Somewhat Exciting Day

Boy I love productive days. Yesterday benig my day off was spent trying to keep myself from sleeping for 8 hours during the day because of a Halo-a-thon the night before at the firehouse. I cleaned up our room, took a shower, read a little, worked out, did laundry, and a whole bunch of other things to take my mind off my fatigue and the problems back home that have been plaguing me the past couple of weeks. I managed to find a company that would ship packages via APO (Thank you amazon.com) which means in a couple weeks I'll have a brand new digital camera...one I'll take better care of. It definitely couldn't make it any sooner because it really sucks not being able to share what I've experienced down here with everyone back home...

Today has been a lot fun. After shift change, a few of us drove to Station 2 on the runway to relieve the crew that had spent the night out there. Apparently, the Air Force requires that a fire department with ARFF capabilities be present on any airfield where a military aircrft will be parked. So that is why Station 2 gets staffed 24 hours a day. Anyways, upon our arrival, we began to shovel out the stairs, check the apparatus, and go over some basic runway operations training. I was very excited because it was the first time I had been assigned to drive anything since I've been down here. My assignment for the morning was Red 6, one of our F-550s that uses MattTraks instead of wheels to move around. On top of that, I was by myself in the rig which was even more exciting. The funny thing was that I knew damn well we weren't going to get a call or anything of the sort. Our job for the day was to be present when a New Zealand C-130 took off for Christchurch and a US Air Force C-17 landed with fresh souls for McMurdo. When one of the engines on the 130 broke down as they were taking off with the 17 20 minutes away, our enitre plan for the day changed because of the fact that the 130 would be staying on the ice for a few more days...which meant that a crew had to stay at station 2 that night. Luckily, that wasn't me. 3 people stayed at station 2 while myself and two others headed back to town. Again, I found myself driving which I take great joy in doing...even if it's just an ambulance. The rest of the day when we got back was spent working on preplans, area familiarization training, ems training, and relieving the crew at station 2 for dinner. Who knows what else the following days will hold...