Hi. This is my sporadic head's up that this blog is a little experiment I'm conducting as suggested by my friends and family back home in NJ while I attend a Wilderness First Responder, National Park Ranger Training Program, and soon to be added Wild Land Fire Training out in Flagstaff Arizona. I've been here just over 4.5 weeks but it feels like a year already. With less than 11 weeks to go, here is my latest entry.
Tuesday Bluesday
Tuesday is quickly becoming one of my favorite days of the week…nothing to do until about noon which is when I start getting ready for class. I talked to Laura early in the morning and found out she was having a terrible day. Among other things, her father had to go to the hospital due to the presence of blood clots in his leg. It’s days like today that make being out here rough. The latest updates say he’ll be okay but he has to hang in the hospital for a couple days for observation. Keep him in your thoughts.
Prior to the start of class, it was brought to our attention that we’re in store for a very long weekend at the school’s gym. We’ll have our normal PT at 10am, which according to our syllabus involves a 1 mile run, then we’ll be staying at the gym for the start of our class at 1 but instead of ending at 5 we’ll be ending at 7. What will we be doing there you ask? Friday kicks off our exciting final weekend of Defensive Tactics, which ends with us fighting our instructors and then taking our first written/computer exam. That’s kind of a bummer hahaha. What wasn’t a bummer was that we got to meet our class “mascot” today, a Burmese Mountain Dog whose name I didn’t get but it’s apparently Kathy’s dog. Her husband was our instructor today.
I didn’t do a whole lot after class. Throughout the day my fellow classmates talked about cold tomorrow is going to be, somewhere around -30 degrees with the wind chills. The temperatures tonight already started heading that way and the wind was really picking up. For a change of scenery, I did a bit of studying and I read more of our required reading out in the living room. One eerie story involved a cop being summoned to his parents’ house as requested by his father, the reason, his father wanted his son to see him kill himself. YIKES! There’s a story in that book that takes place in NJ, kind of up by Laura’s new crib and it involved a 4Runner. It involved an officer, who looks like he could be related to an old co-worker of mine, whose passenger side approach saved his life. I have only 3 chapters left to read and I’m done with only the…..3rd or 4th book I’ve ever read before in my life.
My brain was tired from the new stimuli that were on the pages of that book so I retired to my room for the night. I love that as outdated as Netflix can be, it gets the new episodes of Spartacus up right after they air on TV! That is quite possibly my favorite show right now…competing for my favorite of all time. The Shield still holds that honor but if I could understand the characters’ names in Spartacus it would be a much closer race. I also watched the Demetri Martin and one of his skits was about which 3 people in the world/history would he want to have dinner with…I fell asleep thinking about who mine would be…still can’t think of any.
Gotta get some rest, long day of freezing my butt off tomorrow.
Night Night.
Baby It’s Cold Outside
Just looking outside I knew today was going to be no good. The week’s worth of snow we were supposed to have was reduced to only a couple of hours that I talked about in my last post, but that didn’t matter with the ripping winds you could hear through the walls of our house. I was super bundled up for PT today, one of the things we were supposed to do was a 20 minute run outside. My hamstring was still super achy from Monday’s sprint so I wasn’t even sure if I’d be running today. When we got my car the thermometer read 2˚. Are you kidding me!?!?!? There’s no way I’m running outside in this….the wind was killer, it was easily -20˚.
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When we got into class we soon found out that we weren’t going to be running outside…that was bit of a relief….or was it. I’ve said it time & time again, I’d rather do sprint training than distance running any day of the week. Well today we got a new routine thrown at us. It’s called AMRAP, As Many Rounds As Possible. Now you can do this with any exercises but for our purposes we were doing pushups, situps, squats, and sprints….for 20 minutes. One round consisted of 5 pushups, 10 situps, 15 squats, and a sprint down the tennis court and back. Considering Mike just threw this together he wasn’t sure how many rounds we’d be able to do but he figured 10 would be a good number…that’s what I got and that was about the average. The first 2 – 3 rounds went relatively smooth but when your gasping for air and you’ve gotta do sit-ups...well let’s just say it’s very tough; it felt like my stomach was a bagpipe and my wheezing was the music coming out of my mouth. After our AMRAP certain members of the class were pulled aside if they failed any part of the PEB last week and Mike gave us some tips on how to improve and then we went and lifted.
We scrambled home, the temperature got up to 5˚ and I think getting all worked up inside and then going out into those temperatures may have proven to be costly later in the day. I had my gym bag packed for a quick change and go back out after class but I soon realized I wouldn’t be making the go back out after class portion of the day. I made a Healthy Choice Café Steamer but could only eat half of it, threw the other half out. Uh oh! The cleaning lady came today but I think she skipped vacuuming my room. Nick wanted to drive separate today because he had gym plans of his own. Fine by me, I got to pump my “Ultimate Gym CD” that I was getting ideas for over the weekend.
