Memorial Day 2011

Posted on by Jordan

If you remember from last year, Heather and I had a whirlwind weekend over memorial day. The post picture also featured a sort of bridge. I am going to consider that a theme… more on that later.

This year we had surprisingly few plans for the weekend, with nothing going on Monday.

We were eager to take advantage of a free day, even if the weather wasn’t expected to be very nice. After tossing around a few ideas, we settled on Winterset IA, with the plan of viewing all six of their famed covered bridges.

I took some time before we left to load up my phone with map coordinates for each bridge, and a few geocaching locations around the area. Heather packed us a lunch, and we were all set for a little adventure!

Winterset is surprisingly close to where we live, so before we had even settled in for the drive we were in Madison County, and taking our first turn to seek out a bridge.

Two things worth noting at this point. One, the clouds had blown off, and it was starting to look like a beautiful day outside. Two, Heather and I have radically different ideas about what safe speeds on unpaved roads are. I won’t go into the subject in depth except to say I hope we set the high water mark for disagreements in 2011… and I think we gave it a good shot. I let Heather drive upon leaving the first bridge, leaving us with significantly more time to enjoy the Iowa countryside than we might have experienced under other circumstances.

To be honest, the fact that the bridges were out on desolate county roads came as a bit of a shock for me. It isn’t like I thought the bridges were an eighth wonder of the word or anything, but they seemed familiar enough that I was expecting more development. That isn’t to say that they weren’t being visited, they are just kind of out there.

We took a picture in front of each bridge, but they all kind of look alike… so we are going to take the quality over quantity approach and just have one bridge picture.

I tried looking for a few geocaches, but the bad weather that plagued the proceeding weekend made that unappealing at best. Spring rains, combined with the freshly tilled fields surrounding most of the bridges meant that finding a cache was going to involve tromping through some mud. Perhaps I am turning into a city person… but it just didn’t seem worth it. (Although the gravel-road speed question provides some strong evidence to the contrary)

After three bridges, we stopped in Winterset to hit a park and eat our lunch. The park is home to one of the bridges, and happens to be next to the cemetery (pictured at the top of this post). It was a touching sight, a hillside covered in flags gracefully blowing in the wind.

After lunch we only had two bridges left, so we plotted a route to catch them both, then point us home.

A few notes / highlights:

There is still one bridge you can drive over, and we did!

I suspect the trip would be more interesting if you did more research into the bridges beforehand, as there isn’t much on site.

The movie “Bridges of Madison County” does not count… and in the few minutes I lasted isn’t a great use of time.

There is a tower in the Winterset city park, I forget the name, but we skipped it, thinking it wasn’t worth walking down to… saw a picture later and I wish we would have taken the time to see it.

I think that about wraps up the trip! Perhaps not the most enthralling trip we have ever taken, but a wonderful way to get outside on a nice day and see something new!

-Jordan

Camping

Posted on by Jordan

I went camping over the weekend with the Boy Scouts.

Sorry for the terrible picture… I have some much better ones, but I feel like posting pictures of the guys online would not be the best way to endear myself to the troop parents…. Maybe they wouldn’t care, but lets don’t find out eh?

There are a lot of things I probably could say about the trip, but I wanted to keep this post focused. The single biggest takeaway I have is this:

I hate ticks.

Not on me, or even dug into me… just the idea. It is a terrible moment when you realize your going to have to explain ticks to the new guy (or in this case, the new parent)

It’s terrible. I have gotten to explain ticks quite a few times in my outdoor career, and you can just see the, ah, subject start to get the heebie-jeebies and involuntarily start checking their scalp.

it’s hard to be honest and downplay the things:

“oh don’t mind those!”

“what are they?”

“ah, parasitical arachnids… you know, just part of nature!”

“whahh!? are they poisonous?”

“No, no… well there is the lime disease thing, but nothing to worry about…”

So, the conversation is going to be unavoidably alarming, and then, it always turns out I am blessed with whatever trait it is that makes me unattractive to bugs to begin with, so despite the people around me finding ticks left and right, I never had to deal with one. It makes it that much harder to demonstrate the proper stoic response to our spider-like adversary.

