Author's Note and Disclaimer- Hey, welcome to the second day of this advent calendar. I still don't own Planes and I hope that you are still enjoying the story so far. :)
B is for Bowling
On days like this everybody wished they had a Type II Crew to mop up the mess for them, but the Piston Peak's Air Attack Base budget was so low that they were lucky to have enough personal to meet the minimums for a jump crew. So, while any other jump crew in the US would have already tapped out and headed back to base, confident that other firefighters were controlling the scene, Pinecone and the rest of her crew were still slogging it out in the ash making sure that the fire was thoroughly dead.
Spending 72 hours straight on the fire line would be exhausting for anyone, but this was their fifth fire this month…and it was only the second week of July. While Dynamite had been doing a good job of rotating everyone out to give them a couple of hours of shuteye, it was difficult to sleep with your filters clogged up with ash, and everyone was usually back on the line after a short nap. Avalanche was doing his darndest to keep everyone awake and moving by telling stories about their jump plane that he had found on the internet. But eventually, the dozer's voice began to become hoarse with the effort. The gentle digger knew the given time even most exciting war stories wouldn't hold a candle to their exhaustion.
Pinecone had just been tapped out again and headed to a flat area at the bottom of the slope where they jumpers had struck a temporary camp. She was asleep almost as soon as her tires stopped turning and was enjoying a quiet dream about meandering through the glade behind her house at home. Pinecone was just imagining what the wildflowers around her would smell like, when she heard a terrifying cracking and crashing sound.
Her eyes immediately sprang open just in time to see a boulder about twice Avalanches size, and probably at least six times his weight, appear a hairs breath in front of her. Before anyone else had a chance to act, Pinecone reversed to give herself more space from the still quivering rock. Glancing up the mountain, she quickly located the culprit.
"Drip, next time you try to go bowling for crew mates at least give us a warning!" Pinecone shouted up the hill in frustration.
"Roger." A slightly embarrassed sounding Drip replied after a few piston beats.
And with that, everyone got back to work. Dynamite made her way down to what remained of the camp and gave Pinecone a look over. When it was clear that there wasn't a scratch on the telehandler, Pinecone decided to hit the slopes again. After all, it wasn't like she was going to get much sleep after that intense of an adrenalin rush.
The junior member of the team was pretty quiet the rest of the afternoon, but she knew that there would be time to raze the skid steer about the accident when they got back to base. Right now they needed to focus on the hard work of making sure that all the embers were contained and that the fire they had just spent the last three days getting under control wasn't going to flare back up the moment that they finally had a chance to sack out on their own sleeping mats.
Term- Bowling- Bowling is a term that is used to describe the moments that someone who is higher up on the slope knocks a very large rock down on the rest of the crew. I have been on a crew or two where a member decided to go 'bowling'. Everyone on the team really stayed on their toes after the second boulder whizzed by. This type of scenario is most commonly seen in areas with high slopes...like Piston Peaks National Park...so I doubt that this was the first nor the last time that Drip will try to take out one of the jumpers with a rock.