Don't Stop Believing

The song, “Don’t Stop Believing”, by Journey hit the top ten in 1981. To the girl who was 15 years old, it was an anthem and a promise to the future.  She would get out of the small town and live a life of adventure and rolling the dice.  She was going somewhere and would be something.  She would take the midnight train going anywhere.

Just a small town girl, livin' in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin' anywhere

…

Working hard to get my fill,
Everybody wants a thrill
Payin' anything to roll the dice,
Just one more time
Some will win, some will lose
Some were born to sing the blues
Oh, the movie never ends
It goes on and on and on and on

The song made a comeback thanks to the TV show Glee.  Today the girl is a 45-year-old wife, mother and professional.  Hearing the song again just makes her cry for the girl who is lost.  She doesn’t live a life of adventure.  She wouldn’t take a midnight train.  These days she is in bed by 9 so she can get a workout in before work.  The measurement of her life is in mortgages, paychecks and trips to the grocery store. She cooks healthy meals for a family who would rather eat burgers and fries. The only reason they sit down to her dinners are because they are too lazy to do anything else.  The dinner conversations are stilted, but mercifully short before everyone escapes to their part of the house. Her pleasure comes from cleaning the house and getting it to a point that she enjoys it.  She buys herself flowers.

She feels like her life is more described by the Talking Heads song released in 1984.

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Into the blue again/after the money’s gone

Once in a lifetime/water flowing underground.

And you may ask yourself

What is that beautiful house?

And you may ask yourself

Where does that highway go?

And you may ask yourself

Am I right? ...am I wrong?

And you may tell yourself

My god!...what have I done?

My god, what has she done? And how does she stop letting the days go by and letting the water hold her down?

Sometimes when she goes for a run or a bike ride she has a small feeling that these are her adventures. She wishes she could simply keep going and not have to return home to do laundry and get the grocery shopping done.

Training on the New Engine

Saturday

14 January 2012

It was a typical winter morning in Colorado.  Bright and crisp.  We had training on the new fire truck.  The truck that I get to be captain of. I will be responsible for.  I get to put stuff on. 

It was a good turnout.  About fourteen people, mostly men, but a few women.  I tried to take a lot of notes. 

At the station, we had breakfast followed by a talk by the Chief and the training officer.  The Chief announced that I would be the truck captain for the new $360,000 truck.  The plan for the day was to drive the truck and a tender (the water truck) down to the fill site and fill both engines and do various exercises. 

Since I am the truck captain, I was drove the truck to the fill site.  It is a big truck with two mirrors.  The small, lower mirror is just to see what is happening with the tires on each side.  I was instructed to watch carefully, especially on the right side to avoid going off the road and not run into some of the rock outcroppings. The front of the truck is impossible to see from the driver’s seat.  One cannot tell how far forward it goes.   I did pretty well, only hitting some tree limbs. I backed the truck into the fill site which was a snow covered pullout across the road from a pond.  Those that had gotten there first with the tender had set up a port-a-pond and was filling it from the fill site.  Using our truck, we attached the drafting lines and filled the truck.  The new truck has a monitor on top of the truck that must be attached each time otherwise the truck is too tall for the fire station.  The monitor will shoot a stream of water over the back of the truck up to 1000 GPM (gallons per minute).  Since the truck can only hold 1000 gallons, that would drain the truck in one minute.  There is a second monitor on the front of the truck which allows water to flow while driving.  We all got training on how to attach and use the monitor and change the flow rate down to 300 GPM.  We also used one of the permanently attached hose lines to test and spray water. Finally we connected to the tender and filled the truck from the tender.

After all these exercises, walking around in the snow, it was time to break down.  We disconnected the monitor on top and secured it. The hoseline we used has its own drawer to be stored in and we re-layed it in the drawer ready to be used again. 

The truck was stuck in the snow.  It operates in all-wheel drive, but can do four-wheel drive high and low.  I didn’t want to try to drive it out of the snow so I didn’t drive it back to the station.  But I was a passenger.  I helped back it into the station. 

We had an excellent lunch of cheese sandwiches and minestrone soup before cleaning up and heading home.