Ignoring some minor disappointments I had over the reaction to ticks, I had fun on the camp out. Not quite the laid-back peaceful trip I had been imagining, but I continue to be impressed by the group of boys I am working with… it makes up for not getting much time to read 🙂

-Jordan

Footnote: Heebie-jeebies must be a word, because it’s on Wikipedia!

Geocaching

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I made this past weekend into a long weekend, and headed west to McCook.

I don’t think we could have gotten luckier when it came to the weather… absolutely perfect the entire time we were there. We tried to get outside to take advantage of that, and my parents provided a number of great opportunities for us to do that.

The first was geocaching. I was familiar with the basic idea, but hadn’t really thought much about it before the weekend. So first off, what is geocaching? Somebody leaves a cache somewhere, and then posts the GPS location of the hidden container on a website. Then we go to the website, take the coordinates and go look for the cache. The trick is that GPS will only get you with 10-20 feet at best, and the containers can be tiny! They seem to often only have room for some paper so you can sign the log before moving on to the next find.

Better description here: Geocaching

I should mention, we were well equipped for this in part because I got a new phone! (More on that later, back to geocaching for a minute)

So we loaded some points into our phones, and headed out to do some geocaching, or “treasure hunting” as my brother calls it.

Our first find!

They are holding the cache container in that picture… and I am going to guess you didn’t notice it before I said anything. We ended up finding quite a few points/caches… I don’t know the proper terminology. Heather and I really had fun with it, and hope to try doing more of it around Des Moines as the weather continues to improve.

Oddly related to geocaching and to my new phone… if you were to download the larger version of that picture I posted, and then use any sort of tool that will report to you the detailed information about the image you would find a few things:

  • The brand, model, and operating system version on my phone
  • A ton of information regarding the camera’s abilities and settings at the time the picture was taken
  • and…
  • The exact GPS coordinates of the phone when it was taking the picture.

Mind you, I didn’t add any of that… my phone just decided it would be fun to tack that all on. I didn’t realize the GPS coords were being added until I loaded the picture up in Picasa, and it offered to show me on the map where the picture was taken…. Lets just say you could find our first geocache using that picture if you were sufficiently determined.

I don’t want to sound too outraged, I don’t really think this is a terrible thing… I was just a little shocked.

Going back to the phone, I will talk about in more in a few weeks… maybe a miro-review or something, but I am still figuring it out!

-Jordan

Dave Ramsey Live!

Posted on by Jordan

I seem to be falling behind… lucky for me March ended up being kind of uneventful, so the fact that I am just getting this posted doesn’t mean you missed much.

Heather and I went to see Dave Ramsey in Kansas City. We bought the tickets months in advance, and Heather suffered a small amount of ridicule at work for her excitement over having the tickets. The fact that the event later sold out was somewhat vindicating I suppose.

It did mean that the friends who we talked into going to the event with us were unable to purchase tickets, so we had to go by ourselves.

To be completely honest, I was doing a little bit of foot-dragging in the weeks leading up to the event. I mean, how exciting can it be to see a five-hour recap of the class we took three years ago? Well, the answer to that is, a lot more exciting than you ever would have guessed!

Dave is a gifted speaker, and his team puts on a great event. We really enjoyed it.

Reflecting on the event, I think part of the reason it’s worth doing is that culturally, it’s hard to talk about money and budgets with your peers. It was refreshing to be in an environment where people could say “I am debt free!” Granted, a person could go into the office on Monday and say that, but I don’t know how many friends that would make you… or maybe I am taking too dim a view of humanity… at any rate, it got Heather and I excited to buckle down and focus on our financial goals again, and that alone makes it worth the price of admission.

-Jordan

Colorado 2011 Part Three

Posted on by Jordan

Our last day at Copper Mountain began much like every other day we had spent there; Heather got up far too early and headed to another meeting. Unlike prior days though, instead of skiing, I packed the car and did some reading.

We were on the road heading west by mid morning, and hoping we wouldn’t have any weather surprises as we climbed the remaining miles to the top of the pass. I know the natives get used to it, but I don’t think the steep up and down while going 70 MPH will ever seem normal to me.

