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Aug. 12th, 2005 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bobcatmoranLast week, Aterisk and I had a fun NPS truck related incident where we ended up sliding down the shoulder of the highway into the sagebrush. Today, we were up on the north end of the monument, checking up on some noxious weed sites, came back, and found that the truck's battery was absolutely dead. But! We had brought a radio with us just for such emergencies. So, theoretically, we could just radio back to the resource management office and ask someone to come up and give us a jump start. After all, we were only about a fifteen minute drive away.
That was the theory. Here's what really happened:
Aterisk tried calling our supervisor at the office. No response. He tried calling the visitor's center. Maybe our supervisor was out, or the radio in the resource management office wasn't turned on (that's what happened last week). No response. We tried turning the radio to the weather broadcast channel, and immediately heard "--cloudy and eighty-nine degrees--" So the battery wasn't dead. What was going on?
After trying everything from fiddling with the volume controls to standing on top of the truck to get to a higher elevation, Aterisk was swearing heavily at the radio. "Well, at least we didn't start a fire," I put in, trying to be optimistic. (a 15,000-acre fire was started on Wednesday in the southern part of the monument by a contractor's truck--the heat from catalytic converters can be enough to start burning the grasses around here at this time of the year if you idle in one place for too long.) Eventually, we decided to hike back down to the office. And so we did. All told, I have to have walked at least ten miles today--probably more--over an elevation change of about 250 meters. Needless to say, I've gotten my exercise for the day.
That was the theory. Here's what really happened:
Aterisk tried calling our supervisor at the office. No response. He tried calling the visitor's center. Maybe our supervisor was out, or the radio in the resource management office wasn't turned on (that's what happened last week). No response. We tried turning the radio to the weather broadcast channel, and immediately heard "--cloudy and eighty-nine degrees--" So the battery wasn't dead. What was going on?
After trying everything from fiddling with the volume controls to standing on top of the truck to get to a higher elevation, Aterisk was swearing heavily at the radio. "Well, at least we didn't start a fire," I put in, trying to be optimistic. (a 15,000-acre fire was started on Wednesday in the southern part of the monument by a contractor's truck--the heat from catalytic converters can be enough to start burning the grasses around here at this time of the year if you idle in one place for too long.) Eventually, we decided to hike back down to the office. And so we did. All told, I have to have walked at least ten miles today--probably more--over an elevation change of about 250 meters. Needless to say, I've gotten my exercise for the day.
