Finally

Here’s the massive update. Since I got my slick, little laptop, I’ll try to update a lot more frequently. But in 6 weeks I’ll have no clue when I’ll get the internet again, so you’ll probably be getting a bunch of big ones like this.


Feb 3: The Arrival
- Of course I should fly first class on my way to a year of volunteering. These days, the ferrying of you bags isn’t factored into the cost of you ticket. Lot’s of airlines charge by the bag, but the nice airlines count that towards the cost of the upgrade. The very nice lady at the Airtran counter in Portland at 5am informed that it would only be $9 more to fly first class. Yes please, m’am.
Flying into BWI, spirits were decent. I had a great conversation with an old baggage handler who thought I looked like Ben Roethlisberger. I met up with a few other corps members and soon realized that we’d be a waiting awhile for out ride. My first introduction to government efficiency. I’m trying my best to keep my cynicism under wraps, but getting up at 3:30am, flying in at 8 and finding out we wouldn’t be leaving the airport until at least 10 made me feel GREAT. Especially with the promise of a day of in processing and a mountain of paperwork. Fun fun.
Maryland struck me as fairly boring in its commonness. Each town looks exactly like the last. It’s like the semi-nice, boring parts of New Jersey threw up around the Chesapeake.
I don’t think I’ve written my SSN more in the span of 4 hours, it’s probably imprinted on every folding table owned by the Perry Point VA. Oh, and they didn’t have my boot size. They still don’t and it’s over a week later. Efficiency. They never bothered asking for our sizes over the course of the 20 odd correspondence exchanges in the last year, even for just a rough estimate.
Anyways, not a whole lot to report for the day. Got my uniform (cargo pants, logo t-shirts, sweats, you know, clothes with the Americorps logo). Met my roommates. All seem to be pretty decent so far and I’d say we’re one of the few houses where everyone gets along , I think our relatively advanced ages help.

I’ll take this time to address the simple questions.
- We’re living on a VA campus. It’s right at the point where the Susquehanna meets the Chesapeake. I can see Havre de Grace across the bay from my room. There’s 8 of us in a 4 bedroom house, most of which are near falling down. Luckily we have one with a decent roof and plumbing, other can’t say the same. Last weekend a couple of guys had to bucket brigade a foot of backed-up sewage from their basement.
-I have breaks and I’m allowed to leave. Anytime we’re done for the day, which means meetings right now, we’re allowed to be out of uniform and leave campus. As long as we make it back for the next scheduled meeting, we’re not considered AWOL. I have all federal holidays off and a couple randoms here and there. My biggest break is this summer from July 1-12. So people should lobby now for a visit, because I really miss motorcycle right now and she might need to flex her legs for a week or so.
-I don’t know where I’m going for my first Spike. They don’t tell us until about a week before. I will be spending 2 of the 4? Spikes in the Gulf Coast.
-I quit fire team, but I’ll explain that later.

Feb 4: Meh
- Turned out to be a bit of a nothing day. Probably a couple meetings? I don’t remember much, other than asserting myself as cook and therefore one of the permanent shoppers in the house. We went shopping that night for food for the house. I did this partly out of lack of trust and partly selfishness. I don’t trust a lot strangers, especially dudes my age, to buy and cook for me. I also like to have a little, okay, a lot of control over what I’m eating.
Don’t get too shocked, but they allotted $5 a day for food for us, since we won’t technically be payed our $90 a week until next week. This sounds ridiculous, but when you get to the grocery store and say that you have $200 to buy food for 8 guys for 5 days, it doesn’t sound that bad. Cheap stew meat, frozen veggies and PB&J are the names of the game and so far they haven’t fired me. It’s all in the preparation.

Feb 5: Wasting Tax Dollars
- Just know that on this day, at least 12 15-passenger vans spent 5 hours of stop-and-go driving all on your dime. It was all in the name of a “scavenger hunt” to find local points of intrest, to get familiar with the area. But we were so turned around, nobody but the driver knew where we were. Time and resource waste central. I’m really trying not to be cynical. But it’s so haaaarrrrddddd.
That night I was reacquainted with the taste of Yeungling on draft. $.75 draft. That was nice. Anytime any of you catch me pulling this, “Wah, I still hate summer camp,” crap, just remind me that as a camper, you’re usually not allowed to stumble back to camp in a happily fuzzy state with new friends.

Feb 6: Touch Me
- Not the worst day. Having to ride to Delaware to get a physical seemed a bit odd, especially since we live next to a hospital. But, nothing new. My vision and hearing is still pretty damn good and a nice lady touched my nuts.
I took it pretty easy that night because of the firefighting pack test the next morning. I think I made beef stew and played board games at some girls’ house.

