Its snowing in New York. I'm still thawing out from a jog to the YMCA.

Check out this link about President Elect Obama's stance on wildfire management.

www.barackobama.com/pdf/issues/Fact_Sheet_Wildfire.pdf

Bubbles are rising! The yeast is working on making alcohol after only two days. Hard cider is almost ready to be racked. That is when I get the sludge out of the bottom of the jugs. I guess that will be time for a first taste test. With luck it will be ready for thanksgiving.

In other news... My new thing is splitting wood. Its fun and I get to use my chainsaw on occasion. Also a great time to listen to bluegrass. Its just fitting.

Other new thing: Rowing at the Pittsford rowing club. They have indoor tanks for rowing practice. Dad and I go Tuesday and Saturday.

Keep up the PT. Fire season is never far away. Run, lift, Row, bike, chop and swim.

First wood bowl! Thanks to Grandpa Feather's instruction/lathe and Dad's finishing technique its complete. It took a few hours but here it is. You can see the worm holes which create some character. The wood type is Cherry. Images of my next bowl will be posted shortly!

Hard Cider. My friends at BFA brewery inspired me to do some food science. After awkwardly buying 5 gallons of apple cider in old glass jugs I've began my own brewery. Mom Passmore who conveniently has a BS in food science has helped me get started. Thus far 2 pounds of sugar and a small amount of wine yeast have been added and mixed in too assist in the fermentation process. Will it be drinkable???

Indian Summer! The weather has been unseasonably warm so I took a ride on the Erie canal into the city. Did half day around 50 miles. I brought my camera in hopes that some subject matter would jump out. This picture was the only thing to catch my interest. Very much current event hippie graffiti.

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.

Bird.

Deepest lake in the county. Second in the world. Created by a volcano collapsing. Check out the cool island. If I choose to become a pirate when I grow up... I might just storm that island.

Great place! Worth seeing.

Matt, Susan and Dewey

Bubba's squad. Or as they prefer to be called "The shrimp boat".

September 1. After days of indirect line and very little fire behavior crews started getting released. Today it was our turn. We headed for New Mexico short of a 14 day tour. Hurricane Gustav (sp?) is the only incident ordering crews, the fire world is at a stand still. This picture is of Creator Lake. It happened to be on our way home so we stopped briefly.

Huckleberry Finn. Dewey brought us a treat at the end of the day.

The Gila IHC logging games. Who can cut the rounds faster. A true test of your sharpening ability.

Pocket wilderness? This fire is burning in a designated wilderness area. Its an incredibly small wilderness when compared with the Gila. You can see in this picture how its burning in the re-prod from the 1996 burn. Healthy fire?

Smoke haze.

August 27. Olie our crews student hire has to leave and become a Paramedic. So today is our last chance to get a picture with the full crew of 2008. Here we are in full gear.

August 28. Sunrise Oregon.

August 27. Sunset in Oregon.

August 27th. The most fire we've seen yet...

August 26. Long day of line ended at a nice spot to take a Saw team picture.

August 26. North Fork Complex/Rattle Fire. On the Umqua N.F.
Our mission is to construct indirect contingency line around a 600 acre fire. No one is willing to enter the fire area because lies in a old burn from 1996. Left over are hundreds of snags many of which are burning away what little wood is holding them up.

Mt. Shasta on our way to the Rattle Fire.

Anyone seen the movie Super Troopers? Or maybe the TV show Reno 911?

We staged at a river with some ancient lava flow tunnels for a few hours.

The finished products.