About That Bike Ride

Posted on by Jordan

Well…

We did make it back, but there were consequences:

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

We didn’t get left as early as I had hoped, maybe hit the trail by 10:30. The path I was planning to take, also known as the actual bike path, was closed about half way down town due to the flooding that has been plaguing Des Moines for the past few weeks. Our detour involved a killer hill, but we eventually found our way to Grand, that has a straight shot to down town.

The farmers market was starting to wind down by the time we made it there. Lucky for us Heather’s favorite stand still had a few of the whole wheat croissants she loves! We bought some sandwiches to finish out our lunch, and headed for some shade to relax for a while. At that point we were starting to feel like we had gotten some exercise, but the ride home didn’t sound so bad. I think we were both starting to look a little pink, but each chose denial rather than admitting that two fair skinned adults headed into a day out in the sun without stopping to put on sunscreen.

After lunch we headed for home. As it turns out, the 11 miles we rode in were all still there waiting for us on the way home. Also, that gentile breeze we had been enjoying was blowing into our faces now. I may be mistaken, but I think there is a noticeable climb from the banks of the river to our apartment too. The sun started to feel hotter too, and given that it was now about 1:30pm, it may actually have been hotter. What I am trying to say is that the ride home was no fun! It took us nearly two hours to get all the way back to the apartment. Heather and I are starting to think that her co-workers who described this as “an easy ride” may be trying to get rid of her.

Once home, we were spent. Our plans for the afternoon went from wildly ambitious to lying under the fan and drinking water. As we reflected on the ride, we realized that this does highlight a pattern we seem to be establishing. We don’t go on long walks, so we did a half-marathon, we don’t go on long bike rides, so we decided to ride the entire way across Des Moines. You would think we would be learning about training, and working up to things, but so far no. 🙂

-Jordan

A Wedding, Fireworks, And Demolition

Posted on by Jordan

It has been a while hasn’t it?

What have Heather and I been up to?

Well, we went to her cousin Kiley’s wedding. Perhaps most notable in the fact that it will probably be the last wedding ever to hold it’s reception at Dana College. The news of the college going into bankruptcy came out a few day before the wedding, but somehow arrangements were made to allow the reception to proceed as planned.

Outside of that excitement, it was really nice wedding… I just don’t feel like I know what to say about it. Heather has a big family, and the majority of them came for the wedding. I got to meet a few family members for the first time while I was there! I am beginning to realize that easily my favorite aspect of weddings is the opportunity to interact with the other guests. Everyone has such tight schedules that chances to see some friends or family may only come up at major events like weddings. Not to discount seeing the bride and groom, but if my wedding is anything to go by, so much gets packed into those few hours, it’s all a blur. A warm fuzzy blur, but still a blur.

After the wedding, and after staying up far too late talking to family at the farm in Blair, Heather and I drove to Kearney to see my side of the family. Quite a few of my cousins were there, and they all brought fireworks! To be honest I was a little disappointed that things worked out this year such that Heather and I were unable to attend a professional fireworks show. I am not sure getting to supervise a handful of my younger cousins as they set off an arsenal of patriotic spirit is a full consolation, but it’s something. We have managed a perfect safety record so far, although towards the end of the “show” a lot of effort was put into trying to simultaneously launch two and three things at once. I was sure  that would eventually lead to problems, but we ran out of fireworks before we ran out of luck I guess. 🙂

Moving on to this weekend (still in progress) Heather and I finished work Friday without any special plans for the evening. We had attempted to set something up with a few couples from church, but no concrete plans ever finalized. When we got home, Heather had an e-mail from another couple we know through church, inviting us to come help them demo the house they just bought. Maybe your thinking, “hey, that doesn’t sound like a great way to spend a Friday night” well, maybe you don’t live in an apartment and type on a computer for a living? I am not sure I would want to do that every night, but I truly enjoyed getting to swing a hammer for a few hours! Beyond that factor, it is just nice to feel like we have some friends we can hang out with here in town.

Looking to the future, Heather and I plan to ride our bikes all the way down town this morning to visit the farmers market. It will easily be our longest ride this summer, although not long by most bike enthusiasts standards I suppose. We have discovered that Des Moines seems to have spent a significant amount developing an impressive trail network throughout the metro area, but they have not spent much putting together an online map for said trails. A few low-res .gif files are they best they have to offer, and what they have are years out of date. The adventure may end up being if we can find the trail everyone tells us we should have seen on our last ride.

-Jordan

Changes!

