Camping Vacation

So it was decided that we all wanted to go camping for a night. Since I live in the state of Utah, there being a ton of ational forest land around, finding a good campsite was only a 30 minute ride. The group consisted of Brooke, Camille, Dustin, his brother Archie, Archie's daughter, Justin and myself. I was really excited to go camping since I've had a new tent for about 2 months and haven't had the chance to use it.

Once we found a good site, I ran out ahead of everyone and found the spot that would be the quietest. But I forgot the think about a spot that would be out of the sun as well. But I was very happy with my selection. I managed to snag a beautiful plot a few yards away from a running stream. The sound of the water rolling over the rocks brought serenity and sleep into my life that night.



The night was quite usual for car camping. We had hot dogs for dinner, told funny, gross, and embarassing stories, we had s'mores, and eventually went to bed. Oh but that was for just Justin and myself. The other four stayed up later than us and had quite an eventful night. Let's introduce you to David and Jessy.



Well they were at the camp site across from us. Now these two 18 year olds came over earlier and invited us to have some beers, hence the picture we snagged. Apparently, after I went to bed these two got in a fight over the girls that were with them, threaten each other's life more than once, woke up the rest of the campground, beat each other up, and apparently the winner of the fight (guy with the bandana) was left behind with no car, out of cell phone service, to sit in a drunken stupor and bug everyone that hadn't gone to sleep in my group. This picture was taken during the whole incident as the rest of the group "was in desperate fear for their lives."



But thanks to my prestine tent site with the rolling waters, I did not wake to hear any of the commotion and finally had my first good night's rest in two weeks. Now hearing the story upon waking was very amuzing. After that Justin and I packed up promptly and returned to Ogden to attend church. Here's some more pictures from the outing .

Justin "helping" set up the tent



Apparently I own a lot of prAna attire



I was really good at employing friends to cook my hot dogs



S'more Time!!!!



My only s'more of the night



Trippy Fire Pit

More Pictures from Last Week

Justin taking the pics (yes I finally got a pick of him)



Group Model Shot



Brooke Swinging



Crematorium



Ghost Check



Crematorium on top



Salt Lake at night

Friends, Food, Films, and Fun

So I meant for this to be posted earlier, but I didn't have the pics yet. We can all thank Justin for these fabulous pics.

Now that I have a lot of free time on my hands, I always seem to get to the weekend and have no idea of what I am going to do. The past couple of months I seemed to know exactly what I would be doing days before. So I am still getting used to all of this.

I did have plans for Saturday night, but I had no idea what I wanted to do during the day. Luckily Justin and I were on the same page. We both had things to do around the house, for the first part of the day, but needed to run some errands to the same places after that.

We had a blast going to a discount grocery store and getting some goodies. After that we drove down to Salt Lake for the night plans. Let me tell you that this day was absolutely gorgeous. Our plans were to meet up with Brooke and Camille, grab a bite to eat, and then go see Son of Rambo.

We drove down to a Chinese Gourmet and pigged out on Chinese and Mongolian BBQ. Now that was quality eating. Feeling all greasy and stuffed we headed back to downtown SLC for the movie. The theater, Broadway Theatre, shows mainly independent, Sundance Film festival movies, and stays away from the mainstream Hollywood crap. Our choice for the night was Son of Rambo.

Son of Rambo is the name of the home movie made by two little boys with a big video camera and even bigger ambitions. The movie is set on a long English summer in the early 80's. It is a comedy about friendship, faith and the tough business of growing up. The movie is seen through eleven or twelve year old Will, the eldest son of a fatherless Plymouth Brethren family. The Brethren regard themselves as God's 'chosen ones' and their strict moral code means that Will has never been allowed to mix with the other 'worldlies,' listen to music or watch TV, until he finds himself caught up in the extraordinary world of Lee Carter, the school terror and maker of bizarre home movies. Carter exposes Will to a pirate copy of Rambo: First Blood and from that moment Will's mind is blown wide open and he's easily convinced to be the stuntman in Lee Carters' diabolical home movie. Will's imaginative little brain is not only given chance to flourish in the world of film making, but is also very handy when it comes to dreaming up elaborate schemes to keep his partnership with Lee Carter a secret from the Brethren community. Will and Carter's complete disregard for consequences and innocent ambition means that the process of making their film is a glorious roller coaster that eventually leads to true friendship. They start to make a name for themselves at school as movie makers but when popularity descends on them in the form of the Pied Piper-esque French exchange student, Didier Revol, their unique friendship and their precious film are pushed, quite literally, to breaking point.

