DR-4145 Colorado

Shortly after returning from my trip to Utah, I was informed that our team would be spending our third and final round working at FEMA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. I had mixed feelings about this. I have a strange dislike for D.C., based solely on the fact that every time I go there it's about 110 degrees and 90% humidity and a bottle of water costs $5. But there were a lot of other teams that would be stationed there and of course there is a ton of fun stuff to do.

The day before we were supposed to leave, the plans changed. If you haven't heard, there's been terrible flooding in Colorado, and the President has declared it a major disaster. All the DSAT teams were told to stay. The rest of the teams were told to wait through the weekend on standby (as of Monday morning they were told to wait through the week on standby as well).

So the next day, instead of heading east, we headed to the FEMA Region VIII office in Denver. We got all of our IT issues taken care of on Saturday and got briefed on updates to the reporting app that we use in the field on Sunday. The weather was too bad and the conditions were still too dangerous for us to be out in the field.

Both of those days we had the afternoons off. I savored it, because I knew it would not happen again for a while.

Honestly, when they told us we were deploying for another disaster, all I could do was take deep breaths and tell myself I had one more in me. It exhausted me to think about it.

Our team has not had a normal work schedule since we deployed to West, TX towards the end of April. Since then we have been on disaster, probably averaging around 70 hours per week. Our "relaxing" project was working 50 hour weeks in Long Island. I was excited to go to headquarters, and have time to hang out and do fun things with my team, and have a relaxing last round.

When I heard that I would probably be putting in 12 hour days, 7 days a week for the next few weeks, I kind of deflated.

To be perfectly honest, it also sucks to know that I'm still going to make $80 a week whether I work 40 hours or 80 hours. Trust me, I didn't join FEMA Corps for the money, but it's hard, after working overtime for 4 months, to be broke.

But...today was our first day out in the field, and I have to say, my head's back in the game.

I didn't really think they would send us out today. We had a meeting in the morning, and I figured we wouldn't be cleared by safety to go out in the field yet. But they surprised me. The TL's had a short meeting with FEMA and came back with our assignments. My team was being sent to Boulder. When we got there, it was the familiar "hurry up and wait" because things were still chaotic, but then we got word to go to the Disaster Recovery Center in Longmont, and off we went.

They were happy to see us. The DRC was just getting set up, and people had been there earlier in the morning wanting to speak with FEMA. The city emergency managers were awesome and met with us to learn about how we would be able to help the survivors, then set us up and let us go.

For the first 10 minutes no one was really coming over to us, but as soon as it started, it never stopped. I was registering people nonstop from around noon until 5:30. At 5:30, I stopped to take a break and have a piece of pizza in the back room. I was in there for a while talking with one of the awesome volunteers who was there helping to run the DRC, and my crew lead came in and said that she didn't mean to rush my break, but there were some Spanish speakers in line waiting to get registered. I came back out and there were about 10 people in chairs in front of my empty computer, waiting to get started.  Then it was go, go, go until the DRC closed at 7. We drove back from Boulder, got food for the next day at Walmart, and got back to campus at 9.

It was a long day and a rough day. My Spanish got put to the test almost all day long because Longmont apparently has a pretty large Hispanic population, I had to get back into DSAT mode after being in mitigation all last round, and I made an 80 year old woman cry because I had to be honest with  her about the limits of the assistance FEMA would be able to offer her in the unfortunate circumstances she was in.

But at the end of the day, I also feel like we helped a lot of people. We got them started in the process of receiving assistance, and we offered them some comfort and clarification in a really difficult and confusing time. I was also really proud of our team. We were FEMA at this DRC. There were no reservists there yet, just us, and we got things done. Like bosses.

I'm exhausted, but in a good way, and ready to get back in it tomorrow.

P.S.

If you would like to help out the folks in Colorado, click here to learn how. 

AmeriVacation - Roadtrip

After working with FEMA for 6 months you realize that plans just never quite work out like you thought they would.

Case in point, the roadtrip we planned to take over summer break.

Plan A

4 of us would take my car and go on a one week camping road trip. Starting from Denver, we would go to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Mesa Verde, Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands, Arches, and back to Denver. 

And then we found out our vacation was getting extended to a week and a half. 

Plan B

In addition to the aforementioned parks, we would also stop at Joshua Tree, Laura's house in LA, and possibly Death Valley.

We would leave the first Sunday of break. A few days before we were scheduled to go, I noticed my car was having issues. Unfortunately it was Labor Day weekend, so not a lot of mechanics were open. In fact, almost none. Finally I found that Firestone would be open throughout the weekend and could fit me in on Saturday. 

Unfortunately, after I picked my car up from them, I soon found that it was still not running well, and, if anything, was worse than before. I took it back to Firestone, where the most helpful thing I could get out of him was "cars are complicated these days, I don't know what to tell you." No shit, Sherlock. That's why I paid you to figure it out. But, figure it out they did not. 

