A Work in Progress

Nine miles battling black flies finally becomes worth it.

 Oh, America.

The Niagara River

This afternoon I am headed to the northeast kingdom and the remaining pics of the day will likely not be posted until June.  Hope you'll survive the anticipation.  So, until then, imagine camping! and waterfalls! and mountains! and hiking! and miscellanea! Hopefully they'll be worth the wait.

So, firetrucks make for good subjects. 

a damn fine breakfast

...ride bikes.

contents of a fire engine

fancy new stat packs, jealous? 

I warned you about the excessive bike pictures.  Took me ages to clean. 

Possibly the most awesomely fantastic bike on the trail, no, in the whole state, no, country, no, planet. James Starley would be proud. Most definitely the coolest, most awesomely fantastic sweetest gift in the history of gift giving. And it rips.

Sorry, the pics have gotten a little messed up.  Well, I'm a day behind so far, but I've just been uninspired today.  But if I am consistantly a day behind, maybe no one will notice.  Who am I kidding, no one will notice if I am not a day behind.  Also, I kind of think I set the bar pretty high yesterday.  I pulled over on the highway, crawled over to get out of the other side of the car, then ran down a hilly, wet embankment to cut power lines out of the shot.  Then I ran back up the bank through thigh high soaking wet grass.  Totally worth it.  And really, compared to that, a picture of some CPR mannequins from my PALS refresher today would just be disappointing.  Mostly for me. Outside of that, I've gotten some good rides in recently, despite the rain.  Well, a couple of days ago, I made it 18 miles before I was drenched and had to seek refuge at a local school to wait out the torrential downpour.  Luckily, I did stop, but I wa...

Maybe National Geographic is right.

I have a rose bush.  Try to contain your excitement

Didn't quite make it home without getting drenched. 

More post rain stuff.

Ah, rural paradise from the bike. 

Some giant plant that sprung up in the garden.  Looks cool after the rain. 

4 am boot portrait.  Late half because of blogger, half because of me. 

Check out this dinosaur!  Actually, I kind of like it, I think it only weighs like 20lbs as opposed to the 'fancy' motorized one we actually use. 

I started the call cold and irritated. After your apathetic husband, flagged us down, then disappeared into a dark, unmarked doorway your shady apartment complex. Once we found you, dramatically laying on the floor. 'Come on, get up now dear, laying there isn't going to help your breathing' Stale cigarettes are in the air and as I give you a breathing treatment, I start my lecture on smoking. But as your story unravels I soften I kneel down to look into your face and put my hand on your wrist wishing I could do the impossible. I cannot make your husband love you I cannot make your children care what I can do is offer you my help such as it is I wish I weren't so jaded didn't approach such situations with a negative attitude but I grow suspicioius when displayed in your squalid apartment is a paper thin and absolutely enormous TV.

I've been exploring where I can safely go on the bike from my new digs.  Sure, I could get back to my old bike route, but now I can get to other parts of the county too.  It's a cool city and I love how quickly I can go from downtown to a rural paradise. The only problem with urban and suburban riding is the increased number of cars I have to deal with to get to these rural paradises. (paradises? just go with it).  The problem is not only do people somehow not see me despite lights and a beautiful high-vis vest, but they continually underestimate how wide a bike is, and how I just might not want to ride through the puddles or over the grates and tons of gravel on the sides of the street.  The new law in my state is that bikes must be given three feet of space when being passed.  So, basically I need to tape a yard stick to my handlebars to illustrate just how wide three feet is. More importantly for my immediate safety is that I need to remember that in this h...

My neice and nephew turn 9 today.  Here's a couple from the 'flipbook of supidity' I made while attempting to get one sensible picture of them.  Somehow saying 'act normal' didn't have the result I expected. But, 'show me your guns' did.

The bike and I found some unauthorized trail today a couple miles from the house.  It wasn't trespassing exactly...

After six months cooped up in a suitcase, the prayer rug has found a home. Until I get a pet. 

Because I have extremely unreliable and stolen interwebs at home, the pic o' the day is probably going to be consistantly late on days I don't work. But today, it comes early for all you east coast readers. Sometimes, it's worth getting up at awful hours to go to work.  

Even though I spent the whole day with C test riding bikes, you get a picture of my garden. Lucky you.

fire hose

Housewarming spool candlesticks.

some LP15 action, jealous?

Loaner ambulance, I am not sorry to see it go.  But it looks cool. 

The post that never was. She said in a spooky voice. I meant to write about an overbearing 'doctor' mother I had who insisted that she could give me orders for racemic epi for her kid that did not need it. It was funny and frustrating and altogether amusing, but I never wrote it down. Now, If I don't publish this, the blog will make a liar out of me as I just wrote my 800th post. But technically since this one was never published, it was my 799th post. Once I hit publish, all will be right with the blogging world. Whew!

I like my sweet new fancy pedals. They do not like me.

Crappy camera phone necessity.  Bin Laden is dead.

[no picture] What a good start to my project. The day is almost over, I am at work for the night, and I only just realized it was the first of May. No problem, I thought to myself, there's plenty to take a picture of here. One tiny problem. No one can take a picture without a camera. The fancy cam is safe at home, and the camera I usually carry at work is in my camelbak. What the heck. So, please envision the most amazing, wonderful, evocative, and moving picture to fill in for today. Or you can look at the picture of a miniature horse in a minivan I posted last month. See you tomorrow.

I had collected a handful of trash in my gloved hand and went to take it off so that the trash would be trapped inside.  The stupid cheap glove ripped though and all of the trash spilled back onto the floor.  'Oh...you!'  My EMT suggested I grab a few pairs of their black gloves, as they are far superior. 'Oh, I love the black gloves, they make it look like I'm a tattoo artist.' This piqued my patients interest and we got to talking about tattoos.  'Do you have any?' I asked her, fully expecting a no. 'I do' she answered confidently 'Oh, where is it? If you don't mind.' There was a short pause and she lowered her voice 'On the top of my breast.' 'Ooh! Scandalous! What is it?' 'Well,' she answered seriously, 'It was a hummingbird. But now it looks more like a bald eagle.' There was a pregnant pause as my parner couldn't see the mischevious glint in her deadpan face. Unable to decide if she shou...