Saturday, October 28, 2006

EVOC in the BRT

So I have been a member of a fire department for the last 2 years and I am just now starting to drive the BRT. Mrs. Clean is not as happy about it as I am. But she has been a trooper through the whole thing. So what is EVOC you ask, it stands for Emergency Vehicle Operations Class. In other words how to keep the BRT from looking like this. So today, I got to sit in class all day and here horror stories of drivers that had accidents, and ultimately why I would not ever want to drive the BRT. Because in our sue your pants off society, you will be at fault if any one runs into you even when you have come to a complete stop and then slowly go through an intersection. And if that happens I will then have no money and may end up like this. But one thing I know is that no matter what happens when I am driving that God is good and will be watching out for me and everyone that I may come in contact with. Maybe contact was not the right word when talking about driving and crashing. So if you see me on the road in the BRT or anyone else on the road in any town in the USA in the BRT trying to get to an emergency please move to the right and let us pass. And if my small little plea does not convince you to move. Think about this, our tower truck weighs 80,000 pounds, your car if your lucky is about 2,000-3000 pounds. Even if the driver of the fire truck is at fault and you and he have a collision who do you think would win the collision? And if your car looked like that would it really matter who was at fault. Maybe to the surviving family members and the courts but most likely not to you.

Tomorrow, the driving portion of class.

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Roaring Tiger, Crouching Dad, Part 2

So after the archery off we go to the BB guns. The weapon of choice for any self respecting 6 year old that wants to "shoot your eye out". For those of you not familier with that line start watching your Christmas movies. So here we are at the shooting range, the first time that KZ has ever picked up a gun of any fashion that has a projectile that actually shoots out the end of it. Unless you count suction cup darts, in that case he has had a gun and bow and arrow that he has used. In fact he wanted to play William Tell with his sister the first time he got the bow and arrow. I 'll save that story for another time.

So we all march in and sit down to listen to the instructor that thinks BB guns are the same as a .50 caliber sniper rifle and gives us the safety lecture. Don't get me wrong I think that the safety is very important, and I so much as told KZ that if he did not follow the instructions given I would remove him from the range myself. We also had to here the instructor tell us that the big bad government wanted to take our guns away and to vote for Charlton Heston in November, if we cared about protecting ourselves.

Now onto the shooting. I gave KZ some tips about using the sites on the gun and lineing them up however it is pretty hard to know if he is doing it right. KZ does not have a hole in the back of his head like the Six Million Dollar Man doll that I had when I was a kid. So the only way I could tell if he had it some what right was weather or not he actually hit the target.

He did, in fine fashion. He had about 19 holes in the paper when he was done and about 4 of them were in the black center section of the target (about 3" in diameter). So I think that maybe we are ready to go off to Africa with the Elephant gun and take down the big game. But we are going to stop and vote first.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

ROARING TIGER, CROUCHING DAD, DAY

Mr. Clean and KZ went to Tiger Cub day up at the local Scout camp. The day did not start all that well. I woke up late and had to wake up KZ to even get him ready for the day. (Why is it that the times that I want him to be up at the crack of dawn he is never up?) Well after a quick breakfast and getting ourselves together we pulled out of the driveway in the yuppie mobile, aka the VOLVO and went to camp. We had no idea what to expect and were looking forward to all the things that the Scouts had planned for the day.

When we got to the camp we started by........ Standing in line! WHOO HOO! We had to register and find out what our group schedule was for the day. They had five events planned for the kids during the day. Our order was 1) Nature Hike (in other words run around in the woods, find a stick and whack everything you can with it until Dad chucks it further in the woods in frustration and then start the process all over again) 2) Games 3) Craft 4) Archery 5) BB Guns. I must admit I think that we had the best order for the day. If the Archery and BB Guns had come first the rest of the day would not have been so bearable. It made KZ really put up with some of the more un-interesting items.

So it was not until latter in the afternoon that we got to the Archery. YIPPIE, KZ got two rounds of shooting arrows at a target that was a whopping 4 feet away. Round one, not so good. 5 arrows and here is how it went 1) HIT, about 1" for margin of error.
Hard to tell from the Photo to the left however KZ's arrow is the one closest to the left edge of the target. 2) MISS 3)MISS 4) MISS and surprise surprise 5) MISS. KZ was a little discouraged by the results of his first 5 attempts. I think he figured that this would be a piece of cake since he already had practice at Nan and Pop's and he would not have to practice to hit the target. So then he got to sit down and wait for the other 2 groups to go before he got to go again. While he was waiting, Dad gave him some pointers before round 2. Round two, he only had three arrows. Makes sense to me, can't hit it with 5, lets take some arrows away. All the adults were jumping up and down yelling YIPPIE!!, in their heads of course.


So off we go to round 2, and here were the results. Arrow 1) Dad is busy taking pictures and KZ is busy hitting the BULLSEYE DEAD CENTER. Dad was very proud, all the pointers I gave him worked! Well maybe some of them. Arrows 2 and 3 he also hit the target. So he made much improvement in 5 minutes of sitting. I guess he is ready to go hunting. After the archery we got to go to the Grand Poohba of events the BB Guns. Will follow up with that later.