It is with much difficulty that I am writing this letter to say goodbye to everyone. Yesterday, I turned in my letter of resignation and after my leave balance is exhausted on March 26th, I will officially be an unemployed pirate. Tomorrow morning at 6 am my flight leaves Fresno and I will be in the Caribbean for about 3 weeks. I will come back here for a few days to finalize tying up the loose ends of my affairs and then it’s off to Puerto Vallarta to sail to the South Pacific for the summer. Make no mistake, I am scared to death. Leaving this job is undoubtedly the hardest decision I have ever made. I have agonized over this decision for months. The prospect of the voyage around the world and the opportunities that may come with it is just too much for me to miss.
I want to thank all of you for an amazing ride. This is my eighth year in this department and I’m sure I don’t have to tell any of you, I had fun. There are so many of you I want to personally thank for what you have done for me over the years, I hope someday I can repay some of it (come see me in Tahiti). I know that the only thing that made it hard for me to walk away was you. My family. I don’t care if my house burns down or someone steals my truck or boats. I could walk from that material stuff in a minute. I have friends up and down the state in the fire service and I have never even heard of a place that has the camaraderie we have. Embrace it. It’s so rare. I know a lot of us have different opinions, beliefs, walk different paths, etc. but at the end of the shift one thing is constant. We are all bad ass firefighters doing it for real. Whether or not you like it, we are a team. Be a team. Work together and appreciate each person’s strengths, don’t fixate on weaknesses, help to improve them. In my short eight years I have never been on a call where just one person put a fire out or cut someone out of a mangled car. I will be gone and the fires will go out. Amazingly, this place will go on without me, haha. Enjoy the time you have with each other in the Engine House, you never get that time back.
So that’s it for now. Please follow my progress. For now you can check a couple of places:
www.oceanhuntersb.blogspot.com this will be my personal blogs for now, their is a website being built for me by a publisher but it isn't up yet so this may be temporary.
