A Blog About Things We Do

(places and topics list)

Month: August 2013

  • Scanned some photos

    Scanned some photos

    Not a whole lot to say, but after several hours in the dark room, and many many more scanning photos one at a time, I figured I’d post a few of the photos I’m reasonably happy with (as promised in one of my previous posts).

    Sadly, I am not and was not really in the photography mood the past months (ok, year+), and it shows as I’d say the large majority of photos are very much “meh.” That said, I think that developing these photos and spending some time in the dark room has helped me appreciate photos more once again. So hopefully I’ll get back on the horse, a bit.

    So here we go…

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  • Jenison High School 10 year class reunion

    Jenison High School 10 year class reunion

    This past weekend was our 10 year class reunion, and although I did not attend (in large part because flights from SF to GR are so expensive), it seems like a good time to say that I appreciate the time I had with you all.

    I tend to look back at things through a rose-colored glass that probably makes what I say sometimes seem a bit “dramatic” or over the top or cheesy, and I don’t have the skill with words to properly convey a feeling. But, if you are the type of person who can watch a movie like The Perks of Being a Wallflower (which I watched last night for the first time – a bit “young” and obvious and hipstery perhaps, but a movie I “feel” and enjoy) and get a sort of warm, melancholy, significant feeling in your head, then know that that is sort of the feeling that I feel when I remember back on my time at Jenison.

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  • Yosemite, Lake Mono, Sacramento Beer Tour!

    Yosemite, Lake Mono, Sacramento Beer Tour!

    It’s Sunday, 9:14am. If you crunch the numbers, that means roughly of the weekend is still available for activities. But! We’ve already done more this weekend then we’d normally do in a month.

    Let’s do a quick recap of the big items. For this exercise, you’ll have to pretend you haven’t already read the title of this blog post! Don’t look now if you haven’t already read it! And if you have but perhaps are a bit foggy on it, then don’t look back!

    • Yosemite National Park
    • Lake Mono
    • Northern California brewery tour
    • Tour of our states capitol
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  • Sykes hot spring bonus video: purify water

    Lindsay says that my previous post about Sykes hot springs makes it sound like we had a terrible time. We had an awesome experience, that was physically painful and exhausting. But I am honestly thrilled that we did it. To show more of our true emotion, here is a short video we took ~5 miles out from the end of the hike (note this is after we were stung by wasps, but before the pain got too hellish in the knee department.

  • Sykes Hot Spring Hike with Birthday Girl Lindsay

    Sykes Hot Spring Hike with Birthday Girl Lindsay

    I can barely walk today – today is Monday. Last night we returned home from Sykes hot springs, where Lindsay and I completed (yaaa!!!) a 2 day, 20 mile hike. This is my second (Lindsay’s first) hike-in backpacking trip (the first being much shorter, only a few miles, into Joshua Tree), and for whatever reason we decided that it would be a good idea to start our backpacking experience together with a trail rated “difficult.” See everytrail.com for details if you don’t believe me.

    NOTE FROM THE FAR FUTURE: This screenshot is missing, but it was a screenshot of the hiking on everytrail. Which I think is now alltrail? Either way, it was a difficult trail.

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  • Two More Monterey Dives

    Two More Monterey Dives

    Lindsay and I have now done a total of three dives in Monterey. Two dives at Breakwater, two dives at McAbee beach.

    The second Breakwater dive was with my Dad, and I think it was pretty great. We saw a small octopus, a bunch of great kelp, sanddabs, and the list goes on. Here is another quick video (note that I wouldn’t claim these are amazing videos but I record video for the sake of the memories, then try to cut them down into short-ish watchable chunks).

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  • Our First Dive on the West Coast

    As some of you may know, I come from a family of SCUBA divers (from now on I’ll just say “divers” or “diving”, but I mean the SCUBA variety, not the free/olympic/etc variety… though I am very interested in giving freediving a shot). Still, despite having dove in a number of locations around the world (Michigan, Mexico, Belize, Virgin Islands, Thailand, etc…) I had never been diving in the Pacific.

    Lindsay and I decided that it was probably a good time to do something about that. We had all of our dive gear out here (thanks family!) so there wasn’t much stopping us. Well two small problems:

    -We didn’t have hoods or gloves
    -We didn’t know where to dive

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