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Ahh, my family. Love ’em.

This year for the Boy Scout “high adventure” trip, Zack’s troop went up to Wyoming for a week-long canoe trip on the North Platte River. I couldn’t go all week, so I joined the crew for two days.

It started Thursday afternoon as I drove a few hundred miles to the campsite where they’d put out for the day. It was like an old-fashioned road trip: windows down, wind blowing, music blasting. Woo hoo!

Wyoming is quite scenic in parts, but most of the southern half is rolling hills. It was a beautiful sunny day.

I arrived at camp, unpacked my stuff, and settled in for the evening. Some of the boys decided to prove their manliness with contests of strength. There were a few arm-wrestling bouts, and then they decided to work on stick pulling. Ahh, just like the good ol’ days of pioneer lads who didn’t have cell phone apps to keep them occupied in the evenings.

Zack and a few others picked up fishing rods and worked on their technique. Zack didn’t catch anything, but one of the boys and one of the men did.

Of course we had a campfire, and sat around playing a few games and talking.

Friday morning we rolled out of our tents at 6am sharp (it had been light since around 4:30). It took some of the boys a while to get ready, mostly because their breakfast was stuff like pancakes and scrambled eggs. I just munched on some dry cereal, of course. We finally hit the river around 7:30 at the start of a crisp, clear day.

Our little flotilla of eight canoes started out strong, but after about half an hour had divided into two groups of four. Zack and I were in the front group, powering down the river for a while. After paddling for a bit we realized we were far ahead and didn’t really need to be, so we ended up just drifting lazily with the current. It was nice.

By late morning the sun was starting to beat down from the cloudless sky. I was glad I’d lathered on sunscreen before setting out. Zack had done so as well, but on the first day he’d burned the tops of his legs a bit (I think most of the boys had) so he was feeling the heat on them. He’d scoop up some water from the river and trickle it across his legs. The water was about 45 degrees, so even though the day was heating up, it wasn’t quite swimming weather.

We saw a lot of wildlife: mule deer, antelope, beavers, ducks, and a lot of different birds. There were four huge owls who took off from the banks and soared over the river. We also saw many bald eagles: I think I counted six, and Zack said he’d seen several each day the previous days. Their nests were typically in tall trees right along the river, and we’d see them circling high above. My camera wasn’t great at capturing them, but here’s a shot of one watching us from a tree:

It was relaxing to just float down the river, paddling occasionally to correct our heading or stay in formation with the other three canoes in our group. All of us talked, joked, and shared riddles– one of the riddles took about an hour to figure out, but as there wasn’t really anything else to do, we all played along.

Here Zack demonstrates the proper technique for being in position to fall off the bow and be run over by the canoe:

Around noon the wind started to pick up (hey, it’s Wyoming) and pushed against us at around 25mph. Since the current was flowing at a leisurely 3-4mph, we basically didn’t make any forward progress without paddling hard. If we stopped paddling, the wind would quickly turn our boat and push us to shore. That started to wear on the boys a bit– we were hungry, hot, and getting tired. We stopped for lunch and sheltered behind some bushes to eat before striking out again.

As we wound around bends in the river, the wind would come at us from different directions, so at times it was nice to have it at our backs, although a little while later it would be gusting in our faces.

We reached our take-out point around 2pm and by then most of the boys (and some of the leaders) were worn out. We’d traveled nearly 30 miles on the river for the day– not too bad!

After stowing our gear, we had a little barbecue at a rest area along I-80 and then drove back to Longmont. It was fun to spend a couple of days with Zack and the boys, and I hadn’t been canoeing since college so I enjoyed a day of poking around the river. Good times all around.

Alex just received a letter from church headquarters about his mission assignment.

It’s an exciting (and slightly tense) moment as he opens the envelope to find out where he’ll be serving…

And the winner is… Lima, Peru! He’ll leave October 6 and spend two years there, speaking Spanish and sharing the gospel with the people of Peru. Way to go Alex!

