Zombies? And Other News

Posted on by Jordan

This past week was noteworthy in a few ways, but the headline event was the RRV “Zombaree ” that my Scout Troop attended.

I will continue with my policy of avoiding posting pictures of random other people on here, but you can find pictures of myself and the troop scattered in here, and a deep link to our troop and the bridge that they made here (hopefully that works)

The guys had a lot of fun at the camporee, ahem, zombaree although one could be forgiven if they forgot it was a zombie event… there was a notable lack of zombies. The weather couldn’t have been better and it’s hard to complain about camping on a perfect fall weekend.

I got to pretend to be scoutmaster for the camp out due to a parental shuffle that left the actual scoutmaster at home. I was luck in that the majority of the weekend was being run by the district guys, and we had enough of the veteran scouts in our troop to comfortably lead the troop without too much input.

It’s surprisingly hard to find that balance between letting a bad plan flounder and taking over when your job is very much not to take over. I can’t say that I did a great job of it, but I probably ended up on the side of letting things fall apart instead of jumping in, so maybe it was a change for the guys.

Other notables:

Heather is 28 weeks along! This is apparently a milestone in that if the baby were to come today, odds would be in her favor to make it. Obviously we would like her to wait another three months, but it’s nice to know shes making progress in there 🙂

Also, 28 weeks is when the mom-to-be gets to drink… “glucose-up”… or some near literally named sugar concoction in order to determine if she has pregnancy induced diabetes. We had lots of good news there, Heather isn’t diabetic, and she survived the sugar drink without a massively upset tummy (A frequent problem with her and sugar)

So to recap, no close encounters with the undead, nice weekend, healthy baby, healthy mom.

I think it’s been a good week!

-Jordan

Camping

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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!

Winter Camping

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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

Camp Out Debreif, Physical Report

Posted on by Jordan

I haven’t even started writing this post and I am already afraid I am going to beat scouting to death as a blog topic in the next few weeks. I guess that is the downside to my using this blog as a place to post whatever comes to mind… anyway bear with me, it isn’t the only thing Heather and I are up to! 🙂

In an attempt to keep this brief and focused, I am just going to talk about the practical side of the training weekend, and leave my reflections on it for a later date.

First off, as you might have guessed, not all of my camping gear was 100% ready to go after having been packed away for the past ten years.

Things that weren’t perfect:

  • The elastic in my tent poles — completely dead!
  • My cold-weather sleeping bag
  • ‘flint and steel’ kit — not really flint, whatever it was made out of was corroded beyond use
  • Sleeping mat — still functional, but they make much nicer ones now
  • Flashlight — got me through the weekend, but the switch tried to die a few times
  • First-aid kit — didn’t need it, but the bandages are looking a little… crispy at this point

Things I apparently don’t own anymore:

  • Mess kit
  • Hatchet — not that I need one at this point, but I used to have one I though
  • Camp shovel
  • Extra rope

Last but not least, things that worked just fine:

  • My tent — ignoring the pole issue
  • Rain gear — didn’t need it, but still appears to be in great shape
  • My hat

Beyond equipment, I felt like the majority of my ‘scout-craft’  type skills weren’t too rusty. I still remembered most of the knots, and I don’t have any doubt as to my abilities to light a fire. First-aid is one I should re-visit I am sure, and the compass driven navigation course was more challenging than it should have been. I am really looking forward to getting more opportunities to hone all of this stuff.

Going back to equipment, I ended up feeling really sheepish when I unpacked my sleeping bag and said “oh yeah, I am still allergic to down, and this is a down bag!” The other detail I had forgotten about until the next day, when during a session they pointed out that cold-weather bags shouldn’t be stored in their compression bags long-term. I have a feeling a decade counts as long-term, and it might explain why the insulation wasn’t performing as well as I might have hoped. Luckily it wasn’t really that cold.

