Kelly vs. Wild (pt1)

Saturday morning I grabbed my special lady and we headed to the Blue Ridge Center for Environmental Stewardship in VA. There was no pre-defined GPS information, so we trudged it like the ol' days and made our route that way. We took several trails to get the route we did. Basically, we tried to stay along the outter edge of all the trails to get a decent amount of hiking in. I toyed with the software to put a few extra waypoints in to let you know what was happening along the way.
We decided to keep it short so we could get our errands done, plus we both got our feet wet when trying to cross the creek twice. It wasn't a hard decision to make. Turns out this place has another major section to it. We skipped that and vowed to come back and attack it from the other side since there's parking there too. The almost straight line in the bottommost area is the the top portion of the other half. I'll put up my favorite pictures from there.

We spent the time jabbering on about food and me reassuring Kelly that there was no poison ivy to worry about. At the slow times, I was doing my best Bear Grylls impersonation with regards to moss on trees, the editability of mushrooms in the wild, and trenchfoot.

We got back on the road around 10 AM and went to the store to get that over with.That was the extend of our errands.

Once we got home, we made lunch, Kelly gave me a haircut, then we cleaned up and started laundry. Shortly afterwards, we marvelled at all we had accomplished before 2 PM. The remainder of the day was spent with Kelly playing the Wii and me on the computer getting everything up to date. Dinner was chicken alfredo & asparagus, followed by more Wii.

Work, work work...

Mad Lib Hell

At home, we have a book of Mad Libs that we bought and do once in awhile. These are the latest two we've done. Just thought I'd share...

Advice To Prospective Parents
Congratulations to all of you slimy mothers and crusty fathers. You are about to give birth to a/an laptop. Remember, a happy child comes from a happy junkyard. The arrival of your candle will cause many stiff changes in your life. You'll probably have to get up at four a.m. to give the little button its bottle of saucy milk and change his or her remotes. Later, when he or she is 12 years old and able to walk, you'll hear the patter of little lips around the house. And in no time, your child will be talking briskly, and calling you his or her "bone," and saying things like, "SHIT!" right to your face. It's no wonder they are called little bundles of booger.

My Dream Girl
The girl of my dreams has flowing purple hair scented like bottles. Her eyes are two burly pools of Mountain Dew. And her lips remind me of scandalous knives. Her skin is as smooth and lovely as a/an thickheaded cardboard, and she has a figure like Kelly. When she enters a room, people always stare at her and say, "PISS! What a/an berrylicious woman!" Her sense of humor is always simple, and people marvel at her lengthy vocabulary. In my dreams I see her wearing a/an cautionary dress and a diamond calorie in her hair. I would gladly give up all my sheep for one evening with this serious female. Her name is Kelly.

Sometimes There's A Man

Think back to this past Monday. Yes, I know it's now Saturday and I'm behind.

It was my day off and I decided to go hiking again. It was my first solo hike of the season. I went to the Bull Run Mountain Conservancy in the good ol' South.

I was able to take Kelly's camera to get some pictures.

BRMC is a protected area for the local mountains, wildlife, and vegetation. It provides research opportunities for those interested and population monitoring for some of the species found within the 800 acre preserve. As far as the wildlife goes, I spent most of the morning scaring the hell out of chipmunks and the local woodpeckers. But along the way I was able to take some good shots.

The first two were some historical places, #1: The Beverly Mill, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1742. #2: The burial site of William Dawson. #3: A turtle that was right in the middle of the trail.


These last two were of some pretty good rock climbing locations (prohibited, of course). The highest point on my elevation profile was where I reached the highest spot on the rock. I was also able to find a geocache, as you can see in my route picture.
I skipped a section that takes you to an old quarry...not much happening there. I also took a shortcut down some railroad tracks to cut my last mile or so down into a half mile. You can see where I made that little cheat in the lower right hand side of my route picture. I went 6.7 miles, and I was out there roughly 4 hours. Part of that was due to the rock climbing, taking pictures, and looking for the geocache. All in all, I felt like it was a good hike and would probably go back with a group.

1987: A Good Year For Sisters

I suppose that since my sister now has the blog that I should put up a couple pictures of her.
She works at Lowe's as a Head Cashier and does a damn fine job.

She's a punk (so it Whitney).

I love my little sister...she always gets me cool stuff for birthday/Christmas.

Previously...

This one is a couple days late since I was busy this weekend. But to recap, Friday was the usual work day, which ended with me mowing. Saturday started with a lame morning (after a similarly lame night before) that got better once I got to Sheetz. I'm quite a fan of the iced coffees. So I got one of those and a chicken biscuit, also tasty.

