And the work begins!

OK I only have a few minutes so I will give a quick update.

Work is going great! the weather has been pretty nice so we have been burning a lot. Basically every year when it is fire season, the firefighters start cutting all underbrush on big chunks of land so it is less likely to burn if it is hit with lightning or whatever, and they pile all the brush up and let it dry for a year. The next year before the fire season starts (when it is still wet enough) they start burning all the piles to get rid of the fuel. This year they have 14,000 piles to burn! so we have been burning like crazy! we get all dressed up in our Nomex (fireproof gear) and packs and take our tools, and drip torches and hike up the the burn pile areas and start lighting them all on fire. It is a lot of really hot and smokey work but it is fun too. A couple of times the area has been too dry and the fire has started creeping around and cathing trees on fire. When that happens we stop burning and start cutting a big line down the the mineral soil around the fire so that it can't jump then line and spread to the rest of the forest. The people we are working with are soo awesome I am really looking foreword to the rest of the summer.

On a side note I went to San Fran last weekend with the boys, Jersey and his buddy Jason. It was so fun! We went and saw the Oakland A's vs the Indians and saw the Giants vs the cardinals!! I was so happy to see some baseball, wish it was the Sox though... but the Sox are playing the Giants in June so who knows!! haha

well I can't upload pictures on the computer I am on but I will try later because this computer doesn't right click apparently but I got some great ones so I will promise to try to get them up here

Hope everything is going well out there, my email address is finley.janes@gmail if anyone is trying to reach me and I will write when I can

ps
BRUINS MOVED ON IN THEIR SERIES AND THEY JUST WON THEIR FIRST GAME AGAINST THE FLYERS!

Up at Strawberry Valley.

So its Friday and this brings an end to the first week up at Plumas National Forest.

The Area is beautiful!!! absolutely gorgeous! So on Monday we packed the van up full and headed the short two hour drive from Sacramento up into the Sierra Nevada mountains where we were going to be working. About 45 minutes into the drive we get a call from the Forestry guys and they tell us is was snowing up in the mountains. This was a shock because it was suppose to be 60 and sunny but instead, as we get up higher and higher we end up having to take the chains out and chain the tires so we could get up some of the hills.

As soon as we got past the foothills we lost service on our phones completely. And that was the end of outside communication. When we reached the forestry barracks which is about 20 minutes from the engine house we were staying in, it was snowing so bad that the electricity had gone out up where our housing was so we ended up staying at the barracks for a night before we could move into our housing. the housing is very nice, its a small little house attached to the Strawberry Valley Engine House and it has a big kitchen which is perfect for all our food (because we eat A LOT!). I am sharing a tiny little room with my team mates Maggie and Warith. There are two beds in the room and a mattress on the floor for Warith but it doesn't really fit so Warith has to sleep with his feet under my bed hahaha. But its cosy and not bad at all.

The Mountains are really amazing. The whole town we live in has only about 20 structures. Two stores, and about 80 people in the whole town. The forest encompasses everything. Huge Ponderous pines with their trunk diameters up to 5 feet wide. Sugar Pines with pine cones as big as my forearm and my favorite trees, Medronas. There are 5 beautiful lakes near by and a stunning reservoir in walking distance, the water of the reservoir is a bright turquoise green because the soil is dark red from the cedar trees.

The guys we are working with are GREAT!. They are all really chilled out and relaxed and funny as hell. They really know their stuff about the forestry and firefighting and chainsaws and in the few days we have been here they we have learned so much already. We haven't done much work yet. They spent the first few days getting us certified to cut bigger trees down and teaching us more techniques.

The chain saw we are using is SO heavy! before this we have been using chainsaws with 24 in bars and pretty small engines. Two days ago I ran the new saw for about 2 and a half hours and my forearms were DEAD. Its the 460 which is one of the most powerful chainsaws so it cuts like butter but its bar is about three feet long and it weighs close 25 pounds which gets tiring to hold up all day. But I am excited to become proficient with it.

The nice thing about our schedule is that it is 4 days on and 3 days off. So I always have 3 days weekends! and we just work 7-5:30 during the week instead. Its great! and it will especially be great once the weather gets nice because then we can spend the weekends like fishing and playing games and hiking all over the national forest, I can't wait!


Ok well I can sometimes get service if I hike around a little bit, but I really am only gunna be able to get service/ web when we make the treck down to the foothills on some weekends so communication might be sketching. Good Luck all and

GO BRUINS!!!!

Tree Planting, Transitions and New project

Hey All OK

well I am back in Sacramento again for a week. But first I have a little re-cap on the past few weeks like I promised.

