5 Miles

Each year our town has a Public Safety Day. It’s a chance for all kinds of groups and organizations come out and champion their cause. The local police and fire departments have a large show of all their equipment and do a mock accident/rescue demonstration. The Street Department brings out equipment. The boys LOVE it. It’s much less crowded then other events like Touch A Truck or the Things That Go Rodeo that are also done in the area, so I don’t mind going. Plus, James and I enjoy getting to ask the different workers lots of questions as well. (For example, I learned we have our own SWAT team–all the members are on the police force in other jobs but are trained for SWAT issues…the round-about by our house was built too small and the ladder truck has to drive over it, it can’t make the turn, and the state police have 3 helicopters with infra-red cameras on them that can see the 2×4s in your house from 2000 ft. high–but they have to have a warrant to use it on your house, in case you were worried.)

When we got there we saw where the kids could shoot a fire hose at a wood house and knock down fire flames. This was something new for us! Both boys enjoyed getting to do that.

 Then we got to watch the big wheel races. Each year we’re too late to sign the kids up, and we thought, at first, that was the case this year as well. But I went over and asked, and both kids got to be in a race!

 Will, in the 6-8 range, he’s in the middle.

He was thrilled to finish 3rd (they did 3 laps around).

They had enough kids interested they did one more race of 3-5 year olds, so Alex got to race as well.

He really should have had his seat moved up, he barley reached the pedals. It looked ok when he was sitting, but once he started to go he had problems.

 Here he ran into a pile up in turn #2.  He had fun, even though he got lapped and never got to do his second lap before the girl in front won. All the kids got metals and he was just happy he got to take part in it.

Then it was time to pretend to drive the trucks.

We then watched the accident response demo, had lunch, looked at the helicopters and then headed for home. It was a beautiful day for the event–sunny and warm in the sun, cool in the shade, espically when the wind blew. A perfect early fall day.  We had a nice walk over there and back.