AA Here I Come

I can't believe it's Thursday already and I haven't posted about last Saturday. I think all this sunshine is warping my time perceptions.

Last Saturday there was an inter-agency SAR exercsie, like the avalanche one in the winter. Originally I thought I wouldn't be able to go because Smokey and I had sailing lessons scheduled and then I thought I was going to visit his family, but none of that panned out. With this last hour change of plans, J-Bomb decided to use me as a decoy. She decided I should show up as an intoxicated searcher. To put it into context, recall that I am a closing waitress at a bar on Friday nights. And the two SAR groups I am a member of are aware of this as I frequently show up to Saturday morning trainings pretty darn exhausted and virtually useless by 2pm.

The plan for the morning was some off behaviour, but mostly smell. And I had that covered. I soaked my shirt and pants in the sink with beer while I had a short nap after work. Yummy. I showed up a little late, which largely went unnoticed due to the large number of regular searchers who showed up late. Then I stood close to people I knew. And walked away during conversations. Then I stood close to people I didn't know. Then I stood closer, like in your personal bubble. They assigned me to a field team. J-Bomb and Quakman decided I must not stink enough. So I left and got some whiskey. Not top shelf whiskey either, more like mid-shelf Canadian stuff. And I spilled it all over my shirt and rinsed my mouth with it.

Upon my return I discovered they had noticed I was gone. The IC reprimanded me for not checking out and said they had been looking for me. I told her I got tired of waiting and I got hungry so I went to get food. They assigned me to the one remaining field ready team. The team leader tried to talk to me and figure our what my deal was. Then she talked to a fellow dog group member on the team, who was new and didn't know me very well, but even she said something seemed up. The team leader got really mad and told the IC to get me off her team.

Brilliantly they set me up next to the radio communications and asked me to take backup notes. I wrote down everything wrong. When they called for all communications to standby so the IC team could look something up I talked to them. Eventually a fire department person approached me and said APD was on the way to arrest me for driving drunk to the search. And Quakman relieved me of my role and placed me on a team for real.

The rest of the afternoon was fairly uneventful; I went into the field, we got off the trail we thought we were on (not uncommon for this park), we met up with other search teams, we found subjects, etc. I had to run off to work and missed the debrief, but managed to get Tatonka onto a cold helicopter first. He thought it was no big deal.