The Metal Detector

So I've been wanting a metal detector for a couple of years now. I've been telling Faith all summer that as soon as I get a fire assignment I'm going to buy one. So, for those of you that hadn't heard, I spent two weeks in Montana recently on the West Riverside fire. The fire was pretty fun, I worked with the Fire Behavior Analyst, who tries to predict where the fire could go and how it will burn. Mostly we just watched the fire burn and talked about it, then he would write a fire behavior forecast and brief the incident management team a couple times a day and the firefighters every morning and night. Except I started doing the night shift briefings after a couple of days, once he figured out I wasn't an idiot, I think. One day we were hiking up an old closed road looking at what the fire would burn into if it jumped any of the lines and us and a bear sleeping under a tree about 30 feet away scared the crap out of each other. Anyway, I spent 13 days there, and when I got home I bought a metal detector from the local Radio Shack. Faith and I went to a campground along the river that afternoon and I found 2 pennies and a bunch of bullett shells. Only 1,998 more pennies to go til that baby's paid for itself. So today I took the day off, I got sick after I came back from the fire, and I typically get insomnia when I'm sick, so last night I didn't fall asleep until 630 am, and I woke up at 9. I went into work and we decided that my decision making skills and processing of information would probably be a little hampered, so I took the day off. Rather than sleep all day, then risk not being able to sleep again tonight, we decided to take the metal detector out to a place we like to go camping at and let the kids and the dogs run around while I played with the detector. I gave the kids each a leatherman tool to carve sticks with, one that stays in my hiking pack most of the time, and the one I carry everyday. Simon had the daily carrier, which is my nicer one. So I'm looking for stuff with the detector, and I've got a little probe thing and a small garden trowel. Simon comes over and asks if he can borrow the trowel. I say sure and give it to him. He returns it a few minutes later then runs off to play. After a while he says he would really like to shoot the bb gun, and I tell him as soon as I'm done digging up what my detector hit on I'll get it out of the van for him to shoot. Faith asks "Why don't you carve a stick while you're waiting." Simon says "Good idea." I'm kind of involved in digging up what turned out to be a .22 shell buried about 6 inches down, so I'm not sure what he's doing, but he ends up coming over and asking if he can borrow the probe. I say sure and give it to him. He walks off and returns a couple of minutes later and says "Dad, I need you to bring the metal detector over here." I say OK and we walk over to a spot near where the fire pit is. Simon says he wants me to search around in this area. Earlier he had been holding a a toy key, and I tell him that the detector won't pick up the key if he buried it because it's plastic. He assures me he didn't bury the key, so I say "OK, what are we looking for?" Simon, who is normally never at a loss for words, seems speechless for a second, then says, "Well, it's around here somewhere, lets just look." After a few minutes of finding nothing but bullet shells, I ask him if he buried something, and if so, if he tells me what it is I can make sure the detector will pick up that kind of metal only, so we won't have to dig everytime the detector beeps. Simon tells me "Well, I was kind of thinking that if I buried your leatherman tool you could come over and look for it and get some good practice in with your metal detector. Except I decided to carve a stick before you got over here, and now I can't remember where I buried it." At that point I just started laughing. I told him that it was OK, we'll just see what kind of metal shows up when we run the detector over the other leatherman tool that Dylan had, then we can just look for that. Turns out it's just plain iron on the detector, which comes up for everything the detector scans. I started to get a sinking feeling in my stomach at that point, but I figured Simon could at least show me the general area he buried it in to narrow the search down. What followed was "I think I buried it over here. No, didn't find anything? Maybe it was over here," as he led me 30 feet away, "Or maybe it was over here," showing me a spot 30 feet in the other direction. So I settled into a grid pattern and after an hour I found the leatherman tool. The whole time Simon kept saying, "Sorry Dad, sometimes I get these crazy ideas in my head that seem like a good at the time." I've never laughed so hard while being so frustrated with one of the kids in my life. After I found it we discussed never burying any of Dad's things again, which Simon whole heartedly agreed with. That's about it, hope everybody's doing well, I'll try to take some pictures and post them of the kids soon. They both started school recently, and apparently Dylan is the tallest kid in his class. He loves school and got mad this weekend when I told him he didn't have to go. Simon likes his class as well, he's been getting to do special things at assemblies and other stuff for being one of the best behaved kis in class, which is nice for him.

