Wow- wasn’t this an interesting spring ski season. 47 days of quarantine for us as of today with no skiing and no physical contact with kids or friends or associates. I cannot imagine how hard it must be for you that are parents of school age kids. I applaud your strength and endurance. What a challenge. My Subaru sat so long unused the disk brakes rusted stuck and the battery in my Explorer went dead. My 9 year-old granddaughter has proven herself to be the most capable Facetime computer expert in the family and even I have learned to Zoom! Cody our Golden has made it clear that 4 miles is his hiking limit on any one walk. At that point he transitions into sniffing everything we pass- everything! He’s been my exercise pal thru these weeks. I owe him big.
Anyway, the 2019-20 season started great with our Certified team organizing an Advanced Patroller School at Blue Mountain, PA in September. Jeff Baker led this charge and the program was well attended. The final drill was a simulation of a slope side Active Shooter drill. Amazing moulage again, thank you Tom Wallin. The Pennsylvania State police even participated.
There was a good number of Patrollers from our Region ready to go to Sugarloaf, Maine for the annual meeting in mid-March. I was proud of our Chairman Jon Wilson when he made the difficult decision to cancel the event very early in the quarantine cycle. Sad but needed. Our Region holds a big part in the exam process for OEC, Evac, Risk Management and other topics but all our preparations will just have to wait for another year. The annual Meeting of the Active Certified members was held by Zoom rather than in person on the Sunday morning of the scheduled weekend. Amazingly the 3-hour meeting was a complete success! I am proud to announce that the one award issued during the meeting was to our own Jeff Baker. Jeff was elected into Lifetime Certified Status. This is a rare and great honor issued to only those members that have proven themselves to be invaluable due to years of dedicated service and program growth. Jeff’s history of organizing the successful Division Advanced Patrollers schools is unmatched. He has already started planning for this Fall’s session. I hope you all get a chance to attend one someday. Congratulations Jeff for your well-deserved award and thanks for all your hard work!
In closing, I hope you are all safe and healthy. It is hard to accept that for most of us the best way we can attack this disease is to buck up and just stay home and fight the spread. That’s a tough action for type A’s like most of us but it is the right thing to do. Soon we will transition into learning how to socially interact without risk. I have to say I’m getting used to wearing the mask Liz made me! It has a smiley face. Miss you all and hope to see you soon for picnics and OEC and Refreshers! Hang in there.
Joe Menichino, Genesee Valley Region Certified Adviser