Posted on by Jordan

I mentioned a few weeks back that I had worked on cloning the existing front page, and supporting pages, to an archive area.

Today I finally sat down and put together a new main page.

It isn’t anything fancy really, but I am kind of proud of it considering I coded it up from scratch.

The old wedding page was a free template I hacked up to meet our needs. Not to say that there is anything wrong with hacking up templates and tutorials, but I still wanted to force myself to approach the new site like a programmer. I didn’t use any canned code, and I didn’t use any graphical tools, just Eclipse and an FTP client.

Heather thinks it needs a picture of us on it…. expect some changes down the road I suppose 🙂

-Jordan

Sunset Beach

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I went to North Carolina with her parents the second week of June. The place we stayed is apparently kind of a tradition for Heather’s family, called “Sunset Beach.” The area is actually an island of sorts, being cut off from the mainland by the “Intracoastal Waterway“, meaning that you have to wait for a little draw bridge to be closed to make it out to the island. They are in the process of building a much more substantial bridge, but for now the access remains pretty rustic.

Once we got to the beach house, we had an ambitious week of not doing all that much planned! Besides walking on the beach, and playing in the waves, I managed to squeeze in a little reading.

I read (in chronological order):

  • The Lost Fleet Book 5
  • The Millionaire Next Door
  • The Lost Fleet Book 6
  • Altered Carbon
  • Black Hawk Down

I will probably do some sort of a micro review of most of these, but the short version is that I enjoyed them all. Heather spent quite a bit of time reading too, we stuck together in the shaded deck of the beach house while most people were down on the beach. She didn’t manage quite as many books as me, I think in part because she was constantly distracted by our little nephew Holden.

By the end of the week, Heather and Holden were getting along well enough that she could hold him for extended periods of time without him crying. Everyone at the house enjoyed having him there, babies just provide so much entertainment it seems.

Mid way through the week, it was declared “Family Golf Day” (another tradition I guess) and the majority of us went to one of the many golf courses in the area. Now, Heather and I have been married for 13 months, so you might think we would have found the time to go golfing, or at least go to a driving range so she could show me how to swing a club. Somehow though, we hadn’t. I was more than a little concerned going into the even that I would be woefully outclassed, but I quickly discovered two things: I am at least competent at golf, and the “Family Golf Day” includes plenty of people who aren’t all that good. I think it helped that Heather and a few of the people on our team were providing great coaching, but I really enjoyed playing, and felt that I did ok!

The only really eventful part of our trip was the return. We started out early Saturday morning driving back to Charlotte NC, where our flight would then layover in Detroit, and eventually take us to Kansas City. We were hoping to then push through and drive back to Des Moines that night giving us an entire day home before going back to work.

Thing started off on a sort of bad foot when we were following the lead car through back-roads so small they didn’t even have lines painted on them. We assumed they had done some research on the map and had found some sort of optimal route to beat all the traffic going home from the beach. It was a scenic drive, if somewhat unnerving. We later found out they had mis-configured their GPS to pick routes with “no traffic” and really hadn’t meant to take us off the beaten path.

Once we got to the airport, we found out that our flight was at least two hours delayed, and possibly more thanks to major problems in Atlanta. This was going to be a problem as our connecting flight to KC was going to leave before we even boarded our plane to Detroit! The ticket agent managed to book us on the first flight to KC the next morning from Detroit, while still preserving our tickets on the flight we were destined to miss that day. Apparently that was bending the rules fairly aggressively. The rest of the day went almost exactly like it looked like it was going to, we boarded our flight about 2.5 hours later than we were suppose to, missing our flight to KC. An hour or so in line at the Delta counter in Detroit and we had two meal vouchers each and a hotel voucher for each couple in our group. Six dollars will not buy a real extravagant dinner, but we were more than ready to just grab something to eat quick and go to bed.

The next morning we got to the airport bright and early, got checked in and made our way to the gate. Things were looking good, no delays! Then the gate agent started paging that the flight was over-booked, and would anyone be willing to wait for a later flight. We were really concerned that maybe we weren’t going to get home after all. 40 minutes of this paging with nobody willing to give up their seat, and a woman who hadn’t been quite so early to the gate discovered that she didn’t have a seat on the plane. She went into total melt-down… It wasn’t pretty, I haven’t ever seen anything like it. After a few minutes Heather’s sister felt merciful, and offered to give up her seat. It turned out that she would not be able to get on the plane unless three people gave up their seats. After a few minutes of talking Kelsey, Jim and Pam all decided to give up their seats.