Memorial Day

We went fishing on Sunday up at Swan Lake. We started the day with 4 working fishing poles and ended the day with one working fishing pole (mine). The one Dylan has in that picture is one of the collapsible ones we bought the kids this year. The reels on them both failed about an hour into fishing, so Simon and I took turns with mine with close supervision while he was using it, and Faith and Dylan took turns with Faith's, with no supervision of Dylan while he was using it, until I looked over and asked "How long has be spinning that reel backwards for?" The reel was a complete mess on the inside when I took it apart, so we were down to one fishing pole.

And I caught this fish with it. This was actually the 5th fish I caught, but the only one that was big enough to be worth keeping. There's no minimum size on the fish you can keep in the lakes here, but this fish is about 10 inches long. For those of you who may not see Simon and Dylan a lot, you probably don't realize that Simon is wearing a shirt of Dylan's in this photo. Here's the reason: After the kid's reels quit working, they decided to go play up the hill from the shore. Simon came back in a few minutes and said "I have poop on my shirt. I think it's human poop." After some question and answer we were able to piece this story together. Simon has a little notebook he won from the arcade at the bowling alley we went to on Saturday. Dylan was playing with it and for some unexplicable reason (fecophilia maybe?) set the notebook down in what was reported to be human poop. Simon picked up the notebook and wiped it off on his shirt. End of story. It took us about 20 minutes of questions to get that out of Simon and Dylan. I told Simon he had to take his shirt off, at which point Dylan gave Simon his "extra" shirt he was wearing. Why was Dylan wearing and "extra" shirt? I have no idea. Anyway, I caught a few more fish after this one, but only kept 1 other.

Fishin on Monday. The dock we're on moves quite a bit and the kids were worried it was going to dump them into the lake, so they decided to wear life jackets. Just on the other side of the lake was a dead tree with an osprey nest in it and some hatchlings that were screaming and the mom and dad were fishing and bringing food to the hatchlings. We never got to see them catch a fish, but they would take off to the other end of the lake, and come back and the hatchlings would pop up and they would sit on the edge of the nest for second then take off again. It was pretty neat, I tried to get a picture of it, but was never ready with the camera when they came back. It started thundering and lightning soon after this picture, so we headed home and watched a movie while the storm passed, then piled a bunch of sleeping bags on the trampoline and the kids had me throwing them on to the pile from as I could lift them. I also convinced Dylan to try to learn how to do a backflip. He almost did one, but hurt his ear on something when he landed, so he quit trying after that. It was pretty cool. I'll have try to get a video of his acrobatic feats, he can run at our foot stool, put his hands down on it and kind flip over it, it's pretty neat. That's about it for now, please read the post below to hear about my morning adventure.

I hate Curlew Lake.

