Tuesday Night

Feeling much better today. Still not sure what the heck I had or have. Did run 3 miles Sunday afternoon but it wasn't at all pleasant. I was really disappointed in missing my chance at a great weeks worth of mileage.

This week is COLD. Took Monday off to get well and tonight I had Fire Department training which was basically a bitch session on what needs fixed in the department. It is so hard to have happy people in a volunteer organization and then you add all males, with a bunch of macho, I know more than you type people and your going to have bitching. Like I told them all last week, business is slow (no fires) so everyone has more time on their hands so all they have to do is gripe and moan about whats not getting done and who is not doing any work. And wait till there is an officers position open. Talk about one being better than the other. It's not the pay that's for sure, because that equals ZERO. So why would someone even want to be an officer? More responsibility? More to do? Well, some just want to be able to boss people around and then there are some that just want to have a tittle. The best do it because they are leaders.

When it's all said and done, when it's time to do battle with the fiery beast, we do all come together and will do whatever it takes to get the job done to save life or property. Most of all, we will take care of each other. After all, we are brothers, and brothers always fight but we are still family always no matter what.

Not sure where I was going with that but back to running, I still plan to run the Spa 10k Saturday if I'm feeling good. Hoping to get a run in Wednesday night and maybe Thursday too. Suppose to be cold, may opt out for the treadmill. We shall see.

Stay warm and safe out there.

Sweltering Weekend

Here is a quick recap of some of my weekend which was probably the hottest weather we have had so far this year.

Friday night - I started the so far most boring class ever in my fire department career. 80 hours of Driver/Pump Operator. Friday nights class was 6:30pm till almost 9:30pm. We did have a great instructor, former Cabot Chief Gary Meadows was our teacher and he always teaches a great class even if the content is boring. When I get done with the class I will be "Internationally Certified" as a driver/pump operator. Just means I am trained as much or more than any paid firefighter out there and I could go anywhere in the world to do it.

Saturday - Went back to class at 8am. Yawn. Part of the class was actually how to properly wash a fire truck and why you don't use gasoline of other toxic chemicals to clean the upholstery. OMG......it was so boring and elementary. I was assigned to the engine company in case we got a call and we were actually wishing someone would do something stupid so we could get called out of class. I know this was just the first part and since this is a required class from FEMA in order to get a grant on a truck, we figured the only reason they have some of this stuff is because some podunk department somewhere probably got a new truck and actually cleaned their seats with gasoline...lol. Pretty bad. Lunch was the highlight. Stouts diner on Hwy 107. We all got cheeseburgers and these were the biggest, greasiest burgers around. They were good. The clientel was more interesting. Some of the people coming in there looked like they had just came from the movie set of Deliverance. Pretty scary looking characters. We also had some FD Groupies hanging out for us. A group of young girls had to have a tour of the fire truck. I'm sure we are all on My Space now.

Our Fan Club

Annette ended up going to Forest City with Michele to watch Gary, Curtis, James, Rock and Cindy participate in the triathlon there. They had a lot of fun. Rock and Cindy placed 3rd in the team event. I wish I had been there instead of where I was.

As you can see, Annette and Michele was trying to encourage Curtis!

I think they jinxed Gary who usually gets ALL the attention. He ended up having a flat on the bike portion but he was still able to finish though he wasn't a happy camper.

Rock, David Wonn, James, Gary

I finally got home about 5pm, and we never got even one bs medical call. Go figure.

Sunday - I was dieing to ride Sunday but we had a practical to run through at 1pm so I was going to have to go early. I found out Saturday night that Gary and Curtis were riding at 6:30am and then again at 9:30am from Cabot. James called me and said he was doing the 9:30 portion so that sounded good to me. I figured I could do one hour out and one hour back.

