McCall Idaho

Life has been crazy just a breif check in as to where i am at,
Right now i am sitting in a cabin by a lake in McCall Idaho, the reason that i am up here is due to needing to re cert the wilderness medicine part of my EMT, thus keeping me a WEMT and an EMT I, so i spent the alst three days in an overly simple class with great instructors who were limited by what they were able to teach due in fact to the class being a bunch of first timers un like my self
must go and do internship stuff!!
back into the field on tusday for my last shift in utah and then it is back to maine for the start of school which is fast approaching
more when i am back at home
cheers

fun wilderness times

Had a decent second shift int he woods, with my second shift being over i am now two thirds of my through my 26 day internship. I ave one more full shift before I can be bumped up to level one I worked with G6 this time around and it was a bunch of male teenagers, about as far on the other end of the spectrum as i could get compared to wrking with a bunch of feemale teenagers. had a great week out there and it was easy for me as well as the rest of the staf team
on the account that we spent a good deal of time this week on solo, so staff had to do rounds but other then that we only moved twice. good week great weather the rain kept the bugs away and things cool
pulled my groin the day i got off so i have spent the last off shift recorvering from that
now off to prefect my busting skills
cheers

First shift in

So,
today is thursday and on tuesday night/ late afternoon i finished my first shift with second nature, it was a wild experience to say the least. I got matched up with a group that is comprised entirely of teenage girls, AS well as all female staff. that is to say that i was the only male in the group, even the dog that came along was female, which is fine with me on the account that she was a lap dog and kept me nice and warm.
Those eight days in the high desert of utah were some some of the most challangeing and tireing, while being the most rewarding days that i have had in a long time. I cant go into any details due to privacy laws but it was intense, and it was very very hard work but you know what? I liked it.
on another note relating to work, as i knew that i would be I am way out of shape for the summer, this happens every summer, so this is not much of a shock. But i am trying to make things work out a little better in my favor this time. Lucky for me i am spending a lot of my time in the field, this i am eating very well while in the field and doing a lot of work out there to stay in shape.
the problem is that this summer i have large hunks of time off after each intense session. so it will be easy negate all the good work that i will be doing towards my body. so far i suspect that I am off to a good start. While not in the field I have been trying to do happy body things, like swim laps for a half an hour, eat less each day or go for walks. what my plan for the next several days is, that i will head over to zion national park and hike around. I dont think that i have ever been there, and if i have it has been a long time, like second grade long time. I had planned to head over to horseshoe canyon and see the grand gallary in caynonlands national park but that is about a seven hour drive, which i am not that opposed to, its the money that it was entail, not even the gas but the stuff that i have to do for my car to keep it happy. the time has rolled around for my 7500 mile recomended mantianice, and i suspect that it is going to cost me several hundred dollars,
since i have pennies to my name and owe people money i hae decided to hold off on that for the moment. and thus not drive very far. It will be a good thing when i get paied thats for sure.
and on a complatly diffenert note...
the stupid bank has shut down my online banking syestem so i can look at anything !!!!!
ahhhhhh pain int he asss
off to zion
cheers
t

I start work in the morning

So,
I am supposed to repot in the morning at eight fifteen in the morning to my bosses office to see what i am going to be doing... well i know what i am goign to be doing i suspect that reporting that early is do be a little bit of a here come with me and il make sure you dont get lot in all the shuffel and brussel of the shirt change. regardless, i need to be there early, and on the account that i am about a twenty min drive away i need to have my game face on in the mornig,
the only realy question i have left now is.... which knife to bring? no really you might laugh but this sort of thing can be huge in building your rapport with the little tikes who will giving me what i suspect will be the biggest shallange of my working carrer to date.
so of course that is not the only thing runing through my head at the moment. i feel like i have endless things to do and nothign left to do all at the same time
all i really need to do i go back up my bag and get my self ready to go. although to be honnest i have no idea if i am going to be in the field... or the office for this first shift. as the local resident " intern" i have to spend at least one of these shift shadowing people around so i guess in theory i could pack everythign i own all up and get ready to go into the field for eight days only to find out that i will be in the office, that would of course then suck, but at the same time be a little less nerve racking for me. I still dont know what is happening with all of my internship stuff since the boss does not work on mondays apperently,
i went off and got a small self storage unit today for a grand total of only... 35 a month, whch sucks but my stuff will be safer in there then in the abck of my car all summer, and on top of that my car will get better milage then i did before on the account that it does not have several hundred pounds of crap in it.
so off to pack, hit up the city pool for a shower and perhaps a swim, then who knows what. but i suspect that it will involve me doing nothing and just relaxing and trying to stay calm intill the morning
peace fine folk
t

