Burning the Candle at Both Ends

Just a little busy this weekend. Saturday morning started with more bus training. We mostly drove around the north end of Boulder with Dien, visiting the Boulder Reservoir, through Lyons, and halfway up to Estes Park. We had to make a U-turn at a pulloff because we can't go all the way to Estes without mountain training, which requires at least 40 hours of route time after getting one's CDL.

Saturday afternoon was spent with Ashley at her uncle's house. This was Ashley's grandmother's 90th birthday! I couldn't miss that for training. We went and mingled with her cousins, and aunts and uncles. We met the 6 point buck that her cousin Michael recently bagged on a hunting trip. It's really a monster. We got to play with Ashley's little 2nd cousins. They're pretty cute when they're that little, I have to admit. We stayed for most of the party, and then Ashely and I left for our own adventures.

Saturday night I headed over to Mike's house for a long-awaited DnD session. Ashley intended to come, but wasn't feeling great, so she left for home. However for the evening, we did have Mike, Claire, Jackie, Buddha, and Claire's friend David. We started an odd but interesting campaign set in a desert. What was most confusing was when David's dwarf died in battle, then woke up the next day with a headache and unable to use his gear. We didn't figure out the cause, but hopefully we will continue with this campaign next time. We only played until 1 AM, I'm sure we could go longer next time.

Sunday consisted of more bus training with Adam. We traveled down to Golden via Highway 93 to see the School of Mines and the Coors Brewery, but we didn't stop there. We headed east to Denver to see some of the common event sites, like Mile High Field and the Pepsi Center. The afternoon consisted of more Boulder destinations.

So all in all, I've had a very productive weekend. I can't say I enjoy being this busy, but come what may! I'm ready to take life by the horns!

A Sport with Gadgets? I'm There!

This past week I stumbled upon a relatively new sport called Geocaching. Basically, people have gone out into remote parks and forests and left caches (most are tupperware containers) filled with at least a log book, and have posted the latitude and longitude coordinates. The object is to use your own GPS receiver and go and find these caches. Sounds simple and boring, right? What if the cache is halfway up a sheer rock face, requiring climbing equipment? Or hidden underwater for a scuba diving adventure? OK, most caches are not quite this exciting. If nothing else, it's a fun way to get a family together for an activity. In Ashley's (slightly cynical) words, it gives hiking a point, a goal.

Well, Thursday evening I came home to find my brand new GPS receiver waiting for me in a shipping box. I bought a Garmin eTrex (for a good bit less than the MSRP), a fairly low-end receiver. It doesn't have a lot of fancy features, but still good enough for hiking around the woods. Friday afternoon between my classes, Ashley and I went up to Chataqua and found the Higher Ground cache. You can sort of see some of the hike if you plug the latitude and longitude coordinates into Google Earth. Very beautiful hike.

One last note about my eTrex, one really cool feature I think will be useful is the ability to enter coordinates not only in lat/long, but also in military grid coordinates, MGRS. This means I can use this unit when I go out to "summer camp" (Annual Training) at Fort Hunter Liggett this summer. Sweet!

Buses are Big Vehicles

This weekend was my first full weekend of bus training. Saturday I joined Dine, a girl in biochemistry. Our trainer was Dien, one of the staff drivers. We also had Adam, a staff driver training to be a trainer. After a long, methodical pretrip, we drove out to the Boulder Valley School District bus lot and practiced maneuvers. Let me tell you, it's not easy to parallel park a 40-foot bus. After lunch we went out driving around Boulder. One of the things we practiced was the Williams Village route, or WillVill. It's the major route that TS runs, so just about everyone has driven WillVill, and will drive it again. Sunday was more of the same with trainer Brian plus another trainee, Jordan, a dance major in the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. We started out with maneuvers and then just drove around every part of Boulder we need to get around. Have I mentioned yet that those buses are huge? You're freakin' half way into an intersection before you even start turning! Gigantic. Can't wait to start driving the articulated buses (arc's).

Midterms Round One

This week has been... busy. On Monday and Wednesday between classes I learned how to pretrip buses, so that was new and different. Monday evening I took a required Sexual Harassment Prevention class. Oh goody, another one. Wednesday evening was the calculus midterm, and I walked out feeling okay about my performance. Not great mind you, but okay. We got our tests back on Thursday, and considering the average was a 50%, my 60% was not too horrible. Today's Components exam was way too long, I don't think the teacher meant for it to be this long. Maybe we'll just get a good curve... Oh, and I looked into RCIA classes to get into the Catholic church for Ashley's family. As I told the lady, I would probably pursue the classes at this point whether I was dating Ashley or not. I've seen the Lord working in my life, in subtle ways, and I'd like to explore that connection.

Beautiful Day

Hey everyone, not much time to update at the moment, but you have to see this:

I'll try to really update here soon, but I've been a busy boy, as you can imagine!

Poking Things and Birthday Party

This weekend on Friday night I wasn't partying, like any other freshly-turned 21-year old. No, I was at the first day of drill. We had Friday night prior to the usual Saturday and Sunday this time, which was different. I didn't see much of my section this weekend because I was taking the Combat Life Saver's course. The CLS certification is a secondary duty, so I'm nowhere near a medic, but I now know a few extra medical techniques beyond the average GI Joe. The biggest new responsibility is the ability to start an IV and administer IV fluids. Even after several hours of training on rubber arms, it was still nerve-wracking to stick a person. But I did get to hang around with Faith, so the weekend wasn't a complete bummer. The only real disappointment was that after a month of working out with a personal trainer, I wasn't able to take the darn PT test! Now I have to wait another month!

When I got home tonight, Ashley was horrified that I was earlier than expected. She threw me a surprise party! And it was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles themed! She and Jackie decorated with streamers and balloons, and baked a massive cake with homemade icing. And to top it all off, there are turtles action figures standing on the cake! How cool is that? Not too long after I got home, Kristen arrived with her boyfriend Robert, and Holly also came over. We tried out a new game very similar to our favorite, Apples to Apples. This new one is called Boxers or Briefs, and acknowledges the best true statement as well as the funniest statement. Quite good.

This next week I have midterms and I'm starting bus training, so wish me luck.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Hooray! Today was my 21st birthday, and I'm extremely pleased with the results. This morning I drove to school and attended Arabic as usual. I would have skipped, but I really can't afford to miss much class, Arabic in particular. I drove back to Broomfield to pick up a few documents and headed down to the DMV. I was able to go to the Broomfield DMV this time, and it was much more pleasant and quick. The woman handing out number tickets didn't tell me immediately that she could not answer questions due to a pending lawsuit. (The woman at the Northglenn DMV reminded every customer.) Anyway, I renewed my driver's license and CDL permit and went back home for lunch. I actually went to my calculus lab, and decided to stay for the components lab as well. From there I went to work out with the trainer, our last session before drill this weekend. He gave me a few words of encouragement on the PT test, and I drove home. I did make a quick stop at the liquor store, however, to exercise my new right. I bought a bottle of tequila, went home, and had a rather sad margarita. No salt, ice cubes, and no straw. But it was still a margarita, and still a sweet taste of freedom. More salty, actually. Here's to another bright year!