Gary and Curtis were waiting at the school when I got there. James was running late as he had to wait on Michele to get back from her and Annette's long run. Ended up Gary and I took off. Curtis said he and James would catch up to us. It had already started getting warm and there was some wind. We headed out 89 towards Keo. We didn't really have a tail wind but there were times we were easily pushing 24-25mph. We made it just past I40 before James and Curtis caught us. I know they had to fly to catch up and we did slow to about 16-17 for a little while. After crossing 70, it was a nice ride, no traffic. I hit the one hour mark at mile 18 and told them I was turning back. They were going out 25 and back. Curtis decided he would ride back with me. The ride back was slower at times but the heat had gotten to the almost unbearable point again. Luckily I had enough water to get me back. My tri bottle was already empty and I had drank about half a bottle of my acceleraide mix. We stayed pretty steady going back till we hot the store at Furlow then Curtis picked up the pace a little. Or maybe I started slowing down. In either case, I fell back and didn't hang with him. My heart rate was very high and I wanted to get it down. I didn't feel like I was working that hard but evidently the heat was getting the blood boiling. There are a couple small hills on this route that will slow you down and with the heat they did me. I was sweating more than last weekend which I didn't know if that meant I was better hydrated or it was hotter. I think it was both! I ended up finishing the ride with 36 miles in 2:03. Just under the 18mph average.

I got home at noon, had to be at the church parking lot at 1:00 to drive fire trucks. I wanted to quit right then. This was the worst class and now I had to do the emergency vehicle driving practical again which I have done at least 15 times in the past. Mostly consists of standing around in the parking lot waiting your turn at the wheel. Lucky for me, chief assigned me to work the diminishing cones portion of the course. Only thing was, no air condition in the brush truck we were using. I worked about 20+ firefighters through the course, and probably used at least one bottle of gatoraid and one water to get through it. Let me tell you, it was hot. 97+ in a parking lot with no shade. Yuck. Finally when I got all those guys through I got to drive some. I took E65 through the slalom course of cones to show the boys how its done. Most were just easing through but I added a little speed to mine. Weaving in and out of cones and not hitting them is tough in a fire truck. The it was a road test, down the service road and back up the freeway. The Asst. Chief was with me and when we hit the freeway he told me to give it all she had and see how fast we could go. Well, today 65 would only hit 68mph. Usually its about 70-72. Finally the class was over. By the time I got home I had to be dehydrated. The girls were in the pool when I got back so I jumped in for a few but I headed for the AC after that. I was burnt out and done.

4th of July - why you don't drink and drive

Actually this happened on the 5th, but it was the result of activities during the 4th. Old glory is still intact though!

You can only imagine the adrenelin rush I had when my fire pager went off around 12:30am saying that there was a car that had run through MY station with a person entrapped.


Luckily the driver was so drunk, he never felt a thing and was out of the car standing around when we got there.

The car took out our overhead door, went into the station, damaged two fire trucks in the bay.

If you saw this up close you would wonder how they got our unhurt. Alcohol has a numbing effect and makes you straighten out curves.

One side of the car. You can see that something barely missed taking the guys head off through the windshield. I had several fire fighters that wanted to take his head off too. Since there was nothing we could do about it I had to put a positive spin on it. Now maybe we could get an extra bay added on! This made for a long night. Now the district has no fire response from my station until the Insurance and overhead door people can come out on Monday. We can't get the trucks out! Well, we could tear the door out but they are making us wait. What a crazy night.

Watering the grass

This is how I water the grass.......well, not really. Tuesday night I taught dump tank/tanker operations at my fire station and this was a photo I took while I was discharging water. Thats about 1000 gallons per minute coming out. Master streams are cool!!

The Wind Hits Again

After biking hard Sunday I came home, mowed the back yard, got in the pool, ate a sandwich, then decided it was time for a nap. I was really tired, sat down in the recliner and I was out. I usually have trouble sleeping during the day so a nap is just 5-10 minutes of snoozing at a time. This time I think I was ready to sleep for a couple hours.

I was nodding off when I started hearing thunder. I thought no big deal, summer shower. I was almost asleep when Annette said I better come look out back. So I got up, went and looked out the back door and it looked like a hurricane or tornado. The trees behind us were blowing like crazy. There were leaves flying around, it didn't look good. This lasted about 5 minutes then it was over. About that time my fire department pager went off. We had a tree down blocking a road. No big deal, we had some people responding so I was kind of sitting tight to see what was next. Pager goes off again, another tree down on a power line. I start to get my shoes on. Pager goes off again, another tree down. Other departments were getting paged for the same thing in their area. So I took off for the station.