Class was interesting today, the topic…Human Relations and Interpersonal Communication…right up my alley. Our instructor was a NAU police officer who is also into this Crossfit craze. As with most of our instructors we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves; today’s exercise had a twist. We had to introduce ourselves and then ask the person next to us a question, before introducing ourselves we had to answer our other neighbor’s question. The kicker, nothing we said had to be truthful and there was a prize for the best question and best response. The questions ranged from political analysis, to the last time you went cow tipping, to how many licks it takes to get to the center of Tootsie Pop. Eric asked me how many 7-Elevens have I been to…he must be a fan of this blog hahahaha. I began my response with a question to the class, are there any 7-Elevens in Flagstaff? My response to his question was 5,600. IDK. Then I got to introduce myself. Kept it serious for a second, I’m from New Jersey, I like playing basketball, I was a semi-pro Texas Hold’em player until I found out we can’t do that as park rangers….then I honed my inner Step Brother. “I work at a college as a janitor, I feel like I’m smarter than everyone in the class, I’ll see an equation on the board and I’ll go ahead and finish it…” at this point the class laughing so much that I can’t talk over them, most of them knew what I was talking about. About 20 seconds later I was able to finish with “my best friend is Ben Affleck. I like doing karate in the garage and making music videos on my dad’s boat”. I followed that up with my question to Josh…”On a scale of 1-26, after today’s PT, how unstoppable do you feel?” Got a couple more laughs and Josh failed to give us a number. I should’ve said…”since you have the same flash drive (which I got b/c I didn’t think anybody else would have anything like it), the same folder, and you’ve adopted my initials….exactly how bad do you want to be me?” When Josh was done he asked Travis “who is the one person in pop culture that he would vomit on”. Travis’ response...me… because I would laugh it off to which I interjected…”why not, Brad already did” hahahahahahahaha.
IRONY – somebody asked Nick if he could have dinner with any 3 people who would they be? Ha! That was on the Demetri Martin episode I watched last night!
The first part of this video was my introduction about myself, excuse the naughty language that follows.
This little exercise took up nearly the entire first hour of class which meant break time. I’m not sure what happened but when we came back from our first break I began feeling super sick. I felt weak, I was fighting the urge to cough and my nose started running. Before the end of class I was starting to sweat. At the end of class I got super bundled up, balaclava and all and made my way back to my car when I was soon joined by Kathy who was making the same trip. She talked to me a bit about how the class was going and asked if it ever got this cold in NJ. It doesn’t. On the way home I saw something else you don’t experience in New Jersey, a dude drive his quad ATV around on the street as if it were a car or a regular motorcycle! This place is so weird. Also while on my way home I called Baby Jimmy because nobody else would appreciate my Step Brothers rendition like he would so it was cool to catch up with him. Just as I got home, Laura called me with an update on her father and I got a cool work story out of her today as well! She’s a hero!
When I got off the phone I started more and more sick but Jane made me feel a little bit better. I walked into the kitchen and she informed me that she thinks I’ll be a great leader one day. I asked her to elaborate and she said something along the lines of I have a way of calming people down and that’s a good leadership trait. She also said that people respect me but not through fear and that I’ll impress superiors down the road. The compliment came out of nowhere but I’ll take it. J
Jane & I both needed to make a grocery store run but it was too cold to go outside, I think there was actually a warning about going outside and we wouldn’t even go out to check the mail. Since I couldn’t go out I made some Ramen and Jane had tofu & spinach and I threw some spinach in with my Ramen. I sat and ate with Jane. She was apprehensive about tomorrow because she was going to court to serve as an interpreter, something she’s never done in court before. She teaches sign language people. I was feeling worse so I headed to bed. I fell asleep around 7 but I woke up throughout the night, feeling like I did that night at Rath’s house…if you recall my very first post. I was shivering like a mad man, even though I was in sweats and under 4 blankets with both the house heat and my heat fan blowing on me. At one point I even said, “I need the power of Indy” as I put the Indy blanket on closest to me. I took all kinds of different meds; something broke the apparent fever as I went from being super cold to burning hot. I continued to cough all night and go in and out of sleeping and waking up.
During one of my being awake spells I checked out the site where we find the ranger jobs and I took a shot by searching for New Jersey as the location. Wouldn’t you know it, the very job that I applied for that said I needed to have a Seasonal Law Enforcement Type II Certificate which brought me out to Arizona, the same job that I was so mad at myself for missing the application cutoff date when I finally got settled out here, reopened earlier in the day. SCORE! I was so excited that I had to text Laura…which I immediately felt bad for considering it was 2:30am back east. Upon further review, one of the requirements to be considered for the position is having a Wild Land Fire (fighting) certification. This is an optional training that NAU offers and most of the ranger class is taking and its only 4 days long. The only drawback is it’s the first 4 days of Spring Break which is when Laura was planning on coming out to visit. Bummer. On the bright side, I’ll be gaining 3 certifications that make me more like Superman in just 4 months…and I’ll still have 3 days off for Spring Break but before I get carried away I had to make sure there was room left in the class.
At any rate, I’ll talk to Laura about that tomorrow.
