This may be lazy blogging, but I took the time to clean up a little of the video from last weekend.
Please excuse the less than professional camera operation, we kind of jerk the camera around a little 🙂
First up, crossing on the way out:
Then on the way back:
-Jordan
So it isn’t actually my birthday yet, but due to a busy calendar Heather and I chose to take a day and celebrate my birthday a little early.
We both took last Friday off of work, with plans to be out and about all day.
Our intent was to start the day off by sleeping in. What actually happened was that we started the day by discovering what the building fire alarms sound like. As luck would have it, we found ourselves standing in the parking lot at 6:30 in the morning meeting some neighbors we hadn’t bumped into yet.
As you may recall from my last post, Heather had to contend with a smoke alarm last weekend. She is starting to think she will never again get the opportunity to sleep past 6AM.
On the bright side, this got us off to an early start.
We started with some amazing french toast Heather made. She has sometimes led people to believe that she cannot cook; it’s not true.
Our first stop after breakfast was Ledges State Park. The park is a beautiful little piece of geology that unfortunately had a lot of flooding last year. Thanks to the current economic realities facing everyone, including the Iowa Department Of  Natural Resources, they haven’t been able to repair the stream crossings, nor clear the silt that now covers parts of the developed area.
Given that we were just there to hike, it didn’t really matter. We only hiked for about an hour, but there was enough vertical change to make our legs star to burn from all the climbing. It’s possible we are just out of shape, but I was surprised how much climbing there was to be had!
After our hike, we headed straight to the train station in Boone. The rides there don’t take you to a new destination per say, but we had heard good things about the Boone Scenic Valley Railroad. We picked up our tickets and ate a sack lunch while waiting for our departure time.
I didn’t remember to take a picture of our car, but it was the perfect way to ride on a warm(ish) fall day. It was a flat-car with railing around it, with two benches running the long way down the center facing out. We had a great view of everything!
The main attraction of the ride is the Des Monies River valley, that we crossed via the Kate Shelley Bridge. It’s a great view, well worth the ride out. We probably missed the peak fall colors by about a week, but I am in no way complaining, it was still a breathtaking view!
Once across the bridge we had a brief stop for reasons that were not completely clear, but it made a nice spot to lean out and snap this:
The train was by no means full up there, but there was a good turn out for a Friday afternoon.
From here the rest of the day was less notable, although no less enjoyable. That being said I don’t want to stretch this post out any more than I already have.
-Jordan
It has been another full weekend, for Heather and I.
I started off camping with the scouts, on a trip that included a bike ride
As you can see we brought a lot of bikes along.
The ride was along the trails north of Des Moines. The same trails that lead up to the bridge we rode over back at the beginning of summer. The only thing was, we rode past red trees, and through piles of leaves blowing along the trail. We were lucky in that the weather was great! It was cold over night, but by the time we had bikes going on the trail it was a wonderful fall day.
I suppose talking about a beautiful ride, and the wonderful colors would be more interesting with a picture or two. The problem is all the bikes you saw in that picture were being operated by scouts… not to say they were getting into trouble, but I wanted to keep an eye on things.
That and the fact that all I had was my phone. It’s a workable camera, but phones aren’t suppose to go on camp outs. Adults get to bend those rules, but the boys complain to no end about their oppression when they see you get your phone out and they realize they can’t.
I left camp early because I was doing sound at church. It was probably a good thing I came home when I did though, because the smoke alarm at the top of our fancy vaulted ceiling had decided it had problems and started beeping earlier that day. Heather was about ready to loose it by the time I got there. It did provide an opportunity to use the big step ladder we bought shortly after taking possession of our new place… although I can think of scenarios were we would have used the ladder for some great purpose that don’t also involve Heather having dangerously high blood pressure… Maybe next time it will just be burned out light bulb.
Sunday we had a few friends over to carve pumpkins!
… yeah pumpkins… I didn’t really think it was time for those ether, but apparently it is.
My artistic vision was somewhat hampered by my absolute lack of manual dexterity or and artistic skill, so imagine the one I am holding looks sleepy. When you consider that the face on mine tilts down and sort of leans… and then add a little imagination it’s a pretty good pumpkin I think.
