What Not to Do...

So last night I was all prepared... CMC had told us last week that we'd go "all the way up" (aka, to Mast) if we missed the muster at the Firefighting Trainer down the street this morning. And I had volunteered to go... one of the Sonar guys who's getting out pretty soon had been put on the list for this training, and he wanted out... and I wanted in... so I got on the list. But I forgot to turn my alarm on. Woke up 15 minutes before I was supposed to be there, and nearly had a heart attack. Then I realized, as I thought about getting going fast, that I had locked my keys (and car keys) inside my rack the night before. What timing! Couldn't believe I could be careful enough to pack my bag, but still screw up so royally.

Went straight to the Quarterdeck in my civie t-shirt and sweatpants, and got help from the OOD. The regular Master-at-Arms was already at the firefighting, and everyone else going had already left. I had visions of my petty officer crows flying away... but soon they got the duty MA (STG1) to cut through my lock with bolt-cutters. I was already 10 minutes late, but the OOD called the school to let them know... she said she didn't know if they'd still take me, but I should safely "book it" and try anyway. I ran all the way down the pier.

Thank the Lord, they were still doing introductions when I got there and was still able to make the muster. A couple others from different ships were getting there when I did, but that was because they couldn't find it. My senior STGs had driven me there last week, so I knew exactly where to go.

I was the last person in the last fire team, but I didn't mind. We had brief classes in fire extinguishers, the different classes of fires, and the equipment we'd be wearing. Then we suited up in two layers of clothes (the outer one being fire-resistant coveralls), a flash hood, huge gloves and red helmet. Then we got our SCBA frames and masks, walked through the four trainers, rehearsing what we'd do... and then we got our air tanks ready, suited up, and put out a few controlled fires. It was a little awkward at first to be breathing the air from the tank, but when taking in a breath it made a rasping noise like Darth Vader... so it was pretty cool. I had to tell myself to stay calm when we were fighting fires in the dark... but it wasn't hard to convince myself. Everything is very much under control at a place like this. One guy did drop out before the last two events from feeling dizzy, but everyone else made it just fine. It was a good thing I drank lots of water and ate something before it all got going. It was really warm today, so we all sweated buckets out there. You should have seen how red my face was when we finally got to take the mask off. Gosh.

To finish out the day we had a couple more classes, including dry topics like how a DC (damage control) team is organized aboard ship. Good refresher from boot camp, though.

What a day.