We boarded right on time and made it to Kansas City with no problems, but if you ask me there was a real air of “escaping in the nick of time” getting on the flight. The three people who stayed behind, managed to get on the noon flight (two hours behind ours) and made it with no other complications.

Despite the… adventure getting back, the vacation was very relaxing. Both Heather and I enjoyed the time to just slow down for a while.

-Jordan

Home!

Posted on by Jordan

As I write this, I am happy to announce that I don’t have anywhere to be this weekend!

It’s only a partial victory;  Heather is, as we speak, returning from a wedding shower in Nebraska.

Still, I think it is a noteworthy occasion.

The last two weekends were spend in North Carolina, and I have plans to get a blog post up about that… Although honestly, not that much happened.

Should make for a nice short post then, right? 🙂 The only downside is I really didn’t take any pictures ether so I can’t even pad the post.

In the meantime, I am just going to enjoy being in town.

-Jordan

Website Work!

Posted on by Jordan

I think I mentioned quite a while back that I was hoping to get a chance to revamp the main heatherandjordan.com site.

I have finally completed step one of that process by setting up an archive of the site in its current state. Not the most exciting thing ever, but I wanted to preserve the old wedding site. Anyone wanting to look is free to check it out here, but I should warn you that, unless something is broken, it will look exactly like the main site. I guess if you find a broken page let me know… I know the RSVP page is a little goofy, but I didn’t want to bother re-writing the php right now.

Sadly that was the easy part, as now I have to figure out what to replace the wedding pages with on the homepage. Hopefully I can come up with something soon.

-Jordan

Two Weddings And Some Pancakes

Posted on by Jordan

Can you guess where our first wedding of the 2010 Memorial Day Weekend was?

Heather and I drove to Kansas City Friday night, and then carpooled with her parents down to St Luis for the wedding of a family friend. It worked out really well to be able to team drive that leg of the trip. Being able to spend that much more time with our new nephew, during the car ride, was certainly another advantage from Heather’s point of view. The wedding itself was… elegant I think is the best word, the chapel on the Washington University campus, in keeping with the rest of the campus, is just beautiful. Even the newer buildings are designed to project a sort of old stone aesthetic. I suppose I should talk about the actual wedding but I really never know what to say…

We did discover that I don’t remember portions of my own wedding. Heather didn’t find it amusing that I couldn’t remember if we had done unity candles in ours or not. In my opinion there are more memories generated from that day than in most months, so I think I should get some slack when it comes to candles.

So back to the wedding, there was a large block of time between when the wedding ended and the reception began. Large enough we decided we could go back to the hotel, change, and catch the train down to the arch. I can without hesitation say that the arch was the highlight of St Luis for me. I think Heather might be more inclined to mention Holden (The nephew in question… can’t remember if I have used his name before, I was going to leave it out but it’s just cumbersome to leave out all other names). I don’t know if he would feel the same way though. Once I get some time to edit together some more video I can demonstrate in a much more visual way his reactions, but for now lets just say he isn’t sold on the Aunt Heather idea quite yet.

The next day we loaded early up and drove back Kansas City. Being able to do a sort of layover in KC was a lifesaver to try and breakup the drive. Heather took full advantage of the situation, both taking a nap on the drive, and a nap at the house. It had been a kind of late night the night before, so I took advantage of the napping opportunity too!

Then it was on to Lincoln, where my cousin Josh was getting married. They had opted for a very small wedding, and then invited everyone to the reception, so we didn’t actually go to that wedding. The reception was really fun though. Heather and I have been married for well over a year now, and it was the first time she got to meet a number of the cousins on my Dad’s side. I have to admit that I get a little overwhelmed in situations like that. You really want to seize the opportunity to talk to all these people that you haven’t seen in years, but there are so many of them, and then add in the fact I want to make sure and introduce my wife to everyone… and well I think we did ok, but I wish we could have talked to everyone a little more. A quick note about the venue: The reception was held at a country club that had two noteworthy attributes. One, it was really cool. They had done a rather good job of the giant lodge build, I guess you could say it was sort of rustic and classy all at the same time. We will pretend not to notice the fact that we were not anywhere near where trees like they used grow, nor does Lincoln have native stone like they were using. 😉 The second point is that it was the lodge for the home course of the UNL golf team, something that featured prominently in Heather’s life shortly before she met me. It was fun to get to see a place that she had spent so much time!

