What’s up readers? If this your first time reading the Triple F, please allow me to explain what this all is…sorry if you’ve read this sort of intro before haha. What you’re reading is a little experiment my friends and family back home suggested I do; write about my time out in Flagstaff, Arizona while I attend a Wilderness First Responder course, Park Ranger Training Program, and a Wildland Firefighter Course in hopes of landing a seasonal (at least) law enforcement park ranger job with the National Park Service after I graduate on April 22nd. I’ve been here just under 7 weeks, which at times feels like 7 months, and this blog is just my way of letting everybody back home know that I’m alive. Thanks for reading. Enjoy.
Test Week Continues
I’ve taken the past few days off from The Triple F because this crazy week of testing took over all of my time. Tuesday morning was a very nice break. I slept in, applied to another park, and then went to class. Our instructor today was a hell of a guy. At first he made it look like we were going to do the same old annoying go around the room and introduce ourselves which at this point, I could probably introduce everybody in the class to these instructors and safe everybody some time. This instructor wanted as much to do with this as we did, he asked one person who they are and why they’re here and then said “now that we’re all formally introduced, we can begin.” You could see the relief on everybody’s face.
This dude really made you think, that’s all I can really say about him. That and he sort of extended the little introduction game, whenever he called on you he asked what part of your state you’re from. When he called on me I got, “What parking lot in New Jersey are you from?” hahahahahaha. The guy was very cool and he was only the second 1-2 day instructor to give us homework. The homework prepped us for a mock trial.
Nick & I wanted to finish our grocery shopping that we cut short for a study session last night so we headed back to Safeway. We weren’t going to be there long since we got most of what we wanted to get done the night before, which was good because most of the rest of the class jumped on the study buddy boat and there was another study session called to order. Normally I just cram all of my studying into the night before a test but considering the director of our program dubbed this “the hardest test of the semester”, I figured it was worth the three nights of studying. The much larger group met in the library tonight and the library was HUGE!
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| They sell this at Safeway. I didn't buy any...just saying |
When we found the group, two of the guys started handing out several sheets of paper…what the heck is this? It was the handy dandy answers to the study guide I worked on with some buds the night before and typed out for the 6 of us that worked on it. Next thing I knew I was being offered beers and man hugs for supplying such a useful tool. Don’t worry I didn’t take all the credit. I informed everybody it was a group effort. Nobody made good on the hugs or beers though hahahaha. We were in the library for 4 hours which was longer than the amount of time I spent in the library through 4 years of college combined.
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| Some of the Unstoppables studying thanks to my handy dandy study guide |
It was Wednesday again and that meant one thing for the morning, PT. I’ve been feeling slightly better lately and I was tired of missing the group running portions of the class so I decided I was going to push myself through the warm-ups and see what I could from there. I went through the warm-ups but I was hurting bad, not as bad as I was when this bronchitis first started kicking my ass, but not a whole lot better either. I drank almost my entire 32oz bottle of water after the warm-ups so I figured it not be best to take part in the 1.5 run outside in the cold today…considering I still had 3 days left with my medicine…so I was back on the exercise bike with some of the other walking wounded while the rest of the class went outside for the run. Trying to build myself up, I did a very brisk walk on the treadmill for 5 minutes then we all headed in to do some lifting. I spent the transition period between PT & class re-reading our homework so I could be prepared for our mock trial and then it was time for class.
Today’s class was going to start with a little bit of a scenario, 2 officers and 2 “suspects” involved in a vehicle stop…..something we haven’t even come close to doing yet. The instructor left the classroom to ready the suspects and left it up to the class to select 2 “good” officers. Nobody volunteered or nominated anybody so, well aware that I’d be joining him, I picked on my buddy Jake because he’s the only one in the class that already has a job. (MORE ON THAT LATER!) I volunteered Jake, he got to pick his partner…it was me. I’m starting to not care about being in front of people so much anymore and I looked at it as…we’d be the sacrificial lambs and then we’d be left alone for the rest of the class. The scene was all set, we began our role playing which started with my man made siren noise, Jake was the contact officer & I was the cover officer.
As we went along, the factors of the scenario kept changing, and it was up to the class tell us what they wanted us to do next. See…volunteering wasn’t so bad after all now was it? We initiated everything, got stuck, and then it was up to the class to do everything else. I was up in front of the class for over an hour and a half…that’s very different considering I sit in the back/on the top row of the class room. When it came time for the mock trial, my side of the room won. The cool thing about the exercise was that we were working with an actual case our instructor was involved in. Seeing the different ways this legal stuff can pan out really had me wishing I went to law school right out of college….maybe when I retire from the National Park Service.