Hi, I don't have any pictures right now, Faith took Dylan to school and my camera is in the van. I just wanted (and Faith wanted me to) share this story about why I hate Curlew Lake. Curlew Lake is a huge lake about 7 miles from town, there's a state park there with a beach and swimming area, and it's close enough to go there for an hour or two to go fishing if you don't have a whole lot of time. When I was in Job Corps we used to put the docks in the water in the spring right after the ice melted off, and it was also the time that the new people in Forestry got introduced to our tradition of chucking new people in a freezing cold lake. I threw somebody in that didn't know how to swim, so I got to jump in after them and pull them over to the dock. Then Todd, the instructor, threw me back in the lake once I got out. Then he made me work the rest of the day in wet clothes and near freezing temperatures. We usually let the new people sit in the van with the heater on once they get out of the lake, but apparently I needed to be taught some sort of lesson. The last time I was there Dylan hooked me in the leg with his fishing pole and then took off running and crying when I yelled "OW!" He was still holding the pole, which meant I had to run after him trying to get him to stop, or risk having the hook rip out of my leg. After that fiasco was over with we discovered the battery in the pathfinder was dead, there was no cell coverage, and we were the only people in the state park. Luckily somebody showed up and I was able to convince him to give us a jump. That was two years ago, I haven't been back since. So, as you can see from previous experience, I really don't enjoy the time I've spent at Curlew Lake. Today, however, I made the ill-fated decision to take Dylan fishing for a couple of hours before school started. So we load up, head to lake, get the fishing stuff out of the van, and the sliding door won't shut, it won't even move. So I start looking at it and notice that the roller on the back of the door has popped out of it's track. I apply a little force to the door to see if I can get it to pop back in, and starts sliding closed. I think "Oh, cool." Then it falls off. Completely. It's laying on the ground. Dylan and I stand there in silence for a few moments, then Dylan asks "Dad, what are we going to do!?" Then I started laughing, because Dylan really looked like he was ready to start crying, and I couldn't deal with a sliding door lying on the ground and a crying child at the same time. So Dylan started laughing too, and he went to got throw stuff in the water while I attempted to fix the door. Which I wasn't really able to do. I did however have 50 feet of rope in my back pack, so I got what parts of the door into their proper places I could, then wrapped 50 feet of rope around the van and tied the door on. Then we went fishing for an hour or so. Didn't catch any fish, but I've never caught a fish at that stupid lake. So, we get ready to head home, and start thinking about how many ways my awesome fix can totally fail on the 7 mile trip home. And fail it did, but luckily before I even got to the highway. Now, when I tied the rope on I looked underneath to make sure the rope wasn't going to get wrapped up in the driveline or something, saw that it wouldn't, but did notice that the rope going across part of the exhaust. As the tied on door plan was at that time my only plan, I was just hoping it wouldn't burn through the rope. It did, but as I said, luckily it did it before I had even made it back to the highway. So, with a little reconfiguration, I ended up with the rope wrapped around the door, coming inside the van, and tied off to the drivers seat. I made it about 200 yards at 20 mph on the highway before it became obvious that wasn't going to work for much longer, the rope was sliding towards the front of the door and the back of the door was opening wider as I drove. So I pulled over, took the door all the way off again, and started looking at how the stupid thing was supposed to go back on. I did figure it out, there was a piece at the back of the track I had to take off, then everything slid back in. I haven't tried opening it again, I'm not sure if I will try. We'll see. So anyway, I got to thinking about how everytime I go to that (insert bad word of choice here) lake, something bad happens to me. Which led me to the realization that I hate that lake, and I am never going there again. I'll drive the extra half hour to get to the other lakes around.

P.S. I tried the door, mainly becuase Faith didn't think I should, it works. I'm awesome.

The boys made pinewood derby cars. I drew the design on the block, then they used a coping saw to cut them out, sanded them, and painted them. Simon got 3rd in one of the pinewood derby races, but Dylan couldn't race his in the actual derby because he's not really in scouts yet.

I came home from Oregon and found this in my driveway. The guy that owns the place Faith works at dropped it off while I was gone. I'm friends with his son, and he came over a couple of days later, and I showed it to him. He had built it with his brother in law. He said "Did my dad tell you we never actually got it running? The motor would run, but we never got around to hooking it up so it would move the wheels." Great. I can't even get the motor to run yet, it's not getting fuel. I took the whole fuel system apart last weekend, and was completely baffled. It doesn't have a normal carburetor, just an adjustable screw that controls how much fuel goes into the chamber where it mixes with air. It gets fuel to that screw, but not past it. I cleaned everything and all the holes where fuel should go through are clean, but it still won't make it past there. I'll figure it out, having a go cart is going to be awesome!

Our friend Sara had a baby, she brought her over the other day. Simon loves the babies.

We went geocaching the other day.

Oona looking at some of the geese we got last November. She retrieved one of the geese, they were almost the same size.

