12 of 12 May 2010 …

May 12, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

Another month down and time for another 12 of 12.

Today was nothing exciting but there were a few things that were out of the normal.

The day started as normal dropping the kids at school which allowed some cache maintenance at my Eden Hills CFS cache (spoiler photo). A stop at the Post Office but the postbox was bare today. The usual drive down to Adelaide and grabbed a photo of the city near Scotch College and apart from the traffic at the roundabout there, it was a good drive in.

A couple of photos of the SA Police HQ going up at the back of the Fire Station and the car park going up in the front.

A visit from Ivar with the proof print for the Competitors Map for this years Scouts Rally SA – good to go. 🙂

Today was the start of the second round of Lung Function Testing for our firefighters. The University of Adelaide researchers brought in their equipment today and we set it up ready for the 6 month study as a follow on study from 2 years ago.

There a few photos of work life with the line up of “fire cars”, coffee time and some reading material.

This afternoon, I caught up with Flipper & Co to give some Travel Bugs which they are going to take to Melbourne on the weekend.

Through the carwash on the way back to the Fire Station and then final photo is “Time to Go Home” as the sun sets with the night shift crews about to begin for the night ………

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Firefighting, Geocaching

10 Years of Geocaching …

May 2, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

After attending the 60th Anniversary of Blackwood CFS at the Blackwood Football Club, it was time to head back down to Adelaide to Celebrate Ten Years of Geocaching.

On 3rd May 2000 the first cache was hidden by Dave Ulmer in the forests of Oregon.

On Monday 8th March 2010 the number of active caches worldwide exceeded one million.

Today saw Adelaide’s chance to celebrate the occasion and 150 cachers met in the South Parklands. Activities this afternoon included the group photo, the obligatory Birthday Cake, face painting for the kids and plenty of time catching up with other cachers.

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Firefighting

2010 SAPES Games Stair Race

May 2, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

What a busy day today. Four things on starting at 8:00 am with the Stair Race at Wakefield House for the SAPES Games.

I was asked to fill in for the organiser back in 2008 and I am still doing it now 3 years later.

This year saw a record entries both in the Stair Sprint and the Full Firefighter Race.

This year also saw a record time set of 1:22 for the 18 story sprint. The previous record was 1:42. 🙂

Home Life

Earthquake in Adelaide ….

April 16, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

How ironic is this world. I have just been over in LA where they had an earthquake down at the Mexican Border, I met with the Orange County Fire Authority and spoke with them about their earthquake procedures, get back home and the local newspaper does an article on the possibility and consequences of an earthquake here – and what happens, we go and have an earthquake.

Tonight around 11:35 pm, we experienced an earthquake of magnitude between 3.2 to 3.9. It wasnt a big one but it certainly shook the house and woke up the kids.

Here are some links to the various monitoring sites:

12 of 12, Home Life, Work Life

April 12 of 12 ….

April 12, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

What to do for this months 12 of 12. A work day and not one that was to be all that exciting – spending the day in Court as an assessor on an Appeals Tribunal. Taking a leaf out of DarrylW4’s book, I decided that I would take photos of anything that happened on my iPhone.

The 12 photos I grabbed for the day are:

Main Road of Blackwood while I checked the post box;
The new Police Station construction at the back of the Fire Station;
The new Car Park being built at the front of the Fire Station;
Walking to the Court Building at Victoria Square;
The Court Building;
Looking out the window towards Victoria Square;
Lunch at the Central Market Arcade;
Driving home on King William Street;
A quick stop at the Thompson Playground (named after my parents);
Looking towards Adelaide from Windy Point Lookout;
Sunset over Glenelg.

Ended up not being too bad of a 12 of 12. See what next month brings. 🙂

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Firefighting, Geocaching, USA 2010

The OC to Ventura County …

April 7, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

My last day in the US this time round was spent visiting Fire Departments at opposite ends of Los Angeles.

The morning was spent with Battalion Chief Mike Ferdig of Orange County Fire Authority at their Headquarters in Irvine. This is my second visit here as I visited last July.

We spoke about the Earthquake Preparedness of the OCFA, given the 7.2 Earthquake of a couple of days ago on the Mexico / Californian border. Their preparedness looked similar to what we were trying to achieve with our Strike Team pre planning. I can see this doubling as earthquake pre-planning as well for us.

We headed out for a bite to eat. The fare of choice was an All American Dog from Jerrys Wood Fired Dogs. Wasn’t too bad at all. Back to HQ to have a look a their Communications / Logistics Trailer and it was time to hit the Freeway.