Ok So a few weeks ago we spent two weeks working at a non-profit camp called Camp Niwana. This camp was a sort of bastard child of camps mostly because it was underfunded and lacked a board of directories. Well due to the lack of funding the camp was forced to clear cut 35acres of forest. When we arrived it looked like a nuclear war had taken place there. There was just fields and fields of sticks and slash and torn up brush, really horrible. Our first week there a bit of a horror show. First off, the camp had planned to have us stay in the house that the camp grounds keeper stays in during the summer. This Camp was about 2 hours away from our other camp on Vashon Island and we had to take a ferry to get to it. But anyways, we we got there the staff, who had not been to the camp in 4 or 5 months because it was off season, realized that all the water pumps were broken so if we were to stay there we would not have water. So we ended up having to commute about 4 hours a day there and back. That was bad but the work for the first week was even worse. We spent 9 hours a day picking up sticks. And really it was nine hours straight (well lunch break) of picking up the branches and slash and putting it into neater piles. It was boring, monotonous work and it really wore on you. But It was only a week. the next week was great. We got to stay there so there was no more commuting and we started planting trees to reforest the area!
It was great!! Ever morning we would get up, do PT and then get to work. We would get these two big satchels that you strapped to your hips and filled with 2 year old saplings. We probably put about 40 or so baby trees in each satchel. Then we would take our dibble bars, which is sort of like a shovel except the entire thing made out of a heavy metal, and the end is thicker and narrower. We would slam the dibbles into the ground, wiggle it around so it made a big enough hole and then carefully slide the sapling into the hole making sure not to crush the roots and then stomp the soil around the tree.
After we got used to it, it would take about 40 seconds to a minute per tree. Between the ten of us we plants 5,000 trees, some Douglas Firs and Some Red Cedars. And we covered all 35 acres with new growth!


So Now as I said before we have left Vashon, which is sad because I loved it there but exciting too because it is GREAT to see all my friends back at base. This base weekend was a long weekend for us and my parents and my brother and my baby sister all flew out to meet me in San Fran!! It was so much fun, we saw all over the city, drove up to wine country and visited my campus!! Now I am back in Sac, besides all of the paperwork and meetings I have to go to, it is really really really really really nice to be back with my friends. But unfortunately we will be splitting up again on Monday. Because on Monday I am going to my next project!!!!!!!

My next project is going to be great. We are working with a Fire and Forestry crew that run Plumas National Forest in northern Cali! We are very excited because being with these guys puts us at the best chance for actually going to a fire. Also there is a different element to this project... usually all projects are from 2-8 weeks. I am going to be stationed in Plumas for four months!!! which is kind of sucky because I would like to move around more but is also good because this also gives us a better chance to see fire then if we were on any other shorter spike.
we will be living in a bunk house at an Fire Engine station near the forest in a town called Strawberry Valley. That's all we know now but I'll keep y'all tuned in

BYE

Work, Wood, and Bald Eagles.

So My time here at Vashon Island is coming to and end. We only have a week and a half until we leave. My feet are getting a little itchy to move on but at the same time I really have loved my time here. My activities have been pretty average, basically every day we take out the chainsaws and go to work on clearing all that defensible space I was talking about earlier but the place we live is so beautiful and the people we work with are so awesome that I am a little sad to leave.

There are five other staff living here on camp grounds too and three of them come down to our hang out place (we have a basement that is our dedicated chill place, it has kitchen, a fire place, lots of mice and could also be called a museum of couches through the ages) and chill with us all the time.

I definitely will miss hanging out with all of them but even more I will miss the landscape and community. It is the most amazing thing to be able to wake up in the morning and see bald eagles flying over the ocean as soon as you walk out your front door. Because there is rain and moderate temperatures all year round the forest grows all year round and is lush and green. The wilderness rises up on a ridge and really dwarves the camp. The forests here are full of fir and cedar trees three to four feet in diameter, ferns taller than me and the beautiful tropical-like broad-leafed evergreen, Medrona, which i think is my new favorite type of tree. Paths wind in and out among the trees, and there is enough land that you could hike all day and probably not see it all.

The best thing about being swallowed up by all of this nature is the amount of wildlife that I see daily. On average I probably see 10 deer, 2 raccoons, 2 otters, 2-4 Bald eagles, and a bunch of different bird species, daily. I love it.

Last week I saw something that I don't think I will ever be blessed enough to see again. It was about 7am and I was just finishing up my PT and stretching. I was inside our basement hang out place (its called Shutanka) and as I stretched (I think specifically I was stretching my quads), I was looking out the back windows of the room, which opens straight up onto the beach and the puget sound and as I stretched I noticed a little otter head swimming through the sound towards me. I watched it and as it reached the beach I saw that it was carrying a big fish; he struggled to pull it up on shore. Almost a soon as he was on the beach, there was a a fury of movement as a huge male Bald Eagle swooped down right in front of my window and started battling the otter over his fish.

I knew bald eagles are huge but I don't think that anyone knows exactly how big huge is until they see one up close. His wing span was wider than mine, his talons bigger than my own fist, he could have easily picked up a small dog in each of his feet. The otter, in seeing his enemy sweep down, sort of dropped and rolled out of the way, clutching his precious fish. The eagle, beating his wings so hard in order to stay hovering, so hard he was probably making the sand under fly around, dived and grabbed out twice for the otter but the otter escaped safely into a drainpipe that was sticking out the rocks onto the beach. The eagle flew away empty handed, no fish.

