Last night Jenny strained the fruit out of the cordials she’d put up about 6 months ago. Then we played alchemy and mixed and tasted and mixed. Mostly, it takes an equal portion of sugar water to convert “blech, throw it out” into “mmm, yummy and delicate.” I was surprised at the change.
Tonight, SAR practice in the woods. There will be some walking and some hiding in the rain. I’ll have to remember to dig out and bring my umbrella. It’s just the thing when you’re getting rained on for 30 minutes waiting for your scent to get old then waiting for a dog to find ya.
I got the time and focus together to assemble and post my proposal for the SAR website. woot woot!
I got a chance to drive the small truck a couple miles tonight at Search and Rescue. It’s enormous and takes up all but a foot of the lane. The guy showing me how it works mentioned taking out mailboxes several times. Apparently my default lane position isn’t as far left as he’d like. No one and no thing was harmed though. I even backed it up a couple times, including into the garage. “Small truck” they tell me…
Been doing a lot of rock climbing at the gym. One of the guys there is interested in teaching us how to do lead climbing where we clip in as we go. That sounds pretty interesting. The one route that he mentioned sounds like a lot of fun, it covers all of the first room up to the back cubby. Then, the belayer gets to climb behind, unclipping as they go and getting belayed by the climber up near the ceiling. I’m looking forward to that. Maybe tomorrow.
Saturday, I got out on my rollerblades and did a couple miles. That burned up my legs but it was just muscle tiredness, no pain.
I set up a new development challenge for myself at work. I’m trying to re-write a piece of our systems to use the new language that we’d like to switch too. It’s a LOT of details and googling but it gets enthralling.
I love this guy’s hexacoptor, a remote controlled helicopter with automatic gps based station holding. That’s a freakin’ cool technology on a helicopter. Just staying off the ground is complicated in a chopper. Doing it automatically is impressive. Adding in functionality to return to a specific point automatically blows my mind.
If you’re bored/motivated enough, you can point your cell camera through binoculars to grab some pictures of people doing water scent searching.
Today, I’m hiding for SAR dogs.
Here’s a shot of me in the rafters of a haunted house. The other is of the woods I was hiding in while waiting for a less experienced dog.
This is Jim, the guy I generally follow around the woods, and I believe the dog is Tonx. Tonight was a lot of work and we still didn’t find the ‘victim’. But Trish’s air scent dog brought him back. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen until about 3 minutes after the drenching downpour arrived. Thanks for being our victim tonight Dave!
I fell asleep exhausted on the couch last night and woke up very confused about why my pocket was vibrating. After returning the call, I found out that there was a missing person and my group got called out. After 1am.
Victim found. I learned a little bit more. Including the fact that it’s hard to stand around and wait when you want to Do Sonething.
I got home safe which can be difficult when you’re coming down from being juiced up to act. I was in bed by 4. And, oh by the way, up early today to get the car into the shop. The gear selector doesn’t like to move. I’m hoping it just wants new tranny fluid.
Local band, Sirsy, tonight and maybe a BBQ lunch with friends on Saturday.
