Bearded Oregon.

The closer I get to leaving for Portland the more I find it hard to believe.  Just now as we are settling into the Corps Training Institute life we are setting sail from the foundation we have started here and onto something completely new.  After living amongst so many of your peers and making so many friends it seems a bit out of pace to be spending the next few months with only eight other people.  I couldn't be more excited about the experience though. 

All of my team has been working hard to get us prepared for departure on Thursday morning.  We have gone through a pretty impressive amount of paperwork to prepare us for our upcoming briefing to the staff.  During that briefing we get to wear our snazzy new Amerituxes and describe what kind of work we will be doing and outlining some of our action plans for serving the community.  On the non-bureaucratic side of things we have been collecting our gear for the big move.  I am pretty excited about getting an opportunity to wear my new neon yellow rain gear.  I am also a little stoked to be sleeping in my brand spanking new extra-long cot.  After trying it out today I think it might be even more comfortable than my bed here.  On top of that I have one of those mummy-esque sleeping bags that covers your entire body and head...it is so cozy.

Before I forget we had a really interesting Fire Management meeting the other day.  Since we have been here there hasn't been much talk of our imminent fire related spikes because we won't actually begin work and training concerning them until we come back from winter break.  The other day though we got a sneak peak at our fire resistant uniforms (which are awesome) alongside some of the tools we will be using.  We were also informed of some of the work we might be doing.  With all this Portland talk I must admit that I have at times forgotten about all the cool upcoming fire projects we'll be doing but I am nonetheless excited about them.

I hope to blog as soon as I can but it may prove difficult over the chaos of the next two days.  It will probably be a few weeks before I can get my laptop shipped to me in Portland so I will be relying on the kindness of my teammates to post.  So if you don't hear from me in a while fear not.

As a last note of interest I'd like to mention that I've been recruited to participate in No Shave November.  So if you see a particularly fuzzy Josh hanging out in Portland you'll know why.