Ok well from request from the commenters of my last post (which I now was almost a month ago) I was asked to define why I like chopping wood. Ok well first off chopping wood is a lot better than using the chainsaws because the saws are so loud and heavy and there is so much exhaust. But that point aside, chopping wood is like a challenge and also there is such a feeling of satisfaction when you split wood. Because each stump is a puzzle kind of. You might have a big log a foot and a half in diameter and two feet high and depending on where you place your wedge or where you hit the log with your maul you could split the whole thing in only a couple whacks or you could spend like 20 minutes on it if you can't find the weakest spot. I dunno I just like watching the wood pile up next to me ahha

OK Well I have a lot more to so, about planting trees, murals and my next project so I promise I will write soooon!

From Washington!

Oh I'm Sorry I'm Sorry I'm Sorry!

I've been horrible and I havn't written for awhile but Here I am now, ready to update ya'll on my whereabouts.

Well I arrived safe and sound ( and in one piece) in Washington. The drive up was gorgeous. We were constantly driving up into the mountains and then into some deep foggy valley, just beautiful. We finally made it into the Seattle area, after two days of driving and then took the ferry from the mainland over to Vashon Island. It was breathtaking seeing the island arise out of the mist. The Island itself is tiny. One main road. a lot of back roads, and even more horses. Its pretty cool because the island population consists of rich old hippies so the island is covered with strange art, knickknack stores and coffee shops.

Camp Sealth itself is about 2o minutes away from town and then another 10 minutes down a long winding pot-hole ridden drive to the Camp. The camp is huge! 65 cabins, some heated some without windows or doors and all of them in some array of disrepair. There are about 5 or 6 staff living on camp with us and they are all AWESOME. So nice. All of them are a little rustic a little goofy but they have just been sooo welcoming!

The work we have been doing is pretty routine. We're using the chainsaws to clear ten to fifteen feet of defensible space (no shrubs, no trees, no fire) around all the cabins, the trees we cut down we are splitting for firewood (which is AWESOME!).

We've been going into Seattle every weekend, which is also pretty nice...

Alright I know this hasn't been a very descriptive message but I am exhausted. I will write soon.

Splitting Wood

My House, where we are living (boooya!)

Sacramento Zoo (and a little chainsaw too!)

How well I have learned that there is no fence to sit on between heaven and hell. There is a deep, wide gulf, a chasm, and in that chasm is no place for any man. - johnny cash

I mentioned this before, but, I've been working at the Sacramento Zoo! We've been back here in Sacramento for about a month now and When I have not been in training for fire fighting, I've been spending my time working at the Sacramento Zoo! The sac zoo is a non profit organization that helps support the growth of endangered and vanishing animals, so they requested an Americorps team to come help them with maintenance and animal care. Over the past few weeks we have put in over a hundred hours with them and I love it! I think part of my attraction to the zoo has to do with the fact that I want to go into Animal sciences in school but on top of that EVERYBODY that works at that zoo is ridiculously nice and really cool.

The first week that I was there I was working on a team with the maintenance crew to help build an African Tortoise exhibit in between the giraffe and the Zebra exhibits. It was cool because as we worked, the giraffes became very curious of us and would meander over to oversee our work. A couple of times the keepers brought lettuce out for us to feed it to them. It is almost humbly to be beside such enormous and graceful animals. I've seen them from afar before and on TV but you don't know really how gigantic they are until you stand next to one. We also built a retaining fence for the Bongo yard, and raked all of the leaves in the bamboo grove around the red panda exhibit.

Before After


The next week we were there we actually got to help the keepers with animal care!!! The first day I was in the primate house, in the morning I cleaned out the orangutan and chimp dens as well as helped prepare all of the primates meals. The afternoon was sick because I helped with the 'primitive' primates (not as advanced primates as in lemurs, saki monkeys etc) I LOVED THEM. I got to go inside the lemurs exhibits in order to clean then out and feed them. The lemurs were bouncing off all the branches around me and hanging their tails in my face. I loved the black and white ruffed lemurs because there were so many of them in thier enclosure and they would all wrestle with each other. I also worked with reptiles; I watched the reptile keeper wrestle a dwarf crocodile out of his exhibit so I could climb in there and put in new rubber matting, I worked in Ungulates (hoof-stock) cleaning the stalls and pens of the Attic and Bongo Gazelles. Zebras, Giraffes and kangaroos. These animals were cool because you could pat them and feed them and they would lick your hands and clothes. Bird day was awesome because I was working in cages with birds half my size that looked like dinosaurs. and then of course, Carnivores! My day with the carnivores was a lot of cage cleaning and not much interaction with the dangerous animals but the interaction I did have was impressive. The Lions, Jaguars, tigers, snow leopards and Hyenas were enormous and highly dangerous and gorgeous. When the lion roared the walls shook and the glass in the windows clattered. The tigers when they stood up on their back legs were a good three feet taller than I was.