Sunday

15 January 2012

I went to the fire station alone today. I looked at the truck and played with various things. I made some lists and wrote up some questions.   It was good to get hands on the truck by myself with no one else there.

It had been tense at home. The fire station was quiet and a little cold and it felt soothing. It was a sanctuary. There was beer in the fridge that I wouldn’t drink, but maybe someday would replenish.  I feel so grateful to the Chief for giving me this job so that I have a place to go to when I want to get away from home.  I wonder if he saw that need.  He seems to be pretty perceptive about people.  Sometimes people don’t know how kind they are.

Do you want to be a fire truck captain?

Thursday

5 January 20112

The new fire station

During the Fourmile Fire, one of our firehouses and fire trucks burned down.  The firehouse has been rebuilt, although it still does not have a bathroom.  I think that has something to do with regulations and how the building is categorized.  The new fire truck was delivered a couple of months ago and we had our first orientation on it in early December.

At the Grand Opening of the Fire Station

At the orientation, I asked who would be truck captain.  The truck captain is responsible for the truck.  Also is the expert on the truck.  The Chief and the training officer said that no one had been selected yet and joked that since I asked the question it would fall to me.  I laughed, but didn’t think much more about it.

After Christmas, the Chief called and asked if I wanted to be the captain of the truck.  Although I am an engineer, I don’t consider myself a mechanical person.  I had to go buy an electric weed wacker because I didn’t know how to use the gas-powered one we have.  I think we own a chain saw, but I would not be comfortable using it.   Being asked to be responsible for a $350,000 fire truck scares me to death.  But it is something that I want to try to master.  It’s a challenge. 

Being responsible is more than just driving and maintaining. I am also going to have to know how to operate the lights.  How to get water pumping out of the truck.  How to fill the truck with water.  Inventory all the equipment and make sure it is ready to go at all times.  I’m sure there are things that I am forgetting here that I will need to do.

Yesterday, the Chief called and said that we needed to go to the truck. I agreed to go with him.

We drove to Front Range Apparatus outside of Longmont.  They currently have the truck and are putting all the goodies on it.  Such as the axe, the halligan, the pick axe, the drywall puller, the hose and hydrant adapters and the fire extinguishers.  There was a lot of discussion on where to put everything.  Bret is trying to have a place for everything.  No crates and bin.  I like the idea.  It will make inventory much easier.  It was interesting to see how they can attach things almost anywhere on the truck.  We couldn’t turn on the engine, but Bret gave me a long tutorial in the cab. 

The trip made me much more comfortable with the engine and I can’t wait to be able to get some tutorials to learn to drive and operate it.

