Mattes's Musings by KC2GIK

Well last Monday  night there was another  good thunderstorm down here in Cape May and  lightning hit two houses over on the other side of town. Of course the famous Cape May fire horns w ere going full blast however it was the thunder bthat woke me up! I grabbed the scanner tuned it to Cape May fire and boy was it busy. Lightning DID strike more than  once because a row of houses caught fire. Pretty soon trucks  from Lower Township and even Wildwood were racing into the city I was still half asleep but knew this was going to b e big!The radio traffic bounced between the main Cape May Fire frequency and their fireground. Since Lower Township is just north of Cape May they got dispatched to the scene first but stayed on their own frequency while their chief talked to Cape May directly.   The Coast Guard has \a base down in Cape May and hey're very active in the community! So when Cape May has a fire they call the Coast Guard for mutual aid. Cape May Cou...

Like all other conventions getting there and the action on the trading floor is only  part of the fun. Nestled between the Wednesday Welcome Reception Dinner and the Friday Night Auction is Thursday night which usually means an actual night on the town. Clark Wothe usually acts as our recreation director and always finds something that emphasizes the city we're in. This time it was a boat ride through part of the Erie Canal system. Around five thirty a bunch of us assembled in the hotel lobby and piled into our cars to make the twenty minute trip from Rochester over to  Lockport where after a quick bite we b/oarded the boat to travel the Genessee River and the  Erie Canal. I have never traveled on a canal before and while I have seen the process on TV and understand how it works, sitting on a boat while it rises  is a completely different adventure. The boat we were on was originally the west coast and the pilot gave a little history of how it got to t he Erie Can...