Corridor 9

I was driving up to Louisville to pick up Abby for her fall break yesterday when I heard this song for the first time. Over the past few years I have bought quite a few new Christian Cd’s to listen to. Most of them are a bit harder than the usual contemporary Christian music you hear on the radio. Quite simply, if I can find a musical style that I like without sacrificing the Christianity in the music, I’m going to listen to the most alternative, electronic, and rocking Christian music I can.

Because of this, I’ve got quite a few Cd’s that I’ve not been able to listen to in their entirety yet. Seven Places Lonely For the Last Time is just one of these Cd’s. However, I popped it into the CD player on the trip yesterday and heard this one song that had me in tears by the second line.

Now I know some of you out there already think I’m too emotional, and there are probably some of you who don’t even have a clue. However, I want you to listen to this song. Don’t just hear it, but actually listen to whats being said. Let the words float through your mind and realize what happened solely for you. Realize how this affects your life, and realize what true love is.

Common sense comes in all forms. So does the lack thereof.

We were called today around 7:30 AM and told to report downtown at 9:00 AM for training. Naturally we donned out dress shirts and made our way to Station 1. The topic was extrication, and the information presented in the class portion was both informative and useful. The problem arose when we packed up and headed to Station 3 for the practical portion.

Let me give a background on the instructors. They are very knowledgeable people. However, they all work for a company called WSF which sells firefighting equipment and repairs our trucks when something happens. They brought Phoenix hydraulic equipment for us to use during the class. Therein lies the problem; If we’re training, we should be using our gear. We should learn the techniques using the equipment we are knowledgeable with and have on hand when we arrive at a scene. Why were we using Phoenix gear instead of the Amkus equipment we have?

It all boils down to sales, and the fact that this class was nothing more than a glorified sales pitch. In a way this was very informative. We learned that the Phoenix gear they brought is definitely inferior to our Amkus gear in power.

I would have been delighted to train with our gear, to learn techniques that we may not have known before, but the fact that we were training in 48F temperatures with hard pouring rain simply because of a sales pitch seems way beyond the point of common sense.

I’ve added some wonderful new links to the list on the left. SteepandCheap specializes in backpacking gear while Woot sells just about anything. Both of these sites operate with mass discounted items. The deal is that they buy a mass quantity of one specific product which allows them to pass the discounts on to the end user. Take a look and see if they have what you want.

Yesterday seemed like ordinary, run of the mill day just like any other. Sometimes things don’t turn out as they seem though.

I was sitting at my desk doing bills as usual around payday. After figuring out what we needed to pay this week, and figuring out how much we had left, I realized that I needed to make out a new monthly budget. I started figuring up our monthly expenses and writing them down when I was washed over with joy. I immediately arose and walked over to Kristie to share some of the joy. At first I’m sure she thought I was nutz, but it was simply too much for me to contain. I just never thought that writing House Payment instead of Rent would feel so good.

Ok guys… after surfing the web today, I came across this little beauty on YouTube. I simply had to put this on C9.

You’ll hear him yell “Come on man”, as he’s waiting for water. This is one of the most frustrating times we have. There simply isn’t anything you can do but stand there and wait, feeling helpless. There isn’t much interior action on this one due to the massive amount of flames coming from this fully involved structure. It’s more of a defensive tactic. I would have liked to see them get inside after the initial knockdown, but I found another helmet cam that is a bit better also on YouTube. Feel free to check out a different approach in this Interior Firefighting video.

You can bet I’m going to be looking at one of these beauties for my own helmet!

Steve Sergeant from the WildeBeat, an internet podcast about hiking and backpacking, interviewed me about a month ago regarding my BGT test series of the Six Moon Designs Gatewood Cape.

You can listen to this ~10 minute broadcast here.
http://www.wildebeat.net/index.cgi/shows/gear/E060.html

Ok guys… here’s the prospective trail map.

I’ve setup routes for between 4 and 8 nights of camping.
4 Nights: Start NF Gap, Mount Collins, Double Spring Gap, Derrick Knob, Spence Field, Hike Out.
5 Nights: Start NF Gap, Mount Collins, Double Spring Gap, Silers Bald, Derrick Knob, Spence Field, Hike Out.
6 Nights: Start NF Gap, Mount Collins, Double Spring Gap, Silers Bald, Derrick Knob, Spence Field, Campsite 10, Hike Out.
7 Nights: Start NF Gap, Mount Collins, Double Spring Gap, Silers Bald, Derrick Knob, Spence Field, Mollies Ridge, Campsite 10, Hike Out.
8 Nights: Start NF Gap, Mount Collins, Double Spring Gap, Silers Bald, Derrick Knob, Spence Field, Mollies Ridge, Campsite 9, Campsite 18, Hike Out.

I’ll keep you updated on the progress.

With the upcomming cold weather, my hiking season is going to hit full swing. I’m looking forward to spending more time out in the woods than I have in the past few years now that I have a nice large plot of land behind my house in which I can slip out for an overnighter.

I’ve also been on a warpath about filing BGT applications for new gear. In the last 2 weeks I’ve filed almost a dozen applications. I’ve even been accepted for a new fleece jacket by Red Ledge. The Men’s Covert Fleece Jacket should be shipping anytime soon.

In addition, I’ve begun planning for a winter hike to GSMNP . I’d like to go sometime in January or February when the snowfall is the deepest. Anyone want to join me?

Ok all…

So I’ve been procrastinating on posting this for quite a while now. Things have been in the works for a over a month now, I guess I should let the majority of you in on our little secret.

We finally bought a house! Today at 9:00 am EDT we closed on our new house. We’ve been looking forward to this for the past few weeks and are quite ecstatic to finally have our own piece of property.

I got so tired of paying out the money that we were simply to rent somewhere. So 2 months ago we decided it was finally time to start looking for our own place. We initially started the process of buying a 3BR, 1BA place in the middle of town, but that fell through. After having the appraisal and home inspection, we found that there were termites in the main support beam. We both decided we didn’t want to have to deal with that on our first house, so we dropped it. Shortly thereafter another house came on the market. Tammie, our Realtor, called Kristie and described how perfect it would be for us. Unfortunately at the time, it was out of our price range. We had talked about purchasing a lower cost home and living there a few years before selling it to buy what we wanted. God had his hand in this all along though. As we were canceling the deal on the first house, we were recommended to try an different mortgage company. Tammie thought that if we can get a better deal on our mortgage, then maybe we could slide into this other house. In the end, the new mortgage company saved us thousands by lowering our interest rate over 2.5% below the other companies best rate! Kristie and I finagled bills and payment options and finally decided that we would rather be a bit tight for a year as opposed to buying something we really didn’t want.

In the end, we feel that God blessed us more than we could ever imagine! Here are a few pictures of the new house. Once we are inside, I’ll upload more so you can see the layout of the place.