In Town and Out

We are slowly dipping our toes into the community involvement stew. Gavin is now the assistant coach for the junior high flag football team, and he is really digging it. The kids are all pretty cool, good attitudes and everything. I got athletic too, for one night. There's a town volleyball league, just for fun... they say. Maybe when the bruises are gone I'll try it again.

The monthly fire meeting was this week. Noone has really told us what the routine is for these meetings, but I gather that one of the monthly tasks is to start up the fire truck and drive it around the block a couple times, just to keep it running. We got some instruction on how to operate the manual choke, how to finagle the clutch when switching gears, and how to use a flashlight to view the dash controls. The truck is circa 1962 and could use some TLC, but it's what we've got for now.

The other agenda item at the fire meeting was preparations for this weekend's fall festival. With a demolition derby, an 8K/5K run, and events in the park all requiring presence of an EMT and fire equipment, and the usual requirements for being available for emergencies, both the local fire and EMT would be stretched pretty thin. So the fire chief and another local are bringing their own fire trucks to the derby, and there will be no ambulance for the derby or the race, just EMT's with ready bags.

Gavin and I volunteered to man the sign-in table for the run, and we ended up timing the finishers too. Somehow I roped myself into filling in the ribbons as well. I think I screwed that up, but fortunately everyone was pretty relaxed about the whole thing. Since the sign-in thing had started at 7:30 am, we left after the race and pretty much called it a day. Missed the derby and everything. I can't believe I missed a chance to watch car crashes. We missed the evening street dance too, although we could hear it from our house. By about 9 pm, we were hearing a lot of whoops, hollers, and karaoke, but it had all died down before midnight. Possibly because that's about as late as anyone can stay up here... or maybe because it was about 30 degrees last night.

Fall has definitely arrived. Ah, fall. Time to enjoy the changing of the seasons. Time for some yard work, out in that crisp cool air. Time to bleed on the driveway.