As I was driving down the road I saw a police car running hot to something. There was a lot of leaves and small limbs on the road but nothing major. Before I made it to the station we had alrady gotten another call with trees down. Holy cow. I got to my station and elected to stand by ready to roll whatever truck might be needed. Most of the other guys had responded to the scenes in their personal vehicles. The tree calls quickly cleared up with only one requiring the guys to stay for a while. I was still standing by when the power went out at my station. Luckily I had the bay doors open so we could roll if needed.

Less then 5 minutes later we get paged for a structure fire or a large possible unknown fire. Well, with the storms, a structure fire was the more likely thing. We had also set up a command post at our station one with our assistant chief routing calls over the radio and keeping up with where everyone was. I ended up rolling Tanker 2 as there was not a hydrant close to the address. When our first unit arrived they advised that there was a mobile home fully involved and already on the ground. Upon furthur investigation they found out that it was actually a controlled burn and the owner had set it on fire to get rid of it. Well, technically you can't do that anymore. Too many rules and regulations by the EPA and others. Irregardless we had to put the majority of the fire out.

I ended up setting up a water shuttle with the tanker pumping water into engine 65. About 2500 gallons later I was leaving the scene returning to my station. I still had to refill with water then figure out a way to get the bay doors down since we had no power.

By the time some of my personnel had gotten back to the station we came up with a plan to get the door down. We couldn't just pull a string like most overhead doors. This one was too big and the release was not working. About that time the power came back on thank goodness. Otherwise I would have been stuck there for who knows how long.

We have had so much wind this spring its really kind of weird. It's like we are in a direct path to be blown away or something but luckily we keep getting missed. Maybe this will be the last of it for a while.

Speed

Wish I had more of it. Maybe I'll get some of it one of these days.

Our 1 mile timed mile was canceled last night due to a couple factors. 1) There was a soccer game going on at the High School so we couldn't use the track and most of all 2) The wind was blowing about 30 MPH. With the high winds and cold temps Coach Dennis decided that it would be best not to even attempt our timed mile even though we did have an alternate route behind the community center. Instead we did a warm up and some fartleks for speed work. I really felt I cut my workout short but thats ok, I am suppose to be tapering for the 1/2 Sunday anyway. I still ended up with 2.34 miles with an average pace of 9:33, but that included the fartleks, which are basically timed intervals.


This is what excess speed can do. Other contributing factors could have been a distraction, cell phone, who knows. I was command at this wreck Sunday afternoon. Luckily only minor injuries. Could have been much worse. This person was very lucky today. Cars and telephone poles can be replaced.







Be safe out there people. Pay attention and wear your seat belt. And of course, don't speed unless your running.

Updating my Blog

Wow it's Sunday and I am behind on updating my blog. So here's an update:

Running

Thursday Night Running Clinic
Since Tuesday was a holiday this week we had the running clinic on Thursday night. Coach Dennis decided to return to the Cabot High School track which I always like. I decided to go and try running a couple miles to see how things felt.

After I got there I did a brisk walk around the track for a warm up and then we had a group meeting to discuss the workout for the night. I told Coach Dennis that I would be in the beginner group. If it wasn't for injuries I would have probably been running with the advanced group. After giving the advanced and intermediate their workout it was time for the beginners. Well, myself and Annette's sister Tracy were the only ones left. Dennis advised Tracy to do some 200's and 400's with walk breaks in between. When he got done explaining that whole workout I asked him what he thought I should do. He said NO speedwork. But that I should just run and see how things felt. I told him I planned to run a couple slow miles just to see how things were feeling and to get my muscles back used to running. I think I did one lap running and when I got back around to Dennis he stopped me for a minute. He made a suggestion that I might want to run on the astro turf instead of the track. He said that he remembered when he coached with Nike that when they had athletes coming back from an injury they would often have them run on the football field rather than the track since it was a softer surface. So thats what I did.

The laps went by pretty quick though I was running slow. A few laps later I stopped and talked to Dennis again. He told me that running on the turf would also help strengthen the smaller muscles in my lower legs and feet. I guess all the squishiness worked muscles you normally would not work on the road.

I kept it up, it was not hard even though the temperature was about 28 degrees. I was dressed just right for the run. My heart rate seemed a little higher than normal so I figured that was just the loss of conditioning. I ended up with a final of 2.94 miles. I don't remember the exact average pace but it was slow because I took some walk breaks and stopped a few times to talk. It was nice to get out and run with everyone again.

