Two Minute Hero 2004-01-27

Well, damn, it's been eventfull...

My weekend was spent doing various physical activities, including a few hours at the gym and four hours of tackle football. So all day yesterday found me pretty imobile, and today is little different. My muscles are screaming at me to take a break, but I know if I do that, I'll stiffen up and things'll be even worse.
So here's to an active lifestyle. *raises glass*
And here's to my body, which can't keep up. *raises middle finger*

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Last night something entirely unexpected happened...

Just as I was about to go to bed (around 12:30 last night), I hear some yelling and banging outside my window.
Immediately I suspected the gangbangers who live a few houses over to be up to no good. They have, by their activities, gotten the local police pretty familiar with our neighborhood, and have even been visited by the FBI a few times.

So I peered out of my bedroom window, hoping to verify that it was, indeed, said gang members making a fuss before I called the police.

And then I hear someone yell, "Randy, wake up, goddammit! Your house is on fire!"

They're not really houses. I guess you'd call em condos. Our complex is laid out with condos side by side, in groups of four. So it wasn't really Randy's house on fire, but the house of one of the condos connected to Randy's house. (I have no idea who Randy is, by the way...)

And man oh man, what a blaze! The windows burst with a pop as loud as a gunshot. Thick, black smoke, pouring out of fire that was burning both the first floor, and the second.
I heard one of the neighbors say they'd already called the fire department, so I didn't bother. But I did rush out side, to see if they needed any help.
Well, I rushed as fast as I could hobble, anyway.

There wasn't much for me to do at that point, for which I was grateful.
Until I heard the sirens blaring in the distance, and I realized that there's about a dozen ways to get in our complex, but only two of em take you to where the fire would be.
So I rushed (hobbled) out to the street just in time to see a fire truck about to turn into the wrong driveway. So I waved it down and pointed the correct way in, and the other firetrucks and police cars followed that one in.

The fire was pretty much put out in the next half hour, and as far as I could tell, only the one property (out of the four it was a part of) had totally burned, though I imagine the connecting walls to the adjacent apartments were pretty fucked, as well as a lot of smoke damage. The lady who lived in the apartment that caught fire died in the blaze, but she was the only fatality, and there weren't any other injuries.

I know, in the scheme of things, it's not a big deal, and it's not something anyone will remember, but I was pretty proud of myself for showing the firetrucks the right way into the complex. I don't know if things would have happened differently had they turned into the wrong drive, and I guess it doesn't matter, now.
All's I'm saying is, it feels good to be a hero, even if it was only for a couple minutes.