Lekaro

Today I’ve been in the woods with my FIG at a Civil Defence exercise. And I guess it couldn’t have gone much better.

We started out at 9 at Grorud where the base of Civil Defences in Oslo and Akershus are based. As we arrived we were directed directly to the depot to get new boots. I’ve been looking forward to testing the new boots and after a day of walking, running , splashing in water and carrying stuff I’m very pleased.

The new boots have a good fit, are soft and flexible and not to heavy. Yet they offer good support for you ankles and cot a composite “steel cap” to protect your toes. And they’re gortex. Which at least initially is a good idea, we’ll just have to see how well it works after a few years of abuse

Then we had some time getting to know some of the new members that has joined the group and to re familiarize our selves with the firefighting equipment that we got on our car. We opened a manhole, went down and attached a  valve to the hydrant and the a 2.5″ hose to get the water out of the hole. And then everyone took turns going down or practising the attaching of the valve in a training rig.

Then we went to  Steinbruvannet, a little lake just a few minutes from the base. We started by getting out what we needed for the exercise from our own car and from a larger truck. And we finally have some useful equipment to the ATV that we have. They now got a small trailer for it, big enough for one fire pump (Ziegler Ultra Power) and some hoses and other equipment that you would need. This is great since the ATV can get to places where out ordinary truck cannot go. Which means less carrying for us Which is good considering the pump weights around 190 kilos.

Then we split the group in two and have a hose connection relay race. We started out by laying out a 4″ hose (25 m) and then a branch pipe, which reduces the 4″ to 3 x 2.5″ from there we had one 2.5″ hose (25 m) to a new smaller branch pipe which is split into two 1.5″ connectors, and then finally one length of 1.5″ hose (20 m) and a nozzle at the end. Then each team member had to start by attaching the hose to the pipe then running to the next connection and do that up and so one all the way to the top, of course the track ran uphills, and then on the way back down he/she would disconnect all the connections again preparing for the next in the relay.

Out group was one short so in the heat of the moment I decided to take a second run in the end just to be fair. But the few seconds of hesitation caused us victory. Shit happens

After that we did some drills on how the pump works, starting stopping, running on full auto and we simulated a feed hose breaking to se how the pump reacts and what to do when this happens. And i guess that when we are in the woods pumping like mad that will happen from time to time.

The last part of the exercise was to lay out a standard fire fighting hose arrangement to see how it works and how well we can wet the bushes and threes. One pump can pump around 2000 l each minute and the nozzles will handle about 500 l each so a standard layout have three nozzles connected to one pump. Then we have something in backup if we need it.

All of this in brillinat sunny weather, couldn’t have been any better

But now it’s time for bed, tomorrow is going to be a long day to.

Up early to play and the Susan will arrive later to spend the weekend in Oslo.

Today’s been the spinning day, three hours of it in fact. And all in all it worked out quite good. I was worried that it would be a lot harder than it was. But then again that might mean I didn’t try hard enough

But I’m happy, looking at my pulse graph after i got home shown that i managed my pulse rather good.

I managed an average of  145 bpm over the three hours which i think is good.

And now I’m getting ready to go to Marabella in Prinsdal to have a few beers with some of the people from the gym. should be good. if not I’ll just have to see whether i should go into town or not. It’s such a nice day today, sunny and calm. Kind of a shame that I spent most of it inside on a bike.

But shit happens.

Next weekend I get visitors all the way from Australia. Susan and her boyfriend are coming to spend the weekend here. I’m looking forward to that.

Just hope the rest of my OZ friend find their way to Norway to some day

And it’s back to the good old daily activities. And starting to look forward to my next break

I’ve been really bad at blogging my training the last few weeks, and not to good at doing it either, but now I’m back for a while. Today’s trip to the gym was great, i had a lot of fun and now I’m exhausted in a good way. And I’m loving the weather tonight , you can really feel spring coming today and I’m hoping that tomorrow will be a great day. The weather services are not as positive as I but I’m hoping to prove them wrong

And here comes today’s little chart.

Time for a little update here again, has been real slow the last few weeks.
Both with my blogging and the new and better life I’m afraid. The only good thing is that my new life has been just a tad better than my blogging

Right now I’m in Kristiansand visiting my sister. I came here on Wednesday afternoon and I’m staying until Monday. On Thursday I helped my sister and her husband to move from their apartment and into the house they have bought. Thank God it’s a small place they moved from. It took us only about three hours and three runs back and forth to get it all in. And the weather gods were on our side to. Nice, sunny and dry, couldn’t have been any better.

The rest of the time has been just relaxing and they have started to get stuff placed. Or rather, the kitchen is filled up mostly and the rest is still waiting in boxes. I guess it’s still a while before everything is in place.

There is some repair work needed to so it will probably be a while before they get really settled in. But I think they got a good house. And the surroundings here are just great, nice and quiet and just a few minutes’ walk from a large lake where you can just relax, swim or whatever when the summer really comes.

As I’ve already mentioned we were lucky with the weather in Thursday. And we had the same brilliant sunny day on Friday. Today has been a bit more overcast but no rain so I’m happy.

I’m just hoping it stays like this the next few days to.