The next day I noticed that I was sore in places I had never been sore in before. My butt was sore! My leg actually felt fine. No soreness or pain at all. My old nagging left foot achillies was more sore than anything. I emailed Dennis later and told him about how my recovery from this run was and told him about my new sore spots. He explained that it was because of running on the grass. You do work some different muscles and thats why my butt was sore. If you want a tight butt, running on the turf is the way to go!

Saturday
Not much to report on running other than I jumped on the treadmill and did 1.2 miles with 1 mile of solid running. No pain no hurts. My plan is to start back doing just these short 1-3 miles runs. I go back to the doctor on the 15th and the way things feel now I am hoping for a full release back to running. I know it will require a build up but I still feel pretty strong. Coach Dennis has said many times that my muscles will come back stronger than ever so we shall see.


FD Stuff
It seems like we have been really busy at the fire department this week. The extreme cold brought on lots of fires. Saturday morning started shortly before 5am with an auto accident call. This one ended up being a rolled over abandoned vehicle. It looked like whoever wrecked it kicked the back glass out and took off. Most likely they were drinking and didn't want to get caught. We see a lot of this. I can't count the number of times we have rolled up on upside down vehicles in the middle of the road to find no one inside or around. Usually we do find lots of beer bottles/cans in the vehicles.

I am on a committee to spec out and purchase a new fire truck and Saturday afternoon we had a meeting to go over the specs. Let me tell you, there is a lot of planning that goes into building a fire truck. From chassis manufacture, engine sizes, all the way down to hose connections. It's very complicated. And spending between $195,000 and $225,000 of the tax payers money we have to make sure we get the most we can for the dollar. We did get our preliminary specs completed and bids will be going out to manufactures next Friday. We pretty well have it narrowed down to 4 possible builders, Smeal, Rosenbauer, Pierce and David's Fire Equipment. All of these companies will offer us local or semi-local service. David's Fire is located in Cabot and one of our Captains is the one that builds the trucks. We would love for them to get the job but since they are very small, they may not be able to compete with the big guys on chassis prices. We will know more in about 30 days or less.

Saturday Night
Another MVA Saturday night contributed to alcohol. Luckily no one was seriously injured. The driver of the van sustained a broken leg and the other driver staggered away in a police car unhurt. You can figure the story behind that. I think I finally got home about midnight.

Leg

Well about the time I thought I was about to get all healed up, now my leg is hurt in a new place. Last night I responded to an EMS call with the FD. We had a 15 year old male with a self inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In the process of helping get the patient on the backboard, I had to squat down almost to the ground and I could feel some pain in the back of my leg, just above the joint itself. Hamstring maybe? I'm not sure. I just know I didn't bend that way long and got on my knees instead. It probably didn't help that I was trotting to the ambulance to get needed supplies. It's just weird because now my calf feels fine. It's probably one of those tendons that is not quite all healed up yet. I really don't think it's that bad, just need a few more days.

I'm so ready to start running again. Thank goodness I have the bike I can ride inside or outside. And today I received my new Garmin 305 from UPS that I ordered from Walmart.com. I'm not even going to take it out of the box until I start back running.

CPR

Tuesday night is my "busy" night most weeks. I not only do the running clinic, but it is also our regular training night for my fire department. Since this week I couldn't run I opted to get to FD training on time. After sitting in on a quick Fire Fighters Association meeting, we were given two options for training for the night. 1) Go to station two and give the rookies some pump training on the engines or 2) stay and take a CPR class. Since my CPR card had just recently expired and I really didn't feel like crawling around on the engines and playing in the water I elected to stay and do the CPR class.

I can't even count the number of times I have been CPR certified over the years. It seems like every couple years they change the standards and this year was no different. We were doing the American Heart Association Health Care Provider course and one of our MEMS medics was giving the class. It was pretty much old school to me, after almost 15 years in the fire service, I already knew what to do, though CPR is not something that is done everyday, I have done it on real people though. Most of the people in the class haven't even did a manikin yet. It was still good to brush up on it.

