Well I not not doing so hot, the bike is helping; but it is a steep hill.
I wrote this out, for some help from some other gay officers, in police and fire. It pretty much tells it all.
Well this has to be the place for this. I was on a training course for the past two weekends in a town South East of here. There is new money for area training, our department was lumped in with other departments in Central East Alberta.
Anyway, a little perspective here, Alberta is the most conservative Province in Canada, they'd vote Republican over and over again, and then bitch. The area I live in is affected by Edmonton, this is a liberal oasis in the middle of all the right wingnuts.
One of the Southern departments in our area borders on the Holy Roller christian portion of the province. They have no use for gays, they frequently refer to the 'Lake of Fire' as punishment for being gay.
There were five guys from our department and the other 9 were from the South. At the beginning you didn't know what anyone's full time job was, just that they were volunteer firefighters.
The training was pretty risk, controlling burning fuels, gas or liquid form. This involved getting up close and personal with the fire, to turn a valve off. It required teamwork and lot of safety.
The first weekend was OK, everyone got along, we had issues with the backup man not pulling his weight, a common fire problem, the guy holding hose just aims the nozzle, the guy right behind him is facilitating his aim. In other words he is moving the hose, at 475 kpa that is job.
One guy, who I had backed up a few times gave me some advice. He was a full time Highway Patrol officer and a volunteer firefighter. He kind of looked like a guy I went to school with, who was my best friend (he later joined the RCMP). So anyway, I never hit on the guy, but I did talk to him.
I thought he was like the Highway Patrol in the rest of the province, delegated for traffic offenses but defer to RCMP on the Criminal Code stuff. Doing the job I do I knew what to ask. He said they were delegated for everything, this was weird. But hey, he has a gun. This guy also rode a motorcycle and he was looking for people to ride with (he was about my age, single).
We stayed in the town as it was 3 hours from our town, so did the highway patrol guy and his co-worker. The town was small, it had one restaurant and then there was food available in the bars in the hotels. So we bumped into them a lot.
The second weekend was completely different from the first. First off, three of the five from Vegreville rode down on bikes, the other guys came in a van with the equipment. Vegreville is the largest town in the area. The other 4 guys in our group didn't seem to want to hang out with the other guys, this may have been a factor, I don't know.
Saturday morning, I said hi to the Highway Patrol office, he didn't even make eye contact, he walked past me to the classroom. Another guy, who was my buddy for equipment checks the previous weekend was cold as well. Normally fire guys always have on fire t-shirts. 'Buddy' had a a blue shirt with no fire logo, on the back it had 'Exit Only' and an arrow pointing down to his ass. He wore this shirt both days. Highway patrol's buddy (not highway patrol) would talk to me. There were about five of them there, I found out. The supervisor was the Chief of one of the departments.
Anyway, for this past weekend I felt like i had the plague. A conversation would end, or move away from me if I was near.
When we were doing hose practicing for the most part I was invisible, the highway patrol guy corrected me on something he thought i was doing wrong. Although the others were doing the same thing. But I adjusted.
We had the practical test in the afternoon on Sunday. I hate tests, my adrenaline was moving fast, I was on safety nozzle for first of what were to be 7 runs. It started off just as planned, Teacher gave the thumbs up for my position. One of the attack nozzles lost pressure from 475 so we had to back out. They decided to change the nozzle with mine, this was fun, on air (SCBA). Got it done. Sweating really bad now.
We got through the first run. I rotated to another position. The evaluator wanted anyone involved 'on air'. On 3rd run i was backup to attack. We were just about to start and my low pressure valve goes off. I had used up my air, I ran to the compressor room to refill. Basically anything that could have gone wrong, went wrong for me. I did fill the tank in record time and reported back. The evaluator noticed.
The practical test ended when a real fire occurred at a feed mill and they had to grab our pumper.
Anyway, I thought of this on the ride back and will probably think about this some more. i really think that the 'cold shoulder' was gay related. Somehow, one of these guys had checked with someone one the blue grapevine about me.
I just wanted to say, that no matter how good any of the other guys were, if we had a joint department fire with them, i would not want any of them backing me up.
My fellow department guys were probably oblivious to this. They are all Type A and wanted 100% on the written test, they were always studying (70% was pass). One of them was master of the what if's anyway.
Highway patrol is probably a closeted gay guy or extremely homophobic (net result the same).
In two weeks I am back down there for training, in interior firefighting. This it the one where your buddy drags you to a safe place - the practical involves a burning structure, practice does too.
So last week on the way hoe I learned that my bike is actually going 10 kph faster than I thought it was.
Armed with all that happened on the weekend, I was a completely different rider on the way home. After Wainwright I was doing just about 15 over all the way to Viking. I figured if th highway patrol had it out for me, they would know which way we'd be going home and get us. No tickets.
Another firefighter met us in Viking and they let me lead again, one of the guys from the course must have figured out something was up. He vowed for me leading again. I did say to another guy I felt the need to speed on 631. There is a beautiful banked double S turn there. When we got near the start of it I pulled over to let some cars that were on the road move along. I explained to the other guys I was going to blast it.
I took off, there was a song wind coming from the West. I was going along pretty good, I couldn't go the speed I wanted due to the wind. But I did pretty good. Kind of heard to really get into a corner when the wind is affecting you.
The guy in second tried to keep up, but he said I pulled away on him. When I was finished the curves, I slowed down to 20 below speed limit to let the rest catch up.
I was planning n heading to the city to hang out with my son after getting home. I texted my son on Saturday to ask if he were free on Sunday or Monday. No response. I saw him today and said it was hard to plan things with him if he never answers me. He can't text or answer phone at work, so when I try to contact him I think he is working.
I am basically getting pissed off at being alone. I have to work out everything by myself. I feel like a nag if I try to speak to one of my acquaintances or family about it. I spend a lot of time reading or watching TV/movies. Basically the only interaction with real people is at work.
So the bad thoughts have more time to form. Since coming out in December I can say nothing has got better. In facte it has codified the bad weeks, they are more regular. Roughly about every second week. Now I have started to think of the best ways to go. A nasty bike accident is not one of them, why should the bike pay for my f'd up life?
So with all the thoughts I had to rationalize them. If the Atheists are right and there is no God. Then suicide is not the sin that the Buddha would make it out to be. I am not an atheist but I can agree there is some merit to their lack of belief in a higher power.
If they are right; doesn't that make the person the judge of when to pull the plug, unless karma/bad luck does it for you? Is this an area anyone wants to go into, questioning the merit of pulling the plug. I feel guilty for even thinking it, let alone analyzing/rationalizing it. The guilt may be inherited from my Christian upbringing and current quasi-Buddhist belief.
Oh I did have one moment of clarity during the f-up that was yesterday: no wonder I am good at my job the karma is strong, the bad guys usually wind up on my desk. So why shouldn't a pile of things go wrong when I am being tested? Maybe it makes me stronger,
I don't know. I do know that riding around city today I am safer.
then there is this gem:
The top 5 regrets of dying people are:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the
life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
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