The Dreaded Friday Firefighter's Fitness Challenge

Every Friday each firefighter in the academy is required to run the Fitness Challenge. It is a multi-station agility and strength test performed while wearing full gear and breathing from an air pack (total weight 50-60 lbs). It has to be run in less than 5 minutes. So far, Norris' best time is 3:30 and the class record is a little over 2 minutes (held by someone 40 yrs younger than Norris). The test starts when you have to pick up a high rise hose pack, throw it over your shoulder, and run up two flights of stairs in the smoke tower.

When you get to the third floor window, you throw the shoulder load to the floor, then grab a rope and hoist up a hose roll from the ground up and over the railing. Then you put the high rise pack of hose back on your shoulder and run back down to the ground level and drop the shoulder load on the ground.
Then you run up this flight of outside stairs and grab a sledge hammer and chop 25 times on a block of wood.
Then you run back down the stairs, pick up a hose line full of water and drag it 80 ft.
Then you open the nozzle and have to knock over the orange cone with the water.
Then you drop the hose and run up another set of outside stairs, pick up a "victim" (sometimes a dummy, sometimes one of your class mates) and drag them 80 ft.
When you've finished that, you're done except for the part where you either throw up, pass out, or lay helpless on the ground until your lungs stop screaming. Norris usually does the latter.

Some Leftover Pictures from Week 1

One of Norris' friends in the academy (also from Reems Creek) sent Norris some pictures she had taken of him taken during Week 1. Since Norris is never in the pictures he takes himself, here are some pictures where you can see him.

Norris is the last in line here to enter the smoke tower for a drill.
Exiting the smoke tower after the drill is finished.

Some Rappelling Pictures from Last Summer

These pictures are from fire training last summer at the Reems Creek Fire Station. One of his fellow firefighters just belatedly sent Norris pictures of him taking his turn at rappelling down the side of a fifty foot tower.

Norris - full membership status

Norris has been volunteering with the Reems Creek Fire Department since about the first of June.

(He hasn't actually ridden their fire engine - he takes his own jeep to get to the scene.)

Today they voted on whether he could be a member. He's been on more calls than any of the other volunteers.





The voters include a lot of people who have been with the Fire Department since Norris was a wee lad. He was afraid they might say "but he hasn't done his full year of internship."


But good sense prevailed. He is now a member.


But does that mean he can sit back and wait for the alarms to go off?

No, he's still at the Academy to get that Firefighter II certification - full-time again this week. And when he finishes that, he's talking about re-certifying as an Emergency Medical Technician. No rest for the weary.

Top of Our World

Today is a beautiful, sunny warm late fall day so Norris and Cheryl took a hike up our own property for the first time since last Thanksgiving.

Much of the hike is difficult as there is no logging road to take us up the last, steepest part. But it's worth it when you can enjoy trees at the top still turning from green to yellow -



and if you look down, you can see many mosses and lichens among the leaves -


As always, we visited the fallen American Chestnut tree that's probably been dead for 70 or 80 years. Here Norris uses it to give his knees a little break with a beautiful maple still in full color just to one side and behind him. The baby chestnuts only had one or two dried curled up leaves on them.

Cheryl has been wanting to hike along the ridge to the top of North Knob since she first hiked up our ridge, before we bought the land several years ago - and finally made it there today. North Knob is at 4060 feet - our house is at about 2800-2850 feet. It's a long climb. Cheryl kept pushing and took this picture of the Reems Creek valley while still on the way up. There was no picture-taking coming down - all hands were required with walking sticks so as not to slide down on the slippery leaves.



Norris wasn't going to make the climb but when Cheryl was gone too long he started thinking about bears and started up after her. He did climb one of the two steepest parts. Part of the climb on our property is just about as steep, but there are more rocks and trees for footing and handholds on that path.

And finally up at the top, here's a look skyward - this pine has a very different form and appearance than the pines on our own property.

Barrett's Cove, Fall mornings

Cheryl's picture doesn't quite capture the beautiful yellow glow we have been enjoying every sunny morning, when our house is still in shadow but the ridge across the way is basking in the warm sunlight. The yellows turn to browns from the tops of the ridges down but there are still bits of green from the evergreens scattered throughout.

Week 3 Done for Norris

Norris is thankful he only had to go to class 3 days this week as he has already taken the classes being taught on Thurs and Fri. This week featured lots of time working in dark, smoke filled rooms. The picture below is the "smoke house" at the academy. Part of the training included smoking up the interior with burning hay bales while two teams worked on searching the building and finding the victims. One crew was required to advance a hose line through the small 2 ft doorway seen at the bottom of the wall, through a short confined space maze, and then up to the top two floors searching for victims.

The second team placed ladders to get to the third floor, then started searching from the top down. On the concrete, you can see a couple members of our motley crew of victims, who look a little worse for the experience
The next day, the group worked on the roof cutting simulator. It gives the trainees the feel for working on a pitched roof while operating a special roof-cutting chain saw to cut a hole in the roof. Its a lot harder than it looks when you're wearing 60-70 lbs of protective gear and breathing from an air pack. At least we couldn't fall very far if we got tired.

After that, the next classes were in the training tower. This time, we made much larger fires with wood pallets so that the entire tower got smoked up and heated. Then each crew had to work their way past the fire on the first floor and search all the floors in the tower for victims.

This is a picture of the fire and smoke in the tower. It was toasty when you got too close to it. This burning pile of pallets is about 6 ft high.