Road Warrior

What a week! I think I set a record for miles driven over Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Here's how it went.

Wednesday afternoon I was dispatched to be in Lake Isabella, with my incident management team, on Thursday at noon. The Canyon Fire was about 5,000 acres and growing so I was expecting to be gone at least 10 days. It is an 8 and 1/2 hour drive, so I spent the rest of Wednesday finishing up some projects I was working on, and preparing for the trip. This would be my first deployment with my Team  since last year (I missed two earlier this year due to my surgery). I was excited as usual, but also a little bummed about leaving Kim and Lucy. The Los Molinos Volleyball tournament (Lucy's last!) was scheduled for Friday and Saturday. My road time started with a trip to Reno Wednesday evening to pick up a rental pick-up. I needed to leave at least two hours before the rental agency opened up on Thursday morning, so had to make the round trip. By the time I was packed and loaded it was nearly midnight.

So, I hit the road at 4:45 the next morning and headed south. It was a long day behind the wheel, and when I got to Lake Isabella it looked like the fire had "laid down", as they in firefighter slang, and we might not be needed after all. So, we waited until about 19:00 (that's 7:00 PM for you non-military time types). We were standing around chatting wondering what our fate would be when someone next to me said "What do you think they will decide?" My friend replied: "They'll probably say 'Thanks for coming!'"  Not one minute later, here comes the Forest Supervisor and as she walks by, she says "Thanks for coming guys!" So much for a 10 day assignment. After dinner, I curled up across the front seat of my rented truck (to cheap to find a motel, and too lazy to screw with my tent) and went to sleep.

Friday morning I headed for home. I left at a more civilized time (8:00) and settled in for the long drive. Since Kim was in Los Molinos for Lucy"s volleyball tournament, she couldn't pick me up in Reno after turning in my rental. So it was emergency plan "B". Kim remembered that our good friend Dr. Chris Stanton worked in Reno. She called Laura (his wife) and arranged for him to pick me up at 19:00 (you should remember what time that is but you can cheat by checking the previous reference above) at the Reno airport. Since he drives a Prius, and I had the rental pick-up stuffed with all my needs for a ten days assignment away from home, I drove on home to empty the truck prior to turning it in. After changing clothes I left home and drove back to Reno to await my ride to come back to home (sounds twisted doesn't it?). Got home (for the second time) at about 21:00 (thanks Chris!!) and went to bed buzzing from so much time on the road.

Saturday morning, I awoke at 6:00, showered, and hit the road for Los Molinos (only a 3 hour drive). With luck I could catch most of the second day's games. Turned out I could have slept in because Lu's first game was at 8:30. No way I could make that without Scotty to "beam" me down there! Their second contest wasn't until 12:00! Oh well, I got to see a few JV games while I waited. Finally, it was game time and they crushed the other Team (Biggs HS) in about 20 minutes....next game scheduled for 14:30 (work on it, you can figure it out).

A happy Lucy!

Without going into too much detail, Portola won the championship! They beat the hosting high school, Los Molinos, in three games! I was very proud (as were the girls) since Los Molinos had defeated them in two straight on Friday, and won the first game of the championship match to boot. It was very close with all the girls contributing. Lucy did some great work at the net including smashing an "overpass" into the back corner for a big point in game three. The three game match went 22-25, 25-20, and 15-13! The girls were ecstatic. I have never seen Lucy so happy and excited.

Then it was a 3 hour drive back to the Sierra Valley. I crawled into the sack at about 00:30. Are you getting the hang of military time yet? It was a long road trip, but in the end, I was very fortunate to witness one of Lucy's high school  high points. That is, after all, what being a Dad is all about! I am a lucky man!!

That's All!