It's TOMORROW

Wednesday is THE day. Say your prayers, cross your fingers, cross
your toes, put on your lucky underwear, pat your Buddha's belly, rub
your lucky rabbits foot, perform your animal sacrifice...or whatever
it is you believe in, or do for good luck. Hubby goes for the
physical agility test to get into the fall class at the Fire Academy.

The test consists of the following:
1. Putting on a blacked out face mask and feeling your way out of somewhere.
2. Lift a ladder from it's rack, run 90 feet, and return the ladder to
it original place.
3. Hoist a bundle of rolled hose, about 44 lbs, hand over hand, up to
a 4th story window in 1 minute 30 seconds.
4. put on an air pack, lift a hose bundle, run up 4 flights of stairs,
put down the hose, pick up another bundle, and run down 4 flights of
stairs, in 1 minute and 15 seconds.
5. run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes.

Can Hubby do all this? Well, 1 & 2 are no problem. 3 should be ok,
he is really strong. 4 he did a practice run with a 27 lb back pack
on and did it in 54 seconds, so we think even with the addition of the
hose bundle, he should be ok with that one too.

Now, number 5 though. That's going to be the tricky one. We did a
timed test on Monday and he came in at 17:17. At the 14 minute mark
he was almost at 1 1/4 mile, one lap short. BUT, I think it will
depend on how they administer the test. If it is just him running
alone...maybe not. If they put him running with a bunch of other
guys...maybe. That would give him someone to pace off of, and to
"chase".

It is going to be close.

If he doesn't make it, it's ok though. This will at least have given
him a chance to see how they do the test and to see how the equipment
feels. And then he will have another 4 months to get ready to take
the test again for the spring class.

Either way, I am VERY proud of him.