In the final weeks before leaving for Europe my elapsed time spent surfing the web researching things to do in my various destinations has reached an all time high. With this Summer being my first international travel that I have personally planned, instead of going with a program, I am learning that a lot of the fun with travel is in the planning. Learning about and sifting through the seemingly unlimited options in each city is the perfect method of procrastination for months leading up to the actual trip. CNN Travel has been one of my favorite websites to surf lately. It has a great variety of articles, photo collections, and guides which will always suck me in for longer than I had planned. Today I came across this article (click HERE for article) that made me quite excited for my stop in London. Apparently a company called Zip World is installing in London what will be the fastest urban zip line in the world, with tickets around $30. The zip line will give its riders 360 degree views of the city. For me, a typical tourist visiting London not for a long time but for a good time, this is the perfect tourist attraction! Combining sightseeing with a sense of adventure is a great way to experience an area. For example, I once went wakeboarding in the Boston Harbor, and while I'm from the Boston area this was a new and exciting experience and one that I'll always remember fondly. I have already sent this link to my travel partner for this section of my Europe adventure, my sister, and I can only hope she is as excited about it as I am! We went skydiving together in Israel so I am optimistic she wants an adrenaline rush on this trip as well. It has been a good six months since I last shared a blog post, but I figure that an action packed Summer is as good a reason as any to get back into it. My goal is to post fairly regularly mainly to share my experiences that move me towards my dream career in the adventure based programming field. Additionally, I want to share thoughts and insights about developments and stories that come up in the world of recreation, parks, travel, hiking... So with that I will begin with a discussion of the Wilderness First Responder course I just completed.
The Wilderness First Responder certification is a requirement for many jobs in outdoor recreation, and it requires 80 hours of instruction and hands-on training. I took the WFR course through SOLO School of Wilderness Medicine at an Appalachian Mountain Club Outdoor Center in Russell, MA called Noble View. The facility was self service with a full kitchen, and running water in the nearby state of the art bath house. This bath house had solar panels, composting toilets, and much more... it was great to see the AMC investing in this technology which lets the facility continue to follow Leave No Trace ethics but still allow for levels of comfort not usually achieved in the woods. The course itself was great, I got the certification I need for my new job this fall leading trips for Penn State Adventure Recreation, but to me one of the most beneficial parts of the course was separate from the medical training. The thing is that most people don't just go and casually take a WFR course, its expensive and intensive, so typically everyone taking it is doing so for a job. I was one of the younger participants in the course, so hearing what sort of jobs people entering the outdoor recreation field are going into was valuable and interesting. There were three participants in particular whose new jobs particularly struck me. One was beginning to lead trips for Adventure Treks, which is a company that leads teen summer adventures in many amazing places from Colorado to British Columbia to Alaska. Another was just about to begin their Apprenticeship (student teacher and expedition leader) at High Mountain Institute, a high school semester school in Leadville, CO that intertwines wilderness expeditions with traditional learning to create a life changing outdoor educational experience for its students. And the third was actually about to begin working for Pacific Discovery, an amazing student travel company through which I took my trip to Thailand last summer. Being exposed to these individuals with their stories of how they came to arrive at their new jobs not only expanded my horizons but made me very excited for what my future holds in terms of career options. None of them were right out of college, rather they had worked other jobs and had been led to their current job by different paths. With the knowledge I gained from this course, both medical and otherwise, I am confident moving forward that every experience I partake in will be a part of the growth that will someday help me reach my career goals. Below are the only two photos I got from the course, the first was taken during a mock rescue. It is a little bit hard to see but we are splinting our patient for a tib/fib fracture and preparing to carry her out on a litter. The second photo is of the patch and certification card given at graduation. |
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