It was a good film, quite enjoyable. The night still felt young, even though 11:00 pm is late for me, so we looked for other ways to get into trouble. After getting some sundaes from McDonald’s we headed to a park in the Avenues with the camera. We just wanted to goof off and have proof of our childhood playground relapse. This is what we got.

Camille, Dino and me



Brooke



Slide Fun





How to REALLY make a woman happy (give them your credit card)



Pole Dancing



Jailhouse

After the playground we decided that we were going to hike up to one of the old crematoriums. High up on the bench behind the capital building, there is an old crematorium that has been gated up so that people won’t get hurt playing on it. It was about 1:00 am and we hiked up the path under an almost full moon. I wasn’t thinking about it or even caring about it, but the closer we got to the destined place, the creepier the feeling became. I definitely could tell that we were at a place of death. It was just weird. At one point, we all had those extremely small hairs on the back of your neck rise up. Creepy. I’ll tell you that much. I of course had fun on the way back and hid in the bush scaring the girls as they walked by. All in all it was a very fun night. And it’s been awhile since I have had one of those.

It was a really fun time.

A Beautiful Day up to an Oasis

Sunday happened to be such a beautiful day. After church, I found myself to have nothing going on and antsy to be relaxing outside. I had a thought to take a walk/hike up to Malan's Basin to go look at the waterfall. It's been a while since I have been up there, well during the non-winter months. I haven't been up there in the summer for about 3 years. I do go up there every winter to ice climb. I didn't want to fly completely solo on this, so I called Kev and Liv to see if I could take out the darling and adorable Maddie.

She's my babe. I was lucky enough to get an approval. It was nice and relaxing to get up in the canyon and be in the trees with a stream to the south of you. The rush of the water over the rocks was calming and soothing to me. I enjoyed myself and the company of Maddie. She did struggle a little when she had to work her way through larger rocks due to having a leash on. I would just give her a "come one babe," and she'd bound up the rock and pass me by.

As I got up to the waterfall, I went a little higher than the others gathered there to find a little sanctuary all for myself. As I peered up I wished for the water to be still and frozen. I just wanted to climb. But it was good to see nature at work, to see the cycle of things, and to remember the first time I had been up there.

All and all, it was a good day.

The approach view.


























The good view.


























Top Section.




















A view of Ogden from my secluded spot.

Fun At Work: Introducing Lt. "Gas Can" Dan

So today had a good start to it. I was at my desk going at another wonderful spreadsheet when I got a call. GTACS's very own 2nd Lieutenant Dan Luczak called me in distress. Yes, we have a Lieutenant Dan, just like on Forest Gump. He stated very desperately that he needed my help and to not tell anyone. When I asked him what was going on he said that he's car is stuck on the side of the interstate, to leave and pick him in 5 minutes at the West Gate entrance, and to not tell anyone.

So I go pick him up and what was going on? Lt. Dan, who is a drag racer, from Detroit, lives, breathes, drinks, dreams, and talks cars, has just run out of gas a 1/4 mile outside of base. So to say the least, my buddy is a little pissed and embarrassed. Why wouldn't he be embarrassed? The man practically pisses high octane with how involved he is with cars. Why was he pissed off? Well more than 20 cars passed by as he was walking down the off-ramp to base and no one stopped to see if he needed a ride. "I get no respect I tell ya. Everyone sees that I'm just a 2nd Lieutenant and they just walk on by laughing," he bickers. For those of you that don't know, a 2nd lieutenant is the lowest of the commissioned rank (officers).

I, of course, was having a great time and laughing my butt off. So we go to his apartment, grab a 5 gallon gas can, return to his car, and get him with some fuel to drive the remaining mile to work. Of course, as his friend, I can't let this go unnoticed with the other cowokers. so what do I do? I took out my nifty little iPhone and take the following picture:

Anyone on base would first recognize that exit sign to be the off-ramp to get on base. Next if you look at the right side of the picture, you'll notice a couple of intercontinental ballistics missiles that mark the entrance. He was quite embarrassed to get that far and not make it in.

