Another fire call-out soon!

Now that I've been back to work for, oh, not even 2 weeks... My boss surprised the crap out of me and caught me at the end of work on Tuesday and said, "They're looking to put another fire crew together, wanna go?"

What?! Heck yeah! I didn't think he'd let me go out more than once; but it's the end of the season, and a lot of people have gone back to school or their seasons have ended, so they are looking to get our Northern Colorado Type 2 #2 crew back together. As of right now, there's no resource order or anything, but they want to be ready when other crews time out and need us to replace them. Most of the crews from the area are in the Grand Canyon right now; don't know if we'd end up out there, or Southern Cali, or where... I'm psyched!!

Christie's Photos

Tim gets back from the Poudre Cabin tonight, if he is back when we get the call-out then him and I just might be on the same fire crew! But, he goes back into the backcountry on Monday for eight days, so it's pretty unlikely. I wouldn't be surprised if we got called out Mon or Tues.

The leaves started changed on the aspen already, as of Monday or so. The wind has been crisp lately, despite the warm sun, and snow is already sitting on top of Long's Peak. So much for finally climbing that peak this season! A bunch of folks did a search and rescue yesterday for a guy that was up on Mt Lady Washington for two days.

Here's a photo of the bathroom I've been working on all summer; it was finished and opened on Aug. 24th. Looks nice, don't it? Thank god I'm done with it!

Work, lately, has been a bunch of different projects. One day, I dug two 5 1/2 foot deep hole to find some old water lines that we will be replacing. Then, we started demolishion on another bathrom (#408), so we took apart everything inside and recycled/reused a bunch of stuff; unfortunately I was busy on another project when they bulldozed the thing down. I think it only took 2 days to gut it, then 2 days to raize it. Instead, I was out at Hidden valley, trying to finish up the trail work I had been doing with volunteersall summer. I finished lining my section of trail with logs, and it looked pretty good; Mike finished the log checks, and Tate and I spent 1 1/2 days digging rocks out of a ditch. My back didn't like that much! Then yesterday I was thrilled that my boss let me go nuts and do some tree work; we are contracting out replacing the water tanks, so I needed to clear limbs for big trucks to get back to it. I spent the morning blissfully by myself. In the afternoon, Steve-O showed me how to split boulders using a gas drill and feathers and plugs. Just drill a few holes into a rock (stupid drill had old gas in it, so it took a while to clean it out...), then put these two pieces of metal on top and bottom of the hole, then start pounding a wedge between the feathers, all in a line... wait... and then crackle and pop! Just split granite in half by hand. The hardest part was keeping the drill going! And my forearms were killing me. But it was a good day. All the term employees are ticked off because they are getting laid off for 2 months; usually it's only for 2-4 weeks. That's just the way it goes sometimes, I suppose.

Today is my day off, after this going to jog with the Log, though it looks like it wants to rain. Notre Dame (Tim's team) and Michigan (how embarassing) play tomorrow, and they are both 0-2..... so Tim and I have a lot of trash talking to do tomorrow! Monday, he is driving out of the backcountry to Ft Collins, and I am meeting him down there, for Monday night football - Eagles. Oh, and did I mention how sweet it is that the Lions won last week?! Sadly, Tim will be in the backcountry for the Eagles-Lions game... I was so looking forward to it!

And, I don't know if we'll be able to make it back to MI and PA like we had wanted. Looks like his furlough won't happen til after the new year. Bummer. We'll see if I get into grad school at Colorado State. My friend Ryan is coming out to ski over Thanksgiving, then all my college buddies are coming out Dec 27-Jan 2, then my friend Matt will be out in January! Looking forward to this winter!

Here are Jason's photos from Brian's wedding.

Now, time to do something productive!