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| I'm all the way off to the left...looking like I understand what is being said. Thanks Nick $ |
My brain was fried after class and I was too tired to study. I had to try to get in touch with the doctor’s office to square away this crazy insurance deal but I get out of class too late and they were closed for the day. Nick & I got home and made some spaghetti…which I’ve been craving for weeks. Whole grain spaghetti just doesn’t taste the same. We cooked some my ground turkey and threw into the sauce and then bikkitybam-alakazaam, another nice healthy dinner was prepared, served, and eaten by Jerzinois. I didn’t care about studying anymore; all I wanted to do is sleep. My head was killing me and I think these anti-biotics are making me worse so I just wanted to rest and take it easy. I decided to watch the newest episode of Glee on Hulu real quick…it was awful because I hate Justin Bieber but 2 of the girls sang a song from Rent and that was bad ass. Head still pounding but I went over the review sheet again. I told myself if I finished it that I would reward myself with a shower and then bed. I showered and jumped in bed but I couldn’t sleep. Considering I haven’t heard back from any of these parks yet (MORE ON THAT STILL LATER!), I decided I was going to look into becoming a cast member on Saturday Night Live! Could you imagine that? There wasn’t much help on SNL’s website so I eventually crashed for the night.
Hardest Test. Girls, Boys, & Their Toys
I woke up around 6:30 and got ready for our longest day of this week complete with a bowl of cereal for breakfast and 2 more runs with the study guide. Cereal is good, I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve had breakfast since coming out here…it was great. The test started at 8 but if we felt we needed more time then we could’ve gone in at 730…Nick & I headed in for 8…and most of the class was already there. The computers in the lab take forever to load up and move so slowly…it sucks. Some of the questions are very tricky on these tests, many of the topics weren’t on the study guide, and others weren’t even covered in class. Needless to say I was just happy to pass (I’m a none credit student so I can only either pass or fail). Our director laughed at my reaction when she told me my grade, then I headed up to the classroom for our first of 2 new topics in our looonnng day of class. Fortunately today was the fun stuff! We were introduced to explosives in the morning and then after lunch we began familiarizing ourselves with our firearms and these two instructors were the best yet…but that might be just because of the topics they were covering. Toys, as some people might call them, but they are anything but…duh.
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| I had lunch in the cafeteria (The DuB) today, this was on all of the tables advertising that America's second least funniest stand up comics is coming to NAU on March 5th. We have the range that day but I might want to check it out. |
I mentioned in my last post that I’ve always been a little nervous about handling guns, yet I never get nervous when others around me have them….weird. We bring our laptops into class and take notes on Word which we safe and turn in for a grade twice a semester but something told me that I should keep my laptop away and use a pen & pad to take notes…apparently the instructor felt the same way as he told everybody to put their laptops away as soon as he got in the class. I’ve also said this before but my friend Eric is a NPS ranger and the last time I went down to see him in Virginia, he spent half a day familiarizing me with the same safety standards, nomenclature, actions, and cleaning of the firearms that our instructor was going over with us today. Going over everything made me feel comfortable instantly and I immediately wished I had a bunch of guns of my own, but that much tougher to do in NJ/NY than anywhere else really so that’ll have to wait.
Funny thing about today’s class, I’m (apparently) the designated big guy of the class for whenever examples are required. Well the instructor tried to make an example out of me today and it didn’t work hahaha. He called me to the front of the class and had me stand with our training pistol as if I were shooting at the range. The point of the example was to show everybody that even big guys flinch when shooting a gun. I held the gun “down range” (pointed toward the window) and the instructor yelled “bang” as he hit my hands, mimicking the recoiling of the pistol. He did it over and over again and my hands moved with his, when it came time to prove his point…he yelled “bang” but didn’t hit my hands…and they didn’t move. He jokingly yelled me at me to get the hell out of there and to go sit down. When he explained that his experiment failed, he point to me and said I suck…hahahahahahaha.
