meant to write more but this is what I got...

Here are the short jokes that I remember from the following two days... We learned how to do a 2-man ladder raise on a 35' ladder. At the department I volunteered at previously this was a 3-man evolution. Doing it with just two is definitely a more physical endeavor. The person on the beam of the ladder has to walk the ladder hand over hand into an upright position while the other person anchors the heel of the ladder. I think my crew members were probably nervous for me to go (I was too, not gonna lie) because I got a bunch of congratulations when I did it without the damn thing crashing down. You then extend the fly (the part of the ladder that goes up) by pulling on the halyard (rope). One of the trainers (a firefighter I have loads of respect for) asked me at lunch how the raise went. I told him it went well. He asked if we'd done the halyards. I said we had. He chuckled and said he'd figured I'd just be pulling myself to the top of the ladder instead of raising the fly. I asked him if that wasn't the point? I said it got me up the ladder faster that way. Short joke #1. Number two came at the end of the day when we were checking the brake rod travel on the drill engines. You get on a creeper and slide under the engine to measure the distance on the brake rod before and after the parking brakes are applied. One of the gals in my class asked me if I could just go ahead and walk under the engines and check them all real quick. The last short joke (that I can remember, they come as fast as I can deflect them) was today in our wildland class. We were practicing deploying our fire shelters (reason number 304 why I am not a wildland firefighter by the way). Just imagine a baked potato, wrapped in aluminum foil. This is a fire shelter, an expensive shake and bake container for a firefighter about to be run over by a wildfire. You shake it open and drop to the ground, pulling the edges in around you. Neat, right? When I popped out of mine they asked if I needed the junior size, if my legs could hook the edges down (they barely could and a good wind off a fire would rip that sucker right off me). Then, could I stand up in it? Of course I could. I was running laps inside of the damn thing, couldn't they tell?