I Can’t Be Sick
There isn’t much to report about today. I woke up feeling super hot and dry at some points and then freezing, coughing, and sneezing at other times. At one point I woke up and saw I had an e-mail from this job site regarding one of the parks I applied to, the one in Manassas, Virginia. As it turns out I didn’t score high enough on my self-assessment questionnaire which is funny because just last night I was telling Laura that I thought I’d score high on it because of my experience in the security field and as a park ranger. This was one of my feeler jobs so I wasn’t too broken up. The goal is a season in NJ and then full-time in Philly.
I got out of bed around 8 and tried taking a long hot shower, that’s when I got my first nosebleed in over a year! It just came out of nowhere. I thought the shower would make me feel a little better but when I got out I was colder than ever so I jumped into some more sweats and buried myself in bed. I couldn’t be the second guy to miss class due to illness and then ask somebody to Skype me in…we use our laptops as notebooks in class. I wanted to sleep so bad but it was a struggle at first. I slept until 1130 and I felt like I could make it through class. Good thing I did because another one of my classmates sent out an e-mail saying he would be absent and requested a classroom Skype session. I hope my going to class doesn’t mess me up for this action packed weekend.
I got out of bed and informed Nick I was sick, he wanted to drive separately so he doesn’t catch the illness that is plaguing the class. I made a turkey sandwich but could only eat half of it and just as I was about to leave early for class my nose started bleeding again. Right then and there I almost “called out” but I sucked it up and made my way to class. It was much warmer today than yesterday so since I felt super hot, I drove to class with my windows down. I tried my best to avoid everybody in class, nobody wants to be sick. If I talked near somebody, I covered my mouth. Each break I went into the bathroom and tried coughing and spitting up all of this grossness. It was in the bathroom that I noticed just how sick I was. I untucked my shirt and saw that I had sweated through not on my t-shirt but my uniform shirt as well. FEVER! It was a strange fever because I didn’t feel hot at all but I sure was sweating.
We handed in our resumes for our first test grade and I thought I’d get a 100% for sure considering I submitted my resume last week so it would look good for these jobs I’m applying to and I made the corrections Kathy suggested. There were some items I had questions about but she didn’t correct them so I figured they were good. Turns out, they weren’t. I got 47/50. The grade doesn’t matter because I’m not a credit student but still, I handed this in early for this purpose. Our instructor today is the kind of guy that likes to just randomly pick people to participate in class and my superior psychic/behavior analysis skills were sharp today. I listed in my brain the people he would pick on and I nailed every one of them in order…including myself. Due to my illness, the class seemed to drag even more and at some points I felt like I was going to have to leave. My coughing had to annoy the class and by the end of the class my nose was running. I was remedying that situation when during one of my instructor’s stories he said one of the guys in the story was my size…plus 70lbs. Everyone turned and looked at me mopping up the snot coming out of my nose, the first time it ran all class. I was miserable. During one of the breaks Laura texted me and told me she got “house warming” package I sent her. Finally! It only took 2 weeks! I also received word that the Wild Land Fire Course is only half full. Those made me feel a little better.
After class I decided I was going to brave the grocery store and enhance my medicine bag. Remembering Jane needed cornmeal, I was going to just pick it up for her even though I figured she would’ve picked it up after work. Guess who I saw leaving the Safeway parking lot as I was pulling in. You guessed it, Mama Jane! Am I psychic or what? Remember back when I used to say I always feel like I’m going to run into somebody I know when I’m out at places. Well if you don’t count my passing Jane in the parking lot then you have to count my running into Arkansas inside the store! Hahaha. I stocked up on some of the healthy foods that Mike told us get, almonds, avocado, chocolate milk, etc. picked up some meds, and grabbed a rotisserie chicken for dinner….I’m addicted. First time I spent money in a week! When I came home I had a package on the living room table...MORE AUNT PAM COOKIES! Woo Hoo!!!! Nick was making his dinner already and asked if I wanted some mac & cheese. Boy did I! We combined powers once again. We live on Bird’s Eye frozen veggies but we always get the mix bag that has carrots. Nick hates carrots so I just got broccoli..always looking out for that roomie of mine.
Dinner was awesome, got some laundry going. Nick left to go do some studying. I printed out the section of our notes that our written test will be on on Sunday and began watching Step Brothers. Love that movie.
We got a very busy weekend ahead of us and then after that there’s only 5 days until we have a weekend off. We’ll be learning some MMA tactics, similar to those we covered at the MCPS Academy I’m sure. We’ll be pushed to the brink of exhaustion and then forced to fight for our lives. Finally, we’ll be tested on all of it. Catching the Super Bowl at Granny’s Closet on Sunday is sounding very good right about now.
GO STEELERS!!!!!!
Some News From Home
Many of the readers are well aware that every summer we have fundraiser in memory of my mom at the Lakewood BlueClaws. The past two years this event was held on 4th of July Weekend. Well you will all be pleased to know that this year's game will not be held on 4th of July Weekend, the game was moved back to July 8th. You now have 6 months to coordinate your plans to be there hahaha.
MOUNT UP!!!
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