beer drinking, sling-shot slinging and hot springing

We had three days off following our first fire streak and Jodie, Doyle, Dean and I headed up to Liard hotsprings for a little bit of fun and relaxation (though, truth be told, I was far more tired when we got home than when we left!).

mostly because having doyle around was just like having a little brother there (and i guess i'd sort of forgotten what that was like).

he roped and tied me


shot his slingshot at me


jumped on me


and sat on me


but at least i wasn't the only one being harassed... the buffalo got a taste of his sling-shot, too!


we went for a big hike just south of the hotsprings, just choosing a nice long ridge from the highway and going for it.


it was the first time that dean had ever gone hiking for fun...and i'm still not sure just how much fun he actually had


but we made it, and at the top, we were all smiles :)


but after a long hike, a rainy descent and a million mosquito bites, bathing in the hotsprings felt very deserved

this time's for real

yeah yeah, so i really am going to start blogging again now (just for you, ma!)

here's what the rhino's have been up to so far this year:

the first few weeks were pretty slow...and cold...
we almost got stuck on our way out to crying girl to check up on a 'make sure you're campfire is out' sign


but not long after, we finally had our first fire call - to a surprisingly big and steep fire near dinosaur lake that was a little tougher than what we normally have as a 'warm up' fire. on the first night, the fire actually burned over our hose lay (and some gear)


after a few more days of rain (with some snow chucked in), the weather warmed up again and we had two solid weeks of fires. by we, i mean the rhinos. for most of those two weeks, i was held back in FSJ for training. bah.

we had a really nice fire near chetwynd... there was some good fire behavior and a tanker show when we first arrived, it was dry and steep and we got to enjoy honey garlic chicken wings from Murray's Pub every night! the fire started because of a campfire that got away. when we got there, we found the fire ring and a bunch of empty beer cans laying around it. whoever was responsible must have been worried about an investigation or something, because they came back in the night a few days later, gathered all the beer cans and scattered the rocks used in the campfire ring!

the best part of this fire was watching dawley catch a mouse.


after missing out on a trip up to toad river (my favorite place to fight fires) because of training, 10 of us headed to a beautiful fire on the sikanni river, where we stayed in the hunting lodge.


and met peanut - not the prettiest dog i've ever seen (we actually nicknamed a guy on our crew after the little pug), but he certainly has a lot of character. if you got up and left your chair at dinner, he would hop right up on it and take your place.



on the sikanni fire, we were flown into one of the nicest heli-spots i've ever been dropped off at - we had to hike down a long ridge from the top of the mountain to get to our fire.




this fire was actually an overachievement by the MoE who were doing a wildlife burn. so the owners of the hunting camp didn't really want it out at all since it would create more hunting grounds for them. a good dose of rain took care of it just as well as we could have anyway.

first fire of the year

We had to wade through ankle deep snow to get to a 10 ha fire, which grew another 4 ha overnight and burnt a bunch of our hose. It just doesn't make sense....

but I'll take it...giddy-up!!

The overtime has begun!

Been a While....

My dad asked a very good question last night: what am i gonna blog about now?

True, life back in Fort St. John doesn't seem quite as interesting as cycling around south america....but i'm hoping to keep things interesting enough to talk about. Even if no one is listening :)

I just got back to FSJ last night and am working on settling in and fighting the urge to throw everything in my car and run away. Actually, I couldn't afford enough gas to get much further than the city limit line so it looks like I'm in for yet another summer with the rhinos. Now if only the snow would melt and the water stop falling from the sky so that we could get some fires.....

back in 5....months, that is

Tomorrow I pedal off into the sun.... I'll be gone for about 5 months, biking through the US, Mexico, and South America. And I think an adventure like that is worthy of its own blog, so porbicicleta.blogspot.com is where I'll be posting from now on. And it'll be even more exciting than this blog (and you thought that wasn't possible!).

:)

a bartlett family adventure

on my last weekend home with the family, mom and dad treated me to 2 days of quadding in the mountains around fort st. john. it was tons of fun, with amazing views and loads of wildlife...

coolest mom in the world....really, she's cool. honest. even in pink goggles.

dad enjoying the view of williston lake surrounded by fall colors.
and we never go anywhere without maverick.
mom and mav hiking up for a better look at the mountains near sikhanni.
a herd of caribou cruising through the alpine - one of three herds we saw that day.

nerdy, i know

those who know me know that i'm a 'little notebook' nerd. i carry my little notebook with me everywhere to write down important and, more often, not-so-important things in so i don't forget them. i'm also a 'great quote' nerd - result being that i have a lot of good quotes in my nerdy little notebook. since it's time for a new notebook, i was going through the old one and thought i'd share some of the best quotes i read/heard this year:

"I looked at myself...as a monkey given my life to play with, prodding it, trying to stretch it into different shapes, dropping it and picking it up again, suspecting always that it must have some use and meaning, tantalized and frustrated by it but always unable to make sense of it."
- Ted Simon (in one of the best adventure/travel books ever, Jupiter's Travels)

"But I will walk the road, however hard it is, because only on the road can you see that yesterday lies behind you and tomorrow waits on the path ahead. The road measures life in distance. The further you travel, the longer you live."
- Ma Jian (a chinese political activist/journalist that walked across his country to learn more about life in it, and wrote about it in his book, Red Dust)