Feb 7: Goal Met
- Back story. On the face book for NCCC, there was a discussion about the pack test to qualify for the wild land fire fighting team. As most of you know, I’ve never had a burning desire to fight fires(greatest pun ever), but over the past 2 years I’ve completely overhauled my exercise and eating habits. To pass the test, a person needs to walk, not jog, 3 miles in under 45 minutes, while weighted down with a 45 pound vest. For the 3 months leading up to my departure I worked in a training routine to help myself prepare for this test. I took a backpack and put two 25 pound plates in it, set my treadmill to 1.5 incline and intervaled between 3mph and 5mph. It was really hard. But it paid off. My best time for 3 miles on the treadmill was 44min, so I was a bit concerned for the test, but I developed a decent case of the Fuck-Its and signed up for firefighting.
That morning I wasn’t that nervous, surprisingly. I was a bit anxious, but nothing that affected my GI (this is a Wood family insidey). I did my ridiculous yoga stretches that elicited curious looks. This is understandable because half the time it looks like I’m fucking the ground. But they work. They worked. I worked. I put on the Cro-Mags and pumped my legs and never looked back. I didn’t acknowledge anything or anyone, until one of the leaders rode by me, well after I had passed the half way point, saying that it had only been 22 minutes! Holy shit Batman indeed. I made it in just over 34 minutes. Besting the time of the 1st place finisher of the first heat(I walked the 3rd heat because of limited weight vest availability). As a fat dude it’s fun to beat skinny kids in endurance and speed challenges.
To make the day even better, I got to spend some quality time with one of the bestest buddies from college, Paul Zippel. He and his girlfriend live in Elkton, MD which is quite conveniently only about 20 minutes from Perry Point. We caught up on the past year and a half that we had been vacant from each others lives and he fed me awesome food and beer. I know the best people. My life is good.
That night I went out to the bar again. Too bad it was townie night with a band that played exclusively shitty pop punk and 90’s shit rock. Good Charlotte? You bet. A Limp Bizkit cover? Surely I jest. Surely I don‘t. Even a mash up of Sublime’s “What I Got,” that “Feel like makin’ love” song and “Sweet Home Alabama” but sung as “Sweet Home Cecil County.” I wish I was kidding. I’m glad I didn’t pay a cover.

Feb 8: Off Day
- A perfect storm of events on this day leads me to where I am now. On antibiotics. One thing to note, almost every guy in the house has been sick so far. We’ve all had a chance to do our best Florence impressions to make life easier in the house. So I suppose it was inevitable.
Drinking the night before and getting chilled walking back wasn’t good. Sweating in my sleep with a cranked furnace didn’t help. Playing frisbee barefoot in semi “cold” weather definitely put me over the edge. Mr Virus took hold, conveniently the night before our first round of physical training at 5:30am. Bleh. But Frisbee was fun.

Feb 9: Bleh II: The Return
- 5:30 came early after a night of sweats and crazy virus dreams. Of course we didn’t have anything to do between 7 and 11:30, so it was completely necessary to get up that early. Sorry Cyno the Monkey got out of his cage. Later that day we had a super long meeting that basically said more about how awesome we all are and the 4th staff introduction in 6 days, but it took 4 hours. Cyno stop it.
The two important things to come from the meeting where the anouncements of the firefighting team our permanent Spike teams. My spike team is pretty decent. My roommate Dan is on the team, which rules, because we get along swimmingly. There's also another cook, which is great because when either of us is feeling lazy, the team will still eat well.

Feb 10: Bleh III-d
- 5:30 fire team PT came ridiculously early after another night of no sleep. But I was happy to have gotten some antibiotics the night before, thanks dad. PT was pretty horrible since I could barely breathe, not to mention the basic training climate from the ex-military instructors. You guys know how much I love undeserved authority figures.
Later that day we had another training/brainwash/teambuilding session that could have been summed up in 20 minutes. I was miserable.

Feb 11: Bleh IV
- Yesterday could have been terrible. But it wasn’t that bad. PT wasn’t that enjoyable but I made it. I thought the morning would suck, but the Youth Development seminar wasn’t half bad, mainly because the guy giving it was a great public speaker and I hosed everyone in the large group discussion. Sometimes I revel in the fact that life experiences and maturity affords you greater perspective. The day continued with more boring but necessary team meeting stuff.
For dinner I make dry rubbed pork tenderloins that I grilled and roasted. They went over pretty well.
I ended the night at the house next door where one of the girls from my team lives. She let me play her guitar for awhile and I felt normal again. It felt pretty good.

Feb 12: Bleh V: The End, hopefully
- Yet again PT came early, but for the last time on Tuesdays and Thursdays. By the time I went to bed last night, I had made up my mind that I was going to quit fire time. For the record, here are the reasons:
1) I never really wanted to be a firefighter. I just wanted to do the pack test.
2) I don’t fit in well with the military style training, or, well, I really don’t like it.
3) I know that the alternates who didn’t make the team really want to be firefighters, and it’d be really shitty for my apathy to take up a space.
4) I know I won’t get better from this cold if I don’t get to sleep in just a bit during the week.
5) I didn’t want to possibly give up all my break time to hump out to the mountains of Colorado to fight a fire, eat MRE’s and wonder where I’m gonna take my next shit. Some people would kill to do that, not I.
6) My mom worries enough about me riding a motorcycle, I don’t need to start walking into forest fires.
Sitting here at 6pm, I don’t regret the decision at all. Of course I received a few cryptically disappointed reactions, but it was an incredibly personal decision, made with a decent amount of maturity and perspective. I’ll still be waking up those mornings and working out, just at a more reasonable time, like 7am.
Today was an easy day. Caught a nice 2 hour nap after walking back from my pre-PT mini meeting. Went to CPR training. Had a nice lunch conversation and found I was exempted from first aid training, since it’s good for 3 years (thanks collaborative school). So I spent a lazy afternoon of tidying up the house, a little yoga, and typing out all of this madness. Tonight will be relaxing as well, since a couple of the guys have offered to make dinner, which is just fine since I know all the ingredients they’re using.
I have a long weekend that I didn’t plan for. If I had been wiser, I would have figured out a way to get up to NYC or see some other friends. But I committed to getting trained to drive the vans on Saturday, which will be good to get out of the way. I’m sure I’ll hang out with Paul at some point. Things are decent.