Tools of the Trade

We learned a lot about a really special job that uses these tools.

Any ideas what the job is?

How about now?

If that's not enough information, this should help.

All of these are tools used by smoke jumpers. We toured the Smokejumpers Center in Missoula, Montana, and were surprised to learn that smoke jumpers are really good at sewing. They make their own jump suits and parachutes and backpacks. In fact, our tour guide Molly, who is married to a smoke jumper, says she doesn't know anything about sewing. She sends her sewing projects to work with her husband.

Here are the clothes that smoke jumpers wear.

The sky was hazy with smoke as we pulled into the smoke jumpers facility. The smoke was from the first wildfire near Missoula this year.

We learned a lot about the training of smoke jumpers. They must weight at least 120 pounds and no more than 200. Training for new jumpers lasts 5 weeks and includes 20 jumps from the airplane. All candidates are already trained firefighters. There are 300 candidates for the 5 training positions each year. Not everyone successfully completes the training. We learned that 65 smoke jumpers are assigned to the Missoula facility, including 4 women.  And nationally, their are 20,000 wild land fire fighters but only 400 smoke jumpers.

Each year smoke jumpers must pass a physical fitness test. The requirements are:

Run 1.5 miles in 11:00 minutes or less.
7 pull-ups.
45 sit-ups.
25 push-ups.
Pack 110 pounds on level terrain in 90 minutes or less.

Smoke jumpers are expected to be able to be fully dressed to jump into a fire area within 2 minutes of a siren calling them to duty. Pilots of the planes taking them to the fire are expected to take no more than 10 minutes from the siren to when the plane is taxiing down the runway with smoke jumpers on board. There is a dormitory right next to the airport runway.

Some, but not all, smoke jumpers are certified parachute packers. Here Molly is standing in front of the shelves of packed parachutes. The jumpers pull together their own supplies, including parachutes and have everything ready to go at their locker when they are on call.

After every assignment, the firefights pick up their parachute from the landing zone--often retrieving it from a tree where they landed--and bring it back to the base. If is carefully examined to make sure it is not damaged before it is repacked. The fire fighters sew on patches where damage has occurred. Molly showed us a patch on this parachute.

After the smoke jumpers are dropped to the fire from about 3000 feet, a second pass by the plane drops cargo for the firefighters, including tools, water and food. In front of the food you see a box of supplies with a parachute attached on the top. Someone in the plane attaches a strap on the parachute to a line, pulls hard on the strap and pushes the box out the door. The parachute opens and the box descends safely, hopefully.

A New Mattress

As everyone who owns an RV already knows, the mattress that comes with the unit is not all that good. For two years, we put up with (I won't say suffered with, it wasn't that bad) the original mattress in our Montana 5th-wheel. For the past few months we have been planning to buy a new one as soon as we arrived in Mesa. Here we have lots of dealers to choose from and the mattress could be delivered with no problem. During our time in Denver, we were in state parks and they would have charged the delivery truck an entrance fee.

The original mattress was characterized as king size. But that didn't mean regular king size sheets fit it. Also, it was really wider than was convenient in the bedroom. To make the bed I had to push the mattress from side to side. And to get into bed on the closet side, I had to turn sideways, the aisle was so narrow. What really fits the room is a short queen. A regular queen mattress would be about three inches too long for the slide to close. But not everyone stocks a short queen mattress and they can be much more expensive than other sizes.

I had Googled "custom mattresses, Phoenix" and found several dealers. We found a small, family-owned shop, AZ Mattress Outlet, that has all their mattresses custom-manufactured here in town. For only $379 we were able to purchase what we wanted.

It was delivered Saturday evening--the company is so small that one of the owners operated the store all day, then started making deliveries. I had measured the board under the mattress and thought it would be just the right size. Oh Oh, look at this!



And it was the same on the other side, as well. Needless to say, we were veeerrry careful getting in and out of bed that night.

Sunday, we took the mattress off.



Then we saw what we had to deal with.



I imagine I had measured the board near the headboard after I pushed the mattress toward the foot. Since we don't have a power saw and the Tool Shed here in the park, where we can borrow tools, isn't open for the season, we had to figure something else out.

John removed the screws that attached the hydraulic lifts to this board, as well as those attaching hinges between the two boards.



We loaded the board into the back of our pickup truck.



And drove it across the street to Lowe's.



It took a little while to convince the staff to cut the board--after all, we didn't buy it there. Once they were convinced, it took maybe five to seven minutes to cut off three sides of the board. They charged us the whopping sum of 79 cents--that is 25 cents per cut plus tax. Then we were headed back to the RV.

John re-installed all the screws.



Now, this is what it is supposed to look like.




And here is how our bedroom looks now. We didn't think the old mattress was all that bad. But we sure are sleeping better now. And the bed is much easier to make. However, the new mattress is much thicker and when I sit on the bed, my feet don't touch the floor.