Mike with the Bongos


Red Pandas


Me and my joey, Joey



OK I know this is getting long so I'll recap on my week of chainsaw training quickly. It was Awesome!!! Basically we spent two days in the classroom just learning about chainsaw maintenance, safety, and techniques. And then for the next three days we drove out into the mountains and just cut stud down!!!! Here are some images for your enjoyment

I am A wildland firefighter

"Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money" Johnny Cash

First Off (as the title of this post suggests) I am now a certified wildland firefighter! Pretty sweet huh? I spent this past week in a windowless classroom about 8 hours a day. I took classes on Wildland fire behavior, basic firefighter training, emergency routines, dealing with hazardous chemicals and Fire line tools 101. We basically had a stream of wildland firefighters coming in to teach us how to read the weather and how the weather will effect fires, the different terms in firefighting and so much more. Each firefighter had a whole slew of interesting and scarey stories.

I had to take to written exams, one on weather and fire behavior and one on basic firefighting tactics. Then the final day of the course was a field day. We all drove out to the Tahoe BML, were split into groups of about 15 and then hiked out onto a helipad on top of a mountains. Then were given a scenario.

The Helipad was our anchor and the three teams were in charge of digging 30in fire lines around the 'fire'. The lines had to be down to mineral soil so that the fire couldn't cross it and large fuel items (branches, logs, saplings) had to be cleared three feet on either side of our line. If the hills inclination was too steep then our line would have to become a trench so that flaming debris would get caught in the trench rather than rolling across the line and starting a fire on the other side of our line.

We worked quickly especially because our Crew Leaders (the firefighters that were with us leading us) kept getting radio calls updating us on the changing and worsening conditions of the 'fire'.

We are required to wear a yellow long sleeve nomex (flame retardant) shirt, and green nomex pants along with flame retardant leather boots, flame retardant helmets, leather gloves and goggles. On our backs we are required to carry a pack. Mine was only about 25 pounds but that gets pretty heavy when your constantly hiking up and down ridiculously steep mountain sides and also swinging an ax (0r whatever line digging tool) non-stop for a couple hours. The contained extra gloves, extra nomex clothing, three water bottles, food, headlamp, fusees, firefighting emergency handbook and a 7 pound emergency shelter that I would have to deploy if I were not able to escape to safety and a fire was closing in.

So a couple hours into the drill we were told to work faster because the fire conditions were worsening; the relative humidity was down and the win

d had picked up. About 5 minutes after that order was issued we were told to ROT (reverse tool order, basically to turn around) and MOVE. We started to hike back up this mountain (I'm talking wicked steep) when the orders came to drop our backs and RUN!!!! packs went down, tools went down our emergency shelters got pulled out of our pack and we started to run. It was hot out, we had just worked about 5 hours digging trenches through the forest and we were running our to save our asses (because you need to train like you are doing it for real). I don't know how long we booked it up the embankment but it was long enough for my lungs to be burning, my nose to be running and for a lot of people to be dropping behind or dropping down. The hill was slippery, we were jumping over other peoples dropped gear and then finally we saw an area that our crew leaders yelled at us to deploy in, we grab

bed practice emergency shelters (because the real ones are one time us eonly and cast almost $200) and at a full run we ripped the shelters out of their brick sized containers shook them open and went down inside of them.

We were faced down on the ground inside a metallic burrito throat burning from running so hard and our safety glasses fogging up from how hot it was inside the shelter. It was really exciting and also scary. I started yelling to see who if anyone had their shelter near me ( I had been so focused on getting in my shelter I hadn't even looked around me when

I went down) I shouted and shouted "HELLO, HELLO WHOSE THERE" but over the sirens, wind machines and other yelling no one heard me till finally I heard Christina asking if it was me. We shouted at each other for the next few minutes and then finally they told us we could come out. We were all shaking and I was pumped.

I can't wait to start going into the field... but hopefully I am never in an emergency situation like that haha

Hi Ho! HI Ho! Its back to work I go!

"And the moon’s laying low in the sky Forcing everything metal to shine And the sidewalk holds diamonds like the jewelry store case They argue walk this way, no, walk this way" Bright Eyes

Wow it has been a long time. I've been so incredibly busy I can't find time to clean up my room never mind make my way down to the computer lab. Haha. But Today is my first day off since break so I made may way over to my blog.

So First off my break was great. Flying was a pain. I flew into a blizzard on my way home and out of a blizzard on my way back. While I was home I spent a lot of time with my family, which is always nice and a lot of time sleeping which was really nice since sleep is not always easy to find. It was pretty cool just being back in a place where you know everything. On my way back from Mass, I got stuck in Phoenix overnight because the US Airways flight attendants all decided to go on strike. Which was really inconvenient because I got back to the base a day late, which means I had to use one of my three leave days :(

Though I liked Utah, It is really nice to be back to my home base. The living conditions in Sacramento are so nice, I definitely appreciate them more. I get my own room so instead of sleeping in a room with 10 people Its only my and my room mate Maggie. And Its nice just being able to go out. If I want I can walk to go out for dinner or I can catch the Light rail and go into Sac with my friends. Its really nice that there are ten teams on base because its such a fun variety of people to hang out with. I went into Sacramento Last night for 2nd Saturday with about 10 people from all different teams. 2nd Saturday is once a month Sacramento's stores and art galleries all stay open late and people play music on the streets. Before that, Mike, from my teams Dad brought us all out to dinner because he was here on a business trip. We ate like Kings.

