There was a call out to meet in the morning on Friday. Tony brought his gear to work hoping he could finish early enough to join the search. He didn’t get all of his work done until almost end of business. He called into the search and they didn’t need him then. That was actually a good thing. I called the pharmacy earlier in the week to refill the prescription of his special eye drop (it treats itchy eyes). His insurance has changed since the last time he got a prescription. He picked up the prescription plus a little cup of ice cream! He spent the rest of the night doing prep work for the bike race he will be helping out the following weekend while I was out for my monthly Amnesty meeting. Good rest night for the big weekend ahead.

The Saturday call out was to meet at 6:30am at the Sheriff’s office. I woke up around 6am and Tony had already finished eating breakfast, almost ready to go. It’s going to be a nice day, sunny and high around the low 80′s. He has only one pair of pants suitable for the whole weekend. We need to get him more. His text message after 4pm was that the team was getting ready for a second mission. He got home after 10pm. He was again congested but not sneezing as much as he used to. The allergy medicine helps but it is not enough for how much stuff he was walking through. He told me a few times before, “Search and Rescue doesn’t walk around stuff, they walk through stuff.”

The food that was served to the searchers had improved a lot. During the first week before the statewide call to SAR, Tony had cold pizza and cookies one night. They were lucky last weekend when one of the Multnomah County SAR volunteer cooks showed up with a BBQ and made hamburgers and sausages. Yesterday, he had cold fried chicken for lunch (a late one since the second mission didn’t start until after 4pm) and steak and baked potato for dinner. A butcher shop in Gresham donated the steak. That’s really cool. Tony’s diet in the past year has been meat, fish, broccoli, asparagus, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, eggs, bacon, and a variety of fat. He is allergic to most vegetables, fruit, nuts and wheat. By avoiding these foods and dairy, his seasonal allergy had become almost non-existent until he went on this massive search. It’s important that he could eat about the same kind of foods during the search but it would be almost impossible. An enthusiastic volunteer handed him a baked potato last night and he couldn’t refuse. Luckily, they were serving it with bacon and butter and he loaded that potato right up.

Sunday call out is once again a meet up at 6:30am. I was so tired from my cousin’s graduation party the night before (I was playing ping pong and pool) that I was sound asleep until he came into the bedroom to say goodbye. He assured me he took allergy medicine and had put on sunscreen. He will use the eye drop a little later. When I got out of bed to see him off, I saw that his small pack was out of his big backpack and attached to a helmet. His team was allowed to carry the small pack yesterday and he hopes they will do the same again today. That would be nice because his big backpack has enough gears to stay the night out in the woods. They were carrying the big packs as shown in the Oregonian photos last weekend. It doesn’t make sense to keep doing the same as they get to go home every night. The big packs are still taken to base just in case. Well, let’s keep good thoughts on all the SAR folks.

Update (6/15/2010): Sunday was another long day even though the Sheriff’s Office called off the massive search at noon and Tony’s team was back at base finishing lunch around 3pm. The entire command center needed to be packed up so it’s again up to the SAR volunteers to do the work. A bright side was that the huge amount of donated food and water was distributed among all the SAR’s that came here from all over Oregon. When the SAR goes out on a search, they have to bring all of their own supplies including food and water. Tony said his SAR got all of the water supply replenished from the donation. That’s a really good thing because it’s not yet summer and plenty more people will go missing in the warmer months. Several hours after packing up and figuring out who should transport what back to the Sheriff’s Office, a new search came in just when the Multnomah County SAR was about to leave the Skyline area. A child went missing on Larch Mountain. One of the SAR leaders started pointing at Tony and a few other volunteers and directing them to leave for the new search. Tony was exhausted at that point but luckily, minutes after the call came in, the missing child was found. “Save by the bell!” for sure. He got home around 9:30pm.

Earlier that evening, I dragged my sore self out to buy a gift card for his cousin, a little cup of chocolate peanut butter ice cream (for him), and pizza (dinner for me) after working a long day in the yard. Tony almost stopped by the store on the way home to buy beer and ice cream but decided against it because it was too late to drink a beer. So, I totally read his mind except for the beer. Besides, he didn’t eat dinner after the late lunch of hot dogs and fruit because there were a lot of snacks laying around and it didn’t make sense to cook a full meal again after the search was called off. Tony was congested all weekend and also on Monday morning. He was finally able to breathe again by late Monday afternoon. There is still a scratch on his arm from the blackberry bushes and the itching is slowly going away.