There are times when I wish I had never heard of Television. There are times I wish I had never heard of fast food. There are times I wish I had never heard of anything that may contrive to entice any person into a sedentary, fat, lifestyle!
I have joined the local Volunteer Fire Brigade, and boy do I wish fitness had been my best subject at school! I am not yet qualified to actually go out and fight fire, but the training along the road to doing this can be pretty intense. Imagine yourself with hot, fire-retardant coveralls, an air tank on your back, breathing through the face mask- blind folded.
After imagining all that, place yourself in an old-fashioned (read dangerous by today's Health and Safety standards) primary school playground, crawling around the smallest gaps the instructors could find, up chain-link ladders (and down again), through Bannister rails the height and size of a five-year-old, following only a rope (remember, this is all with an air tank and blind fold on) through all this!
As intense as this all has felt, I know that it is as yet nothing compared to the week long basic training I will be doing in January. As tough as it is, I absolutely love it. I should have joined up years ago, and if I could afford the drop in pay, I'd join up full-time. There is something about riding the fire truck that just brings out the little boy in me!
I have joined the local Volunteer Fire Brigade, and boy do I wish fitness had been my best subject at school! I am not yet qualified to actually go out and fight fire, but the training along the road to doing this can be pretty intense. Imagine yourself with hot, fire-retardant coveralls, an air tank on your back, breathing through the face mask- blind folded.
After imagining all that, place yourself in an old-fashioned (read dangerous by today's Health and Safety standards) primary school playground, crawling around the smallest gaps the instructors could find, up chain-link ladders (and down again), through Bannister rails the height and size of a five-year-old, following only a rope (remember, this is all with an air tank and blind fold on) through all this!
As intense as this all has felt, I know that it is as yet nothing compared to the week long basic training I will be doing in January. As tough as it is, I absolutely love it. I should have joined up years ago, and if I could afford the drop in pay, I'd join up full-time. There is something about riding the fire truck that just brings out the little boy in me!
The fire truck in the photo is the truck the volunteers use at my station. Its specialty is as a hose laying truck, meaning we carry about three times the amount of hose as an ordinary truck. We have everything else too, just less of it all!
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