Nick wanted to have a little dinner date tonight so we invited Travis over. When I got home I saw that my sister sent me my mail from home, the first piece of mail I’ve gotten in like 3 weeks! I guess I started off hot and then just cooled off as far as getting mail goes. L Two cool things were in the envelope, my Eastbay catalog that has a Kobe Bryant ad with the caption “Be Unstoppable” and a copy of Maureen’s wedding video that I’ve been waiting to see since I left the hotel the day after all of the festivities. For dinner tonight Nick cooked some brats, I made sweet corn on the cob, and Travis made his famous pasta/egg salad and we munched on chips…it was like a summer BBQ. I think I’ll keep Travis around, he doesn’t get tired of my humor and he thinks I should go into some form of entertainment. My stuttering, mumbling, rapid eye twitching self may have missed my calling…I wonder if the line’s still busy. The three of us hung out sharing our thoughts and stories about the class so far, how nervous we are about the possibility of not getting jobs (almost time), and just hung out acting like dudes. At one point, all 3 of us were on our phones with our favorite ladies from home…I thought that was comical.
After Travis left I began converting my paper notes to my electronic notes, including making pictures of the firearms and labeling their parts in MS Paint. I was too pumped to put it off any longer so I put the notes away and popped in the wedding video. You couldn’t pry the smile from my face; I was so happy seeing most of my home peoples. The wedding was arguably the best wedding of all time, I only left the dance floor when DJ Shermy Sherm instructed us too (yes people I CAN dance…well…ish) and when I did I posted up at the bar, whenever somebody would go up for a drink I’d make them do a shot with me and then it was back to the dance floor. That marks like only the 4th or 5th time I drank last year but kid sister’s wedding calls for the bringing out of everybody’s favorite…Drunk Jeff. The video even has me toasting the cameraman hahahahahaha.
Good times. Goodnight.
Kick Starting The Unstoppable
After recapping the program with Travis & Nick last night I didn’t care how I felt today, I was doing everything in PT this morning. Thinking the pills were out to get me, I saved them for lunch instead of taking it in the morning thus making me feel even worse when we go to PT. Mike doesn’t have the other class on Friday’s so we get all of his attention which means he runs us through warm-up exercises, one right after the other. He threw in 4 laps around the tennis courts which I think was the most we’ve done and about half the class dogged it by only doing 2.5 or 3 laps then stood around for whatever he had next, not me, I finished that shit by myself while he was giving a lecture. I knew we were working on our agility test today but he always manages to throw something at us in between our main exercise for the day and then lifting. That something was an ass kicking team workout consisting of 5 stations…hell of a day for me to make my comeback after not running for over 2 weeks. I haven’t been able to run in over 2 weeks but that didn’t hurt my agility run time…if only I could get the pivot and change of direction down I’d be smoking that course. Then it was on to this station workout.
I had a pretty solid team, if you were using us to field a basketball or football team. We were easily the biggest team of the class so we knew it was going to be interesting. The 5 stations consisted of 5 down & backs of what was the equivalent of a full court basketball court, burpees where you had to jump over one of those aerobic steps things, jumping rope, box jumps, and yes a station for resting. One member from each team starts at a station and does that exercise until they are tagged out. The sprinter is the pace setter and with the exception of the sprints, everybody counts their reps at each station and the next teammate picks up at that number…total number at the end wins. Like just about everybody in the class, I thought this was a race. I knew my strength would be in the sprints so I started there. 3…2…1…GO! I flew out of the gate, smoking the other 4 runners. People that weren’t even on my team and were at other stations were cheering for me and that caused Mike to take notice, which probably helped me win points in something because I know he probably thinks I’m a wuss for not sucking up the fact that I couldn’t breathe the past two weeks. I was gassed by the 4th down and back and some of the other runners caught up to me and we tagged our teammates on the burpees at the same time. Burpees suck and I was already gassed from the initial sprints. I only added like 13 or 14 to our 18 and then moved to jump rope. I had a hell of a pace going and I only stopped it to catch my breath. When I went to box jumps, all of the grossness that was in my throat & chest decided it was time to make an appearance and I spit a lot of it up in the corner. I’m very good at box jumps too I might add but I was so tired I could only rattle off a bunch sporadically. When I was tagged out of the box jumps it was time for the rest station…so I took my time….trying to catch my breath and drink some water…totally forgot I had to tag the next sprinter so he could start….whoops! We got through 1 cycle in about 8 minutes.
Mike told us we had 20 minutes to do this so I thought we were good…if it were a race we came in like 2nd or 3rd because I forgot to tag Curtis right away. Oh no! We were supposed to be doing this for 20 minutes and see how many reps of each station we could do….nobody realized that. I made it through every station once more and I wanted to drop. Here’s the cool thing about this little exercise…it was supposed to be a competitive, team sport atmosphere, but we built our opponents up as we went. During the sprints we would high five each other as we passed each other, we would try to get each other to keep pace while we were doing the box jumps, and throughout the whole thing…everybody kept checking on each other to make sure they were alright, especially me with my breathing. When all was said and done, I think my team came in 3rd or 4th out of 5 teams. Before we started, Mike told us that somebody has puked in the classes before ours…none of us puked! We only had about 15 minutes left to lift and that was lame, Stan & I only got 3 sets of chest flies in and then we had to leave.
