Messin Around

Our Assistant Chief is also the Pierce Rep for this area. This works out well for us because whenever he has a piece of apparatus on loan from Pierce to demo he brings it by the department for us to play with. This past weekend we all got together for lunch and some flag football. Afterward (when our legs were nice and fatigued from playing football for a couple of hours) we extended the ladder all the way out and took turns climbing it. I have climbed much higher ladder trucks in my time as a firefighter. Edmond has a 105 footer I had to climb to the top of while it was extended strait up into the air on a windy day. This Quint is only a 75 footer but I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to climb something I hadn't yet climbed. It was windy on Sunday as well...this always makes it more interesting...the tip of the ladder will sway back and forth as much as 2-3 feet in both directions if the wind hits it right. (click for big pics)looking up
I'm at the top (in off-duty garb)...looking for my house...still looking.
FOUND IT! See guys, there it is over there.Matt taking his turn.On his way down
Eli at the top
When Eli was about halfway down Luke climbed in the truck and blasted the air horn. This is Eli's reaction.


Good times...I want one!

Helicopters Make Me Smile

I'm not sure how I got here in my mind this morning, but something reminded me of my first helicopter ride. I have been fascinated with anything that flies for most of my life, and helicopters are at the peak of that fascination. My friends think I am a freak because I can tell you what kind of helicopter it is by the sound it makes as it flies over. They also laugh because when I hear one, after I tell them what kind it is, I almost always drop whatever I am doing to go take a look. My parents tell me that I road in a helicopter when I was very young but unfortunately I spent most of my life up to last year without the memory of a helicopter flight experience.
In the spring of last year, my fire department hosted Mediflight course for ground school training. This is where they show you how to set up and emergency landing zone, how to communicate with the incoming pilot, and just about everything else you may need to know about landing a helicopter on an emergency scene. We actually land Mediflight helicopters quite often related to serious motor vehicle accidents due to our being on the opposite side of the metro area from OU Medical Center which is the only level 1 trauma center we have. I had been looking farward to the training for a while, but was most excited about the possilibilty of going up in one of their "birds"...that's what all the flight medics call them. Throughout the whole course it wasn't looking good though. The helicopters assigned to out area where all on calls most of the evening and it looked like they would not be free to come to our station, but at the last minute they all got freed up and they sent one to us.
We set up a mock LZ behind the station and practiced bringing them in. Then they would load 2 or 3 of us into the cockpit and take us for about a 10 minute ride and then we would do it all over again. I was assigned to be LZ command for the first landing and after I brought him in I also went up with the first group. I had perma-grin the whole time.
On our flight we followed Hefner Parkway a little past Lake Hefner and made a big loop toward the east over The Village and back towards the station. We buzzed Quail Springs Mall and I caught myself thinking about all of the times I see a helicopter flying over and thinking to myself how cool it would be to be one of the guys on it...when I saw the people in the parking lot looking up I thought "I AM THAT GUY!"
I took some video and stills with the stations digital camera and made a real cheesy compilation video last year. The quality isn't that good but I watched it again today for the first time in a while and it still makes me smile.

Mediflight Training


I sat next to the pilot so I had a great view. It was the coolest feeling taking off and descending vertically. I studied the pilots moves the whole flight. Several months after the ride I had a dream that I had to fly and land a helicopter. I did pretty good...in my dreams!
My dad worked in an office for a couple of years that was right next to the Addison Airport in the Dallas area. When I was in town I would just sit and watch planes land and takeoff. On rare lucky occassions, I would be there when they were having a helicopter class. One day I went down and asked them how much it costs to get a helicopter pilot license. I don't remember the exact figure, but I do remember being shocked and thinking I would just stick to the plan to get my fixed wing license one of these days.

