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Firehouse Expo 2012 pictures from Mike Legeros
Box Alarm Leather
The beautiful and very talented Mary Arnold, owner of Box Alarm Leather, visited Booth #743 at the Baltimore Convention Center on Thursday. Mary brought two things with her, her husband Andrew (not as beautiful and talented, but a great guy) and a surprise gift for the publisher of this rag you are reading. The present is in the picture above and the Arnolds are in the one below.
Apparently Mary must be familiar with someone who is a Keyboard Incident Commander (KIC) at STATter911.com. So, now that we have a shield for KICs we need to work on certification and continuing education. While at Firehouse Expo I was engaged in discussions with some of the top fire service educators in the nation about providing the courses. I don’t have a lot of details yet, but the one thing I am certain about from these talks is that whatever we come up with will involve sending me a lot of money. That’s something we like at STATter911.com.
If you are not aware, Box Alarm Leather specializes in handcrafted custom leather fire helmet shields and firefighter radio straps. Please check them out. An exceptional product from exceptional people. I still haven’t stopped chuckling over this.
Thursday’s NFFF 9-11 Memorial Stair Climb was, as always, a joy to witness. If you missed it, there was a lot of news coverage. You can read and watch those stories here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
One of the other high points for me at Firehouse Expo was the Chief’s Leadership Forum on Wednesday. Thanks to all of those who were at the session and helped further the discussion on handling bad news.
Back to the convention floor where there were a lot of other comings and goings at Booth #743 from Thursday to Saturday. As usual, we were part of Firegeezer Bill Schumm’s booth. We were also joined by firefighter and author Will Wyatt (buy his book ”And a Paycheck, Too!” … very funny) and Helge “Hagar” Nordtveit who told everyone about Dr. Frank Field’s video for middle schoolers, “Fire Is!”.
Documenting the booth’s visitors, as usual, was Mike Legeros of Legeros Fire Blog fame. Mike shows up each year just to take pictures of old broken down firefighters to go along with the many photos he has of old and broken down firehouses.
But Mike went for the younger crowd too with his visit to the MN8-Foxfire booth. Each time we stopped by, MN8-Foxfire President Zach Green begged me to take THE Fire Critic Rhett Fleitz back. But all the geezers at the Firegeezer booth said no. They were enjoying not having the disruptive environment of a teenager under foot as in previous years. The only way they would take Rhett back is with his guardian IronFiremen.com’s Willie Wines Jr. to provide adult supervision. Zach was not about to give up Willie. Willie is way too valuable to the MN8-Foxfire operation (read Fireboy’s somewhat fictional account of Expo).
Below is a complilation of Mike’s pictures from three days embedded with the Geezer Gang (which includes actual geezers and geezers in training). Missing from the booth this year was our friend FossilMedic Mike Ward who couldn’t join us because of business obligations. It just wasn’t the same without you Mike. Notice I didn’t say it was worse Mike. Just not the same.
Also on STATter911 …
- Stair climb, bad news Statter, a good newsman at the MN8-Foxfire booth, the Geezer booth, Fire Is!, famous author, FOOLs event & Ralphie May. – July 16, 2012
- In Harrisburg, PA this weekend for Fire Expo? Come see the people who make STATter911.com possible. – May 18, 2013
- Design a t-shirt that will light up the room and win. Foxfire looking for a firefighter with some ideas. – March 16, 2012
- STATter911.com welcomes MN8-Foxfire® as a new sponsor. – June 3, 2012
Comments
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Dave, congratulations on the very cool helmet shield. Looks great!
I teared up a little at 3:39 on the video. Such a special moment between you and your kilted critic.
Looks like you all are having fun, wish I was there!
Dave, can I help teach the KIC class? Please, please, please. I’m a certified Instructor and Lord knows I have plenty of experience as a KIC. Nice frontal.
LMAO, that’s awesome!
Congrats Dave, please let us know when the certification test is.
We take Master Card, Visa and American Express. If you can provide the numbers to those cards and the expiration date you will likely pass Mark.
Statter
All of them???????
You may think that’s greedy. But it costs a lot to keep this home for wayward TV reporters running. You wouldn’t want folks like that running the streets now would you?
We must look for innovative and exciting ways to fund this important program in Northern Virginia during difficult economic times. You’ve supported us in the past and I have little doubt that we will be able to count on you in the future.
We have different levels of KIC certification, silver, gold and platinum. We have done extensive studies that show conclusively that the size of a firefighter’s wallet matches his or her ability as a KIC. It’s amazing how that has worked out. So we have no problem providing the top level certification to those who are not only generous but believe, like we do, that a man’s keyboard is his castle. That no one can tell a certified KIC what they can and can’t say about someone else’s fireground.
Thanks, as always Mark, for your support.
I see a charitable fund-raising program.
Autographed Statter KIC shields.
Autographed Firegeezer coffee mug.
Autographed (by LRB) DCFD shirt. Oh wait, never mind.
You’ve officially become a legend, Dave.
Up until now it was just unofficial (in my own mind). Thanks CHAOS.
Test? Dave, we’re KICs, we don’t need no stinking test! Instead show us a video and as long no one breaks their leg jumping to a conclusion, we should all pass.
As long as the checks don’t bounce and the credit cards go through passing will not be a problem.
Oh, and your video doesn’t count if #1, you’re not wearing shorts , and #2, and it’s not set to music.
We have our standards.
Will my certification come with a secret decoder ring?
Of course. They have different rings for the northern region and the southern region.