Iron Firemen Wooden Ladders & Iron Firemen
Ok, for those of you old enough to remember…here’s a little Gene Kelly from 1952″Singing in the rain”.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmc_gwpNQ6c]Why put Gene Kelly on a Fire Department blog? Substitute “training” for “singing” and that’s what we were doing today. Training in the rain! Eugene even danced a little jig. The boys fussed a wee bit this morning when I told em we were heading out despite the weather. I tried to explain to em that sometimes…playing in the rain and water ain’t so bad. Of course I got the typical response.. “Oh yea Capt, like when”??? Ummmmm….
How about like when at a wet tee shirt contest! Huh? See? Oh yea! The bad news is that our day of getting soaked wasn’t near as fun as this looks. More educational I’m sure but not nearly as fun (cough cough .. as if I’ve actually been to a wet tee shirt contest or anything). And, a garden hose doesn’t do today’s weather justice either. Here in the “Noke”, it was “raining cats and dogs”….
LOL..now that’s one wet pus..errrr CAT. Truth be told, it actually wasn’t that bad today. The training division brought out a couple tents to give us a little cover and our PPE took care of the rest. Plus, when you’re actually training on something meaningful, things like the weather are a lot more tolerable. Special thanks to Lt. Hylton from the “Ocho” for putting the “Master stream” class together and to Lt. Mark Brown from #5 for putting on the practical portion. Our morning session was with our brothers from Ladder #2 and E5. Here are a bunch of pics…
We were sitting on a 36″ main with a static of 120 so we had plenty of available water. Eugene walked the boys through the nozzle atop our little “stick” thingy after the boys from the “Deuce” gave an overview of their bucket and it’s operations. Then, we put em in the air and moved a little water of our own.
We dismounted the deck gun from our engine and went over ground mounting operations. We also played with one of our 500 gpm Mercury Monitors.
I think Coon has decided he really likes Engine work because after we got him up in the bucket, he was hunting a way to get his “feets” back on the ground… look at the poor little fella peeking back down the ladder.
LOL…All in all, some good and valuable training. We went back for the afternoon session so that our brothers from #7 could get a look at our stick as well. We actually have 3 of these things in the City.. Engines 3, 4 and 14.
That’s about all the excitement we’ve had today. We’re sitting on about 4 or 5 runs, training, meals and the usual cleaning etc. Pee-Wee remains off on vacation and Opie was off to the hospital again “getting his learn on”. I hope to take it as easy as possible for the remainder of the shift. We start 4 day break in the morning, I’m tired and sore. The first 1/2 of the day yesterday was beautiful and I spent the majority of it on top of a good horse. I forget who was telling me about their wife reading / following the blog and how much she enjoyed the horses and cow and Buckaroo pics. Anyway, even though I can’t remember who it’s for, I’ll throw in a few shots I took from my phone yesterday… working cattle “old school”.
AND… so not to disapoint (i
n keeping my post loooong) I’ll leave ya with a little Old Crow Medicine Show…Wagon Wheel cause I’m in that kinda mood!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswz5MtGey0]That’s it for tonight. We’ll be back on Saturday… same time, same place. Until then, stay safe and in da house. Thanks for reading!
Captain Wines