Meandering my way to utah

So suddenly, while sipping some very good coffee made in my bad ass big sky bistro french press coffee cup thing ( shameless promotion i know) I got the urge to get the hell out of dodge, well not so much dodge as lander. I dont mean that in a bad way at al of course, i just think that it is time to move on, i Could easily spend another day here but that would appear to me to be a wast of my time, If i go to utah today i dont need to be heading to saint george till mid monday, to the plan at this point is to head to Moab, cool little town who knows what i will see?
I hope that i will bump into osme one that i know down there. I do find it a little bit funny that I will have visited the two town epicenters for my outdoor education, Lander and Moab. the general plan once there is to crash for the night and go do something exciting on sunday... perhaps head up into the mountains to play?
on a lighter note i Did end up bumping into some friends here in lander, i befriended the cute WMI desk lady, got some sweet stickers for the new car, hung out in the gear room, and finally retired my red ski patrol hat, i know right I have had that thing lastered to my head since i was a feshmen in highschool i still have it but it was time to move on, the thing was litterly dry rotting off my head due to swat and sun expousre. so the new hat is seen below
now im off to south pass the mountains and the deserts wy co and then utah tonight
peace all have a good weekend

3000 miles, not to grace land... but to land of the 3.2% beer

Right o then, as i site here and write this it is very late, well a huge part of that problem is that i ahve switched into my third time zone in as many days, I left maine one week ago to the day, almost to the hour. I zipped down to portland last thursday night, ok so i guess that does not really count as leaving the state but i was out of waldo county, an in the end thats the only real important note.
Anyways, since then i have travled acorss the entirity of new england all of the mid west and now sit here in the lovely NOBEL hotel aka NOLS badass dormness, no that not a reall word but i dont care too much as I already stated its late.
I had several stops along the way, I stayed for a few days back in burton i got to see the family in ohio, my twin ( see the below picture for his ugly face) as well as some old friend, oh yest and lets not froget the old man. from there i crossed what is with out a doubt the largest corn field in thw world I am refering to wisconson, IL and SD not to mention MN? but not befroe running in to my very own personal version of driving hell, no not the fact that after south dokota i had hit so many bugs that my head lights were place instead of clear, what i am talking about is the lovely city of chicgo il, let me put it this way, its like DC and Boston got together and got it on but it was really a three some and Philly was thrown in for good measure and the bastard child they left behind was what i had to drive through..... WORST TRAFFIC EVER
but thats over and done with and here i am roughly 2000 miles later sitting in lander WY enjoying the fact that I am final herel i have a motel room for fifteen bucks and that i got really good microbrew with dinner, but there is no one here... ok thats not true, there is only one person i know that is here, but there are other students, Two IC's just wrapped and they are all over this place, it reminds me of the good times that i had with my NOLS buddies, but on that not i still feel strangly left out on the account that theese fine people are now working for the company and had some follow up, i on the other hand went back to college while my buddies went to bend and other far parts of the world, alas
on a lighter note i need to get soem bumpstickers, medical books, a new hat, and perhaps even some used tele skis while i am here, so in the end i think that it is really looking up !
sweet shot of me in the NOBEL lobby,
most likely heading to st george on sunday to get ready for work

