Workin' For The Weekend.

So today at work was pretty freakin' awesome. To start out, it was the 4th of July festivities day up at Incline Village, so the Incline Hand Crew and I spent the morning flippin' flap jacks, serving plates of food, and cleaning up trash at the station for the annual pancake breakfast. (Which was a welcome change from hiking ridiculous hills first thing in the morning.)

Next the parade started, and we ran traffic control. This entailed pairing up and then blocking off driveways or roads that fed into the parade route so that cars didn't try and run over the color guard. Unfortunately, this also meant that once the first 10 floats had passed by, we had to run to catch up with the front of the parade. The running yielded two problems. First off, we were in uniform,* and let me tell you that those boots are not the most comfortable for extended walking, much less running. Second, apparently everyone who watched the parade also ate some of our delicious pancakes, because the following hilarious comment was heard: "Look Laura, the firemen are running off their breakfast!"

And as if THAT wasn't enough, when we finally got out into the field to finish up a project, I heard our crew boss Footie say the coolest thing ever.

"Kenneston, you'll be running a saw."

Who-what!? Score!! Needless to say, I had a ball out there. It was my first time running a chainsaw without a supervisor breathing down my neck, so it was a lot of fun. For example, We had to cut out a stand of scrub oak, but we accidentally piled it between two fir trees, making it inaccessible to the chipper. Instead of hauling all of the branches out into an opening, I just got the O.K. to take out a few "piss firs" and then knocked the two into the pile. Genius!

Oh, and since we had to cook breakfast, our workday started at 7 and ended at 5, meaning that I got home early enough to find time to blog! Like I said, today was pretty freakin' awesome.

Lastly, Friday we work from 12pm to midnight** and Pat*** said that we're not doing any project work at all. So we're pretty much getting paid to smile at the public, monitor the beaches, and watch fireworks.

Ta-ta for now!


-Daniel

*Don't let that fool you... our "uniforms" are the Slide Mountain T-Shirts and green pants.
**That's right... 12 hours of overtime! CCU here I come!
***He's our crew supervisor.