I think my head hit the pillow and the alarm went off straight away – well it seemed like it. Up at 7:00am, showered then headed downstairs to grab a coffee and muffin then to the Registration Desk and off to Day 1 of the S-330 Strike Team Leaders course.

The course is being run by Chief Michael Brown, Captain Steve Alcorn and Isaac Powning all from North Lake Tahoe Fire District. The mix of the class is a lot of Nevada and Californian personnel with some from other States and myself and another from Australia.

The course is a lot different from the S-215 I did a couple of years ago. This is more on the administrative role of a Strike Team Leader rather than operational firefighting role. It certainly shows the different approach to wildfires between the US and Australia.

Once the day had finished it was time to explore the local area, to find a store for supplies and of course some caches.

At the southern end of the hotel carpark is Reno Fire Department Station #21 which has a interesting engine room design to allow for the snow to fall off.

Headed south finding one store which ended up being an Indian store (of the sub continent variety) so they didn’t have the usual staples, so kept walking and found a Sak n’ Save which is similar to a supermarket back home.

A couple of bags of stuff later and it was the long walk back, when a woman stopped and asked directions to the Grand Sierra, which was lucky as it was about the only place I knew so I got a ride back to the hotel.

Managed to grab 7 caches today including a couple of the LPC’s (Lamp Post Caches) and find number 2400. Total distance for the walk was 6 km today.

Caches found:

GC1X93A – light it up

GC12DN4 – Movie Title Series #5

GC1Y40R – Cache Challenge

GC12Y5E – Let’s all Learn to Geocache

GC17DDDX – Airport Square

GC1QM09 – WWJEat6

GC18TDK – Another Fast Find

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I have been given the opportunity to get back to the US to attend the 2010 Wildland Urban Interface Conference in Reno Nevada.

The trip from home to hotel was to be 31 hours with 17.5 hours of that in the air. The biggest wait was to be in LAX for around 6 hours.

Friday night and I got a call from Qantas saying that my Sydney leg was delayed and that I had been placed on a domestic flight at a later time. This suited me as I got to have an extra hours sleep. 🙂 I later found out that the flight had been cancelled and not delayed.

The leg to Sydney was uneventful and it was off the plane, through Customs and Immigration and nearly straight on the plane for the LA leg. We were delayed from takeoff as they were still refuelling. No problems with that – dont want to run out of fuel over the Pacific anywhere.

The flight was like riding a train in the A380 until 4 hours in when we started flying over tropical storms and it was roller coaster for about 45 minutes.

Needless to say it was hard to get any sleep after that with a few more bumps along the way. I probably got about 2 hours in total. And besides I was travelling cattle class this time. 🙁

Even though leaving late, we managed to get in early to LAX – not really what I wanted because of the wait I had before my next flight. The plane had a skycam on the TV which brought in images from a camera on the tail. I took photos of the takeoff, landing and sunrise – Cool.

The Customs and Immigration queue only took about 1/2 an hour and both my bags were there. I then rechecked my bags for the Reno leg wondering if I would see them again.

It was out into the real world to kill some time. First stop was Radioshack to get a pre-paid phone and datacard. No nasty data surprises this trip. 😉

Some lunch at Starbucks and then time for some caches in the local area before heading back to the airport.

Caches found were:

GCGDTF – Pushing Tin LAX

GC1DJJR – One Hour Pancakes

While waiting for the plane, I tried the datacard but was having no luck – thats OK the netbook was going flat anyway, I will sort it in Reno.

We were late getting away from LAX due to them trying to fill the small plane then putting too many on then taking people off. As long as my luggage made it on.

The flight was spectactular with flying over large mountains of snow – cant wait to have a chance on them.

Arrived in Reno to find my luggage there – what a surprise.

A shuttle ride to the Grand Sierra Resort, got my room , settled in and headed to bed – I was feeling a little tired by now and I had a 7:00 am start ing the morning.

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