After a few more hours of uneventful drive, we made it to Grand Junction, home of our friends DJ and Vanessa. It was getting hard to remember what day it was at this point, so for my reference and yours, it was Saturday. We spent the remaining day on a little hike, and then went to Saturday evening church.

Before I go much farther, I should mention one of the many highlights of our trip: Ingrid! DJ and Vanessa, are parents now! We enjoyed getting to see our friends exploring parenthood, and seeing that they were really enjoying it.

I sort of wish I had pictures from Sunday, as we had a really great time hanging out that afternoon around the house with a few people from church. Given that all we did was talk and play boardgames maybe the pictures wouldn’t be that interesting… all the same it was a great time. For the record, both “Settlers of Catan” and “Ticket to Ride” are great games. If you have the opportunity to play with someone who can help you learn the rules, you should!

Monday was a special treat of sorts, as DJ and Vanessa were both able to be off work, and were willing to spend a day of vacation with us! As appears to be the custom in Colorado, we used our free time to head into the Mountains again!

What you can’t quite see in the snow around their feet, are the snowshoes they are wearing. There was well over five feet of snow on the ground where that picture was taken, and without the snow shoes it would have been an entirely different picture. As you may recall Heather and I had the chance to play with some snow shoes back in Iowa a few months ago, but there were only an inch of snow. The experience is entirely different with meaningful amounts of snow.

Our plan was to hike straight out into the fresh snow, eventually crossing the trail to a lookout, allowing us to really experience the serenity of the fresh snow in the woods. It was beautiful, it was peaceful, it was also a LOT of work. Even with the snow shoes, the lead person in our group had a big job breaking a trail for us. We rotated the job around quite a bit, and were making pretty good time. Ingrid however, thought it was time for a break.

After a short break, we found a blazed trail. Walking on it felt a little like cheating, but I was ready to have an easier time walking. I should mention that Heather was doing great! Snow shoes may be more her speed, and hikes through the mountains seem to be more interesting to her than flying down the mountain on some fiberglass slats. On the road, we took a more leisurely pace than our guides:

Heather and I were mostly content to just enjoy the atmosphere, although I have to admit we did disagree somewhat as to the proper pace when walking on the road. Ingrid again asserted herself, announcing that the hike needed to end. We reverted back to traveling cross country, although it only ended up being a few hundred yards over to the main road, and from there we were practically in the parking lot where we began the trip.

We stopped through a small coffee shop on the way back to Junction, getting some coffee and enjoying the views. It really is amazing how much more pleasant winter can seem when you drape it over a giant pile of rocks!

After that, home, bed, getting up waaay too early, driving half-way across the state, a plane ride to KC, driving half-way across two other states, and we were back in Des Moines refreshed and ready for a new day at work! 🙂

-Jordan

Colorado 2011 Part Two

Posted on by Jordan

Hey look! An actual picture! Part two actually starts a little before that picture was taken, but it’s a fun place to start.

We made it to the Copper mountain ski area with a few hours of sunlight left, and time to explore before the kick-off dinner for the conference. It was sunny and clear, making the day one of those amazing winter days you seem to only get in the mountains. It should have felt cold, but it wasn’t bad walking around with a coat on. Sunshine is an amazing thing, I know we technically get sunny days during February in Des Moines, but they just don’t have the same kick.

After a beautifully scenic walk around the little resort area, we headed into the ski shop to pickup our rental equipment. About two minutes into that process, Heather had what she continues to describe as the most shocking revelation of the entire trip. I had frequently said things like “Heather and I are going skiing next week.”  Internally I knew I meant “although I will be using a snowboard” but apparently I didn’t communicate that with Heather. To say she was surprised would be an understatement! She quickly adapted to the news, but did insist that I add a helmet to my rental load-out. As a side note, the helmet was a good option, and I would recommend it to everyone.