One major change, now its pretty much thirty compressions and two breaths weather its one person or two person CPR. The thing now is that studies have found that compressions help circulate the oxygen that is left in the lungs so this is the most important part. I can remember when it was 5/1 and 15/2 so 30/2 is easier. They also changed hand placement. Now it is directly between the nipples. Bottom line is this, ANY CPR is better than no CPR. If you ever have to do it your not going to get in trouble for not counting right or having your hand a millimeter out of place. Also, it is against most health care providers policies to do mouth to mouth so unless its a close relative you are taking a big chance on getting something you can't get rid of. The class is pretty boring stuff and it's one of those things you never want to have to use, but everyone should know it.

Oh yeah, I also got my training certificate's for School Inspections and Basic Arson Detection last night. I took these classes back in August and October. Arson Investigation is really cool stuff to study. It's CSI for fire. I have attended many classes on Arson and they are always interesting and informative. Since we are a volunteer department we do not conduct full blown arson investigations. We try to determine a cause and if there is sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation we turn it over to the State Fire Marshall. They get paid to be in court and we don't. Heck, we don't get paid period! So support your local professional volunteers, we need it.

Fire Truck History

Since I have been sitting here trying to write about several different things tonight and then changed my mind, I decided I'd do a little fire truck history. One of the firefighters at my station is in ICU in Russellville due to a motorcycle accident and he loves this old truck so I wanted to do a little show and tell. Get well soon Reginald!

The truck in the photos is a 1975 Mack Firetruck. I am the Captain on this engine and the primary driver most of the time. We purchased the truck in 1995 after one of our firefighters was killed in an apparatus accident. Dania Stivers was the 1st female firefighter killed in the line of duty in the State of Arkansas. Thats another story for another day.

The first photos are from an add in Firehouse Magazine in 1985. The engine was originally Engine 1 in Portage, Michigan. They bought it new in 1975. Ran it as their first due engine and in 1985 sent it to Pierce Manufacturing to be refurbished (rebuilt). It continued to serve the people of Portage until almost another 10 years later when in late 1994 it was sold to Deep South Trucks in Mississippi. You can see in the top picture the way it looked new(1975), and the bottom part was when it had its first refurb in 1985.


Deep South Trucks did another refurb on it in 1995 and thats when we purchased it. Another 12 years later it still looks like this below. Not bad for a 32 year old truck!


If this engine could only talk, it could tell 20 years worth of stories from Portage, Mi and so far a little over 12 here in Arkansas. It has put out many fires and pumped thousands of gallons of water. I can say one thing for sure, they sure don't build trucks like these anymore. I feel honored to have been one of the select few that has driven and loved this truck. We have applied for a FEMA Grant to purchase a new truck to replace this one. If we get it the old Mack will become a reserve pumper and will most likely never get driven much. A new truck will be nice but it will be tough to beat this old truck.

FD Training

Tuesday night is also our normal training night for the fire department so as soon as I got done with the running clinic I headed to Station 3, changed into some dry clothes and headed over to station 1 for drill. I had already missed 45 minutes and the guys were getting ready to set a fire inside a portable connex trailer we had for training. Basically we put some wood pallets and hay in the back end of the trailer and soak a little diesel on them and set them on fire. Even though this is in a small enclosed trailer, it still simulates a bedroom or other small room. They sent two engines down the road with full crews, lit the fire, and then had them respond in just like it was the real thing. I ended up missing most of this fun as the Chief asked me to get some FEMA training put in the computer for one of the guys. It was ok by me since I had already had my workout plus we were trying to get some of the rookies feeling some real fire. Well, they got to pull some hose and feel some heat. You can actually see the fire start, go up to the ceiling and then start ticking across the top, all the while the heat and smoke gets worse. What's funny is after the fire is out, the rookies always think its over but its not. You still have to load hose, change out air bottles, put equipment back on the truck and more. The thing about being a firefighter and especially a volunteer is that it is a total team effort. Everyone depends on someone else to make things happen. You don't always just get to put the wet stuff on the red stuff. Thats the easy and fun part. A lot of the time you have to do what you don't like. Loading 1500 feet of 5 inch hose at 3am after a 4 hour structure fire is not fun stuff!



This is the trailer we use. This was after the fire. They were just putting out what was left smoldering but you can see the white smoke which was mostly just steam.

By the way, it has been very quiet this week. Way too quiet.