The year is winding down and the youngsters are going back to school, which means that our fire program is getting desperate for help. Case in point? I was assigned to a fire engine today. Now, I am technically qualified as a very very low level wildland firefighter but I have never been on an active fire and digging line at rookie school dang near killed me. OK, I guess I have been on an "active" fire, but I have yet to see flames. Today was a "red flag warning" day though (which means the weather conditions are ripe for wild fire), and so the engines had to be staffed up and a bunch of us office folk were recruited. And I actually got called out! Yep, we toodled on over to the local party spot where last night's bonfire was still smoldering and proceeded to dump some water on and stir things up a bit. No more than five minutes after we declared the fire "contained and out" did the skies open up and a veritable deluge began. Oh well...that is pretty much this year's fire season in a nutshell. I think our biggest fire has been 2,000 acres but most have been less than 10 acres.

I think next year will be very different. I have looked at the fire data for the last 20 years and we appear to be on the following cycle: big year, followed by a year twice as big, followed by a year half the size of the first, followed by two-three years of nothing. 1999/2006 were HUGE fire years in the district, over 1 million acres burned...2000/2007 we saw about 1/2 million acres, 2001/2008 a few hundred thousand, and 2002-2005/2009-2010 very boring. There's fuel out there, a lot of it, and it is DRY but it's so late in the season that I don't think anything will come of it till next spring.

As we were on call until 8pm I hit the treadmill and actually managed to get six miles in without going crazy. I did cave earlier in the day and bought a pink sugar cookie (OMG) and chicken nuggets (eh) which torpedo'd my fat intake but my gross calories came out pretty well...not sure how, but I'll take it!