TAKING ONE FOR THE TEAM

Been one of those days for the C-shift Misfits. Wheezy is a little short of run and skills for his EMT-I certification so we had to transfer him up to The Deuce to ride with a preceptor. That led to us getting a fill in from Lucky 13 who ended up being First Lt. Sam Stump. Now, this affected us in a few ways. First, next day (Friday) is Sam's last day on C-shift for a while. He is being moved to Station #8 A-shift as acting Captain taking the place of recently retired Captain Jimmy Renick. Due to the facts of him being an Officer and his leaving the shift next day, I didn't want to assign him to the Medic unit. Here's a shot of Sambo.

Tyrone is still wandering the Highland County mountains in search of the perfect kill. That leaves Opie to ride and he's been on there for the last several days (not to mention they took a beating last night). So...the Ol Capt. bit the bullet. That's right all ye non-believers.... I'M RIDING THE MEDIC. OK, let me ellaborate... I'm out there "DOING IT". Yep, we've seen it all and in just 1/2 a tour. Heres the proof...





Now don't get excited. The box drives a lot easier than the "Cowboy Cadillac". The only reason I'm in the back of the copter is cause they wouldn't let me fly it. And, you have to admit that I look GREAT in my Doctor coat. I know, I know... I didn't have my mask on in the OR but hey, the stash makes for a pretty good filter. I mean come on guys... if it was easy, everybody would do it! Alright, the day hasn't been all about us saving lives, we always manage to squeeze in a little training as well. Today, we got to experience our newest training tool. Our regional gas grill....errr burn building. The latest and greatest. No more real fire, a brand spanking new Class B burn building. Here she is...ain't she a beaut?? More safety features than NASA and the Space Shuttle..Geesh

We basicly ran company evolutions with Ladder/Medic 7 and Battalion 4. Let me tell ya what... Woooooo. Talk about your barn burner! I mean just before those fans kicked on at 500 degrees ... OK OK so it's gonna take some getting used to. At least they have it labeled right..

LMAO...that's the actual label on the building. Anyways, we moved our riding positions around so the boys could get some training from other perspectives. Coon rode the seat and became the Incident Commander while Opie pumped the War Wagon. Both did an excellent job. Here are a few shots from the training...




You may have noticed the "bull horn" located on Coon's Command Board. Well, that's because our brand new radios work REALLY well inside that building. Communication was much better after he started using that thing. LOL. All kidding aside, we had some good hands on training (plus a little "pretend like" on the side) so helmets off to the lead instructor Lt. Tom "Bucket Head" AKA Guts Gherman (and his quality control Officer Plaza)...

Ok, enough of these shananagans, lets move on to some important stuff. New hires. We posted earlier AND FIRST on the 11 new hires for the City. Now Rhett would have you believe that he had the list first by changing his post time and date, BUT...BUT read the comments. He's a fraud....An imposter! We just may sue for copyright infringment and / or Plagiarism (that means you "stole" it PUNK). A cut and paster this guy is. And an insult to every readers intellegence by trying to cover it the way he did. An "arthur" my ASS! Anyway, regardless of where you read it, CONGRATULATIONS again to all of the new hires. And hey, just to PROVE we are the bomb and beat him to all of the "REAL" stories, here's the list of new hires for our Brothers and Sisters out in Roanoke County
Mallic, Meger*, Miller*, Martin, Campbell*, Hefflin and Googin (again, " * " denotes Medics) CONGRATULATIONS to these folks as well and "UP YOURS MIDGET BOY"...gotcha again :-) OK 2 more things real quick. Our Local's President Rodney Jordan and Lt. Steve Jordan from over at #4 A's father is in ICU up at UVA. Keep these brothers and their family in your thoughts and prayers. We also wanted to tell everyone HAPPY THANKSGIVING. We hope each of you enjoy the day and time with family. Keep the brothers and sisters all across this great country who have to pull a tour tomorrow in your thoughts as well. As for you folks out there not on the job...take a moment to stop by your local firehouse and let the guys know you're thinking of them. That's it for tonight... don't eat too much turkey. Everyone stay safe and in the House... see ya on BLACK FRIDAY... peace out! Captain Wines and the boys.