New Years Eve

In the spirit of posting some older photos I've taken this year, I thought I should at least post some of my favorites. On this past New Years Eve, I was at the house getting ready to have some friends over. I was just about done making my famous guacamole and we got paged to assist Piedmont with a fully involved structure fire. I threw the guacamole in the fridge and took off. I was still on medical and couldn't ride out on the engine so I grabbed my camera and followed our trucks in the chiefs command truck. When I got there, they had contained the fire and were finishing the knockdown. Our guys got assigned to salvage and overhaul on the back side of the building. They had set up some scene lights aimed at the front of the building and when I got around to our guys and saw how the scene lights were illuminating the steam and smoke from the building I knew I had something good. It took some experimenting to get the aperture and shutter right for the effect I was going for. These are some of my favorite firefighting photos I have taken to date....click to enlarge....
I love how these convey an emotion so distinct from most photos of firefighting subjects. Most of the photos I take while fighting fire are dramatic and busy. These seem peaceful, mysterious, and distant. Also, notice the crescent moon in the top of some of the photos.

It's almost hard to believe that there was a literal fight between fire and man shortly before these were taken. I take a lot of photos of the fight, but these are the first where I have been able to catch some of the emotions after the fight...the respectful acceptance of surrender from a worthy adversary.

Destroyed in Seconds (I should work for the Discovery Channel)

I took these back in the fall and sadly I am just getting around to posting them. My parents currently live in Midland, Texas. My dad knows just about everybody down there through his work and when he got word that they were doing a controlled demolition downtown he got permission to get on the roof of a high rise building they do some work in. Later we got word that this was a big deal. I just happened to pick that weekend to drive down and visit the parents and even though I got in after midnight I was up at about 5:30 am to go get in position for a very early morning demolition. While we were making our way through all the security, we saw over 20 people with Discovery Channel shirts on carrying all kinds of camera equipment.
I brought my Nikon D40 and shot some test shots to get the aperture and shutter speed where I wanted it. Then we hung out on the roof and waited for the sirens to sound. The City of Midland tried to turn it into a big event...I guess there isn't too much excitement in Midland. I have to admit, there were more people in the viewing area at ground level than I thought would be there. The sirens sounded and I set my shutter to rapid fire. I think they are really cool.
The first series of explosions went off and they were really loud. You could feel them in your chest. But nothing happened. Even though I have seen these on TV I caught myself thinking that they might have screwed up.Then second series of explosions......and then we went home.

Quik Trip

OK, so I'm a little behind. I guess it was a couple of weeks ago on a Tuesday I had had all I could handle at work. I decided that rather than walk into my bosses office and quit, I should just get out of the office and enjoy what might have been the nicest day of the year. I have been meaning to get down to the Wichita Mountains...I used to spend a lot of time down that way. I told the office I was taking the afternoon off. I drove home, through my camera and a bottle of water into my backpack, filled up my motorcycle, and aimed it for the Wichitas. The weather was perfect for riding and it was a pleasant drive even though it had been a while since I had taken the bike for a long ride. I spent about 3 hours in the Wichita Mountain area hitting all the spots I used to frequent:

Mount Scott

The trailhead to the Narrows and the 40 Foot Hole

Hidden Lake


and the Sonic at the Medicine Park Exit off I40

It was a really fun spur of the moment trip and it helped get through a couple of days I might not have made it through otherwise. There were actually quite a few motorcycles riding around the refuge on a Tuesday afternoon for some reason. At one point I wondered if perhaps i wasn't the only one that just needed to get out of the office.

One funny thing that happened - When I filled up the bike my trip odometer read about 250 miles. I always leave my odometer on the trip meter and try to fill up around 150 miles which is a conservative average of how far I get on a tank around town. For some reason, I obviously didn't reset the trip meter last time I filled up and rather than realizing that I hadn't reset the trip meter, I subconsciously transposed 250 over 150 for my range. I made it just fine to the Wichitas and meant to get gas when I stopped at Sonic but forgot and just jumped on the turnpike and headed back for OKC. When I was about 25 miles north of medicine park m low fuel light came on. I thought to myself "I am way under 250 miles...I must have a leak!" Why that was the first explanation that popped in my head, I don't know. I pulled onto the shoulder and then it hit me...150 NOT 250! My trip meter read 167. Now, I was pretty sure the blinking fuel light meant about 1 gallon left and the solid meant about 1/3 gallon left. It was blinking so I prayed over what fuel I had and hoped to make it to Chickasha. I made it but kicked myself for being so stupid the whole way home.

