Heather’s Birthday

Posted on by Jordan

We celebrated Heather’s birthday over the weekend.

I may not have converted Heather completely over to my views on the outdoors, but I am starting to worry that I have ruined her.

She not only cheerfully got up at 6am on a Saturday, but she requested we get a canoe!

It was a beautiful morning, and we really enjoyed the time outside, as it has been far too hot to enjoy being outside evenings as of late.

We were on the water shortly after 8, and were able to stick to shady little coves the entire time we were out.

I wasn’t able to go with my Scout troop up to the boundary waters this year, and I really hope to go someday. As much as we enjoyed our time on the lake, I don’t think Heather and I are quite ready to do a family trip on that scale yet 🙂

 

The rest of the day was spent inside, and I shot some video of the highlights… so I won’t summarize it here until I can get the video up 🙂

-Jordan

Western Nebraska Week Recap

Posted on by 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:

  • Rode in the tractor while I was moving dirt
  • Paddled around in a canoe on a lake that I camped at lots as a scout
  • Went geocaching (not a childhood activity for me, but got us out on a hike and we found plenty of bugs)
  • Hiked around the farm taking pictures of things
  • Floated down the Medicine Creek with me in a canoe

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