Books read and listened to in 2012

Name	Author	Listened or read?	Comments
Faithful Place	Tana French	Listened	Fiction - Irish novel where everyone drinks and is miserable.
A Practicing Mind	Thomas M. Sterner	Listened - didn't finish	Non-fiction. I was looking for a book on mindfulness and how to use it. Instead this book was more about the brilliance of the author and really dreadful to listen to.
The Happiness Advantage	Shawn Achor	Listened	Non-fiction. Good book, nice examples and practical advice
Cutting for Stone	Abraham Verghese	Read	Fiction - took me a long time to read. I just couldn't get into it. Was it because I read it so slow?
The House at Riverton	Kate Morton	Listened	Fiction - Victorian England mixed with current date. Good long story but kind of predictable.
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength	Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney	Listened	Non-fiction - Research into willpower and self-control and how to work with it. Lots of interesting examples involving famous people
Doc: A Novel	Mary Doria Russell	Read	Fictionalization of the life of Doc Holliday. Interesting if only some of it is true
The Marriage Plot	Jeffrey Eugenides	Listened	Fiction - Three people at college and afterward. All flawed and looking ahead. Good writing, but not very interesting story.
People of the Book	Geraldine Brooks	Listened	Fiction - An ancient Jewish prayer book is found and the book traces how the book was created.
The Colour: A Novel	Rose Tremain	Read	Fiction – A couple in the 1800s travels to New Zealand to farm.
Rules of Civility	Amor Towles	Listened	Fiction – 1938 as experienced by a working class woman in New York City and the people she meets.
Unfamiliar Fishes	Sarah Vowell	Listened	Nonfiction – A history of Hawaii
Saving Fish from Drowning	Amy Tan	Read	Fiction - A group of tourists get kidnapped in Burma.
A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)	George R. R. Martin	Listened	Fiction - First in a series set in a mystical land.
Running with the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth	Adharanand Finn	Listened	Nonfiction - A 37-year-old man moves his family to Kenya so that he can train with Kenyan runners and try to figure out their secrets.
Come Home	Lisa Scottoline	Listened	Fiction - A woman's ex-husband conman dies and she starts investigating his death and life. Not very good.
Eventide	Kent Haruf	Read	Fiction - Various people in a small Colorado town and how their lives overlap. Good book
The Shoemaker's Wife	Adriana Trigiani	Listened	Fiction - Early part of the 20th century. Two immigrants from Italy to the US fall in love and get married. HATED IT! The characters were one dimensional and the love story was trite.
True Colors	Kristin Hannah	Read	Fiction – Three sisters who live in a small Washington town and the family ranch. It seemed like it could have been so much better, but many of the characters were very one-dimensional. Predictable story too.
Catching Fire	Suzanne Collins	Listened	Fiction - second book in the Hunger Games trilogy. Forgettable. I feel like I should read it, but it isn't very exciting
War Brides	Helen Bryan	Listened	Fiction - A group of different women come together in a small English town during World War II. Kind of Downton Abbey like.
She's Gone Country	Jane Procter	Read	Fiction - During divorce a woman moves with her three sons back to her hometown in Texas from Manhattan. Not worth the $5 I paid for it.
Wild	Cheryl Strayed	Listened	Nonfiction – A woman walks the Pacific Crest Trail. One of the best books I have read in a long time.
The Chaperone	Laura Moriarty	Listened	Fiction - An older (36) woman is hired to chaperone a 15-year-old Louise Brooks in New York City. The first part is good, but by the last part the years just go by too fast and there is not much conflict.
Grand Avenue	Joy Fielding	Read	Fiction - Four women who live on the same street in their young married life. It was a beach read and was perfect when I was reading it. Better than the other light books I have tried this year.
Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness	Alexandra Fuller	Listened	Memoir - Author writes about her mother and growing up at the end of colonial Africa. Quirky and very British.
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin	Erik Larson	Listened	Nonfiction - The American ambassador Dodd in Germany during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. Very dull and dry. Difficult to finish
Year of Wonders - A Novel of the Plague	Geraldine Brooks	Read	Fiction - Plague hits an English village in the 1600s. Good despite the subject.
In the Last Analysis	Amanda Cross	Read	Fiction - Copyright 1964. Very dated mystery novel involving a literature professor and a psychoanalysist. Really dumb solution to the mystery
Wives and Sisters	Natalie R. Collins	Read	Fiction - Beach read, very anti-Mormon about growing up in patriarchial religion. Couldn't put down.
Shantaram	Gregory David Roberts	Listened	Fiction - Man escapes prison in Australia and moves to Bombay. Very well written and very long.
Fast Women	Jennifer Crusie	Listened	Fiction - Light reading; detective novel. Interesting ideas about marriage and cheating.
A House in Fez: Building a Life in the Ancient Heart of Morocco	Suzanna Clarke	Read	Nonfiction - A couple buys a house in Morocco and renovates it while dealing with language, bureaucracy and cultural issues.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn	Betty Smith	Listened	Fiction - A girl grows up in Brooklyn in poverty at the beginning of the 20th century. Written in the 40s but very modern themes.
How to be a Woman	Caitlin Moran	Listened	Memoir – What it means to be a modern woman by a funny British woman.
A Wasp Among Eagles: A Woman Military Test Pilot in World War II	Ann Carl	Read	Nonfiction – A woman WASP and fighter jet tester memoir.
Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore	Robin Sloan	Listened	Fiction - A technical guy works in a bookstore with some unusual characters.
Running the Books: The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian	Avi Steinburg	Listened	Nonfiction - A Harvard grad who makes money writing obituaries takes a job as a prison librarian.
Sweet Tooth	Ian McEwan	Listened	Fiction - Beautiful british woman gets a job with MI5 just after college in the 70s. I don't get Ian McEwan.  I've never read a book of his that I like.