On the way back home, amidst my angry ranting about how much I hate getting my car fixed in other places because you don't know who to trust and it's so easy to get charged to fix things that aren't broken and how I just wanted to take it to the mechanic in Winner because I know it would actually get fixed for a fair price, Laura suggested that we do just that. 

And that is when we formulated...

Plan C

We would drive to Winner that same day, take my car to the shop, and use my parent's car to go on a new camping route which would take us through the parks in Wyoming and Montana. We would loop back around, trade back cars once mine was fixed, and drive back to Denver.

However, the other 2 girls who were planning on going on the roadtrip weren't exactly excited about Plan C. We don't make a lot of money in FEMA Corps, and they didn't really want to spend it on going places they didn't really want to go. 

There wasn't really another choice though. I wasn't about to risk driving my broken car through the Arizona desert. So...

Plan D

Laura and I would drive back to SD, take my car to the shop, and in the meantime, until it got fixed, camp in the Black Hills. When it was fixed, we would head back to Denver, pick up the other girls, and go camping with whatever time we had left. 

So on Sunday, we drove back to Winner. Luckily, the car made it, although at times I was a little nervous we would have to pop up the tent on the side of the highway in Middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. 

Laura's dream, for some reason I am unable to understand, was to see the Mitchell Corn Palace. So on Labor Day we drove to Mitchell and checked it out. On the way home we stopped at my grandma and grandpa's to get some lunch and a batch of my grandma's insanely delicious bars. 

Then we headed to the farm roasted our dinner over a bonfire. 

On Tuesday we got up early and drove west. We stopped at the Badlands where we purchased our Annual Pass to all the National Parks! Exciting!

At the Badlands

After visiting the Badlands we drove to the Black Hills. On our way to find a campsite we drove past Mt. Rushmore. We were planning on going in for free with our handy dandy pass, but Mt. Rushmore doesn't charge admission. They charge $11 for parking, and the passes don't cover that. That's how they get ya. So instead we saw it from a distance and rolled through to Sheridan Lake, where we got a beautiful campsite right by the water. 

Our campsite at Sheridan Lake

We sat up the tent, made a quick lunch of tuna and pita bread, and then went to Deadwood.

We visited the cemetary at Mt. Moriah to pay our respects to Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane and then went back to the campsite, where we met up with my friend Kelsey from high school, who lives in Rapid City. 

The next morning we visited the Crazy Horse memorial. This, much to our disappointment, is not a national monument, but a private endeavor, which charges $10 per person to get in. Being broke FEMA Corps members, we decided to admire it from a distance. 

Then we drove the scenic Needles Highway and stopped for a short hike to the Cathedral Spires.

Next we drove to Spearfish Canyon and stopped for another short hike at 11th Hour Gulch. 

I had received a call from my dad saying that they had figured out what was wrong with my car. It turns out it was the alternator, not the spark plugs and engine filter as Firestone had believed. Funny thing about that is, after a short google search, I had found a guy who was having the exact same troubles with the exact same car as I had, and it had been his alternator. I had chosen to trust the "experts" instead of the internet, and look where that got me. (Note: I later explained to Firestone that my free Google search engine had been more effective than their $105 computer engine analysis, and they agreed to refund me for that at least). So the new alternator was coming and would be there the following day. 

Since we had an extra day, we decided to make the drive to Wyoming to see Devil's Tower. We got there and got a spot at a great campsite in the park. And our national park pass actually worked!

Devil's Tower, WY

We noticed a pack of Montana Conservation Corps people at the campground and we ended up talking to a few of them. The Conservation Corps is another AmeriCorps program and one of the girls had actually been in NCCC on the Vinton, IA campus the previous year. The program sounded really cool. Definitely something to keep an eye on for the future. 

At night, a thunderstorm slowly started moving in and pretty soon the rain started and we hopped in the tent. Before we knew it the tent was almost blowing over on top of us. We had to hold down the edges until the storm passed, but at least we stayed dry!

On Thursday we hiked Devil's Tower and became Junior Rangers at the park (I have the badge to prove it). 

A deer we passed on our hike

Then we made our way back east. We made a pit stop at Wall Drug to get presents for our team - I chose a jackalope to sit on the dashboard of our van. Next, we stopped in Pierre to pay a visit to my brother's family. They made us amazing shrimp and crab enchiladas and I got to rile up my nephew right before bedtime. Then back to Winner.

Plan E

Head to Denver, pick up Denise and Merissa, and hit up Arches, Canyonlands, and Black Canyon of the Gunnison. 

We got back Friday, stopping along the way in Cheyenne to eat lunch at Taco John's, because Laura, poor thing, had never had a potato ole before. Since the other girls didn't want to leave Denver until Sunday, we were planning on camping a night in Rocky Mountain National Park. We got there and saw some pretty nasty storm clouds moving in. Remembering how my tent held up against the wind in Wyoming, we thought it might be better to just go back to campus for the night and then head to the mountains the next morning to hike. 

And that we did. The next day, after breakfast burritos at Cafe Chihuahua, we hiked to Ouzel Falls. Then we came back to repack the car. 

