Bikes and Training
Whether you’re hunkering down with the groceries you bought before the crowds descended or out in the mix reveling in one of the largest events of this type anywhere, its hard not to notice its Biker Rally Weekend. I personally am a fan despite the inconvenience when moving around. I grew up riding as a kid on motocross style bikes, and rediscovered road bikes later as an adult. And as a professional people watcher I love all the different subcultures of the biker world out there. Plus, the biker rally crowd typically don’t spend a lot of time in the water or driving their expensive bikes on the sand itself. We assist EMS and Fire with medical calls and help GPD a bit with the crowds, but it’s not a 4th of July kind of thing.
This week we started reducing our beach coverage somewhat and diverted some of our staff each day to the big job of tower refurbishment and repair. Considering weather and training breaks, this is scheduled to be a two-month job. We’ll also be focusing some training time on our typical operational winter training which includes medical, law enforcement, boat operations, and SCUBA training.
This winter is unique in that we’re going to focus our energy not only on external operational skills, but also internal training. We’re a hybrid organization in so many ways. We’re a public safety group that specializes primarily in ocean rescue and medical response, but also do a fair amount of code enforcement through both our peace officers and non-sworn staff. Most importantly, we have a lot of seasonal workers that aren’t part of the traditional public safety culture, have employees with over 50 years difference in ages, and a good mix of gender and ethnicities. Its critical that all these people work in a supportive environment in relative harmony, so that we can put maximum effort into protecting swimmers and responding to emergencies. And we all need to be able to communicate in a way that is respectful and isn’t misinterpreted. So, we are integrating training in intercultural competency, alcohol awareness, and in a program we started last year targeting resiliency for first responders. We’re also stepping up the training we’ve traditionally provided in leadership, workplace harassment, and other areas, and have formed a diverse committee to monitor culture throughout the organization.
In our lifeguard academy we stress the importance of a strong body, mental preparation through a well-developed and practiced skill set, and strength of spirit. With the first two we’re pretty adept at teaching and enforcing the practice necessary. But, although we allude to the importance of a strong spirit, we didn’t really have the tools to teach it effectively. But this new training will help us teach our staff to better support and take care of themselves and each other, so we can better take care of the public.
And despite our differences, our staff is incredibly united in the desire to be the best we can be to keep people safe.