The next morning, Heather had to be at meetings really early, although she did get a great breakfast out of the deal. I slept in as best I could (this trip was rough for me… as you can no doubt tell) and then wandered over to a little coffee shop for a “waffle” and some coffee. I put quotes around waffle, because they were running some sort of pastry dough through a waffle iron, and selling it as a waffle. Not that I am complaining really, I just don’t know if that counts as a waffle. Anyway, the coffee was good and the pastry thing was good too once I accepted it’s true nature. It was kind of strange to just be hanging out waiting for things to start around the base camp area. Every other skiing experience I have had had started a long ways from the actual ski area, so mornings were rushing to get everyone and 50 cubic yards of winter-sport related junk loaded into a car and over to the mountain. I don’t know if it’s worth it really, but if you have to stay at the base of the mountain expect a much more peaceful morning.

Eventually Heather got out of her meetings and the lifts opened up. We started to gear up to get in line, and found that Heather was having issues with her boots snapping into her skis. She graciously encouraged me to make a run without her while she went back into the ski shop to figure out what the issue was.

I know it wasn’t her intention to make me look awesome by the time we skied together, but it was the end result. I hadn’t been on a snowboard for… about five years, so I was a little bit rusty. On the bright side, Copper Mountain is huge. By the time I made it back down to the base-camp area, all those old reflexes were starting to work again. You might think this would make it harder for us to stay together if I was starting to ramp up to competency, and Heather still needed to warm up, but really I find it harder to take it slow than run at a moderately fast speed, so the warm-up run was beneficial in a number of ways.

After our initial run, we figured out a system for skiing “together.” We would ride the lift up, then split up at the first fork in the trail. We would each continue at a comfortable pace, I would ride the lift up, ski down again, and then Heather would be ready to ride the lift up with me again.

Beyond that, there are only a few other skiing related notes left to mention. First that Heather really did enjoy it after a little practice, a fact that made me glad. Before our first run, I think we both were a little concerned that she would hate it, and it would just take a lot of fun out of the trip. I don’t know if Heather liked it enough to put it on top of her ideal vacation destinations for next year, but she at least enjoyed it. The second note is that I had one truly bad crash (and only one) the end result of that is a rib that still hurts when I laugh two weeks later.

Off the mountain, we just enjoyed getting to spend more time together than we would during a normal week. Our room ceased to be a quiet little hangout on the second day, when our neighbors arrived. We quickly learned that the walls were paper-thin, and that our neighbors consisted of a “guys trip” intent on cutting loose for the weekend. Ideas like “inside-voices” were not something they brought with them for this trip. Lucky for us, skiing wore them out as much as it did us, so everybody spend most of the time indoors sleeping.

That covers most of what is noteworthy about the second portion of our trip.

-Jordan

Colorado 2011, Part One

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I seem to be on a trend of going cold places in winter.

I don’t quite know how that happened, except to say that we aren’t rally devoted to the idea… it just happens.

Our trip to Colorado at the end of February was initiated by a work conference Heather had been asked to attend.

So, let me back up for a second… You remember the speeds we each used when cross-country skiing? I know it’s a single data point, but it stands as a clue that Heather might not be as interested in high-speed winter sports as I am. That being said, when there was a trip to a ski resort in the middle of winter, I was kind of excited. Heather thought it would be fun… in her defense though, she had to work part of the time, so I had a lot of reasons to be more excited than she was.

Anyway, exceptions aside, we were both ready for a few days away from work.

Heather actually managed a few more days away than I did, heading down to KC two days early to visit some friends and then spend an entire day babysitting our one and most favorite nephew ! By all accounts it was fun, but more work than she expected! Who knew an 11-month-old could be so much work?

We boarded a plane from KC to Denver bright and early Wednesday morning. Thanks to the time-zone weirdness, we landed almost the same time we took off. Then off to the rental place. Apparently rental cars are in high demand leaving from the Denver airport on a Wednesday, not a problem though, we have a reservation! Only, the lady at the desk told us our reservation didn’t exist.

This is the point where you would expect the customer service person, the closest thing to a rental car expert we can find in the moment, to spring into action, providing us options and ultimately a car.