Most of the other things I had at least weren’t surprises; they were just products of my not finding the time before the trip to replace/restock/re-evaluate them. It’s really kind of exciting, although given the time of year most of my “shopping” probably going to be constrained to appending items onto a wish-list. At least I don’t anticipate anther camping trip for a few months now.

If that was too much naval gazing, I can at least offer you a link to the pictures I took

-Jordan

Long Weekend, Short Post

Posted on by Jordan

Hey there!

I really have so much to say about scouts right now, and I am really excited after having just completed an entire weekend devoted to scoutmaster training.

Sadly, I am really tired and haven’t even dealt with all my gear yet.

Hopefully I can find time to pull together my thoughts enough to have a coherent post about how scouting looks from this side of graduation. Worst case you will end up with a rambling info-dump, but the faster I wrap up this post the better our chances of avoiding that are.

-Jordan

Moab Day Three

Posted on by Jordan

Yesterdays Moab post got a little verbose, so I will try and keep this one short and to-the-point.

First off, where Heather was sleeping:

On the morning of day three, ( Sunday ) we basically just packed up camp and headed back to Grand Junction. The drive was pretty, although the scenery was pretty much the same as what we had been seeing all weekend. Back in Junction we had lunch and watched football until it was time for our flight. For the record I would rather not ever have to be that tired on an airplane again.

To recap, I really want to emphasize how much fun Heather and I had on this trip! It was so good to get to introduce the woman I am going to marry to some of my best friends. We also got to see some of the most amazing geological formations out there, in perfect weather conditions, under a relaxed time line that let us just enjoy everything we did. We really owe a lot to Josh for pushing to make this trip happen, and to DJ and Vanessa for being amazing hosts and guides!

One last shot of the guys, for good measure:

-Jordan

Moab Day Two

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(ok, so the picture was taken on day one)

Day two, Saturday started off setting around the campfire some more, while eating bagels and whatnot. The fire was completely unnecessary, but if your going to go camping you just as well include fire whenever possible. After breakfast we hit the Moab farmer’s market thing in the park. The market included things like “Ultra Organic Peaches” and other things that seemed a little… hippie-esque. I suppose when you arrive at the market riding in a 1970’s era VW bus, you can’t say too much about hippie-esque appearances 🙂  We bought some amazing non-organic peaches and played frisbee in the park most of the morning. After a stop at the visitors center, we headed back to camp for lunch. Interesting note at the visitors center, the desert is hot, and people wanting to venture out in it should take water, or so the signs repeatedly told us. The other thing we discovered was that there were plenty of places to shower for a few dollars a head.

After lunch, we headed back into Arches National Park with the rough idea to try a longer hike and seeing some arches deeper into the park. We started out on the trail to the “Landscape Arch,” and discovered that the trail was an amazing walk through some towering rocks. Being on the shaded trail almost the entire way out to the arch was really refreshing, with some neat stuff to look at along the way. The arch was more than a little impressive; the picture doesn’t do it justice.

After a little while just looking at it we headed up the more primitive trail that continued past the arch. Trail is almost charitable… it was just a few markers along the giant slabs of rock climbing out of the valley below the “Landscape Arch.” Given those conditions it seemed natural to just climb out on a kind of pinnacle of rock overlooking the valley once we were most of the way out. We then proceeded to kill huge amounts of time posing and shooting pictures. I should credit Josh for being mostly willing to frequently operate a camera once one of the couples had a picture idea. The sad thing is (and I should have known this from other trips) that you cannot tell how high or precariously balanced people are in pictures for the most part. We have lots of pictures with nice arid mountain backgrounds, without any real record of the stomach clenching drop-off we are next to. I should probably post the shadow pictures we took now, but I will leave you in suspense, simply knowing that we took pictures of our shadows, also that the pictures look cool. We never actually made it to any other arches, and headed back into town to try out one of those rent-a-shower places we got information about earlier in the day. Despite being a graveyard for dead RVs the showers at the place we went were rather clean, although our standards might have been affected by our overall cleanliness. Suffice to say a shower feels really good after 2 days of hiking around in the desert.

