The Annual ARES Christmas Dinner

Tonight was the annual Huntsville/Madison County ARES Christmas Dinner. ARES is the Amateur Radio Emergency Service. We get together one night a week and practice setting up an emergency communication network. We get together once a month and meet to discuss emergency communications topics. We often have a presentation on one aspect of emergency radio or another at these monthly meetings.

Once a year, we have a Simulated Emergency Test (SET). The leadership gets together and concocts an emergency scenario and we react to the simulation as it unfolds. It involves deploying radio operators to various served agencies, The Red Cross for example, where we help coordinate a rational response to the simulated emergency. It gives us an opportunity to see how complete our “go bags” are and practice our skills in a more realistic environment.

Anyway, the Christmas Dinner is a once a year opportunity to get together socially and meet each other’s wives and husbands. It was a nice dinner. I enjoyed it. It was a practical demonstration that even nerds can be social upon occasion.