Simon turned 7, had a party and sleepover with 5 kids. 4 of them were still alive when their parents showed up the next morning.

Dylan turned 5, had a party, no sleep over.

The golf course opened up, I played yesterday with my friend Shane. Simon and I were going to go today, but when he found out we weren't going out to breakfast first because it was too late for breakfast he asked if we could go tomorrow instead, so I think that's what we'll do. I played golf in the rain yesterday, and it's supposed to rain more today, so I was fine with waiting for tomorrow when it's only a 20% chance of rain and snow instead of 90%. The kids are on spring break next week, I don't think we're doing anything though. I have to work most of the week. Next Sunday I'm going to Shelton, Washington for 3 days, then the Sunday after that I head to Tucson for week for a class. That's about it, looks like I'm good for another 5 months.

The sunrise from my window at work the other morning.

Simon started Cub Scouts, he's pretty excited to wear a uniform. He wears it to school on days he has den meetings, and the other day he wore it and I had to wear my uniform because the Regional Forester was here and when I got home from work he was so happy that we were both wearing uniforms. The Regional Forester is the head of the Forest Service for region 6, which is Oregon and Washington. She came up with her executive staff to visit the forest, and they all split up and went to different districts, and the Regional Forester came to Republic. Her name is Mary, and she's actually a pretty cool lady. She was supposed to take pictures to show at a talk the next day, and she dropped her camera within 2 minutes of getting out of the car at her first stop. I met her at the first stop with our district silviculturist to talk about our upcoming project, then I met her again later in the afternoon to look at the big fire we had this summer, then we went up to the project that is getting work done on it right now to show her some of the stuff we are doing. The next day the whole district had to Colville for a meeting. When I got to Colville I was talking to my friend Shane at the back of the room and I set my coffee cup down on a table. Some lady walked up, grabbed my coffee cup and took off with it, saying "We're moving up front now." I said "Excuse me?" rather loud, at which point Shane turned around and walked quickly in another direction. He told me later he could tell that I was irritated with the lady and didn't want to be around while I bit her head off. Turned out he made the right decision. The lady turned around and I said "Do you think I could have my coffee cup back?" and she kind of held out half way and smirked at me, so I reached forward, ripped my coffee cup out of her hand, gave the dirtiest look I could muster, and slammed my coffee cup down on the table where it was before she picked it up. She turned around and walked away. Then the meeting started and she was introduced as the Deputy Regional Forester. Crap. She still shouldn't touch things that don't belong to her.

This is a huge larch tree at a botanical garden the boys and I went for a walk in a couple of weeks ago.

The Curtis and Ballaris kids at the entrance to the corn maze. My friend Mark came to visit last weekend. We had a bunch of fun.

Simon and Dylan inside the corn maze. I'd never been to a corn maze before, and let me tell you something: They're freaking awesome! It was so much fun. Well, it was fun once we separated the kids into 3 different groups, Faith took Dylan and Weatherly, I took Simon, and Mark took William. William and Weatherly are Mark's kids. Simon and William wouldn't quit fighting about who was going to be the leader, so I held Simon back and we waited for everyone to get ahead of us a bit, then did the maze on our own. It took us about 30 minutes to do the whole thing. It took Faith 45 minutes, even though she was in front of Simon and me. Simon and I were able to find the same place 6 or 7 times in a row, he tried to tell me we were lost, and I tried to convince I just really liked that spot and wanted to see it again.

