Final Coalinga

Here are the last few Coalinga images. It was an interesting few days. As always.

Horned Toads. Also the mascot of TCU, my parents' alma mater.

The liquor store in Lemoore, CA has a cow on it. Because.

So, we're all using Rite Aid pharmacy now, apparently.

This is the drive from the hotel to the grocery store. A true metropolitan center.

The Denny's got creative with the no-dining-in rule in place in CA right now.

I think we're heading north next. The adventure continues...

Coalinga Sunsets

The thing about fires is they create gorgeous sunsets 

Coalinga Hotels

A long time ago, I wrote that I needed to take pictures of hotel lobbies and window views. It was a good idea then; it's a good idea now. But when you end up in three hotels over the course of four room shifts in a little over a week, it's best to just combine them.

The post immediately preceding this one showed you the...interesting...hotel we started with in Coalinga. So, imagine our surprise when it got this much better:

MUCH better

See?

This was the view from our private balcony

Sadly, after staying three nights there, we all had to move for a night. We made reservations to come back here after that one night, though. 

This time, thank goodness, there were rooms available at the national chain. Luckily for us, it looked better on the inside than on the out. When the co-pilot and I met in the space between our rooms, I said, "It's better on the inside, I promise." To which he gave me the most skeptical "ooo-kaaaay..." I've heard in a long time.

You can't tell, but that building is under serious external construction

                                                 

The pleasant surprise inside

Until I turned on the TV and found this. Coalinga is just flat-out haunted. You can't tell me otherwise.

                                             

By the time My Favorite got home, the issue had been resolved, so we could flip through channels and find non-creepy people. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if we should all just stay put, when I had to call him out of the shower to come get the really big, furry spider. No, there's not a picture (what's wrong with you people???) and no, I didn't suggest we all just stay.

We went back to the nice hotel. While we all ended up downgraded in terms of rooms, there were no spiders to be seen while I was there.

Spider-free hotel rooms are the best kind of hotel rooms

                                      

And even with the downgrade, the place still looked like this:

                                      

And allowed us to have dinner here:

                                                                                         

                                             

Honestly, there's not a lot to draw a person to Coalinga in its own right, but if you happen to be in California and in the area, this place is an oasis in the literal desert.

And just like that...

...it gets a little more real. We had been in Modesto again, for three nights this time. The hotel, which should have been nice because it is a major national chain, wasn’t. We thought maybe it was just us but, nope, no one’s a.c. worked, no one’s carpets were clean, and everyone had asked “what is that smell?” at least once during the stay. So when it was time to check out this morning, we happily made reservations at the truly nice place where we’d be the last time we were in Modesto. Our mechanic had even arranged for us all to check in at 10:00 am.

My Favorite and I were standing in the lobby speaking with the front desk clerk to check us in when the noise that says “IT’S THE BOSS” hit his phone. There was a fire in Coalinga.

We canceled the check in and the rooms, put our stuff back in the car, and I drove him to the airport. On the way, he made hotel reservations. There were no rooms until tomorrow at the place he'd wanted, so he booked those. But that left us the first night. He called a little no-tell motel. They had 4 rooms. After he booked them, he warned me that, um, they may not have internet, babe.

But it was a room (4 of them) in the town we needed them to be. He took off; I found a shady spot to tutor (hello, Nouran!), and then headed to Coalinga, 2 hours and 7 minutes away.

Sure enough, the motel is exactly what we’d pictured...

No-Tell Motel, the Universe's way of reminding us to be grateful for not-quite-so-nice national chains

Not pictured: black mold in the bathroom or the single wash cloth provided for the two of us

But the fire was the fire. These are the views of my drive into town. Expect more of these in the next post.

And after one night in the No-Tell Motel, and another afternoon fighting fires (him) and hanging out at a Starbucks patio (me), we moved to the nicer place. Which is also coming soon.

I started this on the 13th and a week later finally have the time to finish it. Sometimes, the adventure is busier than others.

Random Tuesday

My friend, Seyda, tells me that, sometimes, even the mundane is nice to see. She reminds me that it's certainly worth remembering, and why I'm writing this blog in the first place. So...

A random Tuesday:

Sometimes, the Forest Service or BLM (Bureau of Land Management) will provide lunch to everyone assigned to a fire, is the fire is big enough. The only problem there is that each lunch has 10,000 calories ~ because each lunch has to sustain the firefighters on the ground, who are burning more calories than they can consume. However, air crew don't really need all the sugar, fat, and carbs that the people on the ground do. So, helicrews often will send someone out for sandwiches or even carry a grill with them. 

