The Great Montana Adventure

My car tops out at 111 mph, it still has acceleration but the computer just shuts the engine down. The fact that I can do that and not worry about cops, cars, or basically anything makes MT a great state. I got to my Bunkhouse and the Sand Creek office (4 miles south of the Missouri river) today around 3:00pm and its in the middle of BF nowhere. All I have been doing today is arranging my stuff and just talking with my two other teammates; AmberBeth and Derrick, they are from Minnesota/Iowa and North Dakota respectively. I just found out that I (we) are on an engine crew and not a handcrew. I was kind of looking forward to being on a handcrew but engine is going to be just as cool if not better and more interesting. This week has been lots of sitting in offices waiting for paperwork to be ready and then filling out the paperwork. But it hasn’t been horrible because the people are awesome and are fun to work/talk with. During our first week here we earned 6 hours of comp time. While we are not on a detail/fire instead of earning over time we earn comp time which means they give us the hours we work over time and can use it as vacation anytime we want. Now if we save up our hours until the end we will get a check filled out for those hours…but the boss doesn’t like people saving up more than 80 hours and will force us to take two weeks vacation so they don’t have to pay us. Today I only worked two hours because my crew boss was taking the day off and said It would just be better if we used our 6 hours of comp time to make the day easier. Jim (my crew boss) said that we will be racking up plenty more than 80 hours of comp time so we should just use it whenever we want. Tonight we are going to the Roy, MT high school basketball districts, which is the excitement that I have for this three day weekend. I may also head into Lewistown for a couple of hours to check out the internet cafes in town. Oh and I have a roommate, his name is Nick and he is the fourth person on our crew. AND I found out that my first detail will be at THE GREAT DISMAL SWAMP in Suffolk, VA. If you don’t remember my past experience with wildfire it was at the same place. I did not have the best experience last time but this round should be much better since I like everyone I am going with and we will be burning the place seeing lots of fire. The other great part of this is that we will be staying in the Hilton again. Here are a couple of pictures from my trip and of the bunkhouse:

The Living Room

Our house from the front

In the middle of hwy 191

My sexy car