Kyra came back from Girls’ Camp last night, and her hair had been in a braided bun for about two days. She undid the braids today and the result was impressive:

I told her to whip her head around a bit because her hair was so big. The camera couldn’t catch it very well, but these pictures give an idea of just how frizzy and huge her hair was this morning.

Personally, I love her beautiful long blond tresses. When she has them in a braid overnight, it’s funny how big her hair can get the next morning. I keep asking Laralee to let her hair grow out, but she refuses to let it get past her shoulders. Oh well.

Last week we had some crazy weather… well, okay, we’ve been having crazy weather for almost two months now, but last week there was a particularly rough evening when the rain and thunderstorms hit. We were sitting around in the house and heard a terrific flash-BANG where a huge crack of thunder immediately followed the flash of lightning. We all jumped, laughed a bit, and then I headed out with Zack to a Scout activity.

A few minutes later, with the Scouts, I saw a bunch of fire trucks zoom past with their sirens blaring. Curious.

Later, when I returned home, I found out that the trucks rolled onto my street and took a peek at the house across the street from us:

Laralee took this photo from our front yard as she watched the hook-and-ladder truck lift up a firefighter to inspect the roof. Apparently the lightning we’d heard a little while earlier had struck the top of the house. Nothing was damaged and no one was hurt, but that was a close call…

This isn’t something you want to see on a server:

Whoa, luckily this is a spare server that I’m not actively using for any clients. Also, it’s probably roughly ten years old and has been running 24/7 all that time. I suppose it’s not unreasonable for the hard drive to fail…

Seen somewhere on the internet… made me laugh.

I found an old box in the back of my closet… it was full of a stack of old papers from my childhood. I think Mom gave it to me the last time I was visiting Missouri, because she was tired of storing it in the basement. There were some real gems in there.

For example, my life history as I saw it at age 9:

Apparently the big events in my life were:

1972 – born
1973 – moved
1974 – stitches
1976 – brother born
1978 – kindergarten
1979 – moved
1980 – broke collarbone
1981 – swingset

It’s funny to see that I failed to mention either of my sisters being born, but apparently Thom’s birth was momentous. Or maybe I couldn’t think of anything else for 1976? And I guess the swingset in our backyard was a pretty big deal, since it made the list in 1981.

Next in the exhibit is some pencil drawing that must’ve been part of a unit about perspective in art class.

My favorite part here is the catchy billboard slogan “For a toothy smile, use toothpaste!” I’m not sure why Colgate or Crest never used something like that.

Finally, behold the reason why I never became a poet.

At this point in my young life I was apparently over the excitement of Thom’s birth, and lashed out at the horrible injustice of him breaking my best model. Grrr.

Last night I took Alex and Zack paintballing with a group from church. Despite threatening weather, it proved to be a nice cool evening in the mountains and we had a good time shooting our friends.

After a two-year hiatus from paintball (because no one could ever seem to organize a game) it was nice to get out and collect a few bruises and war stories.

Every week we get together at work to have lunch and discuss the affairs of the company. The tradition is called the “State of the Zing” and is a good way to find out how everyone is doing on projects, share things that are coming up, and generally prepare for the week.

Lately we’ve been going around the table and giving a self-assessment of how busy each of us feel. This is a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being “I have nothing to do and plan to nap all week” and 10 being “I’m so busy on projects I probably won’t get to sleep this week”. No one’s ever been a 1, and likewise no one’s ever claimed a 10.

But today as we went around, everyone was at 9 or above (9.2, 9.21, that sort of thing). We’re completely swamped with projects and client requests, and doing our best to stay afloat and deliver work on schedule. It made me think of The Princess Bride, where Prince Humperdinck is talking to Count Rugen:

“I’ve got my country’s 500th anniversary to plan, my wedding to arrange, my wife to murder, and Guilder to frame for it. I’m swamped.”

To which the count replies:

“Get some rest. If you haven’t got your health, you haven’t got anything.”

Unfortunately rest isn’t going to help us finish our client projects, but at least we’re not planning murders at Zing.