Hose Action Weight Loss Plan

Well if you want to lose about 8 kilos in one night, just turn up for fire fighting training. Holy cow. The fellows took me & Tracey out to do some hose running practise in full kit - heavy pants, jacket, helmet, gloves, boots. It's still about 30 degrees in the evening here so of course we were soaked with sweat before even leaving the change room.

So we took the HSR (big truck) out to one of the back streets, learned to identify where hydrants are, then unrolled the hoses, hooked up to the hydrant, and learned how to partner up to operate the hose, which is like handling a large athletic anaconda. We also learned the hand signals for "water on" and "water off", which are highly effective if the guys at the pump end are watching and not talking about cars. Then we had the excitement of draining and rolling the hoses, by which time we just felt like having a nice lie down on the comfy pavement in a pool of our own sweat.

The average age in the brigade is probably about 45. What I like is that everyone plays some role in the town and we catch up on all sorts of gossip & news. Paul, our secretary, is a teacher at the school; Reece is the head of the hospital kitchen; Greg is our local "garbo" and handy for getting updates on when loads of pallets have been dumped at the tip; Nathan is a sort of bush mechanic out at Sherwood Station; Tracey is the pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church; then there's a motley bunch of the real old timers with their mad patchwork pasts and a few young blokes who've rolled into town & aren't quite sure what to do with their evenings, including Benton, who is the only Indian guy within something like 800 kilometres and needs something more than just his lonely shifts at the roadhouse.

I managed to stay awake during the detailed explanation of the town fire hydrant map, then went home for a nice cuppa. Gary is very sweet and picks me up & takes me home from training, even though it's only a block and half from my house. My place is absolutely feral at the moment with all the renovation work so I go and stay at his place a couple of nights a week where I can have a hot shower and then get fried from the invisible horrifying plasma rays from the giant TV (we have moved on from 1970's car movies to modern sci fi series thank god).

As usual there's lots more to tell but right now I need to go and lie down with an IV drip of body fluid replacement, if I can get my arms to move out of hose-holding position ever again.