"Heaven's not a place where you go when you die, it's a moment in life when you actually feel alive"
- Spill Canvas (overall, not a great band, but damn, that's a good line)

lac-la-stupid

i'm officially nominating lac-la-hache for the stupidest town in bc award. it calls itself the 'longest town in the cariboo'. Bah. all that means is that they put the stupid welcome to signs 20km on either side of town so that they can lower the speed limit to 80kph through 40km of cow pastures. stupid stupid long town.

that's the rant, now on to happier things...

i drove back home today from a wonderful (albeit a little rainy) 10 days in the kootenays - the beautiful, mountainous, full-of-outoodrsy-people kootenays that helped me recover from my summer in the john and that have convinced me that that is where i want to live when i finally decide to actually live somewhere. i did some hiking and biking and visiting (big thanks to Chris and Rob for putting me up [putting up with me?] for so long!) and relaxing and overall had a great little vacation.

that wonderful time of the year again

Every time the seasons change, I find myself saying, "oh yay! ______ is here. _____ is my favorite season!" Now I think I've figured it out - I just love it when the seasons change.

Here's why I'm excited about fall:

~ because i knit about 5 new toques this summer and it's finally cold enough to wear them
~ i pulled my down vest out of the closet today and went for a long walk with it on
~ it's cool enough for cords
~ i love when the ground starts to freeze and the grass is all crunchy and dry when you walk on it
~ i love unexpected early snow falls and waking up to everything white
~ and, of course, i love school supplies. even though i don't have any reason to buy them this year, i love looking and touching and half-wishing that i had a reason to buy a nice new note-book.

meet the rhinos

the death of a fire season

First, I could see my breath.

Then there was frost on the ground.Next, it started to snow. And it kept on snowing until the entire fire was white.
So we lit a new one to keep warm. And that was the end of fire season 2006. For me anyway. Some hardcores are still at it for another 2 weeks but I'm headed somewhere sunny :)

chim-chimeny, chim-chimeny, chim chim cher-oo

Tonight, we got back from 3 days and 2 nights on a fire and headed straight to the grocery store to get some more fire food. We went right from work, without stopping to shower or even taking the time to wash our faces, so I was more or less black from head to toe and smelt like a campfire. Nah, a forest fire.

I was standing alone near the check-out when a friendly looking lady with an irish accent asked me if I had been to a wedding.

Huh?

When I told her no, she said, "Oh, well some people believe that it is lucky to have a chimney-sweep kiss the bride at their wedding."

Maybe that's a business I ought to look into.

the 11-hour shopping marathon

2 very tired fire girls
14 hours of driving
11 hours of shopping
3500 dollars spent

3 very productive, albeit not very relaxing, days off.

wonderful williston

What we expected to be a weekend fire turned into our biggest money-maker of the season. We just got back from 10-days on a fire near Williston Lake. The first 5 days felt a little rough since we were camping and waking up to frosty tents and frozen hoses. The last half couldn't have been cushier - we were put up in a beautiful heli-ski lodge where we enjoyed comfy beds with down duvets and were fed gourmet dinners every night.

Alex watching the action from the lakeshore.


Who's that sexy fire chick ?!

Johnny lighting it up....trust me, this actually does help put the fire out.

Another frosty morning - every day it got harder to get out of our sleeping bags.

The most beautiful pump site in the world.

and the fires burn on....

We're working on a fire near Hudson Hope right now - far enough in the middle of nowhere that we have to camp out. We just spent 3 nights, then they let us come back to town for one night for some more food and a shower and then we're back out for another three. You wouldn't believe how disgustingly dirty you get after four days on a fire without a shower! At least the hours are good (we're up over 1000 converted hours this season already!), and the setting is beautiful (in a steep, lush canyon), but man is it starting to get cold this late in the season! Yesterday morning, we all woke up to a thick layer of frost covering our gear. Brrr. Hard to believe that fires can burn in weather like that!

RIP: Rouge

"He was a good fish"

Rouge was one of 4 fish that the guys bought on our way through Kamloops a couple weeks ago coming home from the fire in Golden. The first one quickly met it's demise when Cole ate it - whole and alive - in the restaurant where we had lunch. Rouge, shown here, was the next to go. He died of apparent overconsumption after going 3 days with no food at all. The other 2, miraculously, are still going strong.

why does biking make my bum hurt so much?

I took my new wheels out for their first long ride - 100km along the Hudson Hope Road. The first half was beautiful. It was sunny and the riding seemed easy. Then I turned around and realized why the riding was so easy: I had a 20kph tail wind. Which meant that on the ride back, I had a 20kph headwind. Ugg. Still, it felt awesome to be out getting some exercise and training for my big bike trip this winter. I just have to do that, oh, 50 more times and I'll be in Mexico :)

20 raging rhinos and a kiddie pool full of pilsner (cont'd)

20 raging rhinos and a kiddie pool full of pilsner

rhinos in the rockies

We just got home from an amazing 2 week fire near Golden, BC. The fire was at 6000 feet, right in the rockies so the terrain was steep and the views were spectacular. Pretty much my ideal fire, in fact, made all the better by the fact that we stayed in a beautiful log lodge and ate in restaurants every day.

Still, it's nice to finally have some time off to relax and catch up on sleep and chores. Ok, and to party it up a bit. I'm sure there will be some great pics after our big rookie party slash year-ender tomorrow night.

Dustin and Alex hard at work


A burnt-out bear den...or so we figured


Working and enjoying the view of Kinbasket lake.


"Oh, please make the helicopter stop!" A hungover Jodie on the long flight to work at 7am.


Just another day at the office - John reading the morning paper on the way to work.


Cooling off after a long hot day on the fire.