Truckin'

I'd like to take the opportunity today to write a little about our crew transportation. It's an F-250, 4X4 Super Duty, manual transmission with a V-8 engine we affectionately call Blue. I'm pretty fond of saying that there's nothing that makes you feel like a natural resource employee quite like driving around in a big truck, and this has been no exception. It's like actually living in those Ford commercials where they show you how much punishment their work trucks can take. Just to do kiosk installation we negotiated some gnarly dirt tracks. The most exciting stretch so far was taking a back road to the Mt. Evans Wilderness Boundary to install kiosks for the Chicago Lakes trail. The crux of the road was an extremely steep patch with bare rock exposed. We rolled to the bottom of the hill, engaged the 4X4 (we have to do this by manually locking the front axle, no on-the-fly shifting!) threw it into low gear and took off. The big truck scaled the hill like a nimble mountain goat, or at least a loud, diesel belching mountain goat. The A/C may not work, but we've got a functioning CD player, and all the Hot Shots agree that we've got the best truck in the CFI. Blue always gets us there in style!

Dan