Gizmos and other Various and Sundries

After I buy a jet propelled master stream from the Chinese, I think I'll get a flying robot from the Australians. You can never have too much technology, especially cool firefighting gizmos. The flying robot would be especially useful on those 100 km round trips down the highway in -40 weather. I can see it now . . . sitting on my couch watching hockey and fighting fires in Raith with my flying remote control robopumper. Except that I think the Aussie gizmo is just a flying camera and doesn't fight the fire. I'll have to put in an order for a model with a 625 gpm pump and a thousand gallon tank for the new improved version.

Speaking of new and improved, check out the Fire Within's new and improved Facebook page. Chad Sartison is on a mission to take North America by storm. It's nice to have a smart, talented entrepreneur on the side of volunteer firefighters. Our calendar project here was not a stunning success, but we did make a few bucks and raised some awareness. Most importantly, it opened my eyes to the fact that the majority of the folks really don't know or care much about us. Knowledge is power, and hopefully 2011 will be a year of strategies to change this perception, or rather lack thereof.

If you have any 2009/10 Blaze Firefighter gloves in your hall, check out this website. Six New York Fire Department firefighters suffered second degree burns to the backs of their hands while wearing the gloves, and the department is taking $850,000 worth of gloves out of service. That's a lot of gloves.

If you think my rantings about Groundhog Day predictions were far out, you should know that Pittgirl from That's Church believes that Pennsylvania's Punxsutawney Phil made a true prediction this year. The groundhog didn't see his shadow, and now the weatherman says that warmer temperatures are on the way . . for Pittsburgh, which is a few lightyears away from Upsala. It has been -30 here every night for the past three or four days, with a windchill of minus gazillion, but they say that it's going to climb to near zero on the weekend.

We're going skiing this week, so the milder temperatures will be welcome. When you are hurtling down a hill at a thousand km an hour, a minus gazillion windchill turns into . . . well . . . minus gazillion times a thousand windchill. Just believe me, it's cold (my math isn't that good).

You can read about my ski escapades and see a couple videos here, here, and here.