Oona with the ducks I got on opening day of duck season. She did pretty darn good. I got them both when they came into my decoys, and one ended up right next to shore so I grabbed that one and sent her out after the one that was further out. She tried to retrieve one of the decoys a couple times, but I got her out past the decoys and lined up on the duck and she swam right out, grabbed it with no hesitation, and brought it right back. It was awesome, I was super excited. I've seen puppies that won't grab a duck the first time, the feathers and the smell confuse them I guess. She'd never had feathers in her mouth, but I've been putting duck scent on everything she retrieves since she came home, so I guess that must of worked. Those were the only ducks we got that day. You can only shoot two hen mallards a day, that's what those are, and I'm a lot better at identifying ducks after I've shot them then I am doing it when they're flying past me or into the decoys at a high rate of speed, so rather than shoot anything I wasn't supposed to I decided to end it on a positive note and call it a day. I went again the next day, but some kids in a boat came to the other side of the lake from me and were doing something that apparently required them to bang on metal objects and shout loudly. I didn't know how long they would be there, and no ducks were even looking at my decoys or responding to calling, so I picked everything up and headed home. That's about all that's been going on, I leave next Sunday for a conference in Spokane, then the day after that gets over I'm heading to Oregon for duck hunting with some of my friends from Bend, then up to Newport, WA for 3 more days of hunting. Hope everybody's doing well. See ya.

Sorry it's been so long since the last post, but I've been super busy. I'll try to stay fairly chronological, here it goes.

As you can see, the kids got new bikes and we got a new puppy. Faith brought her home from Idaho, she's my Christmas present. Her name is Oona, but her registered name is "First August Snow", Oona is a variation on the spelling of Una, which is latin for one or first, so the internet tells me. She's a pretty good puppy, she's learning really fast, but if she doesn't lose those puppy teeth soon the kids won't have any toys left. She's a pure bred lab, and she is hopefully going to be my duck hunting companion for the next 10 or 12 years. Faith and the boys had a great time in Idaho, I still haven't seen any pictures though. Simon got out of the car when they got home and started riding his old bike, which still had training wheels. He rode for about 5 minutes, then came over and said "Dad, I think it's time to take my training wheels off." So I did, he hopped on his bike and took off, no problem at all. So we bought them both new bikes, Dylan was getting too big for his just like Simon was. Of course, Faith and Simon learned a valuable lesson a couple of days later, Simon learned about not parking his bike behind the van, and Faith learned about doing walk arounds before reversing over the 2 day old bike. So Simon got another new bike. They're only about $40 at Walmart, so it wasn't that bad I suppose. About 5 days after Faith got home we had a huge windstorm here, and it knocked a powerline down and started what turned into a 650 acre fire that ran in between two roads that had about 50 houses tucked away between them. No houses burned down, just one barn. I went out to it after it had been going for an hour or so to help the incident commander manage all the engines and crews that came, and ended up going to look at the road that the fire was heading toward to see what we could do to try to stop it there. It spotted across that road, and the story I heard later that evening from the incident commander before I left for the hospital was that I was solely responsible for stopping the fire, and if I hadn't been where I was with the plan I had developed we would have been chasing the fire for another week. Let me tell you what really happened: I drove up to the road, found a couple of small spot fires, snagged an engine that was driving by to help put those out, put them out, looked up on top of the hill, cursed profusely for a minute when I saw the big fire that had crossed the road, stopped the engine from rushing up another road into the head of the fire, fell in a ditch and hurt my knee so bad I walked with a limp for a week, got dumped on by 3 big retardent planes (30 mph winds will carry retardent alot farther than you think it will), found some local yahoo in a bull dozer and led him around trying to stop the fire from getting into a bunch of wheat fields, climbed a few barbed wire fences, and left at 9:00 pm to go to the hospital, where I got a free water bottle. Apparently they gave free water bottles to all the idiots that cut themselves badly enough on barbed wire fences to get stitches, though. Then I ended up staying on the fire for 8 days, 4 with the management team that took it over, then 4 more when it went back to the local state DNR district. I really have no idea what Faith and the boys were doing at this point, however. So that finished, I had a few days off that I ended up coming down with a sinus infection for, and Simon started 1st grade. He was super excited. He likes his teacher, but none of his friends are in his class. It's funny, because when his friends were in his class he couldn't focus on school because he was showing off for his friends, now there's no friends in his class, and he is apparently falling asleep. He's been telling us all summer that sometimes he doesn't ever go to sleep at night, apparently he was telling the truth. Dylan starts school at the end of September, he'll be in preschool again. They both started soccer tonight, Faith's the coach again, and Simon will be doing Cub Scouts here in a week or so. Faith got a job at her friend's parent's store working in the deli/coffee shop, she'll work a couple of days a week. I switched my schedule so I'm working 4 ten hour days so I can have Friday's off to watch Dylan while Faith is working. I started brewing beer again, Faith had bought me a kit about 10 years ago, and I made a couple of batches, but a bunch of the equipment got broken when we were moving at some point, and I never replaced it until a month or so again, and started brewing beer again. It's turning out pretty darn good, I even had one of our friends come over who is really into brewing and is opening his own brewery pretty soon, and he said my beer was excellent. That's about it, the boys are home from soccer practice and are telling me to stop typing. Hope everybody's doing well.

