Chris' Updates

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 lo...

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. Fr...

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....

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.

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!

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....

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 e...