We stayed as late as we possibly could at the reception, but had to leave before we were completely wiped out as we were spending the night with Heather’s aunt Amy in Omaha. We rolled in a little after midnight, actually beating her home as they were off doing some baseball tournament in KC that day, crawled into bed and passed out. The next morning we awoke to the smell of bacon! Amy had mentioned something about doing a pancake breakfast, but neither Heather nor I had thought about it much. When we walked downstairs Amy was nearly done frying what must have been ten pounds of bacon! After recovering from the initial shock, Heather spoke up to suggest that we probably weren’t going to eat that much bacon. It was at that point that we discovered we had inadvertently invited ourselves to a breakfast party. Apparently the graduation reception for Heather’s cousin Jarred had been in the AM, and breakfast themed. As is often the case with receptions, they had substantial leftovers. The solution Amy had was to invite about 30 people over for breakfast on Memorial Day! Heather and I certainly enjoyed getting bacon and pancakes for breakfast, as well as getting to spend a few minutes talking to so many people from the area.

Eventually we had to say our goodbyes, and headed back to Des Moines. We made it home in time to do a few loads of laundry and get ready for another week of work! (albeit a short week)

-Jordan

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I really had planned to stick a few more in, but I just ran out of time… this ended up being a substantial post even without embedding pictures! If you click on the picture at the top of this post, you should to to the gallery and be able to find a few more pictures from the trip!

A Few Links

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I just wrapped up a HUGE weekend, and I can’t wait to post about it, but I just don’t have the time / energy right now!

Teaser: we drove over 1000 miles

In the mean time, add one of these to my Christmas list: Quadrotor UAV

Also I wanted to share a cool little application I found out about as of late, called Launchy

It pops up a launcher when I press “ALT + Space” that I can start typing the name of the application I want into and then within a few letters I generally have the program I want right there ready to go. It is so much faster than picking through three or four levels of a cascade menu in Windows!

For example, I wanted the calculator,

Using the mouse it is:

Take right hand off keyboard, find mouse, click: Start->All Programs->Accessories->Calculator

Using Launchy:

Press “ALT + Space”, type “cal” hit enter

As far as I know it works fine in Vista and Win7, but I am still living in the XP era here… I guess I could load it on Heather’s laptop… maybe I will update this later.

Stay tuned, hopefully I will have the real weekend post up shortly 🙂

-Jordan

Find A Mechanic

Posted on by Jordan

Not so long ago the front left brakes on my Escape started making a sort of rumble when slowing down. The sound started getting progressively worse, adding an air of anxiety to counteract my normal procrastination when it comes to dealing with the hassle of trying to figure out where to take my car.

Heather and I had gotten by using the local “quick oil change” specialty shops thus far in Des Moines. I don’t really like having them change my oil, but the convenience of being able to get in when it woks for me, without having to call way in advance is nice. It doesn’t hurt that they all happen to be fairly cheap too.

I really didn’t want those guys looking at my breaks though.

So I figured I would just go to a dealership. Not the cheapest option, but you figure they will at least do a top-quality job. I started looking online for Ford dealerships, and wasn’t finding too much that was close. They are in Des Moines, but were all going to be a huge trip out of our way, and not practical on the way to or from work. Did I mention how quickly that rumble was getting worse? So I clicked on the sort of close one in Google Maps, and as often happens, the map pop-up bubble had a customer review on it. It was overwhelmingly negative, not really what I wanted to read right then.

Seeing the review got me thinking though, I had been talking to someone who moved recently, and he mentioned how helpful the “Car Talk” website had been in tracking down a good local mechanic. Going to the Car Talk website then wondering around until I realized the “Actual Car Info” tab had “Mechanic Files” that then lead to “Find A Mechanic.” It turns out they have lots of reviews for the Des Moines area!

After a little reading, it looked like West Side Auto Pros was a good option, and they were not too far from Heather’s office. I called first thing the next morning, and when the guy heard I had break problems he shuffled things so they could for sure get me in that day! I was able to leave my car, drop Heather at her office and make it to work without really even being late. I have to say seeing the big signs for “AAA Certified,” “NAPA <something or other>, and “Voted Best In Iowa” was reassuring, as well as the really sharp looking facility.

They were not cheap… not to say I think I got over-charged, but I didn’t walk away from the transaction saying “wow they came in way lower than I expected.” I have to say though, it’s like driving a new car… you wouldn’t think breaks make that big of a deal, but it feels so smooth now.

I haven’t actually gotten around to adding my review to the Car Talk site, but I wanted to share the fact that it really helped in picking a shop to use. Definitely something to keep in mind if you are trying to find a good local shop.

-Jordan