This is when I found out that I had severely overestimated my trunk space. We would have never been able to pack for a week and a half road trip with 4 girls. We could barely fit stuff in for a 4 day trip. My car was packed to the brim. 

We headed out Sunday morning and made it to Moab, UT. Camping at Arches National Park was full, but we found a nice campsite a few miles down the Colorado River. It was right on the water and it was beautiful. 

After we set up the tent, it started to sprinkle, and it was downhill from there. We were able to build a fire the first evening with only a few light showers here and there. At night, it started to rain. And it never quit.

On Monday we got up, quickly got dressed and ready in the rain, and then headed to Arches. I had tried to pack as light as possible because we had no room, so I didn't have a jacket or sweater. It kind of sucked, because dressed like we were dressed, we couldn't go for a hike or anything without getting soaked. Luckily, Arches is a lot of driving and not so many hiking trails. And it did actually look pretty cool. Not a lot of people get to see Arches in the rain, which is a shame, because when it starts raining waterfalls spring up everywhere and it's actually really pretty. 

After seeing the rest of the park, we drove over to Canyonlands. That park is a lot higher than Arches so we just ended up being in the clouds, which meant we could see absolutely nothing except the road in front of us. Everything else was white, dense fog. We gave up and headed back into Moab where we tried to stay dry by grabbing coffee, browsing shops, and having dinner at a restaurant, since we couldn't really use the camp stove or a fire in the pouring rain. 

The next morning it was still rainy and foggy, so we packed up and were planning to head to Black Canyon of the Gunnison. Once we were able to get cell service and check the weather we realized that was probably pointless. It was raining there, too. 

Plan F It

Let's just go back to Denver. 

All in all, it turned out nothing like we had originally planned, but we did get to see some cool places, do some fun camping, take some nice hikes, and generally enjoy our vacations by turning off our blackberries and not thinking about FEMA. 

Transition Week in Denver

I will spare you the nitty gritty details of all the sessions and AmeriCorps stuff we had to do during transition week and skip right over to the fun parts.

Garden of the Gods

For an SLI (service learning initiative), our team planned a trip to Colorado Springs to visit the Garden of the Gods. It was a beautiful day and we spent the morning hiking through the park. 

Afterwords, we stopped in Manitou Springs to have lunch at an overpriced Mexican restaurant and then to browse the shops a bit. Right outside of Manitou Springs is a trail called the Manitou Incline. 

According to Wikipedia, "The trail is the remains of a former incline railway whose tracks washed out during a rock slide in 1990. The Incline is famous for its sweeping views and steep grade, as steep as 68% in places,^[1] making it a fitness challenge for locals in the Colorado Springs area. The incline gains over 2,000 feet (610 m) of elevation in less than one mile." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitou_Springs_Incline)

The Manitou Incline from the top

We decided to climb it. I decided to climb part of it. We'd been walking around all day, and my feet hurt, and I wasn't really feeling it. But then you get up a little ways, and you figure you might as well keep going. You can see the peak. It's so close. You keep trucking through, step by step, wheezing and sweating, and finally.....shit. That wasn't actually the top?!?

The Incline has what wikipedia refers to as a "false summit" and what I refer to as a cruel, cruel joke. What you thought was the top was actually just a crest that blocks the real summit from view. At that point my legs felt like jelly and I was dying for oxygen, but going back down wasn't really an option, because it was very high up and the steps were very janky, and I am not a fan of heights. So I kept going to the top, where I would be able to take a different trail down which was much less steep. Finally, I made it, in a little under an hour, I think. 

I'm still alive!

By the time we got down it was sunset. The end of a long, fun day of team time. 

Day of Volunteering at Summit Lake

Our team had talked about setting up some ISP's (independent service projects - basically volunteering with someone besides FEMA) to do over break and transition week. I had found an awesome organization called Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado that does environmental conservation and restoration projects throughout the state. 

We got a group of seven of us together to help them out on their Summit Lake Ecological Restoration and Shelter Rehabilitation project. This is an excerpt of the email that VOC sent us a few days after the project:

" 40 volunteers showed up at Summit Lake to restore delicate high alpine tundra and install a stone floor in a historic structure.  In all participants were able to transplant 89 plants, restore 112 ft of buck and rail fence and install 176 square feet of rock flooring. The work will help restore an extremely sensitive area that sees thousands of visitors a week during the summer months."

As you can see, I worked on the transplanting. 

Summit Lake is on Mt. Evens, a 14er about an hour and a half away from Denver. We were working up at 12,800 feet. 

It was absolutely gorgeous, but the altitude definitely made the work difficult. I could use the pickaxe for about 30 seconds before I would start getting lightheaded and gasping for breath. So unfortunately, we had to work pretty slowly. 

After lunch a storm rolled in and we had to call it a day. They made it very clear that lightning is no joke at that altitude. So we ran through the rain back to our van and headed back to Denver. 

The rest of transition week was spent catching up with teams we hadn't seen in a while, discovering the $2 margarita happy hour at Cafe Chihuahua, and square dancing at the Cowboy Lounge.