| | Over the first weekend of March, JD and I headed up to Seattle to compete in the Seattle Firefighters' Stair Climb, along with 4 other people from Hoodland. The event consisted of climbing 69 flights of stairs - 1,311 stairs total in full turnout gear, including being "on air" (i.e. breathing from a tank instead of breathing room air). One of the people from Hoodland was our "bottle changer" - she was on the 40th floor of the tower all day long, and was responsible for changing out our air bottles for us. Thank goodness for her!
Here's our team of climbers. Ron (on the left), who is our Captain, was getting ready to climb when this picture was taken. He was in the 9th battalion, Scott (on the right) was in the 20th battalion, Phil (2nd left) was in the 27th, JD was in the 28th, and I was in the 38th out of 38 battalions (I'm the short one in the middle).
And here's the tower itself!
Waiting around was kind of boring, plus I was fighting a horrible cold and we had gotten up early, so I took a nap on the floor. That's my new Hoodland jacket that I'm using as a blanket - quite reflective!
Here's what the stairs looked like. I became well aquaninted with them!
This is JD standing in line, getting read to climb. We all had to go outside to get ready to enter the building and climb all the way up. I liked the perspective of the picture - I had to lie on the ground to get it.
And JD just before he goes in (as a side note, they need to do more outreach to young children, since when firefighters have all their gear on they look and sound really scary - definitely like monsters!).
Here I am waiting inside. The funny thing about pictures that JD takes is that they make me look even shorter than I am, since he's taking them from so high up!! I feel like an Oompa-Loompa from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
JD tried to get the same picture of me as I did of him, but I think that he kind of missed the idea ;)
And finally, me at the top (JD didn't sit around long enough at the top to get a picture taken). I was just a little sweaty!! There was another picture where you could see my pants, and those were drenched, too. Of course, I did also have the volunteers on the stairs pour water down the front and back of my jacket when I had the chance.
It was a very neat event. I didn't finish as fast as I was hoping - I came in 1317 out of 1385, in a time of 38:09 (so I have some work to do). JD got the best time in our department - 17:06, and came in 210th out of 1385!
We also wandered around Seattle a bit, and found some amazing tea down at Pike's Place Market - its the Market Spice Tea. They had little cups with samples, so of course we took some since we both love tea. We made it about 30 steps outside of the shop before we immediately turned around and bought some. YUM! We also got 2 Dungeness crabs to bring home for dinner (and yes, they threw them to us). Still not as good as MD Blue Crabs, but I'll take it ;)
Very fun weekend, and I'm looking forward to it again next year!
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| | Posted 3/27/2009 4:42 PM - 2 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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