First and foremost, congratulations to everyone who donated to, participated in, or otherwise supported the members who did the Polar Bear Plunge this weekend! The Department raised almost $12,000 in total for the Maryland Special Olympics, and we had a blast doing it.
I think some of us who plunged were still feeling the effects today, especially because of our brutal Tower workout this morning. Full gear, hose racks… you name it, we carried it up there. Upon further inspection, we found that we ran the Tower somewhere between eleven and twelve times.
That's anywhere between 627 and 684 steps! (57 steps to the Tower, remember?) Just for a frame of reference, the Washington Monument contains 897 steps to the top. However, keep in mind that a standard step height ("riser height") is approximately 8.25", and the riser height on the Tower is 12"—so in terms of sheer vertical feet inside a stairwell, we climbed anywhere from 912 to 995 standard stairs!
Yes, I think the public should know that today we climbed higher than the Washington Monument, all while wearing full firefighting gear and lugging a big-ass hose rack.
On another note, I won't have much this week in the way of posts regarding the Academy; some of 994 (myself included) will be detailed out to D.C. General Hospital to get a few EMS housekeeping issues out of the way before fire school officially starts on February 2nd! Yes, that's right: we have a start day for all the firefighting stuff we've awaited for so long.
The posts and photographs are soon to flow, my friends.
In the meantime, look forward to a few older stories that I penned either when I was working either in the Emergency Room or at my old medic job.
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