We had supper at a neat little pizza place in Moab, and then headed back to camp. We broke out a deck of cards to complete the Medicine Valley recap by playing 13-point pitch for an hour or so. Sadly the best place for Heather to participate was in the top bunk of the Bus, meaning she stayed awake for maybe 15 minutes. I suppose given the shower and heavy meal that’s pretty good for her 🙂 When we packed up the card game we realized that the bedding for the other bunk was behind Heather. As I predicted at the time, Heather has no memory of being woken up and helping me get the bedding sorted out, but everyone else felt bad about having to do it.

Next up, Day Three! 🙂

Moab Day One

Posted on by Jordan

I am going to spread the Moab trip over a few days worth of posts so hopefully it wont be as huge as the DC post, and so it wont take so long to write 🙂

We drove from Grand Junction out to Moab after breakfast and packing our gear into the “bus” and Josh’s car. The drive is roughly 100 miles, but the bus only dose about 55-60 mph and the 2nd half of the drive is mountainous enough to make it take a while.  We stopped somewhere along the road once we were into the valley next to the Colorado River to take a few pictures ( like the included illustration ) and watch DJ climb to up the side of the valley. I would post pictures, but he’s so small at the top you cant tell it’s even him.

After the stop I got to drive the Bus, leaving Heather and I to man the bus. It was fun, but let’s just say that power steering and power breaks make driving on small winding roads easier. After some searching we found a really cool campsite, tucked in against a rock wall, so we had shade all day long. We bought food for the trip in Moab, had a very late lunch back at camp and then headed over to Arches National Park.

At this point somehow the entire day has slipped away, and we were racing against the clock to get to the delicate arch in time for sunset. Heather and I discovered that her ideal all-terrain speed isn’t nearly as fast as some of the other people in our group. A certain amount of stress was created between the two of us while we figured this out, but we made it to the arch in time after all. The view was well worth it! Catching the last few minutes of sunset, with a bright full moon behind the arch was amazing. It was incredibly crowded, as it seems quite a few people, and about $100,000 worth of cameras also wanted a look at the “full moon + arch + sunset” combo.

Back at camp we made (“foil dinners” / “hobos”) using virtually no flat space, 2 swiss-army style knives, and exactly the amount of foil we needed to cook all the food. This was Heather’s first exposure to camp cooking (motto: “the dirt adds flavor!”) so I was a little bit worried, but aside from some comments about “health code violations” she was enthusiastic about the whole thing. The food came out almost perfect, and then I think we kept the entire rest of the camping area up listening to us recount dumb high school moments for hours. In short a great night, and a great way for my fiancée to get to know some of my friends better.

-Jordan

Back from Moab

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I had an amazing trip over the weekend + Friday, out to see DJ, Vanessa, and Josh, and go camping in Moab.

First off I should say that Heather did really well camping! I am really proud of her for just jumping in and having fun on her first camping trip.

I hope to get a full recap of the trip, and maybe some pictures up soon… For now all I can say is that it was an amazingly fun trip, but today has been one of the roughest Mondays in a long time. Somehow sleeping on the ground for 2 nights, and then getting to bed after 1 last night was more than my body wanted to do.

-Jordan

Tuesday!

Posted on by Jordan

catchy title huh?

so, today all I have done with my free time for about a week now is mess with the website. I spent forever working up the new header graphic, and still want to come up with a cooler name, but this works for now. On the main site, the bridesmaids, and groomsmen pages are complete.. or mostly, I will be putting up new pictures for the guys as soon as I have them.

Heather is at Husker Harvest Days… I see a lot of humor in the fact that I have never been to that mythical event, and now she was forced to go by her job. Hopefully she isn’t too traumatized by the experience 🙂

only 2 days until the Moab trip, and another chance to tramatize Heather, but I think camping will be a blast!

-Jordan