As I sit here writing this blog, I'm at the New York State Academy of Fire Science, in their quaint little computer lab... with more bruises than I can count, more pain in my body than I could have imagined... yet somehow feeling at ease.

Let me explain. I decided that this would be the year for me to attend the Annual Women's Week at the State Fire Academy in Montour Falls. In order for me to get the permission to attend, I needed to select courses that weren't offered in my little County of Erie. When I got the course list in front of me, the one thing that stuck out as not being in my neck of the woods was SCBA Confidence. I read through the course outline, took a gander at some of the practicals and decided that I'd go for it. It couldn't be that hard, right?

WRONG. Dare I say it was the most challenging experience of my life?

Yesterday we began with some classroom basics, and then moved on to the breathe down/air consumption - otherwise known as "Walk around and do a little obstacle course until you are absolutely out of air and your eyeballs fall out of your head" COOL, HUH!? Having done it in Firefighter I (which now seems like ages ago), I didn't realize the challenge I was up against. MORE obstacles and HARDER obstacles. I was set up on a 30 minute bottle, and to keep us from screwing around with our air and making it go faster, they duct taped our gauges - and we weren't allowed to use our purge valves AT ALL. Well, on my 30 minute bottle I made it a little over 20 minutes... and it was a challenge. It was late in the day, starving... just wanted to get it done... and I did. I was hurtin' afterwards, but I figured I was ready for whatever they were going to throw at us this morning.

WRONG AGAIN.

We reconvened at 0800. After a light breakfast and a ton of Powerade I thought I was ready to go. We ran through a series of classroom exercises explaining the MAYDAY process, proper disentanglement procedures and a few other logistics and "be careful of..." incidents. So far so good. We break for lunch, and we're told that after lunch we'd get down to the nitty-gritty. Still have my head held high at this point.

After lunch we met back in the "chapel" (the Academy was a monestary at one point), and began some of the "shorter" tasks. We did the low profile exercise, where I nearly choked on my SCBA, but I'm good now. From there we moved to the disentanglement simulation - PIECE OF CAKE. Got out of that sucker in 5 seconds (the instructor even said he made it a little harder on me, but I knew my *swim* method so I did okay - SCORE.). From there we did my personal favorite - WALL breach. Again, a PIECE OF CAKE. Didn't get caught up at all. Didn't get stuck, smoooooooooooth like butta. Then we did the MAYDAY call. We laid down and then got smothered by one of the wrestling mats (the instructor sat on top of us), and we had to get to our radios, and make contact with command explaining that we had a collapse situation. Got myself in a funny position there where my back started to hurt, but after a few minor readjustments, I was good to go. Then we did the partner scenario where you had to simulate what you would do should your partner encounter an SCBA malfunction. Damn it's hard crawling on only 3 limbs.

After a short break we transitioned to the gym -- THAT's where the fun was. Yeah, fun, that's what we'll call it.

First part was relatively easy. Follow the hose to the coupling to find your way out. Okay, not too difficult, but with an uncharged line with lots of loops it was a little stressful. Next part was another one of those cake runs. How to safely get on an off an apparatus - maintaining three points of contact at all times. It was easy, but definitely not something you think about on a daily basis. A good lesson indeed. Next element was a standard room search. We weren't looking for victims (although there was one there), but rather just orienting ourselves with the room to find the point of egress. Took a little time and almost took the striping off my pant-leg, but nothing I haven't done before. Got through that fairly easily. Then came the dreaded maze. I never made it through the maze fully during my FFI because of some asthma issues, but I was optimistic that I was prepared for everything that was headed my way.

Oooooooooooh SO wrong.

I was the second-last one to go through the maze of hell. I'll be very up front about the process and tell you that I barely thought I could make it through the first tube. I am comfortable crawling, but I have some serious issues when I have to slide on my belly. That is one maneuver that just DOESN'T work well for me, and of course that encompasses most of the maze. I have a bad knee. There's no buts about it. When I was 12 I sprained it during basketball camp and it never healed then. The resulting injury is a permanently dislocated kneecap. While given a clean bill of health by my doctors, it's not to say that it doesn't give me the occasional problems -- LIKE TODAY. I have limited upper body strength as it is, and when the knee is stressed it causes cramping in the rest of my leg and sometimes even into my foot - lovely. I had to stop a few times because the pain was just so bad that I couldn't go through... and probably 1/3 of the way through the maze from my frantic breathing and my crying, I lost my air. Pack was GONE. DRY as a bone. The instructors gave me the nod to continue, but that didn't mean that things got any easier. They were constantly coaxing me, giving me encouragement and telling me that I couldn't die in that maze - it wasn't acceptable. Although at times I really wanted to... I'll be honest with you there. Probably a good 30 minutes into it, I was finally done. I was out of my gear, clearly shaken up but out of that maze entirely. I was never so happy to see that dusty, dirty gym in my LIFE! I didn't think I had passed. I thought I was going to be packing up my car to come home tonight... I thought I had reached the end of the line.

After packing up my gear and taking it back to the car, I found myself back in the classroom... where the instructors would be handing out the certificates. One of the first things they said was that two people didn't pass and would be permitted to re-test in the morning. I was convinced that I was one of those two people. But I knew I just didn't have it in me to go through that maze again. I'm bruised and beaten as it is, I know I couldn't get down and crawl again. It just wasn't an option. When the certificates were being handed out, I became worried... finally, one dropped on the table in front of me. I broke down into tears. I came here, and accomplished what I set out to do. I never thought I would be walking away with that certificate. After the past twelve hours of schooling, I know that I've really accomplished something - and to anyone that says "hey, anybody can do that." I challenge you, right here and now - DO IT. Put yourself to the test. Not in your own county maze. Not in the maze that your department has assembled. Do it here. It's nothing like you've ever experienced. It was more mental and physical work than I ever could have imagined. And I'm happy I did it. I'm elated that I managed to accomplish that - and when I met up with one of my instructors at dinner, I told him right out - my SCBA Confidence certificate is the one that I'm most proud of. Anybody that looks at my profile will see an extensive training run down - but this, this is the one that I'm going to frame because this means something to me. I accomplished something. I wasn't babied and nobody gave me this one. I did this on my own, and with the support of my other Women's Week cohorts.

Happiest day of my life?... Close.