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This too shall pass...

Per my cycling coach, Eric Kenney, whom you'll be reading about on this website very soon, I'm supposed to be off my bike as much as possible. Getting fat...check! Actually, I've been in the gym working on lower body and core strength in this transitional phase of training. I'd be lying if I told you that I wasn't fairly pleased with being able to not ride copious miles day after day, as has been my routing throughout this year. So...I currently find myself fighting through a post shift workout, doing battle with the old ladies and their sign-up clipboards at the recreation center and generally doing battle with my need to always have food and drink in my mouth despite not having the activity level to support my latent hunger.

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On a completely unrelated note, last Tuesday, September 11th continues to be a day of mourning and struggle for many in the public service arena. America remembers the heroes and victims of 9/11 and I personally mourn the loss of 343 of New York City's bravest from the FDNY. I count them as part of my extended family and just wanted to include a quick note remembering those who were lost and those who struggle with that loss years after the fact.

Last week, Denver Fire hosted a memorial stair climb at the Qwest building which brought approximately 200 professional firefighters, including five of us from Boulder Fire Rescue, to a challenge of climbing 110 stories in our full firefighting gear, carrying tools and wrapped high rise packs (dry hoseline, spare air bottles, forcible entry tools, etc.). The women and men of the Colorado Fire Service paid tribute to those lost on 9/11 and worked in unison to carry themselves and about 80 pounds of gear each to the top of the Qwest building. Thanks to all who attended and to those who gathered to support our profession.

I'd like to leave you with this in remembrance of all we have and will lose:

Not of the princes and the prelates with periwigged charioteers
Riding triumphantly laureled to lap the fat of the years,
Rather the scorned - the rejected - the men hemmed in with spears;

The men in tattered battalion which fights till it dies,
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries,
The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.

Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne,
Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown,
But the lads who carried the hill and cannot be known.

Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,
The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth; -
Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and the scum of the earth!

Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;
Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold -

Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tale be told.

-John Masefield
"A Consecration"