HERE IT IS. At the beginning of class today, a representative from the NPS addressed the class regarding our job application process. Jake, the only 1 with a job, will be returning to his old park where being a law enforcement ranger will be a promotion for him…he didn’t have to go through this website that we all use to find and apply to the national park jobs. Well due to the massive amounts of students not getting “referred” to a park’s hiring list, some investigation took place. Nobody knows for sure right now but there’s a great chance that there has been some computer error messing up the applications, or scores from the applications, thus negatively impacting the students applying to these jobs. It turns out that it’s just the students in my program but the ones in the programs across the country. I’m not sure if this has affected me or not. I’ve applied to about a dozen parks since I’ve been out here and only one has gotten back to me, and it was with the “not referred” e-mail. I’d like to think that it’s taking so long because they are carefully considering me for the positions and are contacting everybody they need to contact so that I can get in there. This not knowing shit is going on way too long. I know I’ve got plenty of experience and everything else they are looking for so what gives? Among other things going on in my head, this is the longest I’ve ever gone without working…but how much longer after I graduate will it be before I’m working again??? I might have to look a little harder for a way to get on SNL! Maybe I should start by watching the show.
Back to class, yesterday we learned about our sidearms, today we learned about shotguns. The lecture was much shorter than yesterdays but very informative as I’ve had far less experience working with shotguns than I have with pistols. We broke off into pairs and took turns loading, unloading, & field stripping the shotgun. My partner Eric named our shotgun the Valwardenator. Hahahaha. After a few minutes with the shotgun, we took our 3rd test of the week…the firearms test. I got a 96. Go me. These two elements of the class took only 2 hours and it was believed that we were to be done after that…wrong again! I spent the last 2 hours of class learning about one of the forms necessary for employment as a Federal Security Officer. It took 2 hours to learn about the form but it’ll probably take two days to fill it out. It’s very inclusive and you have to go back 10 years, or to your 18th bday, and include everywhere you lived and worked and there can’t be any gaps in time. You have to give vital information about your family members and other descriptive elements that one would encounter in a thorough background investigation.
At the end of the class, it seemed like the class was getting split up into groups for dinner plans that night. It sounded like a bunch of people were going out for sushi, some of us more manly men went to Buffalo Wild Wings. It was pretty good, not as good as the ones in NJ but it’ll do. We were happy it was Friday but we knew we couldn’t celebrate too much…we have another early & long weekend ahead of us. We’ll be meeting on campus at 7o’clock on Saturday and carpooling down to Sedona PD’s shooting range for a chance to apply what we’ve learned the past two days. The crappy thing is it’s supposed to be worst weekend, weather wise, so far this year. By tomorrow night we’re supposed to have over a foot of snow in Flagstaff. Looks like NJ’s weather finally made the trip out to catch up to me. Ironically, it was nearly 70 back home today. We like flip-flopped weather or something. Due to the bad weather, I may be staying in a hotel room in Sedona tomorrow…pretty cool ey? NOT!!!
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| Jake & Curtis...some of the dudes that made it out to BWW |
Wish me Luck!
Flagstaff Observations
Weird Dogs – there’s been something strange about every dog I’ve seen out here in Flagstaff, none of them are like normal dogs. They are like hybrid mixtures of other dogs or they are just flat out ugly. They’re wooly or scraggily/abused type looking things. Some of them could pass for wolves, others for bears. Aside from that one Siberian Husky that was staring me down with its head out the window that one day, I haven’t seen one normal breed of dog out here. Many ugly/ scary creatures…and that’s coming from one of the biggest animal lovers that many of you know.
Legit Hoops – every now & again when we head home from class we pass signs in the parking lot that read “NAU Basketball Parking”. I still love playing hoops but I’ve never stopped to check out a game. I was going to the other night but we had our test the next day. So I decided to look up the team’s schedule online and they actually play some notable schools…and they hang with them. They lost to both USC & Arizona by a combined 13pts, they got crushed by Alabama State, and the only other two teams I’ve ever heard of are Creighton & Air Force. There’s only 1 more home game left, March 2nd against Portland State, so I hope I remember and I’m able to go to it.
MOUNT UP!!!
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