EVERYONE NEEDS A LITTLE TYRONE!

You just gotta love Tyrone. With him in the house, there's never a dull minute. Sometimes that's a good thing, other times it ain't so bad. Today, the boys decided to take matters into their own hands and attempt to suppress his thyroid problem by fretting him into a state of calm. That plus I think they were just trying to get a jump on him and beat him to the punch (usually Tyrone is the one doing the fretting). Anyhow, it's been Tyrones day to be the center of attention. That, along with some other happenings has made today a pretty fun tour. It started with us getting up a few leaves this morning. Tyrone had a nice big pile. I think he was planning on doing a swan dive into them from the bed of the "cowboy Cadillac" but just as he'd get em piled up, Opie would come along with the leaf blower. Just might have saved Tyrones life... or at least a few fractures.
Now, we all know that Tyrone is a little "wired" at times... ok ok.. MOST of the time and I thought we had learned to work around it. Apparently NOT! The one thing we try to avoid is letting him eat sweets. I think I've even issued an order on it. DIDN'T MATTER. The boys juiced him up today. They've done everything but shoot him up with D50. I know you've heard the "you might be a redneck if" jokes. Well, here at station #9, the joke goes a little different. "You've worked in the ghetto to long when..." ???? how about when you make Kool-aid pies. Yep... I said "Kool-aid" pies. At least they made it from our favorite flavor...RED!! So sweet your teeth hurt! Just look what happened when Bugg licked the spoon. Ok, so fretting Tyrone didn't calm him down ANY. The Kool-aid pies only jacked him up worse. So, our only option... buy a new mask and scare the crap out of him...
LMAO...He's still sitting in the corner shaking! But at least he's quiet :-) The rest of the day...just as funny. A tour full of laughs and even one unbelievable event. The well known, famous, master blogger, self proclaimed genius, author, mega web master, paterfamilias Rhett Fleitz himself was left SPEECHLESS... Yep...didn't (couldn't) utter a word! SPEECHLESS! Well after the fact anyways. You see, Todd "multi media" Harris was attempting to talk on a cell phone while utilizing the "redneck hands-free technique" (pinning the phone between his shoulder and ear). Which generally works, just not so well when you're wearing a radio strap across the same shoulder. You guessed it...the radio mic was keyed. Oh yea, and for what seemed like an eternity. Always up in someones business, looking for any hint of a story for his "feel good" "eco-friendly" piece of poo, rag blog / web site, Rhett was in close proximity and just had to add his 2 cents...it came across the air loud and clear.... here's how it went.... #%&@^%!$%*#) church $@^*#*@^^#((&&^%@*&@^% please $@#&&@%*@%#&$!&@%** yes, thank you *#&@#%$^^#(@***@^%%@$#&*$%#^@ I love my job too @*%#&^!$@*%%$#*!&@**#@* that Chief of ours..what a nice guy*#%@^$#*@&%#&^@** gonna have to buy him dinner#$@*&!%@$#(!*@&^#%!$@#**@#!HAHAHaahahahahahahahaha. Every man on the North Battalion was running for their radio or cell phone to notify them. Too late. Afterwards, when the Chief came out to bust a few balls;...errrrr I mean to investigate the matter to assure there was no radio malfunction or possible safety issues involving their portables, Rhett had no rebuttal. NOT A WORD. Quiet as a church mouse. GUILTY! The best part was that we got to witness it. They (Lucky 13) were out hose testing and, since they never get to use any of that "yellow stuff" on the back, they called and asked the Melrose Misfits if we'd come help. The chief even rolled his sleeves up and all the while kept us in tears with his antics over the open mic. (editor's note: Rhett and I are good friends and he knows I'm only poking fun in the above posting. His site is NOT eco-friendly). The shenanigans haven't been all about Tyrone and Lucky 13 today. The boys have even worked on me a little. You see, Wheezy and Coon are testing for promotion to Lieutenant. Our Lts ride the seat when the Captain is off so, in an effort for them to gain some experience, I have been letting them "ride the seat". Today, Wheezy is riding and I'm backwards. Our War Wagon is still sick so we're using a reserve piece. Yesterday, the "Q" siren quit on the reserve. Now, the engine is equipped with an electric siren as well but I CANT STAND hearing a fire truck on a run blowing an ambulance siren. Ughhhhhhhh! I'll stick my head out the window and yell for vehicles to move while blasting the air horn before turning on the "woo woo". Well, Wheezy and Bugg know how much it irks me so.... THEY BLEW IT! I guess they were thinking I can't fit over the dog house and between the seats to get to them. Blowing and laughing all the way. Then....THEN... to top it off, when he keyed the radio to clear us from the incident, he identified us as "Medic 9". See... that's why I hate those woo woo sirens, messed him up so bad he thought we were on a medic truck. Geeeeesh.
Ok, this is getting long, it's late and I'm tired so I'll try to wrap it up. Sorry we missed the post last day. Caught a small job, looked and seemed worse than what it was. I'll tell the full story another day (it's funny)...basically a mattress fire. Here's a shot just before taking up.