As we get back to our building, Dan places a gag order on me. As he goes to talk with a boss regarding an item to be brought up in his staff meeting, I email the picture to the guys in the cubicle and others in the building. They just happened to put it on their desktops to see how long it'd take Dan to notice. Well since someone unintentionally let him know that I did that, I had to make up for it. So I printed out a copy and gave it to his boss to pass it around in the staff meeting. I guess that was the funniest staff meeting that they've had in GTACS in a long time.

Now Dan was a little upset at my antics, but it was more to him feeling embarrassed, being a man with a high octane stature. We were joking about after their meeting and came up with a great call sign for him: Gas Can Dan. Yeah it's no Maverick or Goose, but it sure is funny.

Even after all the prodding I did, Dan still took me out to lunch to show his appreciation.

A Day with Kev, Liv, and Maddie

So I happened to have a whole Saturday with no plans. What to do? Well I decided that I'd give my day up to helping Kev and Liv. They just recently bought a house, which is just a couple blocks away from me (that's awesome because I have three friends in the neighborhood now), and they are currently remodeling it before they move in. You can check out their progress by going to their blog, and I have a link to it on the right hand side.

Having neighbors is great because it allows me to walk for just 5 or 10 minutes and be at a friend's house.

So I walked on down to Kev's place and told him to just have me do whatever. This is what we did accomplish: cut a drain pipe hole in the bathroom for the tub's new location; ripped out a door in the master bedroom; and framed a doorway for a closet that is yet to be built. Take a lookie here.

The great soon to be coat closet.





















The end of a fun day.

Ski Mountaineering Epic

Friday was a crazy day. It was a valuable day. This is a day that has given me much experience and knowledge. It calmed my fears and allowed me to grow. It was a day of ski mountaineering, a day that would be called “epic.”

I had the day off and I decided to go skiing. That was a good decision because Little Cottonwood Canyon received over a foot of fresh snow. I went out with Christian again. We were skinning up to Little Superior Peak by 8:30. We had pretty good conditions with good cloud coverage to keep the sun off the snow but it was still a little warm that day. That ended up hurting us a bit later.

The skin up to Little Superior took about 90 minutes. We decided to ski the backside, skin up, and ski down Little Superior. Christian started to check the conditions. He did a ski cut along the top of the shot that we were going to do. This set off a small wet slide that traveled maybe 30 meters at a slow rate. We expected this and decided that we were in business. Christian headed down first and then paused at the bottom signaling for me to go. It had been a couple of weeks since I had skied and I could tell. I didn’t feel as comfortable as I normally did. This was just our warm up run and I needed it. I couldn’t believe how fast I was going on the snow; the snow was heavy. I just felt so out of rhythm. We decided not to go all the way to the valley floor but to skin up the ridge just to our right and get back up to Little Superior.

As we were skinning up this ridge, the face looked so sweet that we decided to ski it. Christian started out and made a few turns down the ridge heading into the trees, the safest route. On his third turn he sent a huge wet slide off. It was about 10 meters wide, traveling about 30 mph (and gaining), and went all the way to the valley floor. We immediately decided to bag that run.

We skinned back up to the top of the ridge and hiked up to Little Superior again. This time was a little harder. The ambient heat had started to melt the snow on top of the knife blade ridge we were hiking. This made it extremely slippery and we were walking over exposed cliffs on either side of us. There must have been inversion set in because the peak, at 10900 feet, was warmer than the valley floor at 8800 feet. As we were walking up to our drop in spot, our visibility went to about 50 feet. That sucked, as we needed to get down before the snow conditions worsened even more. It would have been even harder to see the exposed rocks and cliffs in those conditions. We decided to wait it out but being ready to move at anytime. However, we had decided on hiking the ridge back till we arrived at a safe descent as a back up plan.

