Fire Muster

Last weekend the firefighters on base hosted a Fire Muster, where we non-firefighter types were able to come out and 'live the dream' we all had as kids of being a fireman. They set up a few different events in which we competed as teams as well as an individual event category.

Here is a picture of our EMEDs team:


That's (left to right) me, Dave Lewis (RN from Nellis), Melissa Dooley (ER doc from Eglin), Magnum MaCrae (MCC tech from Eglin) and Greg Stroup (Gen Surgeon from Travis). You can see that Greg, Melissa and I are pretty average and we pulled in the other two as 'ringers.' Dave is a big strong guy that used to play a lot of rugby and Magnum runs an off duty business as a personal fitness trainer.

Our first event was the tug-o-war - pretty basic except that we used a fire hose and there was a tank of water in the middle that the winning team had to pull the loosing team up a ramp to finish the competition. With Dave as the anchor and Magnum as the muscle, we figured we would be OK.

We started off loosing ground initially until a friend advised us to "get down." We dropped to the ground and let them wear themselves out trying to drag us and then we were able to pull them up the ramp into the pool. That was a long 1:34, my forearms were dying by the end of it!

The next event was a sequence where you had to unroll 2 firehoses, connect them up to each other as well as to the water source, put the nozzle on and shoot some targets (baskeballs on cones). After knocking the baskeballs off we had to disconnect everything and roll up the hoses to finish the event. We did really well here and got one of the fastest times.

(cant find my picture of this one - I'll add it later)

After that we did a bucket brigade, passing water in buckets to splash on the roof of a small house. The water (at least some of it) would collect in the raingutter and fill into a barrel at the end and the fastest team to fill the barrel would win. The only catch was that all of the buckets had a bunch of holes in them and most of the water you threw on the roof splashed away rather than ending up in the barrel. We had a pretty good system going, though, with our tallest guy (Dave) throwing the water on the roof.

We figured out that it was easier to slide the buckets on the wet concrete, so we saved some serious time in bucket transfers and ended up with one of the top 3 times on this event as well.

At that juncture they tallied the points and the top four teams (out of a field of 20 or so) advanced to the last challenge event: The firehose joust. We were second on the leaderboard, at this point, so we 'made the cut' and prepared for the joust.

This was a really cool competition that put the two teams at the opposite ends of a rope stretched taut with a hanging bucket in the middle. The objective was to push the bucket (with the water jet) to the other side of the rope past the opposing team.


If you've ever seen how they use firehoses for riot control, you can imagine how it was for us when the glancing blows of the opponents water hit us. Despite the fact that we all had eye protection on, it made it very difficult to target the bucket when you had a face full of water.

Unfortunately for us, we picked the side that had the weaker water pressure and we got beat in both of our turns on the hose. Now I know it sounds like I'm making a big ol' excuse for us (and I am) but out of 12 competitions done (both during and after the formal event), every single time the joust was won by the team using the hose that we didn't use. No worries, though, we felt pretty good about our showing and ended up with the consolation prize as 4th.

After the team competition, I decided to enter in the individual competition as well.

There were two events which were timed and added together, with the fastest overall time being the winner.

The first part of the individual competition was the Bunker drill, in which you had to put on the full complement of fireman gear (correctly) as quickly as possible. Above is a picture of SrA Matt Wright just getting started on this drill (no one has pictures of me for this event).

And here is a picture as he is nearly finished. This part of the competition really favored smaller guys like me, since it was so much easier to fit into the suits that were relatively large on us. I watched a couple of big guys run into trouble because their hands were so big they couldn't easily fit them into the sleeves of the coat, let alone put on the gloves.

Next we did an obstacle course with a continuous timer. The first part was the hose drag, pulling two sections of hose the full length of a basketball court.

Those hose sections are heavier than you would imagine (although Magnum just picked up the whole hose and ran down the court with it). Officially you were supposed to drag it down, then come back to the end and finish pulling the whole thing across the line. This is SrA Amber Kelly 'putting her shoulder' into the drag.

Next we picked up one of the 'jaws of life' (40-50 lbs) and carried it around a cone at 1/2 court.


Next came the shuttle relay, where you had to pick up rolled sections of hose at one cone (one at a time), then run and stack them at another cone. This was the easiest part of the individual competition, but you were already starting to get tired by then.


Next we had to use a 10 lb sledge to hit a sandbag weighted truck tire 10-15 feet. You could expend a lot of energy here and only have the sledge bounce off the tire without advancing it much at all. Below is a picture of Magnum getting after it.


I used a non-traditional approach and backed up to the tire and hit it backwards between my legs with short, choppy hits. It moved really well that way and I made up a fair amount of time (and conserved energy) here.

Next we pulled another weighted tire with a rope across the 1/2 court line and back. You had to keep your feet in a relatively small area (so no holding onto the rope and running away to drag the tire), which made this the most difficult of the events for me - and by then I was really feeling tired from the previous parts of the course.


The last part of the course was the Dummy Drag, in which we were to take a 140 lb dummy around a cone at 1/2 court and then back to the line. Once again, I took a non-standard approach and instead of holding the dummy around the waist and walking backwards (how everyone else did it), I grabbed the dummy by the feet and dragged it with the head and shoulders bouncing on the ground. Granted that wouldn't be the preferred approach with a real patient, but there was no rule dictating the manner in which we dragged the dummy for the competition.