Phil (Kelly's (Dom's girlfriend) dad) recommended we hike Black Rock. It's a popular hiking spot in MD that is along the Appalachian Trail. So we looked up some information and gave it a shot. Turns out the Garmins are a little iffy on the details of some points of interest, but it was good enough to get us where we wanted to go. Here, we see the route info followed by the elevation profile.
There were a number of geocaches. Unfortunately I was unable to find any since we didn't know the exact path we were going to take and I didn't read any of the hints for them. So I plan to go back and find the geocaches and do some more rock climbing next time.

Sunday Kelly and I went to Harrisonburg to have dinner with my family. Beforehand we saw Get Smart. It was nostalgic for me, since I watched the old show on Nick at Nite as a kid. Dinner went well and we ran up a nice bill for Reo, which was due to my mom's customer service skills (go mom!).

10-90, 10-91

I was feeling nostalgic today about being back in college and driving the bus. I got to thinking about those late nights dealing with the drunks and freshman (who were mostly drunk). I don't think I'll ever forget some of those nights - some really good, some bad. Some of the more memorable times included:

• The many renditions of "The Wheels on the Bus"
• Chants of one half of the bus vs. the other half of the bus to see who was louder
• How many times people would use anything except their student ID or fare
• Calling out the guys who almost came to blows over absolutely nothing
• The freshmen who came to me asking if I would drive like a maniac so they could surf (which of course I did...I couldn't resist the challenge)
• The flashings
• Goofing off on the radio or pulling pranks on other drivers (which was my eventual downfall from BT favor, a story for another time)
• Halloween weekend night driving
• The handful of times when I crammed ~100 people on my bus. Note: max capacity=80

That was just to name a few. I eventually became a Paratransit driver, which entailed taking handicapped and seniors to their destinations and back home. For the most part, this was a pleasure. Some of the nicest people I've ever met live in Blacksburg and just can't get around on their own. Other times, it was a real hassle. You could say the job had its ups and downs.

The best part about my BT experience was quitting. Sure it was the end of an era but it was just a job, not a career. My final radio traffic was heading back to base to park forever.

To The Hills, Men!

Yesterday was the kickoff of the hiking outings for the summer. Dom and I traveled to Greenbrier State Park MD. It turned out to be a good first hike of the season - no mountain dwellers waiting to make us squeal like pigs or inbred psychos with a first generation pickup from the 1920s. After being eaten alive by mosquitoes, we figured out that the next thing to add to an outdoorsmen's must-haves is bug spray. That brings the list to:

• Food & Water
• Toilet Paper
• Bug Spray
  

The best thing about this hike was that we got to take our Garmin GPS systems to the field. It is a device built for the outdoors that can create routes, waypoints, and will lay breadcrumbs digitally. Kelly got it for me for Christmas and Dom received one as well. So, off we went with our toys and here's what we got.
The first image shows the preloaded path in purple (downloaded from a website) and the yellow with black dots is the actual path we took. Turns out the purple paths that were not taken were either service roads or another trail that branched off. We decided to stay on the red blaze so we wouldn't be out there all morning. It was almost 5 miles and took about 3 hours. We stopped a few times to mess with the Garmins, pay homage to the Gods, and ponder the meaning of the stone walls. We'll eventually have a digital camera that we'll use to take pictures, especially of stuff we can't identify. The second image is the elevation profile of the trek. Nifty feature indeed. Yes I realize it doesn't start and stop at the same elevation. Chalk it up to technical difficulties that were identified and fixed in the field.
A new hobby I've taken a liking to is geocaching. It's basically a modern day treasure hunt. I found my first geocache today in Pikeside, a town close to home.
The open treasure chest means it was found. There will undoubtedly be more hiking/geocaching maps to come.

Life before GPB

I decided to write a post talking about the last half-year of my life. I guess I'll start from when I graduated college in December 2007.Moving out of Blacksburg wasn't so bad, except for having to say goodbye to some of my close friends there. Frisbee on the drillfield was good exercise/banter. Dinner and Heroes/other TV shows with Kristin was always a blast. Going to the gym in the morning with Chico always made my day start out right. Yes, I'll go back for a visit, so I'm sure I'll see all of them again.

Afterwards, I moved back to WV where I worked as an intern over the summer. I started back full time at the Coast Guard Operations System Center on the Web Services Team. I moved in with my girlfriend Kelly, who I met there as an intern.
So now this is where we live, work, and play.

Just a couple weeks ago my best friend moved off to tackle the west coast. Will went to San Francisco to get back into grad school. He's digging it so far.
Yeah, I just thought that was a badass picture of us, so I figured I'd throw it up here.

That's about all I can think of right now...I'm a little tired so I'm going to wrap this up and do something else.

Tester

Being in software development / testing, I create a lot of "test" entries. It really only answers two questions: 1) does the stuff work? & 2) what does the thing look like?
Will inspired me to finally start a blog...so here we go...