This was just too amazing not to share.
Be sure to watch this in full screen!
Plains Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.
Hat tip: GaS
Sunday Afternoon Bike Ride
While it is Sunday afternoon as I write this, the ride happened last weekend.
Heather had some coworkers who were excited to try out some of the more outlying trails around Des Moines. A plan was put together to have everyone meet at one of the trail heads near “the railroad trestle”
Interesting note about the trail head, it features a bar build specifically to cater to the people using the bike trail. It was also next to a s dormant grain elevator, not too shocking given the trail runs down a recently decommissioned rail line.
Speaking of the rail line, let me tell you, if you want a nice easy bike ride the rail right of way is hard to beat.
We had a group of roughly ten people, and rode together down the trail. Nobody seemed to know exactly how far we were going, except to say that it wasn’t that far. Distance wise, we may have covered more miles than everyone considers “not that far,” but as I mentioned before it was a really easy ride so I don’t think anybody expected to arrive at the bridge quite when we did.
I do quibble with the “trestle” description, but it clearly was a rail bridge, and it does provide a rather unique thing to ride over on a bike. We stayed and enjoyed the view for a few minutes, then headed on down the trail to the next town. I don’t quite know why, but I suppose it made for a more complete ride that way?
Before I forget, here is a map of the bridge, if you are interested as to what part of the lake it covers.
After refilling our water bottles at the nice little pit-stop location waiting for us in Woodward, we headed back to the trail head. We completed the day with a quick stop at the Flat Tire bar I mentioned before and headed home.
This makes our third summer owning bikes, and I have to say they have continued to provide a really great way for Heather and I to get outside together. Tangentially I realized that google maps now lets me show bike trails. It appears that there are a few gaps in the trail network between our house and that bridge… Not to mention the significant distance involved 🙂
I feel like this may not have been the most interesting post ever, but it at least serves the purpose of recording a unique day for us in the summer of 2011 🙂
-Jordan
Strawbery Crepes
I don’t get many chances to make deserts. The following is a report from a weekend project I undertook while Heather was out of town.
Typically if I make deserts, Heather is out of town… same goes for bacon come to think of it.
In tying to find the recipe I used so I could write up this post I found the article that had gotten me interested in crepes in the first place here: Chicken-Broccoli Crepes. I probably could feed that to Heather, but somehow between the time I got it into my head that I wanted to try making crepes and the time I actually tried it, the healthy filling part had faded leaving me searching for something to fill them with.
I ended up settling on vanilla pudding and strawberries.
Before we get to the filling though, the actual crepes:
The actual recipe isn’t too important, all crepe recipes seem to be about the same, just flour oil and egg mixed aggressively and left to sit for a while in the fridge before cooking.
Speaking of cooking, I was worried about this part, because it has taken me a long time to get to the point where I make a passable pancake and these seemed like they would be less forgiving. As it turns out though, they are easier. Or at least, I found them to be virtually impossible to mess up.
After I made the crepes, it was just a matter of spooning in some pudding and loading the sliced strawberries. In hindsight I wish I would have made the ‘pie filling’ version of the recipe on the instant pudding box because what I made turned out to be too runny to really produce an attractive crepe.
I have been trying to work more on presentation, as that seems to be an area where you can take the same recipe but have it seem way better, just by having the finished result look amazing. I don’t know if I really go there with these… but I gave it a shot:
In a possibly related note, I have found that despite the fact that it sounds acceptable, Strawberry-vanilla crepes do not make a great Saturday lunch… or maybe I am just getting old. I suppose next time I should make up main course filling too, then fill half with something more substantial than pudding 🙂
-Jordan
Memorial Day 2011
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
An Old Knot, Revisited
It turns out I tie my shoes wrong.
You would think that somebody who, was an Eagle Scout, and is currently working with Scouts would know the basic knots. That’s what I thought anyway.
Then I saw this
The first thing that hit me was “Hey, I have a pair of running shoes with round nylon laces that will not stay tied!” So, I tried the ‘proper’ way to tie the knot for the past two weeks. I can tell you the strong form of the basic shoelace knot is MUCH better than the one I was using before.
I had read about, and sometimes used a technique where you tie the double-knot inverted. That works really well, probably better than the inverted basic bow demonstrated in the video. The downside to that is that the second knot works against the first to tighten each other and the end result can be very hard to untie. For that reason I almost never use the inverted double knot, and now… I don’t have any reason to!
Even after a week I have to stop and think about it every time I tie my shoes, but it is starting to come naturally, so maybe in a few weeks I won’t even know I am doing it!
-Jordan
Laminate!
I really need to catch up to current events, but I didn’t want to skip this one…
So a few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to help a friend from church install laminate flooring. We were helping out because another member of the church was dealing with life-threatening asthma in one of his children, and needed to get all the carpet out of the house ASAP.
None of that really matters, except to set the scene for why I was standing outside a house somewhere in Des Moines at 8AM on a Saturday, getting ready to work with a carpenter to install some flooring. The only detail is that neither myself, the home owner, or the guy who brought the majority of the tools had ever done laminate flooring before.
It turns out it isn’t that hard, although I am sure it helps when you are under the guidance of somebody who does quality woodwork on a daily basis. While not being really hard, it was time consuming. We finished two rooms a hallway and a staircase over the course of a day, but it took roughly thirteen hours to finish.
I would put a picture in here, except the only picture I took was of the miter saw, and I am guessing you have seen one of those before.
A few takeaways from the day:
- Laminate flooring is surprisingly straight forward to install.
