the cure for stress . . . training!

I'm at a regional fire conference this weekend, doing my civic duty as a volunteer instructor. It's a great event with over 300 firefighters coming from all over Northern Ontario to learn and party with their friends (in that order of priority, of course). There will be all sorts of interesting courses, and possibly a few boring ones. Live fires, smashed cars, helicopters, waterbombers, and smoked up buildings will be the order of the day for many of the attendees. The rest will listen to the Fire Marshal, the Ministry of Labour, the Ontario Association of Fire Chiefs and other eloquent speakers, who will elaborate on numerous topics of importance and interest. If you feel sleepy reading about it, just think of all those poor fire chiefs that actually have to be there.

I'm just kidding. A lot of valuable information will be transferred during these sessions, and all participants will hopefully take something useful home . . . something to help them be smarter, safer firefighters.

Have you ever gotten stressed out to the point where you just want to pulverize something? That's the time to take a vehicle extrication course, which is what I'm helping instruct this weekend. It's not every day you get to legally smash windows, rip off doors, air chisel your way through roofs, and turn hard-tops into convertibles. Vehicle crashes are violent events, and it takes a certain amount of violence - in a controlled manner of course - to undo the damage. The training is lots of fun. The real thing isn't so fun . . . intense and rewarding if you are successful, but definitely not fun.

If you aren't feeling stressed, and like quirky computer games, click here. The object of the game is to move the red block around without getting hit by the blue blocks or touching the black walls. If you can go longer than 18 seconds you are phenomenal, I'm told. If playing the game makes you want to smash something, come to Bucks Auto Scrapyard tomorrow. We'll have just the cure.