Fires, a new house and Bermuda

The past few days have been eventful up here in Newport. The week started with a 5:30 wake up in order to catch the shuttle to Windsor Locks, Conneticut. This is where Conneticut's Firefighter academy is. It is also a town devoid of absolutely anything that I or anyone that I know would find even remotely amusing. At the fire academy, we spent the first day in the classroom. This mostly consisted of slideshows supplemented by firefighter stories. The second day, we suited up in full firefighter gear. This included boots, heavy pants, heavy coat, balaclava, helmet, face mask and oxygen tank and harness. This is a lot of stuff to wear in late June, especially near giant propane fires. We practiced advancing the water hose and ran drills in which we would spray one area to keep the flames away while one of us would turn off the power to a fake AC unit or stove. The last drill consisted of teams of 3 dragging the hose into a burning building to extinguish the flames. The rooms were supposedly 400 degrees, pitch black and filled with smoke. This is a disorienting situation to be in. Really cool experience though.

Last night, after a day long class about life rafts and personal safety, Jason, his cousin and I went to a MLS Revolution game. The fan base is small when considering other sports, but the ones who show up are very lively. 1-1 draw.





After the game, we headed home, but were drawn to an enormous parking lot for an even more enormous building. It was a casino, but not the cool kind of casinos, with scantily clad women giving out free drinks, smooth blackjack dealers and african wildlife. This one was solely slots and video black jack. Jason's cousin spent some money on video blackjack, and while he was cursing at a life size video game black jack dealer, I wandered around the massive establishment. The place was larger than the patriots stadium that we had just left and contained 3 Dunkin Donuts. In this building there were probably 11 million slot games and half as many geriatrics stuffing their retirement money inside of them. I put in five dollars and instantly became confused at the colors, pictures of pirates and tropical fruit. After pressing a bunch of buttons for a few spins, an alarm went off and the screen lit up even more than it already was. I had done it, I had turned my five dollar bill into nine dollars and eighty eighty cents. I immediately cashed out and bought a donut.

As it was only 11:00pm, we decided to hit up the karaoke dive bar near our house in North Kingstown. It was the same mixture of kids singing for fun and middle-aged citizens hoping to showcase their talent. Evelyn, a product of 5 decades of harsh winters and unfiltered tobacco, serenaded us with a delicate rendition of "Redneck Woman," which she has sang every wednesday since the invention of sound. She is a sweet lady.

Today, we had CPR/first aid class. It was interesting but still tedious. The notable part of today was when Court called to ask if I would be interested in racing in the Bermuda Race with one of Ian's friend's crews. Then, I would spend a few days in Bermuda and sail back up here with the boat. The hole thing would have taken 10 days. It wouldn't have paid anything, but it wouldn't have cost me anything, either. I was really excited for about 30 minutes. Unfortunately for me, there was a snag in that a boat cannot add crew members once it has submitted it's roster. What a dumb rule! There is still a chance, however, that I could do the delivery, in which I would be flown down to Bermuda and sail the boat back with a few of the other crew members. We shall see.

I have a great house near the center of downtown Newport that I will move into this weekend. I will post pictures once I move in.