I had a 150km drive on the I-5 and I-101 to get up to the Ventura County Fire Department at Camarillo. The thing with LA Freeways is that you can be going at 115kph with hundreds of other cars hoping that someone doesn’t get it wrong or you are doing 10kph wishing you were doing 115kph. I was doing both today and ended up being 10 minutes late.

I met with Assistant Chief Vaughan Miller. I had attended a presentation of his at the conference and wanted the enquire more on his work with PPE and hydration. He has given me a lot of usefu information.

It was time to start heading down the coast towards LAX as there was a plane to catch back to Australia. It was a scenic drive with an opportunity to grab a few geocaches as well. It was going well until I hit Santa Monica when the traffic crawled to a stop.

Luckily I could turn off to grab a more direct route to LAX. Arrived in time to drop off the car, grab a bite to eat, check out the duty free then board the 747 back to Australia. I used points to upgrade to Premium Economy which was well worth the extra room.

Farewell to the United States for now ……

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Firefighting, Geocaching, USA 2010

High Desert California ….

April 6, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

Today I had a chance to drive through some of the country that we would normally see alight with wildfires. Taking the I-15 through the Sierra’s to Baker and Death Valley, it was easy to see why the wildfires get so large.

The landscape is so high and steep with access to most areas limited at best, although the areas were very green today due to recent rains, so it will be a while before this burns,

The further you moved towards Las Vegas, the lower the mountains became but they were still steep. It is similar to the Flinders Ranges.

I eventually made it to Baker, home of the World’s Tallest Thermometer and Gateway to Death Valley. The weather today wasn’t that bad with the worst that you would suffer would be a bad sunburn – temperature was 66F.

From here it was time to tackle one of the 3 Geocaching Power Trails. Due to the time of day I tackled the smallest one, the Presidents Trail with 32 caches, each located at the bases of High Voltage power pylons.

While in the area, I met up with Flaglady and BoydChicks, a couple of Californian Geocachers who ended picking up 412 finds in 17.5 hours. I cached with them for a while but had to head back to Los Angeles while they continued on.

$I-15 through the Sierra\'s$

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USA 2010

La Brea Tar Pits

April 5, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

The La Brea Tar Pits is somewhere I have always wanted to visit but all my times in LA, I have never had the opportunity until today.

It was a sunny afternoon on Wiltshire Boulevard and the park was full of a lot of families. It was interesting to hear about the history of the area and how it came to be, even though there was a lot of chances that it would have been lost to progress.

Nearby, even more fossils have been found while workers were excavating for a new car park. The most famous find in that area is “Zed” the mammoth.

After spending a couple of hours there and a couple of caches as well it was a 60km trip down to my hotel at Placentia. This took 2 hours as the I-5 was a car park for most of the way. Gave plenty of opportunity to check emails and twitter as well. 🙂

Camping for the next 2 days at the Residence Inn.

Caches found today:

GCPFPG – The La Brea Tar Pits

GC23J41 – That Black Gooey Smelly Stuff

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USA 2010

Farewell Reno

April 5, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

Reno put on a show when I woke up this morning and looked out the window. There was a coating of snow from the mountains to the carpark.

Last minute packing and down to the airport. Arrived in plenty of time or so I thought until a few Mexican families with about 4 kids each and around 35 suitcases happened in front of me in the queue. Of course they had about 20 of the cases that were overweight and they had to transfer stuff into other cases to get under the 50lb limit.

This was probably a good thing in the end as the check-in girl looked at my 54lb and said don’t worry about putting stuff in the other case. 🙂

We were late getting off the ground – probably due to loading luggage. Took off to the north then a steep curve around and over the mountains all white and into LA not too late at all.

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Geocaching, Skiing, USA 2010

Mt Rose skiing revisited …

April 4, 2010 Scott Leave a comment

After being “slightly” sunburnt and windburnt from yesterday on the slopes, I did the right thing and added some suncreen. I needed not worry as the closer I got to Mt Rose the cloudier it got.

By the time I got to the slopes the wind had picked up and the snow was starting to fall. Despite the conditions, I persisted until 1:00 pm then called it a day when it really started to dump.

It wasn’t the snow so much but the wind which went straight through you. I still enjoyed the skiing I got in but my thighs are telling me different.

One thing I can say about Mt Rose is the staff. They were friendly to regardless of the conditions – this is something the Australian ski field staff could learn.

I headed back down the mountain being chased by large amounts of white stuff falling from the sky. Once down on the plains, the sun appeared but the wind persisted. It gave me a chance to go caching and I picked up another 32 finds.

Back to the hotel to pack the bags, then to find that there had been a number of earthquakes in California. LAX had been closed down to inspect the runways for damage. It will be interesting to see if we get in tomorrow if there are more quakes overnight. There is also up to 18″ of snow forecast for Reno overnight.