got a really cute dress at Ross. It was a normal Saturday.

I was going to go to bed early last night in order to prepare for this hike we had been planning on all week. A bunch of us were going to try to hike Long’s Peak, which is one of the 14,000+ ft hikes. When I got back, though, I heard from Nikki and Joanna that they had been with Mary (a FS girl) when she got a call from Tim (a FS guy) who told her to be ready as early as Sunday to leave. There’s the possibility of a dispatch heading to the Gulf to help out with hurricane relief, especially with all of the downed trees and debris. Nikki said that they might want an A faller for every B faller that goes. They were also cleaning one of the trucks yesterday in preparation for the trip (allegedly). So I made the decision to not go on the hike the next day. I asked Ervin about the whole thing and he said that, while he hadn’t gotten a call from Chad or anyone saying anything definite about a dispatch, it would suck if I went on the hike and then we got the call because that would be a huge turnover of time before I could make it back to the work center.

So I didn’t go. And now here I am, sitting around, waiting for someone to join me for grocery shopping. Everyone else left for the hike around 3 am. Bah. I swear, if I don’t get some indication of a dispatch today, I’ll be miffed.

Note to self: add "A Faller" to resume

Nikki, Blake and Chris are finally back. Joy! =) Unfortunately, just as our team reassembled, John and Adrienne left tonight to go up to Estes Park because they're heading out to California with Alpine tomorrow. Alas. But this is what Ervin said would happen at a certain point -- it would be rare to have the entire team together in the same place for more than a few days. Now that the NoCo (Northern Colorado) crew is back, and John and Adrienne are going out with Alpine, there's talk of organizing the next NoCo crew. I would be on that crew. Woo! Two dispatches. That's luck in such a slow season. But we'll see, there was chatter about it, but also talk of how it won't go out for a while.

Speaking of Nikki being back ... on Friday, Joanna and I went down to Denver. She had a friend in town for business and we also wanted to go out in the city with Nikki since we didn't get a chance to during transition week because of Nikki's dispatch. So that was good fun. We made our way back up to Ned on Saturday and it was a big reunion in Ned that night because everyone was back from dispatch. On Sunday, it was grocery shopping as usual. Chris came with me, which was nice and different, and also helpful because Chris is a vegetarian so I have that to consider now when I shop.

Today, we all finally tested for our A Faller certifications. We had to be at the work center by 6:30 am to load some saws because we had a two and a half hour drive to Grand County where we worked with the Sulfer Ranger District because they had a C Faller certifier. Everyone had a chance to cut down at least one practice tree. John and Adrienne went first, taking their practice trees and then testing, one after the other. This enabled them to leave early so they could get back to the bunkhouse and organize before they had to head up to Alpine. After lunch, Paul took his two practice trees and then I did the same. There are a TON of beetle-kill trees in that neck of the woods, but it was really difficult to find one that didn't have a lot of hazards to mitigate. Still, I managed. And then I tested for my A Cert. It went really well, I was glad. My cuts were cleaner than the two practice cuts, so that's good.

So we're all A Certified now, which basically puts us on the level of apprentice. It means that we can cut without a B Faller watching our every blink, but we've kind of been doing that already in our cutting units. This just makes it official.

I don't know what we're doing tomorrow. Probably cutting. There's been talk of prescribed burns sometime in the near future. Exciting! Yay fire! Haha.

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.