I had the absolute pleasure to sit in BOTH of these Panthers at Innsbruck airport last year.
They even startet the engines and drove out of the hangar with us inside and gave us a little water salute. Absolute pleasure, I felt like a little kid!
I do have a video of the spray, sadly there were many people around and I don't want to show their faces. Needless to say these things shoot water like a rocket!
At a USAF civilian auxiliary encampment I got to sit in one of those big yellow airport fire trucks, the kind with the huge water cannon, bright yellow paint, slanted "cockpit" widow, joystick+cameras inside, etc. It was amazing. Then they had my squadron put on PTs, marched us in formation into a gravel drainage trap, and shot the cannon up at like 60° to create a rainstorm above us. Fun times.
You can usually sit in some older ones at air shows, or air museums. Sometimes they'll let you sit in new ones too! I got to sit in an FA-18 when I was a kid at an airshow, but they had all the gauges blacked out so you couldn't see classified parts of the jet. You can sit in the cockpit of an SR-71 Blackbird at the Boeing air museum in Renton, WA, but it is detached from the rest of the plane.
For sure! My community is served by a volunteer department and I joined a couple years ago, definitely a rewarding experience. Now not only have I gotten to sit in a truck, but I drive them, have learned all sorts of cool tools like the jaws of life and get to work with a great group of people serving our community.
You don't need to be young and fit either (I'm not!), there's a job for everyone. Anyone who's interested should definitely check out their local department. Most have active Facebook pages sharing updates and their website should have info on how to learn more about joining.
How much of your time is spent polishing the fire engine, and painting facer boards on the fire station? My friend's dad was a Firefighter for 30 years, and he said his time was evenly split between cleaning & polishing things, playing poker at the fire station, and BBQ'ing behind the fire station. He made the job sound like it's mostly just hanging out with your friends all the time, interspersed with a few moments of heroism, and a few moments of life-threatening terror.