- There are some specialized tools just for sliding the slats around with that are lifesavers
- Having a good miter saw, and a good table saw also made a huge difference
- (Sub note) I don’t work with those kinds of tools every day, but I have enough to be comfortable with them… watching the homeowner operate a saw was at times heart-stoppingly alarming
- Estimating the needed materials to finish a job is hard
- And… A final note (because this was written after the fact) It only took four days for my legs and back to loosen up enough so I could walk normally 🙂
Helping out was great for a number of reasons, not the least of which was learning how to install the flooring, but in the end it was fun just to get to swing a hammer and run a saw… Not something I manage too often these days.
-Jordan
Scones
As you probably heard about somewhere along the way, there was a wedding a few weeks ago involving British royalty.
It wasn’t a significant event in my world,but the office Heather works in had a different take. They claim it was because of the recent addition of a Canadian to their ranks, what with the whole “Canada still recognizes the Queen” bit. I can’t say I completely buy that. I talk to Canadians every day, and while they may have been a tiny bit more aware of the event than I was, they did not demonstrate the boundless enthusiasm for it that my wife did.
Whatever their reason, Heather’s office decided to have a sort of party on the day of (because it happened on a Friday morning for those of us in CST). Outside the world of TV shows about offices, “office party” just means “bring food” and not much else. Normally I should say… Apparently they designated a couple to dress up as the bride and groom…. Suffice to say they went above and beyond with their plans for the royal wedding.
And this is where I come in. I have actually made scones a few times before, but I don’t think they ever made the blog. They fall into that grey area between sweets and bread, and I have periodically tried them as a way to share a desert with Heather. I have even gone so far as to try a savory scone recipe although it wound up being kind of a tough sell.
Heather apparently remembered the first batch of scones I made well enough to think they would be a great addition to an English themed party at work.
Basically I doubled this recipe, except without the raw sugar crystals on top. Using dried cranberries doesn’t add much sugar so the end result is Heather approved.
Doubling the recipe did involve a distressingly large portion of butter, but I can’t complain about the results. The reports that came back from Heather’s office were equally positive, so I don’t think anybody really missed the sugar sprinkles on top. Although, speaking of the butter, because the method I used to cut each scone involved patting out a circle and splitting it into eights, it made calculating the butter per scone distressingly easy. There ended up being three-fourths of a tablespoon of butter in each scone. It’s better when you are just vaguely aware that there is “a lot” of butter in something I suppose.
One last comment about scones, and then I will stop before this gets any more scatter brained… Scones aren’t very hard. If you can make biscuits from scratch using a recipe, you can make scones. Just you know… use a scone recipe.
-Jordan
Softball 2011
The calendar says it isn’t summer yet. Actually, having written that… the weather out side says it isn’t summer yet ether.
All the same, Heather and I are both on Softball teams. We are already into week two, seems like I was scraping ice off my windows just yesterday.
We aren’t on the same team, both our respective peer-groups at work wanted to put together teams, and the nights picked for each didn’t work for each other.
The team I play on isn’t coed, so Heather wouldn’t have been able to participate anyway. That might be for the best, we renamed the team this year (this being our second season as a team). I snapped this picture when I picked up my team shirt:
Last season we had a perfect 0-13 record.You might think we had nothing left to aspire to this season, but in our first game we surprised even ourselves by loosing by a record 15 points! We look forward to a great season this year!
Heather was unable to attend her first game, but I hear the team won, so clearly they are on a whole different level.
While Heather and I are not star players, being on a city league has become a sort of summer tradition for us.
And if you know anybody who helps organize the Des Moines men’s slow pitch league, tell them they need a less competitive bracket.
-Jordan
Phone Review
It isn’t like we haven’t done things worthy of blogging about, but I decided I wanted to write down my thoughts on the new phone while it was still kind of new.
First off, what is it: Motorola Droid 2
Touch screen, with a slide-out physical keyboard.
More raw processing power than the computer I so proudly took with me to college 10 years ago. Has more storage space too.
As a phone it works as well as any other phone I have owned.
Beyond being a phone it is little portable computer, complete with internet, GPS and a camera. This let’s it do a lot of things, that don’t seem particularly novel to me right now, but would have been mind-blowing just a few years ago.
Speaking of the GPS and camera… The camera is quite good. Not quite as responsive as my point-and-shoot, making quick snapshots impossible. On the other hand, the quality is more or less on-par, and I always have it with me. Having a camera with you is one of the first steps to actually taking pictures! The GPS is more than functional, but in most applications requires that the screen be lit at the same time you are using it. Running both the screen and the GPS eats the battery in a shockingly short amount of time. This isn’t a limitation when using the phone as an in-car navigation device, as long as I packed a charger, but it means the phone isn’t going to provide constant aid in navigating an all-day hike. To put it bluntly I would guess the phone life when displaying a map and my position is between two and three hours. I did however discover in rare applications when you don’t need the screen on and only want passive monitoring the battery life is much better! Running a tracking tool for recording bike rides only drained about 10% of the battery life in around an hour and a half.
Hmm, so I didn’t even manage to describe all the features without some editorializing… something I have been fighting every time I thought about writing this post.
The problem is, I feel like I need to be using the phone all the time to make it seem like it’s worth it. I know that isn’t really true… but it’s kind of the thought floating around behind anything else I think about the phone. I imagine that will fade, and I can already tell you it would be hard to go back to my old phone (even if it were still working properly)
TL;DR: Great phone, can’t say I *needed* it, but it’s really useful now that I have it.
-Jordan
Camping
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!
Nelsons 