A couple weeks back I had to renew my Wilderness First Responder certification which meant traveling to North Carolina for the skills update and test. Due to the global Coronavirus outbreak they had shifted most of the learning to “E-learning”, which I hate. Because of the situation SOLO changed their process from three days of training and testing to a whole bunch of computer stuff, and then only one day of actually being in person. After what seemed like a classical hell's worth of staring at a screen I passed the internet test and then needed to head across the smokey mountains for the rest of it. Thankfully an overly generous friend let me borrow his vehicle! Once I arrived back in the Nantahala national forest everything seemed the same as it was a few years prior... except that most people were now wearing masks. My group consisted of 10 people, and we were geared up with masks and goggles the entire time we were training. The group had some interesting people in it. One of them was a lady that ran a fairly high-end sounding expedition company. A few of them ran wilderness therapy expeditions. One was a backpacking instructor for a university in North Carolina. Of the 10 people in the group, more than half needed to rely on the skills we were drilling and testing over for the entirety of their income. However, there was only one person who got a perfect score.... NASH!
The instructor, when he is not busy as a Wilderness EMT, Paramedic, and teacher, also leads/sets up expeditions for college kids and said he has had a lot of requests regarding Japan, but doesn't have an in. He asked me if I wanted to be his Japan guy. I said yes, but knowing how everything is in the world right now, it will probably be a couple of years before anything comes of it, if ever.
The instructor, when he is not busy as a Wilderness EMT, Paramedic, and teacher, also leads/sets up expeditions for college kids and said he has had a lot of requests regarding Japan, but doesn't have an in. He asked me if I wanted to be his Japan guy. I said yes, but knowing how everything is in the world right now, it will probably be a couple of years before anything comes of it, if ever.
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I also just recently had my debrief with CERT for my time staffing the Emergency Operations Center during the start of the COVID-19 incident. I got a matted commendation from the mayor... which I promptly stuffed in a shoe box with a pile of similar things.
Everyone smiling big with their commendations.
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