Fifteen minutes later our white out started to break. The snow was horribly rotten by this time of the day. Christian started out. Every turn he made sent off a wet slide. That was good for one thing and bad for a couple of reasons. It was good because the wet sliding snow exposed any barely hidden, underlying rock. Now we could see where not to ski. Even though we would be skiing only a turn or two at a time, hitting one of those rocks on a 45 plus degree slope could send one cart wheeling down the slope over some cliffs. The first bad part of a wet slide was that it was a wet slide on a hanging snowfield, meaning that it was suspended stacked snow on cliffs, not a mountain slope. A large enough wet slide could take out the hanging snowfield. The second bad part was now we had only the variable rotten bed layer to ski on.

So Christian skis down, clearly the way and taking his time. I was watching for natural slides above him. When it came for me to drop in I was quite hesitant. I was extremely nervous; you could tell in my breathing, which was shaky and irregular. I knew that I was out of shape for making demanding tele-turns; I was afraid of making a mistake and ending up tumbling towards a cliff; I was afraid of sending a big slide towards Christian. My heart raced as I made my first few turns, trying to stay in the path that Christian cleared to prevent sending down a new slide. I took my time as I tried doing jump tele-turns down a steep slope with exposed rocks. Once I made it down a little cliff band to Christian, I had calmed down. My legs were so exhausted. We continued down the mountain through the trees, not stopping until we reached the road.

We gave an exhausted yell of triumph; we made it down without getting hurt and we were out of danger. As we looked back up to see our descent, we saw that we caused the whole right side of Superior to slide bit by bit. We knew that we had just survived an "epic."

I have not had an experience that was more technically demanding than this day. I am very much grateful that the conditions were less than favorable and that things came about as they did. Now I will be able to remain calm when the situation quickly deteriorates on the mountainside. I now have a confidence that I can make it down a rock exposed slope in less than perfect conditions when needed. And confidence, not cockiness, is a key requirement in ski mountaineering.

Fun at Work

Let me start off by saying that working for a "for-profit" organization that deals with a government "not-for-profit" organization is quite different. The first thing that is does for me is that it makes me glad for capitalism and "for-profit" organizations. The interaction that one has with that government organization can be very slow and arduous.

Anyway with that being said, I have managed to fit in with one of my" customers," The GTACS Sustainment Program Office. Instead of being the fly on the wall contractor, I have managed to become one of the guys. In doing so I decided to pull a little copycat joke with one of the guys in the program office. Lieutenant Dan, yes I have a Lt. Dan (Forrest Gump) in the program office, decided that we would pick on Neil, the Equipment Specialist. So I decided that I should look like him for a day. This is what happened:


Everyone seemed to get a kick out of it. I had a meeting with my company’s VP of Operations and he was laughing so hard at the beginning of the meeting that we couldn't get started on time. When someone would ask me why I did it, I would just reply, “I just needed to feel like more of a man today.”

The one person that hated it, of course, was Randi. I sent her a pic of it and she replied back as fast as humanly possible that I “need to fix that ASAP!” I told her that I would. The unfortunate thing for her, and myself, was that the guy I was pranking was out sick the day I did this. So I had to keep it for another day. But I did manage to keep it for a family birthday dinner. She was very tolerant of me and that was a good thing. Randi made sure that I took it off before our next birthday party the following night. But as long as it kept her happy, I was fine taking off my "manness."

Happy Mother's Day: I love you Mom

I don't think you realize how much you mean to me. I am probably the only 26 year old that brags about how awesome his mother is, and was, while I was growing up. I really do love you.

You've kept me in your prayers, which is something I both know and feel. You raised me to be independent and to think on my own. You've sacrificed so much for me throughout my life that I am forever indebted to you. I wish we could be closer to each other in proximity.

As I sit here typing this post late at night, trying to put my thoughts together to let you know how I feel about you, it is turning out to be an inadequate means of expression. I wish I could be there when you read this, to look you in the eyes, give you a big hug, and tell you "I love you."

Happy Mother's Day

How this blog came to be

The idea of this blog came to me as I was thinking about what to do for Mother's Day. I know that my mother loves me and is always wondering what corner of the earth I am in now. I thought that this would be a great way to show you what's going on and, most importantly to you, that I'm still alive.

This blog is here to help stay in touch with my family, and to let everyone see what's going on in my life, even if I don't call for a couple months.