Screaming Through the Streets of Merrimack

As a reporter, I have to admit, I have a pretty awesome job.

I get to meet new people on a regular basis and talk to them about their lives.

Sometimes the stories are those of success and happiness, sometimes of sadness and loss. There's the tough stuff, like untimely death and tragedy but most of the time it's a pretty fun job.

To say my day is never the same day to day is pretty accurate, but last week I got a taste of a career that is about as unpredictable as they come.

On Friday, May 10, for the first time in my almost 32 years, I rode in a fire truck and an ambulance (Well the front seat anyway. I rode in the back once when I was 17 and passed out following a bad reaction to pain killers a few hours after I broke my arm.)

But, on Friday, I had the opportunity to ride along with some of Merrimack's finest firefighters and EMTs and get a taste for just a few hours of what their job is like (sadly, they wouldn't let me drive.)

Check out a gallery of photos above from the afternoon. I was apparently among very few who, in many years of ride alongs, had a busy afternoon with an opportunity to sit shotgun in an ambulance and go screaming through town on three occasions in the back of Merrimack's Engines 1 and 2.

Check back early this afternoon for an account of where we went, what we did and what it was like to tag along with the Merrimack Fire Department.