The only Thing sucky about being on campus is that we have Duty about once or twice a week. Which means we have to stay on campus all night cleaning the halls and securing the base, its just like a watch but ours was on Friday night this week and its gunna be on Saturday next week. Bleh!

Oh wow I have so much more to write to everyone! I've been working at the Sac Zoo, which is amazing and I'm starting my training to get my Red Card Certification for Wild Land Firefighting tomorrow, But I'll save those little stories for my next post BECAUSE Dadadaa Da (drum roll please) I FOUND OUT MY NEXT PROJECT!

So On February 8th we take a two day drive from Sacramento all the way up to VASHON ISLAND, WA! Its a pretty big Island in the Puget sound off the cost of Washington. We will have to take a ferry to get there. Apparently we are going to be staying at another Summer Camp, but this one, instead of in the mountains is on the beach literally. I am SOOOO freaking excited. I know its going to rain every minute of every day but whatever!

We are going to be building trails and also building fire lines (huge trails that fires can't hop) around the community for 8 weeks! I can't wait. Its pretty cool because I really wanted to go to the northwest but because we are FRT I didn't think we would be there, But now LOOK OUT WASHINTON!

This is an aerial view of camp Sealth where we'll be living.

And then here is the island!

Ok well that's all for now folks!

On the Road to Sacramento; Reflections

In time the snow will rise, in time the snow will rise- Sufjan Stevens

Driving back from Salt Lake City was like passing between two worlds. In the morning before we left on our first day of road tripping, we met up with Silver 3, another Fuel Reduction team like us, who had been stationed in Wyoming working with Habitat for humanity. We all drove, caravan style, from Salt Lake City to Reno, about 11 hours on the road. It was so strange being back with all my old friends, who during the month of CTI (training) I had become so close with, especially Cody, my old suitemate on campus, and seeing them again seemed so strange but also so comforting.

We had been living in a world where the only people that existed, were the ten members on our team, who I had grown to love and appreciate so well. The only activities that existed were the ones that we could access from our cabin; hikes, snowball fights, and of course our 9-10 hours that we spent working at the Utah Food bank daily. It was like our first project had been a perfect little experiment tucked neatly inside a snow globe, complete with an absurd amount of snowfall and filled with little people that continuously did the exactly same thing every day and smiled the entire time, no matter how good or bad their day was going.

As the landscape around us passed from daunting rock-faced mountains to the hours of painfully deserted salt flats and then into the cozy foot-hills, I sat in the other team’s van and quickly found out that not all team’s experiences were as neatly folded as ours had been. While winding through the miles of snow covered mountains, touched only by the pine trees and railroad tracks, I heard stories of negative fourteen degree days, wearing coats a mittens to bed, using outhouses nearly flooded with frozen refuse and team members at each others throat constantly.

It was easy to think at a first that my team would never get to the point of fighting but I guess when you are sleeping on canvas cots in an unfinished basement versus sleeping snugged up in a fire-heated cabin in the mountains, then things are different. I am still as enthusiastic about Amercorps as I have always been, but I have no Idea what we will be waiting for us on the other end of January.

For now I am just so excited to go home for the Holidays, to see my family, and dogs and my friends. The more time I spend away from home; backpacking and road tripping this summer to all my travel in Americorps, the more I appreciate and love my roots. Massachusetts has got some solid people.

The Turkey.

If you don’t want to sink, you’d better figure out how to swim – jeanette walls

Seeing that we are living on $4.50 a day for our eating allowance, we have become a bit like gremlins. Its really not that bad because when you combine 10 peoples living allowances than you get $45 dollars a day for shopping but then you factor in again that I live with 7 boys between the ages of 17-24 and you begin to understand why four gallons of milk is always gone within 2 days.

Now, when food comes into the food bank and it is improperly labeled (aka no label or in plastic baggies or what have you), or it is damaged beyond help (cracked, opened, broken) it gets weighed and thrown away. This is where the gremlin part comes in, we scavenge that food like no other. Daily we take home boxes of opened cookies, unlabeled cans, and cracked jars of salsa. Which is why when we found out about the turkeys we were so ecstatic.

The Turkeys were pre-cooked, expired, and re-frozen. There were thirty of them, give or take and they needed to be eaten immediately. We waited for a few days and asked multiple times about the turkeys and Finally were given the green light, that yes, we could take one home because they were not going to be able to distribute all of the Turkeys in time and already some of them were questionable.