Here are some more pics from the trip:

Really bright green goo in the creek...fascinated me

DCFD Paparazzi

I couple of weekends ago we (Deer Creek Fire Department) did some extrication training on a Saturday morning. I think it was the hottest day of the whole year! I was on the first team so I spent the rest of training taking pictures with my new D40.
Later that day we got a call to a grass fire. There were plenty of guys around so I let them ride out on the trucks and fight fire, and I just followed with my camera hoping to get some good action shots. Being a firefighter, I could anticipate what they would be doing and I knew exactly where to stand to be in their way...so I did just that trying to be extra obnoxious. I would also get in their business and say things like, "could you pretend like you're doing some work for this picture" or "would you take your shirt off for this one". One of the Oak Cliff firefighters asked where the Deer Creek Paparazzi came from. They got a kick out of it...I think they like the attention.
Here are some links to some of the pics.

Extrication Training

Grass Fire

Starz

I have been meaning to transfer some of my favorite blogs from the site that shall remain nameless. I thought I would start with this one since it does a pretty good job of capturing the strange places my mind goes sometimes (or most of the time):

OK, I love the stars and just gazing up at space and letting it blow my mind, but if you know me very well at all, it will come to know surprise that I place absolutely no confidence in astrology or any weight whatsoever on what my horoscope may say for any particular day. You may think that this has to do with the fact that my faith is instead in the One that created the stars and you would be right. But, I rarely leave things that simple. The horoscope popularity has toned itself down lately, but it still drives me crazy at how it is everywhere. So aside from the fact that God created the stars and your faith would be much better served in Him, lets take a scientific approach.

So what is a sign and how does someone get assigned their sign? Well, it would appear that the ancient Greeks had a heck of a lot of spare time on their hands (especially at night) and thought it would be neat to play a galactic game of connect the dots with all the stars visible from Earth. I can only imagine all the fights that must have taken place at 2 oclock in the morning...It looks like a scorpion. No it doesnt it looks like a ox. Anyway, they somehow came to agree on them some 3 millennia ago and what do you know they stuck. Worked out great for sailors!

Now you know its not good when youre not even to the meat of your argument and things already start to fall apart. You see, the ancient Greeks assigned each of the 13 major constellations a portion of the sky. Yes, I said it right, 13. If you know anything about astrology or been awake for any part of your life, you know that there are only 12 Zodiac signs. What happened to the 13^th sign you ask? I'll tell you what happened. The freakin Babylonians thought it was just too much of an inconvenience to have 13 and decided to nix one. And wouldn't you know it, those stinkin pagans didn't knock out the most obvious choice. No, they went after Ophiuchus the serpent bearer. Heck, the sun only appears against the constellation Scorpius for 7 days, but some knuckle-headed Babylonian pagan thought it better to cut Ophiuchus out and give Scorpius his space. Do you really want to be any part of something where blatant discrimination such as this is going on?

I regress. Anyway, you get assigned your Zodiac sign based on which of the 12 constellations the sun appears against on the date you were born.

Now this is where the good stuff comes in. As it stands this year, the sun will not even appear against the constellation the Zodiac says it should for 326 of the 365 days of the year. So there is an 89% chance that you are a month off on your horoscope. Furthermore, the same chance exists that you were assigned the wrong sign when you were born if you are less than 120 years old (in case you were wondering, if over 120 the probability is 88%) Sure, you may think you are a Virgo, but I say with 89% probability that you are actually a Leo or Libra.

Why the inconsistency? It is called Movement of the Ages. Movement of the ages is an astronomical (not astrological) phenomenon that exists as a result of the Earth not being a perfect sphere. Come now, surely you didn't think the Earth was perfectly round. Imagine a toy top. It seems to spin perfectly strait for a little while but in a short amount of time it starts to wobble about its axis. This is because it is not perfectly symmetrical and the forces acting on it (mainly gravity) point out its lack of perfect roundness by making it wobble. The Earth does the same thing. It wobbles about its axis like a top. The major difference being that it takes the Earth 25,925 years to complete one wobble. But the point is that at some point during a 25,925 year cycle, the sun actually passes through every constellation on any given month.

Yes, I am afraid that means that your Zodiac sign is even more meaningless than the Da Vinci Code.

If nothing else, now you know what a big dork I am and what happens when I can't sleep. Again, probably not a big surprise to those of you that know me well, but hopefully insightful to those of you that dont.