CoEMS first hand - InsomniacMedic

Earlier this month I had two weeks of vacation. Initially I wanted to travel to Spain, but that didn't work out in the end. So decided travel around in Germany the first week and visit friends who I hadn't seen in quite some time. One of which I became to know over the Internet about 4 years ago and has since become one of my best mates. He lives rather far away, but we still try to make it a habit to visit each other a couple of times a year.

Over the years I've met a lot of people from the web in person and I have yet to regret meeting "strangers" from the creepy Internet. I'm sure there are creeps and weirdos out there somewhere, but I have never run across one in the "real world". The Internet in general isn't as bad a place as many people, such as my mom, make it out to be. She was scared to death some ten years ago when I set sail for my first endeavour to meet people, who I got to know through online gaming back in the day. She was horrified of all the things that could happen to me. I didn't share her fears, fortunately, otherwise I would have never met a long of awesome people over the years.

One of these great experiences occurred on the second week of my vacation when I visited my cousin in London. I'm pretty new to the whole Chronicles of EMS movement and have only been aware of a bunch of great EMS blogs out there for a couple of months. I never considered blogging or even following blogs until that day, but CoEMS and those blogs changed my mind. There really are great people out there who put a lot of effort in their blogs, some funny, some tragic, some educational, but all great reading material.

InsomniacMedic is one of these bloggers I have stumbled across. I have been following his blog for quite some time, but only before I left for my Trip to London, did I remember that he is not only from Britain, but works for London Ambulance Service. Naturally I thought this was a great opportunity to meet.
I had sent him an email and while I was sitting at Frankfurt Airport his response came and we was interested as well. A few emails later we had setup a meet for the very next day at his LAS station.

So I hopped on the tube and made my way north to his station. Once there I was greeted by a warm smile and a hot mug of coffee, and I got to know a not only a great blogger, but a great paramedic and hilariously funny person, known to his colleagues as the Shit Magnet, for some reason... The next two hours we chatted away about our EMS systems, about calls, about protocols and life in general. We also did drugs, but that expression seems to have a completely different meaning in British English...

This was my first real life CoEMS experience and it was a great afternoon. I sure hope there will be more event like this in the near future.

I want to thank InsomniacMedic for making the time on such short notice and also the guys and girls at his station, who are a great bunch.