It is Day 3 for me at FDIC and we are finally getting to the Opening Ceremony. After 2 days of workshops, it is almost an anticlimax to have the Ceremony now. There is plenty of pomp and ceremony with a huge Pipe and Drum band, National Anthems (but only the US and Canadian – what about the other 50 countries) and some words (sometimes strained) from Bobby Halton followed by the keynote for this year, Angela Hughes.
After the morning pep up, it is back into classes for the rest of the day. Each is a couple of hours and the three I attended today were “Managing Crew Safety in the Dangerous WUI Environment” by Chief Todd McNeal from Twain Harte FD in California, “Special Operations in Small Departments” by Captain Art Bloomer from Kearny FD in New Jersey and “Thermal Imaging in 2017” by Division Chief Mike Richardson from St Matthews FD in Kentucky.
Jenny made here way in at lunchtime and we tried another of the eateries for the Indiana Foodfest. Today’s delicacy was Philly Cheesesteak and it wasn’t too bad but you could feel the arteries clogging up as we were eating it. Lucky we don’t live on this stuff.
As we headed back to the apartment, the skies were getting blacker as there were storms predicted. I decided to go for a walk through Garfield Park to work off some carbs but the temperature was still around 28C and the humidity up around 90% so I certainly worked up a sweat. Didn’t get to find too many geocaches but I did find a lot of critters with squirrels and opossums.
At one spot where there was a geocache, there was a mother opossum with about 4 young ones in the hollow where the cache was supposed to be located. She wasn’t happy with being there so no way was I going to stick my hand in to see if the cache was there.
It did eventually rain during the night but certainly not storms as predicted.