So I got home from my fire assignment, found out we had been getting fires at home, was told I could work as much as I wanted, decided to work all my days off to earn some extra money since my assignment was short, and Faith decided to bail to Idaho. So I worked all my days off and we haven't gotten any fires since then. Oh well. My fire assignment was pretty good, I got to work on my Division Supervisor task book, which means I'm in charge of pretty big chunk of fire, with about 120 people working for me. I only made one mistake during the fire. That was sitting at the bottom of a ridge and saying to my trainer "It doesn't look that far to the top, I think I'll hike up there tomorrow." There was a road that some crews were working on at the top, so I figured I'd hike up along the fire edge where I had some crews building line, then walk the rest of the division along a roadway that some engine crews were working on making sure it didn't cross over into the fire that burned there a couple of weeks before. That's right, we were making sure fire didn't cross a road into another fire, I didn't get it either, but I do excel at following directions, so that's what I had folks doing. Anyway, "not that far" doesn't mean you can't climb a little over 2000 feet in elevation in a little less than a mile, the last 800' of elevation gained by basically rock climbing in fire boots, a pack, and tossing my tool up to rock ledges so I could use both hands to climb. At one point I decided to go back down, but when I turned around and looked at the shale slope I'd just climbed up, holding onto the edge of a rock bluff the whole way, I decided that sliding off the cliff at the bottom of the shale slope was probably worse than just finishing the hike, so I did. I've done some pretty horrendous hikes on fires, and that one I think is in 2nd place. First place goes to scaling a rock wall with fire gear and assorted helicopter long line equipment wrapped around my body, using a crash axe to reach up and hook onto ledges to pull myself up. Anyway, throughout the assignment as a trainee division supervisor my branch director never talked to me, he's my direct supervisor on the incident management team. After a few days he told me that I was doing such a good job he didn't need to bother me with anything. Then on our last day one of the operations section chiefs (they're second in command on an incident management team in terms of carrying out the actual firefighting) came up to me and told me that the rest of the team was very impressed with me and would like to recruit me to join the team on a permanent basis. The next morning my branch director and the other operations section chief (there's usually a 2 or 3 on a team so they can work in shifts) asked me to consider joining the team full time. I told them I would love too, usually a person has to bounce around for quite awhile before being asked to join a team, and asking a trainee to join the team as a permanent member doesn't happen very often, so I'm pretty stoked about that. I've been pretty bored since Faith and the boys left, I can't wait for them to get home. Faith surprised me by calling one day and telling me to look at the dog Casey on snakeriverretrievers.com, as she would be bringing home one of his puppies as an early Christmas present for me. She's bringing home a female, pure bred lab, from what looks like an excellent line of hunting dogs. It should be fun, and make duck hunting alot easier for me. That's about it, I've just been working and reading alot since Faith and the boys left. I went camping with our friends Landon, Brooke, and their son Jackson on Friday night, that was pretty fun. We camped in a campground, which I normally don't like, but we had a good time all the same. The berries are all just about ripe now, I found a huge patch of thimbleberries and rasberries the other day and picked about a pint in 20 minutes. I ate them all on my way home though. Tomorrow I think I may go pick some huckleberries after I go to work. It's supposed to be my day off, but apparently one the crews we sent out had some problems and I have to go in and talk to them about what the problem was. Hope everybody's doing well.