EMT I

as of thursday night last week at about eight thirty in the evening i am one of maine's newest emt Intermeidate's. thats right, i passed, passed with flying colors in fact. all of my clinic time is done my classes are over and my exams are finished. as i write this its coming to you from the statee of ohio, in the lovely town of burton.
I passed my pratical exam on tuesday night and let me tell you, that was rough, it was a little sweaty in the words of the wise and sage mark king, but it was worth it. i got throught it and then it was time to study for the written, although to be honest i might have studied for all of two hours for it. i guess i took the stance that if i didnt know it at this point then i wont eve3r know it. the written test was thursday night and none other then my rick petrie was the tester. I sat for it and was a little bit amazed at how much old school stuff was still in there. i dont know why the state of maine wont write a new test, this on was make in 97 and up dated in 2007 for protocols, so it dosent have a lot of the stuff that we have been talking about in class in it.... what ever the point is that i passed it, i am done!!!
my paper work in in the hands or should be in the hands of maine EMS and everything will be processing form this point out, it sort of sucks that i woont be able to work as an emt I till the end of the summer but thats ok becuase I can work as a WEMT I this summer all that means is that i have a better title, in the end i can do a darn thing more as an WEMT I compared to a WEMT, and in reality compared to a WFR ( wildeerness first responder
in the end what it comes down to is the experience, i ahe the experience and the oh shit factor over any one olse that i will be working with let me tell you again in the words of the sage and wise mark king i got the pucker factor aka iv been in the3 shit and i know that i can handle it when i have to if i need
so anyways right now i am in burton ohio in a few days i am thinking about going to madison WI to visit witht the nice rachel tyborof sustainabullies.blogspot.comand her lovely partner luck and of course the wee dog lil
from there i want to shoot over to lander WY and perhaps pick up a a nice pair of used tele skis!!! and of course and play in the mountains of i have the chance, the non to utah
all you out there in cyber land
texk mycellcall mycellsend mealetter via pigeon keep in touch !
peace all

lets just talk about...

can we just talk about how much i hate STATS,
bane of my fucking existence but thats ok my lovely girlfriend is brilliant in the subject
she make it easy... and i get to sleep with her
so its all good
cheers

Clinic time, testing,ramblings of an annoyed student

When people see a blue shirt that says EMS STUDENT in large letters under a cool star of life logo their first thouts is wow this person has no idea what they are doing get the hell away from me. i Guess people dont really understand that I will be the guy walking through your door at two in the morning when your emergency turns into my emergency.
this vital point is missed by many and thus here i am two weeks before the end of my semester with not all of my objecves done yet i have done more clinical hours then any other person in my class. the other day i actualy got the line from a nurse, well she has a lot of hospital connections so i better start this iv, the lady had veins the size of a bloody subway tunnel I told the lovely nurse in centeral maine medical center, well how am i supposed to get any pratice in? and my response was well she is the wife of the CEO in the hospital... lets be honnest that dosent mean shit to me. I dont cae of your the bloody president of the united states your getting treated the same way in the back of my ambulance. so if the ceo is in the back of my truck... does that mean i should be lik ewoah... let not give her an IV because she has connections. my point being as a student i need to learn, i need to get hands on time and you are not going to let me then back the fuck off and dont let me use ou as a clincal site. dont ask just be like HI we have a student here who is goign to be starting your iv today. or at least let me introduce myself so i dont have to look like a total idiot.

the good news is the Unity Ambulance is now an offical proctor for me for just IV pokes, why this couldnt have happened from the start is beyond me
intill later

so its been a year...

Its been a long time since i last posted but i suspect that there are not alot of people out there who acutaly read this anyways so i am guessing that its not a huge deal to a whole lot of folk and sine the purpose of the blog is more for my own purposes i dont feel too bad about.
regardless
a lot has happened in the last year I worked for the AMC all last summer and that was all fine and jolly, except for the fact that it rained all summer long, other then that the summer was un-eventful. I started my third year at unity college and spent the fall semester going to school working for LL Bean and busting ass for unity ambulance ( since some of one had to do it)
the end of the fall brought a big change I decided to go for my EMT I which is the step below paramedic in maine. I managed to get Unity Ambulance to pay for my class which is great since i basicly have given them my soul over the last three years, so since january i have been at a full out sprint.
Full time at unity college as an outdoor ed major and full time at KVCC as a Intermediate student in the paramedic program.
28 credits total its a bit of a handful, a huge chunk of my time has been spent at clinical sites around the state doing everything and anything but mostly making a whole lots of beds and cleaning a whole lot of shit. sadly when people hear the word students they pucker up tighter and a blocked old lady
hence i am now scrambling to get everything done in time for both schools with my biggest worry being my EMT I semester simply because of the little amount of time i have left
hopeful it will not be a year before i post again but who knows
heading to utah soon to work as a back packing instructor more on that later
all of you out there send good vibes pratical and wirtten exam comeing up and my tester is a hard ass just becuase she used to work for unity ambulance dosent mean i get a break, it just means she is more bitter !