The pre-cooked part was essential; we don't have a kitchen in our cabin, only a microwave and refrigerator. We let the turkey thaw in our house for a full 24 hours and when the meat was ready. Christina and I methodically and carefully as possible carved our prize ( well as carefully as we could with pocket knives). It was amazing. It was the first time we had had meat in the cabin that wasn't Walmart deli meats or canned meats. I think I ate at least 20 turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches. The plates of dark and light meat were gone in days.

Well now we back to no Turkey but what can you do. Back to spam and rice.

On the 22 day until Christmas My true love gave to me....

I can gather all the news I need on the weather report- Simon & Garfunkle

Wooooohhheeee well it has been a little while since I have last written but I have been In a whirl wind. Thanks giving was really nice I took a chunk out of my day to call both my dad’s side of the family and my mom’s side of the family and I basically talked to everyone in the fam which was really nice. Everyone sounded great so thanks for that guys.

The warehouse has been really hard lately we have been bringing in about 25000 pounds of food a day more or less which is sweet but boy is it tiring. We found out that per week we have been collecting and sorting a little more than half of the food that they intake. Yay Americorps!!!.

We had a pretty sweet Independent service project the other day, we helped out at and animal shelter!!!! Which, if any of ya’ll know me, would realize that that is right up my alley. I basically spent 4 hours cuddling with cats. It was great. They had this one big room just PACKED with cats, it was CAT CITY 2009! And as soon as you walked in they all surrounded you. So cute. So cute.

For all ya’ll that haven’t heard yet, I’m coming home the 22^nd! I’m really excited to see everyone. I’m going to do an Americorps recruiting event at the High school that day too, which will be pretty cool. I hope I get some H-Dub kids to join up.

Today Instead of working in the warehouse and driving around doing pick-ups, I worked in the 2-1-1 Call center. Which is a referral and information center for people to call if they want to get a hold of volunteer opportunities, need information on addiction help support groups, are looking for financial help for he holidays are anything non-profit really. It was interesting but actually really sad. We got a lot of calls from people who had multiple children and were looking for a place that they could get free winter jackets for them because all of their kids had no jackets. Or we would get calls from 14-year-old girls who needed a place to contact for teen pregnancy classes. It was really deep but I felt like I was doing a lot of good and the people I worked with were really cool.

Once again running out of time to write but you guys are probably getting bored of this novel anyways. On a closing note I did a 24 hour fast a few days ago to better understand hunger and poverty in the working world because I am seeing with it so much especially with the food bank and all. It was really difficult to work a 9 hour day with nothing in my stomach and it really made the work I’m doing have some meaning.

OK well I love you guys, happy Holidays.

5000 Feet Above Sea Level. 2389 Miles from Home.

"I heard a little girl and what she said was something beautiful. To give your love no matter what." - Red Hot Chili Peppers

Just a little check in while I have Internet. The closer we come to Thanksgiving, the crazier the docks get. I think I am going to working the docks at the food banks warehouse for the next couple days because there are suppose to be an insane amount of donation drop-offs. Apparently in order to volunteer serving food for the homeless on turkey day in this city you have to sign up months in advance... so that is out of the question but we are going to be working (and some of us running NOT ME) in a 5k for charity on T-day. Then our supervisor Harvey has invited us all to a dinner he puts on in the afternoon. so I am excited.

Today is our first day off since we've got here. I spent the morning making phone calls and catching up with people. Then We all watched a little Beauty and the Beast because the cabin we are living in has a Tv and a VHS player but the DVD broke so the only three movies that were in the Cabin were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Mummy haha. And Now we are at the Library picking up some Wi-Fi then we'll explore the city a little.

Tomorrow we are working at this Bike Co-op that collects and fixes up bikes and then gives them to people who don't have them. This is an Independent service hour for us (we have to complete at least 80 hours of these). I am excited to check it out but it will be a LONG DAY, we are working from 9am-9pm! haha I'm buying a red bull.

OIY!

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose" Kris Kristofferson

Well. Blogging from this point out might be a little difficult because I do not know how often I will have internet but we will work with what we have. Also I broke my camera so we will not have pictures for awhile.

The Drive from Sacramento to Salt Lake City was like driving being stuck in a deja vu movie reel. At first it was exciting because it really looked like the wild west, I know that sounds silly but really looked like the old westerns. The ground extended until the horizon, the soil red and cracked and tumble weeds tugging to free themselves from the dilapidated barbed wire fences. But after 10 hours of this exact same landscape it all looked pretty bland. I drew a picture of my surroundings in my journal just as we drove into Nevada and 8 hours later I looked at my picture and the landscaping looked exactly the same still.

We would drive through a town and then we wouldn't even see the slightest hint of civilization for about 3 or four hours. The town we did drive through were made up of trailer homes, convenience stores and maybe 1 warehouse-like church. I can't imagine living like that because It would be at least an hour or 2 drive to do any shopping or anything. Even the big cities had only couple thousand people.

