My long Summer and how I got to this point...
So Crew is over. Sad.
For thoes of you still confused as to what the hell I've been doing the last three months here's the story.
I came to Utah to be a crewleader of a chainsaw crew doing fire fuel reduction-thining trees to prevent fires or for prescribed burns, mostly for the local national park forests and the BLM. I had a great hot boss Tim- a little highstrung at times and flaky, but overall a real big goof and superlaid back. My Co-leader Scott and I did have our issues but mostly because he had it stuck in his head that this job was going to be like the last ones he's done on chainsaw with Rocky Mountian Youth Corps- a hard core Conservation organization that apleals to hippies and rich kids with nothing and nowhere to go, crazy and sur-real, I was with them way in the begining for training its a crazy bunch but way to hard core for me to hang with.
Crew started out with a total of 10 including Scott and I then dwindled down to the final number at graduation a big total of 5.One guy and a girl left during the first 3 weeks, Two left the final two weeks for family reasons, then another the day before graduation cause his girlfriend had to have surgery. So there was never such a thing as normality for us.
I did have several cases of heat illness, elevation sicknes, and yes yet again spraining my bad ankle, but I kept going back to work, much to Tim's dislike.
We rocked out all of our project completing them well ahead of sechudal and beyond project sponsors expectations- more often than not they had to find extra work for us to do inorder for us to complete our 40 hours of service. However somthing went wrong with our last project our only 2 weeker and our last to boot. The BLM sponsor didn't have our contract signed for the work we were to complet for them, so for 2 days we did some cutting along the roads. then we got to the real work and it turned out to be super narly, they wanted 35-40 feet spacing between trees growing 10 feet apart- so we had our work cut out for ourselves to begin with and 2 days behind. Morale was hurting and so was the equipment, we were always at least 2 out 5 saws short most of week because we were always running out of stuff to keep going with. the second week though it started off better, but quickly deteriated after Yolanda a crew member left because of her asshole husband. The rest of the week as we all realised there was no way we'd finish started slaking off, we still worked but instead of putting a full 10 hour day all in all it was more lie 5-8 depending on which group cause we split up half way through, my guys and I did about 8 hours, the others with Scott well we maybe heard their saws on for a total of 4 hours a day, what they did I don't know and never asked.
We completed about half the work, but before that Willis my LIT
(and new little brother) broke his finger throwing a log onto a pile.
So we spent the last 2 days of the project seeing doctors.
Graduation went well as small as it was.
It was this last weekend that was fun, I rented a car took Willis, Derek, and Yolanda to Lake Powell and got drunk. It was the most relaxing carefree moment I've had in a long time.
And in all this time I've decided to move to Florida to give Landon and I another try. Its a lot I know, my funds are stretched to the max, and I'm not even sure how its all going to work, but I know its what I want. so next week I'll be going to Salt Lake City and getting on the soonest flight I can and swimming in the ocean- as soon as Landon lets my out of the apartment.
And my crazy life continues.
For thoes of you still confused as to what the hell I've been doing the last three months here's the story.
I came to Utah to be a crewleader of a chainsaw crew doing fire fuel reduction-thining trees to prevent fires or for prescribed burns, mostly for the local national park forests and the BLM. I had a great hot boss Tim- a little highstrung at times and flaky, but overall a real big goof and superlaid back. My Co-leader Scott and I did have our issues but mostly because he had it stuck in his head that this job was going to be like the last ones he's done on chainsaw with Rocky Mountian Youth Corps- a hard core Conservation organization that apleals to hippies and rich kids with nothing and nowhere to go, crazy and sur-real, I was with them way in the begining for training its a crazy bunch but way to hard core for me to hang with.
Crew started out with a total of 10 including Scott and I then dwindled down to the final number at graduation a big total of 5.One guy and a girl left during the first 3 weeks, Two left the final two weeks for family reasons, then another the day before graduation cause his girlfriend had to have surgery. So there was never such a thing as normality for us.
I did have several cases of heat illness, elevation sicknes, and yes yet again spraining my bad ankle, but I kept going back to work, much to Tim's dislike.
We rocked out all of our project completing them well ahead of sechudal and beyond project sponsors expectations- more often than not they had to find extra work for us to do inorder for us to complete our 40 hours of service. However somthing went wrong with our last project our only 2 weeker and our last to boot. The BLM sponsor didn't have our contract signed for the work we were to complet for them, so for 2 days we did some cutting along the roads. then we got to the real work and it turned out to be super narly, they wanted 35-40 feet spacing between trees growing 10 feet apart- so we had our work cut out for ourselves to begin with and 2 days behind. Morale was hurting and so was the equipment, we were always at least 2 out 5 saws short most of week because we were always running out of stuff to keep going with. the second week though it started off better, but quickly deteriated after Yolanda a crew member left because of her asshole husband. The rest of the week as we all realised there was no way we'd finish started slaking off, we still worked but instead of putting a full 10 hour day all in all it was more lie 5-8 depending on which group cause we split up half way through, my guys and I did about 8 hours, the others with Scott well we maybe heard their saws on for a total of 4 hours a day, what they did I don't know and never asked.
We completed about half the work, but before that Willis my LIT
(and new little brother) broke his finger throwing a log onto a pile.
So we spent the last 2 days of the project seeing doctors.
Graduation went well as small as it was.
It was this last weekend that was fun, I rented a car took Willis, Derek, and Yolanda to Lake Powell and got drunk. It was the most relaxing carefree moment I've had in a long time.
And in all this time I've decided to move to Florida to give Landon and I another try. Its a lot I know, my funds are stretched to the max, and I'm not even sure how its all going to work, but I know its what I want. so next week I'll be going to Salt Lake City and getting on the soonest flight I can and swimming in the ocean- as soon as Landon lets my out of the apartment.
And my crazy life continues.