I am now at the stage in life where I *should* be retiring. (No, I'm probably not going to get any more quiet.) I never figured that I *would* get to retire. And, indeed, I don't seem to be. I've tried to retire. Twice. Neither time did it take. (The second time this thing called "the pandemic" came along, and I was asked to write another book, and then to write another course, and ...) I'm not getting paid any more, but I still seem to be contributing to, and therefore seeming to need to research in, the security field.
I *am* doing other volunteer work. Most of my volunteer work is Community Policing, which is mostly about keeping people alive; and Emergency Support Services, which is mostly about keeping people alive; the hospice society, which, in my case, is mostly about comforting people who are grieving because their people have *not* been kept alive; so it's nice to go out with the trail maintenance crew (currently removing sword fern and salmonberry) or Broom Busters, and, legitimately, *kill* something.
(Then there is the fact that I volunteer with the hospice society, where we deal with people who are facing the worst situation in their lives, and also with Emergency Support Services, where we deal with people who are facing the worst situation in their lives. Are we beginning to see a pattern in my choice of volunteer work?)
The girls are *vastly* amused that the first shift that I had with Community Policing, after having finished training, was me, as an old man (even though I do try to be hygienic), hanging around the school, handing out candy to students. And the police were *okay* with that! Actually I do this fairly regularly now. Although most of the time I'm the one handing out the apples, rather than the candy.
I tend to do some of the the odder shifts. For example, I have had one shift in support of a security presentation at a bank. I do, as noted, semi-regular shifts at the high school. This is in support of the breakfast club program at the high school. But I will be doing another shift, staffing the speed watch van, out in front of the school, in support of the fact that the grade 11s and 12s are going to be getting a road safety presentation. I don't know whether we, doing speed watch, are simply going to be an object lesson, or whether the students will have time to come up and look over the gear. Speaking of the gear, another oddball shift that I'll have this weekend[1] is on Sunday morning. There is a women's hockey tournament, and we are to be using our radar gun (a very *old* radar gun, which we aren't entirely sure still works, but is the only one that actually uses radar and is therefore likely to be able to measure the speed of a small object), to measure the speed of pucks when the skills part of the tournament practices slap shots. On Saturday, I will be staffing a table at the Newcomers Welcome, put on by the Neighborhood Welcome company, where most of the tables will be occupied by businesses, shilling for business, but we will be trying to point out some of the volunteer organizations and opportunities in town. A few days later, is McHappy day, and we will be helping out at one of the McDonald's restaurants in town, although I strongly suspect that we won't be terribly much help. It'll be a visible presence for us, and a bit of a an attraction, or at least a point of interest, for the customers at McDonald's.
Okay, that was a really ... interesting ... second shift[1]. Starting with wondering, as the shift got nearer, whether it was going to happen at all. But, eventually it did, and we drove around town looking for, well, anything suspicious. I checked 166 cars, and none of them were stolen.
And then, pretty much at the end of the shift, the driver, heading down a back alley which did not, in fact, go through to another roadway, decided that he did not want to back up half a block down a narrow laneway. So he decided to turn around. And dropped the back wheels over quite a steep slope, which lifted the front wheels off the ground. Even though the car is a four-wheel drive, when none of the wheels actually have much weight on them, it's difficult to move.
Eventually he called a tow truck, and the guy came and pulled us out in a couple of minutes. But only after the other three guys on the crew decided to throw their combined 500 pound weight against 4,000 pounds of uncooperative car. All happening in the pouring rain.
OK, at the moment[1] I am the newest member of the Community Policing team (and, as it happens, have currently[1] done the most volunteer hours of *any* member of the crew for this year). I have done so many shifts that other work has started to suffer. So, I figured I should pull back a bit.
But, on Friday, the boss sent out a call for the Saturday late shift, which was understaffed to the point that we couldn't send out *anyone* if we didn't get a couple more. I said that I wasn't keep on a late shift, as I had a pretty busy day on Sunday. He said that the shift ended earlier than usual: at eleven PM instead of midnight. I didn't think that was a *huge* difference, but I signed up.
And then, late on Saturday, I realized that it was time change weekend, and, effectively (in terms of sleeping time) it *DID* end at midnight ...
I was supposed to cover the hockey tournament skills event for Community Policing. (We had been asked to use the radar gun to measure the puck speed for slapshots). And as I was driving around this morning, I realised that broke two rules. Number one, I was not supposed to be on a shift by myself. We *never* do shifts alone, and I'm the newest guy on the team, and I'm not even off probation yet. Number two, we never do shifts on Sunday.
Oh, well.
Anyway, having gotten to the venue on time, according to the schedule that I had been given, I waited around for half an hour before anybody showed up. At which point I was informed that the skills event had been cancelled. A bit of a shock, that. But, of course, I was already out. Already had the van out, packed up yesterday[1] after the Newcomers Welcome event in preparation for the hockey tournament event. So I had to take everything back to the office and unpack the van, so that everybody knew where everything was for the high school event on Monday. And then take the van back to the RCMP detachment. So that wasn't great.
[1] - as of that writing ...
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