We got a blank stare. With some prompting we were assured that there “aren’t any cars left… at any of the companies here” when asked “you mean there isn’t a single car left to rent in Denver?” she said yes. The next question was just “so… what do we do now?” She pointed us to the shuttle-bus stop, and said that we could get back to the airport on the next bus, “maybe one of the other companies has a car I don’t know about”

Back at the airport, we power-walked our way to the only rental-car booth with a huge “cars available” sign sill showing. (it really felt like we should run… but one doesn’t want to stand out in the airport, who knows what they might mistake you for.) Let me tell you about the booth, unlike the other booths, this one lacked a few key items: name we had ever heard of before, a computer, a phone, any furnishings beyond the counter and a chair for the solitary staff member working the booth. The guy assured us “don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of ‘us’ ether, before I got this job… but I guess ‘we’ are big out west” He then assured us they had cars left, talked from memory about the price and options we would have, then wrote our desired car on a scrap of paper. Scrap of paper in hand, we headed out to yet another bus stop. After watching every other rental-car bus pass about three times, our bus finally arrived. The ride was normal, until we got to the ‘T’ intersection leading where you would turn to go into the rental car row. Our bus turned left instead of right. About a mile in the wrong direction and we were in the parking lot for a mostly vacant industrial strip. There were rental cars though! Dirty rental cars, but rental cars. Inside we learned that they were having problems with the car wash, but not to worry the car would be fine. A few sheets of paperwork later, and we had some keys! The instructions were to: “just wander around pushing the panic button on the remote, you will find it eventually”

Low and behold, that tactic worked perfectly, despite it’s lack of professionalism. Once in our car, we found that it had less than 300 miles on it, and was wonderfully clean– on the inside. After that, we stopped for a quick and uneventful lunch and headed up to check into the place we were staying.

hmm sorry I didn’t make it to a part where we have a picture, but the wall-of-text is sufficient to make me think I should close part 1.

-Jordan

Home!

Posted on by Jordan

Hey there!

So, Heather and I have been out of town for about a week now. We got back last night, and are still trying to unpack.

I always regret posting anything implying I have a better post coming soon… but that is what I have to do tonight.

We had a lot of fun, and took a few pictures, I really want to bring some of that into the blog, but I don’t think it is going to happen tonight.

So… ah, stay tuned I guess 🙂

-Jordan

Winter Camping

Posted on by Jordan

The past weekend saw Heather and I apart for a large amount of the time.

I went camping with the Boy Scouts, and Heather had a movie night with some girls from church.

In the days leading up to the weekend, Heather was making phone calls and sending e-mails to entice people to come over. I meanwhile, was rapidly eating through my Christmas gift money buying cold weather camping gear. The premiere purchase:

A sleeping bag rated down to ZERO degrees! The picture isn’t from the camping trip, but Heather thought she should record my testing the bag for proper fit.

By all accounts, Heather’s movie night went really well… and the camping was kind of cold 🙂

Actually, it wasn’t so bad. We had access to cabins, so weren’t out in the cold the entire time, nor did I really need the ultra cold weather bag when we were sleeping inside. I am prepared now though!

It was my first trip camping with the troop as an adult leader. The trip back in November was a training event and I didn’t camp with the troop.  I had fun, but it was challenging to know exactly how much guidance I should be giving.  Doubly hard when many of my meals were being cooked by 14 year-old boys. In the end though, I think the boys had fun, and hopefully learned a few things.

I had fun, and learned a lot, even if the boys didn’t! I don’t know if I can quantify it as easily as saying “I learned square-lashing” but I am sure I will be better at working with the troop next time we go out.

-Jordan

And We Are Back!

Posted on by Jordan

Hey there!

Heather and I survived the Christmas build-up, Christmas travel, and even the post-Christmas blah that seems to hit once you get back to your apartment after seeing all your family.

Of course, all that happened over a week ago… It seems my posting has been delayed. I think I have been feeling overwhelmed by the idea of trying to recap the holidays in a way that somehow does justice to them, and also isn’t too boring to read.

After procrastinating this task for some time now, I realized it would be best to just put out this token post and then get back to whatever I felt like writing. Feeling obligated to post doesn’t do much for my frequency of posts.

So Christmas was fun! Heather and I spent the time with my family, getting to see quite a few members of the extended family on both my mom and dad’s side.

I want to say a lot more about how much we enjoyed getting to spend time with everyone, and what we did, but this will have to suffice rather than writing up a 5000 word post.

-Jordan