This crew is a carry-a-grill-with-them type o'crew. The Mechanic grilled up lunch for everyone yesterday; My Favorite wanted to do it today. I ran ingredients out to them, but didn't get to drive through the airport, because I was at the wrong gate.

Not the right gate for the code I had. Still cool.

When I got back to the hotel, the parking lot was a little more crowded.

CalFire is in the house

The only issue there is that My Favorite and the couple other aircraft that were pulled in the other day have gotten the fire out. We'll see if they're here in the morning. (Hell, we'll see if we're here in the morning!)

A little more crowded, indeed

That silver Impala is me. The asshole pickup truck is just a random asshole pickup truck. I probably sat in the Impala for a good three minutes trying to decide if I should snuggle myself into that parking space, tight enough to make it impossible for them to open the driver-side door. Unfortunately, cooler heads prevailed because it dawned on me ~ if this driver is enough of an asshole to park like this, they're enough of an asshole to drive over my silver Impala. And I love my silver Impala.

A couple days ago, I posted pictures of preflight. Here's what happens after that, courtesy of someone from My Favorite's crew:

Running up

Fly away

Please note the size of the bucket next to the size of the (very large) human being standing next to it.

Even on random Tuesdays, the adventure continues.

The Money Shot

There will be times when I go days, perhaps even a couple weeks, without posting, so two in one day is an anomaly. But I had to post this one while the link was still live.

Check out the slide show. Yeah...that's My Favorite. *swoon*

Not Completely Uneventful

With as much traveling as I do, I often get the question "How was the trip?" And I often answer "Uneventful, just as I like it." It is not, however, always uneventful. Sometimes there's a little something interesting thrown in.

I had peered at the horizon and realized I was looking at fire smoke several miles back. This was when I called my mom, though.

Since she and her husband live in CA and know how to get CA information, I asked my mom to see if there were road closures on the highway ahead of me. She went to her husband, said "Mame needs us" and they dropped everything and settled down in front of their computers.

No road closures according to CalTrans (California Transportation) or CalFire. So I knew I could keep driving. Eventually though, I came around a corner and needed to get off the phone.

Because I was driving into this:

It was a grass fire and CalFire was on it. 

Once I got through it, I called my mom and her husband to assure them all was well. But it was nice to have been able to make the call.

In a move that, had it happened in a movie, none of us would have believed, the moment I hung up with them for the last time and turned back on my radio, the very first thing I heard was, 

"All right, some news; there's a grass fire on 580 backing up traffic, so expect some delays, but CalFire is on it, so everything should be moving again soon."

A little excitement for the trip to My Favorite and his fire..

This is when I realized I was looking at the real fire

Yep, real fire.

What I found out last night is that the fire I'd been referring to as "My Favorite's Fire" actually is his fire. He was spotted it and called it in first. One of those little things that make me proud.

Another thing that makes me proud...back before we had ever met but were just words on computer screens, he told me about saving horses, so that has always been a priority for him. Yesterday, he was watching deer and rabbits scampering, running scared, in front of the fire. As he puts it, there was nowhere for them to go. So, he took his bucket and cleared a path through the fire for them. They ran back through the fire and into the part that had already been burned over and was now out (known as "the black" as I learned) where they would be safe. 

Yeah...not only does he protect people's homes, but he saves Bambi and Thumper, too.

How It Usually Works

I decided to come back here and then things slowed waaaaaay down and got boring. Naturally. However, this is how it usually works:

The phone rang this morning, about 5:50. There was a fire call. By 7:00, we'd packed, loaded the car with the heavy stuff, and I had him at the airport.

We know where the fire is (St. Martin, CA), but not where we're spending the night yet. So, I'll stay in the Modesto hotel room until checkout at noon, then hang out in the lobby until I know where I'm supposed to go next. All else fails, I'll head toward St. Martin and meet him at the McDonalds. 

The 4th of July

Here in the States, it's a holiday weekend. Today is our independence day. It's a day of ambivalence for me on most years ~ we promised so much, and delivered so little (with a hat tip to John Adams, who was only one of seven founding fathers to never own slaves {only one of the seven was from outside of New England, I'm just saying} and was probably America's first male feminist, marrying a woman whose education and advice he valued and insisting his daughters be educated equally to his sons) ~ but this year...wow. My ambivalence has ambivalence about this 4th of July. 

So, instead of getting any deeper into the politics of the day, I'm going to tweak and repost something from another blog I used to write. It's still applicable today.

The holiday weekend has brought the emotional beginning of summer and the seasonal PSA here at Stilettos in the Outback. Summer is great ~ beaches (if you're socially distancing!), frosty drinks, picnics (6 feet apart, please), barbecues...yeah, that last one. Folks, have your bbqs. Toast your marshmallows and eat your s'mores. Just please, don't set shit on fire.

