There has been a lot of fire action in the West the last couple of weeks. And as time went by there was a lot of smoke. I got an air quality app. I was wondering why the graph chopped off at 500. My app said we were well into the 500's. I learned that that was as high as the chart goes. We were literally off the chart. I guess they assume you aren't going to have numbers like that. Our house was never in imminent danger of fire. They had a map on the news that had green areas meaning "Get prepared to maybe leave", and yellow was "Get ready to go, and red was "Go now". Our house looked to be 5 to 10 miles from the green and maybe 10 to 15 from the yellow. So, a bit concerning, but not too bad. I figured we're in a city, not a forest. I guess I never really paid attention to how many trees there are on our street. There are a disturbing number.
But everything is much better now. When I was in high school / college I had a summer crap job of working in a youth parks program. That is when I learned I was not cut out for manual labor. We built trails and dug ditches and paved a parking lot. Yes, I was literally part of paving paradise and putting up a parking lot. Its not as much fun as it looks like. My job in paving was to be above where the tar comes from the dump truck, down a chute. I was standing above that bin and was to keep the tar moving along with some kind of stick they gave me. It was about 105 degrees those days and the tar itself was about a billion degrees. And if you've smelled fresh tar before you know its not pleasant. I spent hours right on top of that heat and smell.
Anyway, for about a week there was a big forest fire that they used us for to help "mop up". That was kind of fun. One time we were kind of on the front lines, but otherwise we just had a hoe or shovel and found smoldering places and put those out. We also had back pack filled with water and a squirt gun thing attached. That was super fun.
I'll never forget the lunches. I hope they've improved. Some kind of meat sandwich with almost no mayonnaise and an 8 oz can of unsweetened grapefruit juice. That was nasty. I was maybe the thirstiest I'd ever been. But, I lived and had an adventure, so that was cool.
