Mundane Monday

It was another Monday!  There wasn't much special about it, but it was a good day.  There was frost on the windshield of the truck this morning, but the weather was warming up already when I left the house.  It was a foggy morning!!  I got to work a little early and went for a walk right away.  I really enjoyed the fog and the reflections on the water.  The water level has come up about as little as it went down yesterday.  It is just hovering.




When my paperwork was done and I had talked to my coworkers, I headed over to Ichetucknee.  While I was there, I met with our biologist to talk about some information that I have to update and compile about cultural resources at Troy.  Cultural resources are traces of human impact like the remains of the Madison, the Civil War-era steamship wreckage in the spring.  When we were done with our discussion, we practiced deploying our fire shelters.  A fire shelter is a folded tent that we wear in a pack on our belts anytime we are on the fire line at a prescribed fire.  In the rare and extreme event, that we become trapped in a fire, the fire shelter would save our lives.  At least once a year, like our pack tests, we practice with a training shelter to make sure that we are familiar with it if we ever needed it.  We should be able to deploy and get fully positioned in the shelter within 30 seconds with all of our gear on.  Here is my helmet, my gloves, and a training fire shelter (the actual size of a fire shelter).


The training shelter is a tarp-like material so that it can be reused for practice.  The actual shelters have a reflective, foil-like coating and can only be used once.  When the shelter is opened and unfolded, there are elastic straps inside to help you pull it down over you.  Once you are on the ground with the shelter over you, there are flaps that you can hold down with your arms and legs to help hold the shelter to the ground.  This is our biologist, in a deployed training shelter.


When I got back to Troy in the afternoon, I talked to my coworkers and some scout leaders.  I talked about plans for the new exhaust fans in the restrooms with our volunteer.  I went back and forth with 5 or 6 phone calls to two scout leaders who had groups that wanted to camp the same weekend.  I was able to sort it all out before the end of the day though.