FDIC 2011—as traveled by me

Ahhhhh….returned home last night from another whirlwind weekend…and had no orders attached to the end of it like my trip to Baltimore.

Me and “the Deer Slayer” (aka “the Green Machine”, “WTF is that?”, and “Rescue 4”) made our way eastward on 74 at a good rate of putter.  The entire time knowing I had a goal of being there around 1400 EDT (Thanks, Boss, for not shoving me out and letting us shoot the wind). By the time I reached and crossed the IL/IN border, I had a few inquisitive tweets and texts as to my whereabouts. One was a Beautiful maiden telling me that she was going to be “living vicariously thru u this weekend”.

After a couple of missed turns (and too late to hit the convention center (especially after I was told it was $45 to get in per day)), I ended at my hotel.

I figured since I had time before the meet up, I figured I’d take care of about 5 days of weeds on my face before I went. I no sooner had my lower jaw covered with shaving cream when another text came in “We’re here…surprise.”

I made my way to the door and had to crane my neck when I opened it and saw gingermedic and the before mentioned beauty.  Needless to say, my jaw hit the concrete.  Here I was, shaving cream on my face, one path of a razor down my neck, and two beautiful women come to my door.

I let the ladies in and return to finish the removal of the beard from my face (Damn, a lot of grey hair shows in my beard when I don’t shave). We then draft some kind of game plan for the night.

While all the thinking was going on (explains the HA I had), @Ckemtp comes a pounding on my door.  Three medics and a basic 28 days out of the month (only a combat medic on reserve weekends) planning to invade a fire party.  This is gonna be fun.

When we finally found a place to park and got there we were greeted by @FireCritic and made our way to get a soda and a glass of water. was actually surprised he could stay out as late as he did

And of course Dave Statter already knew about the blog post before I even composed it.

Was a shock to have the publisher of EMS World sit and talk to us for a little bit.  Was also “very cool” to meet Tiger Schmittendorf, the host of “Firefighter Storytellers” on Firefighter Netcast.

We ended up going back to the room early and becoming pretty much asystolic.  Saturday’s events (to include my 21 second obstacle course time) in the next.

I am a Firefighter because...

...of a couple of reasons, actually.

First off, I spent many an afternoon driving "Coffee Table 51" while watching reruns of Emergency! (Emergency! One in syndication) as a boy. That started things off for me.

The other reason was an uncle of mine that spent alot of his time visiting Peoria's different firehouses. My dad and I never knew if he was going to be at 12's, 5's, Central, 10's, 8's, or even way up at 13's (at the time...now there's 16, 19, and 20). 12's was the easiest for me to get to.

That kept me going until 2002, when I was voted on to my department--and made engineer within 30 seconds of pack training (something about that mask flying toward a captain's head as soon as I took that very first breath--on air).

There you go. The "in a nutshell" reasons I'm a firefighter...why I'm in EMS will come later.

A quandry...

Now it's a time where I take off my Combat Medic hat and put on my writer's hat. Needless to say, wearing that hat makes me sit in front of a blank page for hours on end (when I'm not on twitter or facebook, etc) trying to come up with what to write.

I've written 2 books already, and have also started writing adaptations of those books for television/web. There be my quandary...

I've basically run out of ideas.

I'm not asking for ideas, mind you. If it comes down to it, I'll just listen to the scanner and pull calls out of Peoria. The thing is...basically everything else to make my characters tick.

I've got the pilot about 7/8 done. Just have to close that one all up. It'll be the ones after that that will become a headache.

The other reason I'm just about out of APAP is wondering if there's a way to incorporate EMS 2.0 into it. Along with trying to make a 21st century version of Emergency! in a nutshell.

Guess I'll sleep on it and try tomorrow after work...at least while I still have Final Draft open and blinking on a blank page.

Well, it's part way there

I figure I should go ahead and start one of my own. See what EMS 2.0 is doing to me? LOL

I am a Army combat medic, a volunteer firefighter/EMT, bus driver, and dad. I've written 2 books and working on a web/TV series based off those books. That's me in a nutshell.

For some odd ball reason, I decided I wanted to try to start doing a netcast...decided to take babysteps and do this first.

Where in the world did you come up with 1-U-801?

I came up with my blog title by using a combination of my FD Identfier according to IDPH (we're 1-U-52) and my unit (801 CSH) thus the 1-U-801

for those that follow me on twitter, I'm @ssgjbroyles