One last note is that Gary "Fish" Fisher is back in the States and town. We posted earlier about seeing hits on the blog from Iraq and that we figured them to be either my future son in-law or Fish. Well, he called the station tonight and let us know he's in. He's here for about a week, back to Iraq for about another week, then home for good. We're glad you're back safe and WELCOME HOME brother!
OK, I'm done. Off on 4-day in the morning, back on Saturday. Until then, stay safe and in house. Capt. Wines

C shift is not slacking ... we've been busy!

Day one of our cycle, we're about to eat dinner. Nothing really exciting yet. However last cycle we were pretty busy and unfortunately neglected our blog obligations. So let's use this as a refresher.

Middle day looked like it was going to be great. Beautiful weather, clean truck "it's gonna be a good day tater". Then after lunch we were going to meet with The Greenhouse Hippies, and Lucky 13 to flow a little water. First a quick call to assist an animal control officer, we stopped back by the station to clean the dishes from lunch and plans quickly changed......

the ol'girls alternator gave up! The fun part was getting the war wagon out of the station. Since the house is as old as it is, there's some clearance issues and to raise the cab, or if she needs to be towed, you gotta move her out. It was first decided to push to the front which is down hill. That went fine. Then changed to move her to the back pool in case a reserve was needed while repairs were being preformed. Well to get a war wagon to move up hill you've got to call in reinforcements..... also known as the "Cowboy Cadillac".

and out the door she went.

Now you may be thinking that no truck no training. Nay say we! Quick call to the Chief and Engine 13 arrives at our door. We loaded up and headed out to flow some High Quality H2O.
Company 3 was nice enough to let us pump off their truck. We quickly learned the benefits of high side doors that swing out as opposed to roll up.

After training a few quick back to back alarms while trying to get a reserve and a quite night followed.

On to last day....

The Engine was back in service and still clean as can be... so you guessed it off to flow more water.

Medic 101 came out with us and seemed to enjoy being out of the house without being on a call.

The training went well everyone got a little time on the pump panel. Just as we were taking up 3 Engine showed up to do some training of their own. As soon as we got everything put away... mulch fire near an A/C unit and gas meter. Now with Opie's thumb O.O.S. he was driving the Engine leaving Bugg to ride backwards, and he got to do work. Sure it was only a water can and a little water flowing from a cross lay, but he got to do work son! Look how tired he is.

After getting chased off a roof by squirrel (ask Wheezy to tell ya the story) the night slowed down and off to four day we went. Where a few of us became CHAMPIONS!

That's right practice makes perfect. Not only did 9 House bring home first, but with a little flower power from Winters at the Hippie Hotel. Second place was brought home as well!

That's it for now, if the night picks up we'll make another post. Until next day stay safe!