Ian just sent me this link along with the photographs bellow. Another fire blog had a write up on this one. Check it out. Thanks calfire.blogspot.com!

http://calfire.blogspot.com/2008/10/great-blogs-gila-hotshots-wildfire.html

Short update of what I've been doing. Running to the YMCA, Taking dead trees out from the Bushnells Basin FD, turning my first wood bowl, getting a free TRD suspension on my truck, wine tasting at the Finger Lakes and riding the road bike.

Negrito fire base's new building! Hopefully I'll get one of the guys to send me pictures of the completed building. Photo credit goes to Ian Morgan. Thanks!

Cutting Room. Hit up the Union Square area to see Marye Lobb play a show at the Cutting Room. Mary's got a great voice!

E. Manhattan. Took my first Yoga class. It was awesome! Bikram Yoga is like swimming laps in a hot tub. I have a ton to learn about form still. After I get good enough at yoga it'll be time to learn how to dance...

Went to Comic Strip in E. Manhattan this evening. Great comedians there I strongly recommend it to anyone. Well, I'm off to another Yoga class, get some wings and end at Big Lebowski bowling night. Ummmm... White Russians.

Queens, NY. Fire juggling in the streets of NYC?

I'm pretty sure Jay liked our suits. How couldn't you?

Jay & Jenn's Wedding. Dan, Fiona and Chris at the reception dinner in Albany, NY

Dad on a completed walk way. I ripped logs in half to set the scrap wood beams and cross boards on.

I made Mom pose for me with Dads chainsaw.

Camp Cutler, Naples NY. Spent a day with my family doing trail work for the Boy Scouts. We had the help of the Order of the Arrow kids.

In this picture you can see the OA kids standing on one of the completed floating walk ways. Most of the work was done to a trail that got washed out when a beaver dam broke. Also, I finally got to use my saw for a few hours cutting up trees that fell over the trails.

Backpacking. We ended up hiking close to 70 miles in 3 1/2 days. 20 miles on the AT. All of the trails were in the eastern part of the park. We packed light, approx. 25 pound packs and both of us used running shoes rather than boots. As for food we ended up having just enough to survive. Also, thank the gods it didn't rain or get below 30 degrees... On our hike out we found a nice swimming hole. (pictures above) Jumping into the freezing cold water made a great lasting memory of the trip. Another great memory is jogging the last 5 miles of trails out to my truck.

Great Smokey Trip. Matt and I decided to backpack the Appalachian trail through the park. We quickly realized we needed someone to drop us off or pick us up. We waited till the last minute to plan anything. Since it would require a ton of driving we nixed that idea and settled on a loop hike.

Chimney Bluffs.

Great Smokey Mtns. Kelly was nice enough to put Matt and I up for a week in TN. We took two excursions into the Smokies. This one is from on top of the Chimney Bluffs.

End of the season party. Every year we create a slide show of all the pictures from the season. This year it was my turn to put it together. This was my staged reaction when things didn't go so well...

Bluegrass. The tiki torch incidents...

Sept 12-14. Presents Pickin' in the Pines bluegrass festival. Flagstaff, AZ. What a crazy weekend. Meet Pam the first night. She picked the three of us (Bubba, Matt and I) up hitch hiking and stayed for a beer. The music was great, even picked up a few cds for the road trip back east.

Quick note. I'm enjoying not working for a little bit. If I find some pictures from my travels I'll post them soonish.

To: The person who left angry comments. I changed the contentious posts. Chill please! Thanks for bringing that to my attention.