I spent eight days in the glory of the mountains of the Continental Divide. Words aren't enough to describe the experience. I was in heaven amidst the snow-capped, glacier-laden ranges of the Rockies.
It was beautiful, beautiful country. Rivers coursing powerfully by the highway. Thick, evergreen forests as far as the eye can see, like lush carpeting from mountain to mountain to mountain. And the Rockies themselves -- gray, jagged peaks long ago forced from beneath the earth by something violent and primeval; thousands of feet of rock partially draped in green and capped with a layer of white, sometimes a hesitant dusting of snow, sometimes meters-thick with hundred-year-old ice. Range after range of them, for more than a hundred miles.
I don't know what it is about the mountains that fill me with both a sense of excitement and peace.
I love the wilderness and the life it nurtures. I saw a female deer on the shores of Moraine Lake, just inside the trees as we paddled a canoe close to land. It was lean, gentle and statuesque, the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen. I saw a female elk outside our cabin, eating grass amongst the pines. I saw a group of bighorn sheep grazing by the side of the road, their horns curved and majestic. Nothing has ever made me feel so alive as unexpectedly crossing paths with these wild, innocent creatures.
I was captivated once again by mountain rivers. Born from snowmelt up high, a thousand individual streams come together to become a mighty force that carves the landscape and feeds life. It's nothing but water, gravity, and obstacles in between. And yet the sight of it is breathtaking, and its power undeniable.
I saw glaciers up close and was stunned, for I was face to face with a wonder from another time. I saw the unusual color of tranquil, glacier-fed lakes and will never forget that shade of blue. I paddled a canoe in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, and photographed scenes from high places, dangerous places, that not many people have been.
I hiked thousands of feet up a mountain just to see where it would take me. I made it through a hailstorm in the frigid cold. I scrambled up ledges and down scree slopes with a thousand foot drop beside me to carefully ignore.
I challenged myself and won, and my reward was pure bliss.
[Canadian Rockies trip slideshow]
Monday, August 21, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006
My First Class
I taught my first post-academy class this week. It wasn't so bad -- actually it was pretty good, because
1. there were only six people in the class as opposed to the usual 20,
2. my co-worker/"mentor" Jenn was there to help out with questions,
3. I got pretty high grades in my evaluation.
Five of the officers gave me a grade of 5 (5 is best, 1 is worst), and the other one gave me a 4. Comments included suggesting that I speak louder because the laptops and their radios make lots of noise, and to slow down during practical examples/demos as they follow along on their own laptops. On a positive note, they also thought I was very knowledgeable about the subject. Well, I've only been working on the CAD/MDT (Computer-Aided Dispatch/Mobile Data Terminal) system for seven months, but I agree that I know more than they do fresh out of Police Academy!
I'm quite lucky that this was a pretty small class and that Jenn was there to help out. I'm also very pleased that, bottomline, they liked me as an instructor!
To be honest I put a lot of pressure on myself by not preparing enough. I mean, I was comfortable with most of the stuff I was going to teach, but I hadn't used 100% of everything I was going to talk about. Not that I had much choice, because I couldn't exactly enter such things as a False Burglary Alarm report, or an Officer Activity Log entry on the laptop and send it to the Police Department's live system.
Another reason I was stressing out was because I wasn't sure of how officers made use of all this out in the field. For example, if they ran a license plate on the MDT (laptop) and got a hit on it, meaning the vehicle was stolen or the registered owner was a wanted person, what would be their next step? What if they had more questions on procedure and I didn't know the answer? Was I supposed to know stuff like that? I haven't worked with this system for very long!
But while I was stressing out, I also realized that they'd be spending their first several weeks on the job with a Field Training Officer anyway, and those questions would be for them. I didn't have to know everything. Regardless, the answer to the stolen vehicle hit is: they would need to contact the originating agency, meaning the governemnt agency that entered the stolen plate/wanted person information to verify before they made an arrest. This I found out from watching Jenn teach the class for months.
And so goes my job, and I still enjoy it. Right now I've been tasked with "cloning" our existing MDT laptops and enabling a wireless area network configuration in them. This is our Wireless Pilot Project, and we have been at it tirelessly since the spring. We are gradually replacing every single laptop in all the vehicles in one particular precinct, and if it turns out to be a success, we will be doing it for the entire fleet, in all the precincts, city-wide.
1. there were only six people in the class as opposed to the usual 20,
2. my co-worker/"mentor" Jenn was there to help out with questions,
3. I got pretty high grades in my evaluation.
Five of the officers gave me a grade of 5 (5 is best, 1 is worst), and the other one gave me a 4. Comments included suggesting that I speak louder because the laptops and their radios make lots of noise, and to slow down during practical examples/demos as they follow along on their own laptops. On a positive note, they also thought I was very knowledgeable about the subject. Well, I've only been working on the CAD/MDT (Computer-Aided Dispatch/Mobile Data Terminal) system for seven months, but I agree that I know more than they do fresh out of Police Academy!
I'm quite lucky that this was a pretty small class and that Jenn was there to help out. I'm also very pleased that, bottomline, they liked me as an instructor!
To be honest I put a lot of pressure on myself by not preparing enough. I mean, I was comfortable with most of the stuff I was going to teach, but I hadn't used 100% of everything I was going to talk about. Not that I had much choice, because I couldn't exactly enter such things as a False Burglary Alarm report, or an Officer Activity Log entry on the laptop and send it to the Police Department's live system.
Another reason I was stressing out was because I wasn't sure of how officers made use of all this out in the field. For example, if they ran a license plate on the MDT (laptop) and got a hit on it, meaning the vehicle was stolen or the registered owner was a wanted person, what would be their next step? What if they had more questions on procedure and I didn't know the answer? Was I supposed to know stuff like that? I haven't worked with this system for very long!
But while I was stressing out, I also realized that they'd be spending their first several weeks on the job with a Field Training Officer anyway, and those questions would be for them. I didn't have to know everything. Regardless, the answer to the stolen vehicle hit is: they would need to contact the originating agency, meaning the governemnt agency that entered the stolen plate/wanted person information to verify before they made an arrest. This I found out from watching Jenn teach the class for months.
And so goes my job, and I still enjoy it. Right now I've been tasked with "cloning" our existing MDT laptops and enabling a wireless area network configuration in them. This is our Wireless Pilot Project, and we have been at it tirelessly since the spring. We are gradually replacing every single laptop in all the vehicles in one particular precinct, and if it turns out to be a success, we will be doing it for the entire fleet, in all the precincts, city-wide.
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