Page 2 has an orange stripe!

10/3/2006 12:09:21 AM

I've done alot of cool things. Chased drug runners in the islands, search and rescue on the North Atlantic and picked up hundreds of Haitians and Cubans down in the straights. But at the same time, When your getting your ass handed to you while you're heading 50 miles offshore to get a sinking boat in 20+ feet seas, the cool factor wears off pretty quick. That's when you see the new guys, and alot of times the seasoned guys as well, puking there guts out and wishin they were anywhere else.

But all in all, I couldn't see myself doing anything else unless it was something like DEA. Once you do a job like this, it's really hard to be content working a regular job again.

10/3/2006 8:06:32 AM

I JUST got home after 10-hour lecture on Swiftwater Rescue. I'll spend the next 2 days training for flooding and such. The Class is 7 experienced river guides and 6 USCG rescue swimmers (the guys who jump out of the helicopters in 30 ft. seas...)

The actual training will take place on my home river, the Nantahala. The instructor said to the coasties, "these guys are gonna look like swans in a raft, they know every rock." The he told the guides "these guys are gonna look like dolphins in the water."

This is gonna be much more intense than I'd anticipated... I'm scared (of the challenges that we're going to attempt) But the instructor kept coming back to us and asking us to explain how moving water behaves. We're gonna spend a day and a half swimming pretty much... we usually don't spent more than 5 minutes in the river itself, it's 45 degrees which is why they use it.

The Coasties are all from the Detroit Air Station. I can't wait to work with them, we've already exchanged so much knowledge... I know I can smoke them like a joint when it comes to throwing rescue ropes, but I'm not in as good a shape as most of them, and if they can swim as well as we're told, we'll be pwnt.

We are going to swim the Class VI (highest survivable rating.) I've been down it 3X in a raft, but that's scary. Someone WILL get hurt.

The guides' advantage is that this is our home field... and none of the Coasties have whitewater experience.

This is part of a movement by various levels of the Gov't after Ivan and Katrina/Rita to have ppl trained in swiftwater rescue AND boat manuevering... They showed us videos of rescue squads trying their best but doing everything wrong due to a lack of knowledge and leadership.

They explained that we could hypotheticaly be given a raft and 6 firefighters (all they really need to know is how to paddle) we would control the coordination of the rescue in flood situations.

They also showed us some VERY disturbing images of things that went wrong... The one that really hit home was a 3 minute video of a man who fell out at Little Wesser falls... a rapid I've run a million times, forwards, backwards, and even been live on Good Morning America doing it. I've pulled out hundreds of ppl there with ropes casually... but this man stood up and his foot got caught... there was plenty of help, but no coordination...

He struggled and finally drowned in the portion of the river I'm most familiar with. That hurt a lot, I had to look away.

The Coasties were very receptive to anything we had to advise them on boat handling, I had dinner with them and they were VERY helpful in advising mme on career paths.

10/4/2006 2:27:24 AM

theres plenty of people here with degrees...Electrical Engineering, Systems Engineering, Internation Business, Political Science...etc etc...who are enlisted

10/4/2006 10:51:57 AM

^ agreed steven, and many many more who were close to getting there degree or held at least an associates.

10/4/2006 9:35:49 PM