The land of fire/rain

Today I worked on my third burn/rain. Everytime we get to a burnin', and afternoon t-storm comes in, brings gusting winds that shift every whichaway causing high anxiety for spotting, and then it drops heavy rain, putting out our oh so lovely and productive fire. Last thursday and friday we travelled up to Orlando to burn at the Disney Wilderness Preserve (no, Mickey Mouse wasnt there, although I do think Disney world would be great to have a themed section involving wildfire/prescribed fire). We set backing fires (see also, slowest fire ever) and burned long days, but ended up not finishing due to rain. Today, we were burning out a small unit (less than 50 acres) and the rain came in (talk about a case of the Mondays). Hopefully tommorrow will be better though, as we are assisting with an aerial burn. this means that a helicopter will be dropping little flammable ping-pong balls to set the fire, and we just sit and watch, making sure the fire doesnt escape. From what i hear though, it can get exciting if the fire is dropped outside the burn unit. This is called a spot fire and requires immediate action to extinguish. It'll be a long day as well since we might be burning acreage up in the high hundreds (maybe even low thousands).

Last weekend I went to visit my cous Carla in Tampa. She cooked for me and it was awesome. Also, much thanks to Bill for the boat ride and the hospitality. It was nice to get out of Frostproof for a little while, but is also nice to return to this small ville. I am kinda getting attached to it...or maybe its just the fresh mangos getting to my head (or maybe its the chemicals from the orange factory across the street).

--Will