I am at the Utah Food bank now. I have been working for 2 days now. The work is hard. We are working in a warehouse. We do a lot of different jobs. While we are at the warehouse we help unload big truckloads of food donations, check them in, sort them and put them away. We are dealing with tens of thousands of pounds of food personally each day. We also are driving Uhaul trucks all over the city to pick up food drive donations. The people here are amazing. Often we will go to a chain store like a jiffylube to pick up a box of food and we will find a huge maybe (5x5x5) box just bursting with canned goods and when we ask the store workers, they will say that they only just put the box a day and a half ago or something. Its crazy.

People also donate weird things. We find unmarked ziplock baggies of mystery powder, cat and dog food, half eaten boxes of gummies and boxes of things boxed way back in 1994. Our work days are Tuesday through Saturday 12- 9pm. Next week will be a crazy busy week because it is Thanksgiving. There is suppose to be a snow storm this weekend big temperature change from Sacramento.

OK well sorry the last part of this blog was confusing I am rushing because I got to get to work

Good Luck. God Bless. Love ya'll!

Race to the top of the tallest building.

Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing

Helen Keller

In order to successfully graduate from NCCC I have to complete 1700 service hours. Most of the hours will be through NCCC with my team but 80 of those hours need to be Independent service hours. So I started working on those hours this past Saturday. We arrived at the tallest building in Sacramento at 6am and we helped set up for a benefit race put on by the Lung association. The race is a timed even where groups of runners set out to run up all 35 floors of the building. It was crazy there were old people and young people, athletes that ran it and even little kids who walked the whole thing. One guy ran it in 3 minutes and 47 seconds!!! that is 10 flights of stairs a minute! Another guy ran it 7 times! I had a wicked sweet job. I stood on the roof, the view was amazing. It was a helicopter landing pad with no walls and I could see everything! It blew me away (quite literally seeing that the wind was crazy). I just cheered people as they came to an end and passed out water.

Salt Lake City Here we Come

No, this is how it works, You peer inside yourself, You take the things you like, And try to love the things you took, And then you take that love you made, And stick it into some, Someone else's heart, Pumping someone else's blood - Regina Spektor

We leave for Salt Lake City in 9 hours give or take. I am all packed and ready to go but it is definitely bittersweet.

I went out last night into Sacramento with all of my buddies. It was so much fun just chilling with all my friends here because we have been so busy, running around because this last week was the last week of training that we haven't really hung out as much. I am really gunna miss everyone so much. We have spent the last 5 weeks together every day basically that it will be weird to not see them for the next 6 or more weeks. Josh, who is going to the Gulf Coast I probably won't see for another 4 months! Its actually really sad. So we all went out last night as a celebration/ going away party. It was a celebration because all of us Graduated training, but also because Sandyha got into Med School and Jersey got into Law school.

We all slept in Sandyha's room last night and then woke up at 6 to see of Kent and Cody because their group is going to Wyoming to build houses. After that I went back to bed until 11:30!!!!!!!! It was the longest I have slept in since I got here. I spent the entire day just cleaning my room and packing and getting ready for the trip. I am really gunna miss all my friends but I am excited to be able to get to know my team better. I am REALLY excited to see salt lake and Utah even though it is gunna be wicked cold. The good thing is that after Christmas break I am gunna be on campus for a month and so will Jersey, Kent, Cody and Sanyha.

AHH It is so soon. I have 2 days of driving but hopefully I'll get WiFi or something so i can keep ya'll updated... haha if there is anyone out there

South Lake Tahoe

"And I'll talk real loud, God damn right I'll be heard" - Modest Mouse

Just came back from Lake Tahoe for the weekend and it was amazing!!! We had eight people and we found a really nice motel called the Stardust Motel. The guy checking us in was really cool and he gave us a suit (three rooms) for 120 a night. It was close enough to walk to the Casinos. My buddies a gambled a lot. one of my friends won 300 bucks but then another one lost 180. We hiked around lake Tahoe. It was pretty cold out, maybe 50 and we all went swimming in the lake it was FREEZING! I had the most amazing time but now I'm even more sad that I'll be splitting with all my friends on NOV. 16th for our first project.

OH and also It turns out when I was sick last week (I had to go to the doctor and sleep for like 40 hours) I actually had the Swine Flu, just a fun little fact. They just called to tell me the test results.

Camp Mendocino where the RedWoods Grow

Hey Guys. I know I just posted but I figured I would give a nice quick re-cap on my Camp Mendocino trip. Camp Mendocino is a camp where they take inner city kids from San Fran during the summer. We went up there to help fix up the camp and do some team building exercises. It was beautiful. We drove through desert, and mountains and red rocks for hours until we got into the Redwoods district. Then after driving for miles and miles without even a speck of civilization, we took a dirt road that slipped between jagged hills and rocky ledges over a river. We drove on this road for almost an hour, EVERYTHING was dripping with moss and we drove so far into the forest that it became wicked dark because the trees were so tall and dense.

