Welcome to station number 9.

The county of Prince George might not be the best example of what United States has to offer, but I like it here. Not that I would ever buy a house from these neighbourhoods, but when living at the fire station, there is not much to complain. I love the weather and I like the positive attitude of the people.
Of course it takes time to adjust to new enviroment and surroundings and you cannot avoid home sickness. Days roll by, and even though I sometimes get tired, the feeling of doing the work you love keeps me going. I do not need to wake up every morning and curse my job, but when I wake up, it is going to be an other day of action, learning and interesting events.

This is the day.

Soon I will start the car to the airport. Feelings are calm, spend most of this day in my hometown company. Just a normal day, nothing spectacular.


Will this be the day that I will remember when I die?

Not too many left

Fifteen days left. Not much, I suppose. Anticipation is building up, as anyone can imagine. The days fly by in waiting, and I almost count the seconds.

The change I am going to face still steals a lot of my thoughts. I've been to Düsseldorf once, and that is the only time I've visited a real metropol city. All my life I have walked the endless country roads, stared at the fields, farms and woods. Of course I've visited some cities around the world and I have also lived in a suburb near the capitol, but still, country side is what I've known for the most of my life. Also in the field of firefighting, usually when a call comes you drive for 5-20 kilometers to the scene and all the help you are going to get in a while is only a couple of units. Where I'm headed, the incidents are located usually pretty close and if needed, an armada of units are on location. I'm going to get used to that, of course, but the amazement will hold me for a while, I suppose.

And no matter how much I desire for departure, I know that there are things that I will miss. I'm leaving everything behind including the station where it all began, my family, my farm, my animals and the country side that I so much love.
And yeah, I'm going to miss my mother, no matter how it sounds. My mother is also a firefighter even though that she has turned 50 a couple of years ago and I love having her as a partner, and that is the stuff that I will surely remember as an old man while sitting in the front porch under a yellow light. Perhaps you can't really tell people that you have actually lived before you can tell everyone that yes, you have cut the front door of an apartment with a chainsaw, entered the pitch black smoke and carried the "customer" to safety, and all this when your partner was your mother too.

A family business they say. To tell the truth, my step-dad and brother are in the same field too, so maybe there is something wrong with us. And before anyone wonders, yes, she does nag, not always, but sometimes. Especially when I'm driving and that ain't even funny anymore.



So, back to carrying water to the horses and stacking hay. Meanwhile, here are some morale boosting pictures from the station 9.