I was pretty wiped out by the end of the obstacle course and I felt like it took me a really long time, so I was amazed when they told me that I had completed the combined course in record time and that I was in the lead! My time held up to the few competitors that were left and I recieved the 1st place award for the individual event.

I am looking forward to finding a nice place in our library or our office at home to hang this ax! What a cool award they came up with to commemerate the event!

Tops in Blue Concert

Greg, Glen and I - along with a couple hundred other military members - went to a concert put on by the AF Tops in Blue group the other day. They are a "talent organization" that pulls from all parts of the Air Force to make a team of singer/dancers that take a year off from their regular AF jobs and tour the world performing at various military venues. Here we are waiting in wild anticipation for the extravaganza to come!

As you can see below, they have a pretty large group and are complete with a 10 member band to accompany them (2 trumpets, trombone, 2 keyboard artists, drums, guitar, two saxaphones). They spent about 90 minutes entertaining us with show tunes, pop songs and patriotic classics.

They arrived at 0400 that morning, but by the evening they had set up the stage and all the sound equipment and had plenty of energy to 'blow us away.' It was incredible how much energy they had, given the grueling schedule they keep for a year (After our show they packed away their pallets of equipment and got onto another plane to head to Balad at about midnight)! These men and women are not only talented, they are amazingly tough and resiliant. I don't think many performers could keep up with them on or off stage!

Their act is similar in nature to the "Music USA" group at Lagoon (or some of the performing groups at other amusement parks), except the performers have to pack, carry, and unpack all of their equipment with them as they go from place to place. They have no stage crew and are their own equipment handlers - with the kind of crazy schedule that I mentioned above! Pretty impressive group!

They came out among the audience and embarassed a few people....

Unfortunately I didn't get the camera out in time when Greg was sitting in the 'hot spot,' but I took this picture of him immediately after his moment of fame.

We really enjoyed the performance - they did a great job - and it was nice to be in a situation that you could almost forget that you were deployed 10,000 miles away from home and your family.

Dinner and a Movie on Krab Island

The EMEDs hospital complex has two buildings with a walkway between them. Some time in the past someone was able to put some metal decking out there and cover it with cammo netting to create our very own KRAB island (you can see the netting is getting pretty ratty at this point).


This is the "social hub" of our squadron. It has been wired up with a steroe and lights and it even has its own little fountain-pond (a bit heavy on the algea).


A tradition had been started just prior to my arrival that we have a weekly barbeque as a squadron where we sit down to eat together and then watch a movie that we project on a 'screen' made of several pieces of white-painted plywood. Really it was one guy (Lt Nick Sauber) who was running the event with very little help from anyone else, so I started helping with the organization and execution of the weekly outings. One of the key elements that added greatly to the enjoyability of our events was when Nick and I were out and about (working on networking and finding out what was 'possible') and were able to get an 'in' with the guys in the food supply shop. That opened a whole new world of options tha we now had available for weekend barbeques.

Here is a picture of me and Nick (now out of the AF and on his way to medical school in Ohio) grilling up some chicken and pineapple.
Nick passed the power of the tongs on to me when he went home a month ago, and we have continued in his proud tradition and have served all kinds of different barbeque meats (ribs, burgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, chicken) and other grilled acoutrements.

Here are a few pictures of the group sitting down to eat and socialize, which is really what this weekly outing is about.

In the words of the 'immortal LT', "The unit that plays together, stays together." Of course we don't have much of a choice about 'staying together,' (at least for the period of the deployment) since we are all jammed into rooms together and we all work in these two buildings, but the spirit of his statement holds true. We may have to be here away from our families for this period, but we can do some small things along the way to make the time pass more quickly and pleasantly.

Weapons training

Last week Greg, Glen and I had the treat of going out to the range and firing off a fairly sizable number of rounds with various guns. I've always loved firing pistols and rifles, but it was a whole new experience to just let loose with hundreds of rounds from some of the automatic weapons we shot.

This is the array of automatic weapons that we fired, along with a standard Glock 9mm pistol (not shown).

The small machine gun pistol with the "fold-over" stock is the HK MP5, which is similar to the Uzi (only more reliable and accurate) and fires a 9mm round.

Here is a picture of Glen modeling with the HK. He doesn't look like he is enjoying himself at all :).
It is amazing how the recoil from the high rate of fire "walks" your shots up as you shoot. You really have to squat forward and put your shoulder into it to keep it on target.

Next we spent some time shooting the M4A1, which is similar to an M-16, that uses a 5.56 mm round. You can see that Glen caught the below photo as an "action shot," with one of the brass cartridges ejecting from the weapon as I fired in full-auto mode.



After that we had the chance to rattle off 200 rounds apeice from the M249 SAW (Squadron Assault Weapon - or light support weapon) machine gun - both from prone as well as from the standing position. Every 10th round was a phosphorescent tracer, so it was a lot of fun to watch the "path of destruction" that this gun can lay down.





We had such a great time - I mean how many times does a guy think, "It would be fun to have (essentially) unlimited ammo to fire off in fully automatic mode." That's the way it was for us and we really enjoyed ourselves. I would have to say that this has been one of the highlights of the deployment so far!


Next week I'm going to get to fire a sniper rifle - so I'll plan on posting some pictures of that as well.