We stayed in plank cabins, windows with no glass and no doors or electricity. It was freezing. In the nights it got to about 40 degrees or colder, waking up for PT every morning at 5:30 was hell but it didn't matter because the land was soooo beautiful. I literally didn't change out of my clothes once because it was so nippy, I wore long johns under my entire uniform and my parka. Even in the mess hall, which was heated, we could see our breaths. We got three huge meals everyday and a different team helped prepare/ clean up for it everyday. We were at camp for 4 days with all 60 people in my unit. We hiked, did a ropes course, went on a zip line through the the woods and helped scrub the camp from top to bottom. At night we had camp fires. On the last night I pulled my stuff out by the fire and slept there instead. The sky was outstanding.

PICTURESThis Is one of my team mates Christina

Big Tree
Anthony being a crazy son of a bitc
Christina, My team mate

Destination: Nowhere Near

"This is My life, and Freedom's my profession"

-Gogol Bordello

So Lets get straight to the point. MY FIRST MAJOR SPIKE. Most people are going for about 6-8 weeks to their first projects, but because I'm on FRT, I need extra trainings to become a Forest Firefighter and I need trainings in chainsaw use. SO on the 16th of November (2 days after my induction) We will be driving to Salt lake City, Utah and working at a giant Food bank. We will be driving around the city and picking up foods from donaters and such. It will be cool because I am getting certified to be an authorized NCCC driver so I hopefully will be able to drive the sponsor vehicles around the city! We will be living in these sweet cabins just outside the city in a really gorgeous area. I am sooo excited.

We will be there for a month and then we will come back to Sacramento for my trainings. In Sac, we will have 2, 40 hour week of training and then (DADADAD

Speaking of teams, my team is really great. It was hard for me to move from my temporary pod who were all crazy and goofy, a lot like me, to a team who are a lot more focused but I am really happy with me team. They are are super nice and wicked reasonable as well as fun. Other teams are already having conflicts but its hard for me to see any major conflicts coming about at all.

There are a lot of really cool projects for the other teams too. The entire gold unit, which about 7 teams, 60 people, will be heading to the Gulf to do house rebuilding. A lot of other teams are going places to build houses, Wyoming, So Cal, etc. One team is going to be camping on the beach in the Catalina Islands and removing invasive species. AHHH so many cool projects.

My Birthday

I'll start out by telling you guys that my friends were soo sweet to me on my Birthday. It was Oct 20 (i know I'm a little late) but, it turns out that they had been secretively asking me questions about my cake/ pie preferences and had found out that pumpkin pie was my favorite thing so for my birthday my Pod all pitched in to buy me a pumpkin pie and a Boston Creme pie and brought it out at dinner and got the whole dining hall singing happy birthday to me and then bought me a card with a firefighter on it (cause I had just passed my FRT test) It was just really nice I was about to like cry hahaah.

OK well I have to run off to help organize a school supply bank ( for families who can't afford to buy school supplies). I'll tell you about that when I get back. I'll also fill ya'll on in on my time in the redwoods AND

I GOT MY FIRST SPIKE (project)!!! So keep checking in if you wanna know what I'll be doing for the next two months!!

Redwoods here we come.

We choose to create our own freedom and our own world, because freedom is not available without effort

-Eugene Hutz

Today is Thursday and in three days I will be going with my entire Silver Unit (about sixty Corps members) way up north to the Redwoods to Mendocino! I am so excited to get away from this Area. The weather might be nice but from what I have seen of Sacramento It is not a gorgeous area. It is just really flat and all of the trees look like they were they were imported and put there on purpose instead of just growing naturally.

The redwoods are going to be a fantastic change of pace. We are going for 4 days and we will fix up a Boys and Girls camp. The camp takes children from cities like San Diego and San Francisco, children that might never get a chance to attend a summer camp otherwise (or even leave the city) and brings them by the Skunk Train, a huge snaking Steam Engine complete with singing conductors that winds its way up north through the forest. It's all a big secret what exactly we will be doing up there but they were very quick to tell us that YES, PT (physical training) will still be going on every day. WAHOO!

I bet Ya'll are wondering why I haven't talked about my new team yet, seeing that I just got them and they are going to be such an integral part of my corps experience? Well I actually have been wicked sick for the last threeish days. I think that in the that time I have slept about 45ish hours AHH. I'm feeling a lot better seeing that my 100 and some odd temperature is gone but I am still hacking up a lung about every 5 minutes. In order to take time off from my NCCC duties I had to go to Sick call and get a doctor's note. Even though there was 5 of us (all my neighbors) who had the exact same sickness and all of us had gotten sick the same time, for some reason I was the only one tested for swine flu.. I don't know why.

Sorry I know I said I would tell you guys about my Birthday But I'll have to push that onto next post. THANKS FOR READING!!!!!!!!

My Amazing Pod

Josh Cleaning a garage door at the Senior Gleaners

My Halloween Costume. Mostly all my uniform with some other pieces added in.

The Uniform.