Oh, on a somewhat related note, I discovered that if you make pumpkin bread, but leave out the pumpkin, the resulting product will be a rather dry spice-bread. Stop by the break room at work tomorrow you might get to try some, its not bad… but it wasn’t quite what I had in mind.
-Jordan
I actually finished the entire project over the course of the weekend, but didn’t get a chance to update the blog until now…
As you can see, I settled on only having three drawers. This was largely due to poor planning on my part, as I could have made the fourth one work, had I only laid out the supports correctly.
On the other hand, having the extra shelf space may end up being more useful.
The bench has an electrical system in it, four outlets and a switched light. My initial plan was to use a GFI outlet, but that changed when I realized I would be paying $15 or more just for that one outlet. I am plugged straight into a GFI outlet anyway, so it was really just for the sake of completeness rather than any actual safety.
In the end, I am very proud of the finished product. It’s probably bigger than necessary, but it’s a nice solid platform and the lighting seems about right. I haven’t identified any projects that I plan to undertake now that it’s complete, but I am sure something will come up. At the very least I have somewhere other than the kitchen table to go when I want to take something apart 🙂
-Jordan
It’s looking pretty good so far!
I planned to chop up an old dresser and use the drawers from it in the bench. Due to my limited experience and time with Google Sketchup, I left that part out of the plans and figured I could do some subtle adaptations as I went to make it work.
It looks like my on the fly adaptations were about 1/4 of an inch off… I have a plan B but it’s clear I should have put the drawers into the plan.
Other than that though, I am really happy with the project so far.
-Jordan
One feature of the new place Heather and I moved into is a garage. The garage happens to have quite a bit of room on the sides, and was just begging to have a bench put in…. or at least that was my impression.
I spent a few hours over the past week in Google Sketchup working on this:
It’s probably too optimistic, in places… but I wasn’t happy with the designs I was finding online.
That brings us up to Friday night, where I was seen driving this:
I hope to know by the end of the weekend how much of a disaster my plains end up being 🙂
-Jordan
I always find that when I try to cover something as big as a week away from work it’s an overwhelming thing to try and post about.
So I will just hit a few highlights:
First it was great to just spend time with my family. The fact that we had plenty of work to do was nice too, it made the start of the week feel really productive.
The other highlight was getting to share so many things from my life with Heather that she hadn’t ever seen or done before.
Heather was a really good sport with everything, despite the fact that she was able to attract every bug within five miles of wherever we happened to be.
Things Heather did with me:
I should expand on that last point. As you can see from the picture it was cool enough to be comfortable wearing a sweatshirt. Still ok weather to be on the water as long as you stay dry.
The trip marked only the second time Heather had been in a canoe, and the first time on moving water. I really should have been giving more instruction during the lazy areas as we started out. I had somewhat naively hoped that there wouldn’t be any downed trees blocking our path.
On the other hand, I did make sure Heather packed an extra change of dry clothes before we headed out that morning.
As you can probably guess, we didn’t make through our little trip dry. After a few close calls with tree branches we finally met one that was going to be really unpleasant to get past. There are a number of things I should have done at this point. One, I could have aggressively back-paddled to get some space between us and the tree, then landed at shore letting Heather out. Two I could have jumped into the water and guided the boat to shore by walking in the water. Three I could have told Heather to lay down the the bow of the boat so the trees wouldn’t hit her.
Instead I only sort of explained that she should get down, and tried to get us lined up on the spot I figured we could plow through.
What happened next wasn’t so surprising: Heather didn’t realize I was planning to ram into the tree and got caught off balance, falling into the middle of the boat(on the upstream side). I wasn’t going fast enough to actually plow through the tree, and we were instantly swept crosswise of the current, and the canoe rolled.
Did I mention Heather was a really good sport about everything I wanted her to try this week? Because she got dumped into some very cold, very brown muddy water and managed to laugh about it!
We completed the res of the trip without much excitement, but I think I ruined my chance of instilling a love of canoes and or the Medicine into my wife. 🙂
-Jordan
Nelsons 