This isn't hard. Not lighting shit on fire is remarkably easy, in fact. So easy anyone can do it. Put it on the top of your summer list: Don't Set Shit On Fire. Ta-Dah.

Second on the list? Should you set some shit on fire ~ or someone else should set shit on fire ~ and the people who are in charge of things like this tell you to evacuate, get the fuck out.

The Summer To Do List

1. Don't set shit on fire.

2. Get the fuck out.

Not hard. Very easy. Feel free to pass this along. The firefighters, the smokejumpers, the helicopter pilots, and yes, the people who love them, thank you.

Backing Up a Bit—My Favorite at Work

I realized something this morning. There is A LOT missing from this blog. Some of it happened before I started writing it. Some of it happened while I was writing it, but I just never wrote it. Some of it happened between the time I shut down and now.

So, I'm going to back up a bit, capture some images and stories that aren't here, and relive some moments. I'm also using it as an excuse to fangirl over My Favorite.

He fights fires. He logs. He does construction. He works on power lines. He moves people between power lines. He transports people from one place to another. He does search and rescue. He performs recoveries. He has flown tours in Hawaii, worked on a tuna boat in the South Pacific, been with researchers in the Arctic, and helped with clean-up in the immediate aftermath of Katrina. 

One of my favorite stories (that I was around for) happened while he was in Mexico. I was still stateside because of a deadline, but his gig had started so he headed across the border. They were flying the federales into the jungle looking for drugs and drug dealers, when they found tons of the stuff. Tons. So, being good federales, they set it on fire to destroy the crop.

Since it was going to take some time and he had cell service, he called me. We talked for about 20 minutes when I realized...he was giggly. Not laughing, not joking. Giggling. When I asked him where he was, he looked around and then he realized. Needless to say, he moved upwind. 

This is what it looks like sometimes when he flies...

His version of texting and driving

In spite of what the name tag says, don't ever call him Dave. He hates that

Maintenance Test Flight with my favorite mechanic

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. This is what he does. And while there are a handful of people who do it as well, nobody does it better.

The adventure continues...

Modesto, CA

Really no need to caption that one, is there?

We've been in Modesto for so long that neither My Favorite nor I remember off the tops of our heads. For fire season, that's a long-ass time. But because of COVID-19, we're still not doing a lot. Didn't get to see the grandkids or the other set of grandparents that we really like, even though they're less than an hour away. Not going shopping or to movies or even out to many dinners. Which means I don't have as many stories about Modesto as I normally would a place we've been long enough to forget when we got here. 

Still...

The hotel is nice...

More and more, I'm a Marriott fan

I've written already that it's the best place we've been so far, in spite of the grab and go breakfast cakes. There is some information further down in this post that may make you question that. Trust that neither of them change how much I love this hotel.

There are really pretty flowers...

See? Really pretty flowers

And a Motel 6 right across the street...

The fighting and sirens keep us from being homesick for Philly

And since it's right around the 4th of July, we get to play "Fireworks or Gunfire?" Always a good time!

Then there's this store, just a few doors away from the Motel 6...

Cookies

Now, as someone who doesn't eat a lot of sugar, and doesn't even struggle with it, I admit, living this close to a Cookie Monster colored cookie shop has been a bit of a challenge. In fact, the only reason I haven't gone in is because I am doing a 3-week-no-dessert-or-sugar-no-my-friend-not-even-ice-cream-because-that-was-your-rule challenge with a friend who needed some accountability and support.

Well, folks, I am grateful for that challenge. Not just because I have access to tres leches at the store every damn day, but because it turns out the cookie shop isn't a cookie shop. Nope. Pot store. Right there. Big, blue pot store. And it's been a long time since college. 

See? Not much happening. But sometimes, there's not much happening.

The adventure continues, even when it's dull...

Ps ~ My Favorite has just informed me that we arrived here on June 25th. In case you were wondering. 😉

Family Dinner

I’ve written about cookouts with the crew before here and here and have had so, so many of them in the years I wasn't writing the blog.

Sometimes they looked like this:

 

Snowed in in Grangeville, ID with the Billings crew

More often they looked like this:

Tailgating at the Red Carpet Inn, Medford, OR, with the mechanic from Airlift

And I'll be honest ~ the first couple are awkward. Getting to know a new crew takes a minute. So, the first ones tend to look like this: 

Behind the hotel, Modesto, CA

A little awkward, a little uncomfortable. But by the end of the evening, we were chatting comfortably, a little easier with each other. By the end of the season? Well, I have hope, because I know what Family Dinner can be.

And the adventure continues...