Names and Locations have been changed to protect the involved parties…

Every once in a while you need a recharge, be it at home, in your hobby and unbelievable but true in your career. Well I didn’t really think I was in need when I left for New England last Tuesday…was I wrong.

My trip started with a 4am wakeup and about 6 hours of travel, and that was before getting in a car that would take about 5 hours to get the 45 miles from Logan IAP to our hotel in Lowell, MA. Not the way to start a recharge…right?

So we decided to explore Boston for a while and ended up eating a late lunch in what could only be described as a rough neighborhood. Now I have more a few more colorful words that would describe it, but one would hate to offend the kinder, gentler…ok liberal members of this site, so let’s just call it a rough neighborhood. Food was great, roast beef sandwiches that would make Arby’s close their doors if they (the unnamed restaurant) ever set their sites on greater America. But I digress...

After lunch we used the GPS my partner took with us to find one of the more famous members of this site’s Station somewhere north of the Charles River. (You know who ya are) After driving past it and making slow loops of the city we finally bracketed the location enough to get there…this is where the recharge starts.

After an hour searching we got out of the car and were met by a smiling, vertically challenged firefighter, who took us on a tour of her house and introduced us to a great bunch of Jakes. John, my B shift companion hung out downstairs with the guys while I met the Captain and after a few minutes we regrouped in the kitchen for a brownie to die for. I mean this literally folks…OMG you can’t imagine!See I am a little on the ADD side, and keep having all these side thoughts that well just don’t fit neatly into the story, so bear with me when I digress. They will all be marked by italics…just like the one above!

So after about 30 minutes hanging out in their house we said our goodbyes and headed north for a rather uneventful night and the last decent night of sleep we would get.

Wednesday morning we fired up the GPS and headed north for MFD. We knew we were going for pre incident planning software training, and honestly that seemed like a really dull class to spend 3 days attending, but there was this great benefit, “The Brotherhood”. Now how does the brotherhood play into this class you ask???

It’s pretty simple actually. We started class with a MFD Lou and the instructor, and were shortly joined by Deputy Chief O’Malley who was exactly what any firefighter from the south expects an old Jake from New England to look and sound like, not to mention he came complete with the Irish name…right? OK so you get the picture.

Deputy greeted us and due to other responsibilities was in and out of class, but never seemed to miss much when it came to learning the programs. Before lunch one of the brothers came in and asked us to stay there and have lunch which was pretty cool as we hadn’t even met them before sitting down with them. Great guys, and Shepherd’s Pie is a personal fave’, so it made our visit even better. The guys on the Ladder got banged out for a mutual aid call shortly after and we didn’t get to see them again till the next night on a fire in the city. I’ll get to that part later!

After class Deputy gave us both his card and said to give him a call if we were going to be in town. So we did some shopping and decided to head back into town and find dinner. See, one of the decisions we made before leaving CC was to avoid Taquarias at all costs…basically NO Mexican food! So we found an Irish Pub & Restaurant that also happens to be Deputy’s favorite place and sat down for a good Irish meal. Of course after we ordered I called and found out it would be 2 hours before he could make it, but hey it was a PUB…right? By the time he arrived we were pretty close to ready for bed and with a 30 minute drive had already decided we would have a beer then head south. I’m sure you can already tell that this story is not going in that direction.

In comes the Deputy and his wife, and its then that we realize just how many people know O’Malley. literally 10 people came up and either hugged him or shook his hand. Now that was just the beginning, probably 25 people came by to say hello to them…25 is really a pretty low number if I actually counted them up, but we are talking 25 at least. Crazy…right? So we talk about stuff for a bit, then he wants our take on not only the class, but the software and how it can be utilized. I was pretty honored to have a Deputy Chief ask my opinion on anything, much less this subject. But that was only the beginning of the recharge…

After we finished our beer’s Deputy offered to buy a round before we left, and being the polite fellows we are, of course agreed to stay for one more. But before we could even take the first sip he says lets go outside for a minute…well, we soon found ourselves walking thru some pretty historic and at this point in their lives scary buildings downtown. Let’s put it this way, he recommended we not touch anything so as not to get any DNA on us! Are ya getting the picture yet? We walked a couple alley ways, and were even greeted by a couple of the local rental units during our tour. Ill let you put 2 & 2 together.

So of course we ended up back at the Pub and when we had finished our now very tepid drinks headed for home…or so we thought before agreeing to drop by the Deputies house for more conversation. After a short drive we were given the grand tour and spent a couple hours talking biz and looking at some great fire service history pieces…see the Deputy is not a first generation firefighter and his helmet collection alone is impressive, add that with the other things in his basement and many a fire department would be envious of it.

It must have been 2am when we realized what time it was and bowed out for the evening…and 7am came awfully early Thursday morning. But that’s for the next part of this Saga…