Rescue Me

Grab some popcorn--this is a long entry, but I had to write it. This has been a very eventful weekend here at the Calder house. Kevin went four wheeling on Thursday and Friday. Actually, it's six wheeling. Instead of a four wheeler, he has a ranger which has six wheels. Anyway, on Friday morning he left again to go four-wheeling with a friend. Kevin goes four-wheeling with this friend all of the time and they have a GPS "Spot" system which can track where he is at and can call for help if he needs it. I bet you can guess what happens next. At about 7pm, I got a call from this GPS company in Houston, TX. She informed me that Kevin had sent a 911 signal. Kevin has the choice to send two different messages. One says "I need help, no one is hurt" and the other says, "911".   He pushed the "911" button. The woman from TX told me that she was going to call his cell phone and get back to me. I, in the mean time tried to track down his friends' cell phone number. This was completely pointless since he was in the mountains, but hey, it was worth the try. He could be at the top of the mountain I guess. The lady from the GPS company called me back to say she couldn't get a hold of Kevin (surprise) and had already called the Larimer County Search and Rescue. Geesh. During that conversation, I got his coordinates from her. That's so cool to say ("coordinates"). I feel like I am in Star Trek.  I called a friend who usually goes four-wheeling with him and we looked up his longitude and latitude on his map. Kevin sends me periodic emails from this GPS "Spot" and he had sent me one earlier in the day, so we played connect the dots to figure out where he was. I don't why, WE obviously were not going to get him. I then had to call the wife of Kevin's friend who went with him to tell her that a team of people had been dispatched to find her lost husband.  She thankfully took the news well. I found out later that she had a whole house of family members to wait out the evening with her. It didn't even occur to me to call anyone. Why would I? After that, I got a call from the search and rescue lead man/sheriff/whatever. He asked me ominous questions like what Kevin and his friend looked like, what clothes they were wearing, what cars they drove, etc. I told him that they had lots of supplies and were fully able to wait it out till someone came. I also was able to tell him some of the "coordinates" that we had of him. He told me, "Ma'am--no one can be in that area, it's too buried in snow".  He obviously didn't know Kevin or the fact that he had been there the day before, or that he had snowmobile tracks instead of tires, or that they go in the snow all the time (they aren't amatures).  I found out later that the rescue man told everyone how helpful I had been (smile). So then I had to wait. And wait. And wait. I hate waiting. Your mind starts to wander and I started to imagine them pinned under the ranger, or something else...... I naturally started to clean, but I'm proud to say that I didn't get really upset. I told myself that there was really nothing to be upset about yet. I got a call at 10:30 from the rescue people that they had found their trucks. Now they knew about where Kevin was.  We all knew he was 10 miles in from there. So, then it was more waiting. I finally got a call at 11:30/12:00 that they had been found, everyone was fine, and they were being brought out on snowmobiles. Sigh.  Then the anger hit. The seriousness of the situation hit me then. I thought--"How could you put yourself in this position?" I had the whole chew out session planned at this point. I went to bed, but couldn't sleep because I was so mad. Kevin called at 2am to say he was about home. I heard the garage door open at 3am, but I was half  asleep and he must have thought I was too, because he crashed on the couch. The next morning he became well aquainted with the small profane vocabulary that I have. He thankfully was a sweetheart and apologized profusely. He felt soooo bad!! He let me vent, and everything was fine after that. He was actually really smart to call for help. Their four-wheelers became buried in 15 feet of snow (the ranger was under 4-5 feet of that) and instead of walking out, (which they would have normally done) they called for help instead. Smart guy. Yesterday, they went back up there with a rescue team to "rescue" the machines. Whatever. We are talking about selling the tracks (the snow "tires"). I think we will. Ending note---Kevin wants to be a volunteer for the search and rescue team. I actually think he would do a great job.