The Ride Home with Rosey

I can't believe that it has taken me this long to put something on the blog but there seems to be less time for blogging with a live-in girlfriend :)

Here are pictures from the trip:

• Mammoth Caves National Park
• Road Trip through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri (Misery), Kansas and Colorado
• Rocky Mountain National Park

Rosey and I had an incredible time together on the way home from Alabama. Here is a quick synopsis:

• I flew in to Alabama on Friday night, went on a short bike ride through Rosey's neighborhood (down and then back up a killer hill) and then had dinner with Rosey's Mom at Jim and Nick's Barbecue.
• On Saturday morning we got up had breakfast at the Cracker Barrel (which Rosey affectionately refers to as the Ass-Crack Barrel) and then drove to Mammoth Caves in Kentucky.
• On Sunday we went for a short bike ride through the park where we saw a rabbit running away from us alongside the road. It was so frightened that it ran itself right into a tree stump and completely knocked itself out. It was one of the funniest and saddest things that I have ever seen :)
• Later on Sunday we rented a canoe and paddled 7 miles down the Green River in Mammoth Caves National Park.
• Even later on Sunday we went on the River Styx tour inside of Mammoth Caves. It was incredible to be walking through what used to be a massive underground River. The tour actually went down deep enough in the cave to where the river is currently flowing.
• Monday morning we got up packed up camp and drove through Kentucky, Illinois and Misery to Kansas. We stayed at the Hampton Inn (they have awesome beds!) in Lawrence, KS. I was ecstatic to discover that Lawrence had both a Perkins Restaurant and a Culvers Frozen Custard restaurant. We also discovered a kick-ass mexican place called On the Grill. Because of the three restaurants and the fact that we were tempted to stay an extra day in restaurant just to continue eating, we dubbed the area the Bermuda Restaurant Triangle.
• Tuesday morning we decided to sleep in and really take our time getting out of Lawrence. We wanted to enjoy our nice bed at the Hampton and have plenty of time to eat at Perkins and Culvers before leaving. After eating, taking a few pictures and stopping by Walmart to grab some additional camping supplies, we finally got back on the road at one in the afternoon. I still can't believe that we got started that late, but we had a lot of fun in Lawrence and it felt good to just take it easy.
• We drove all day through Kansas which was unbelievably windy. Our gas mileage sucked. But we did eventually make it through to Limon, Colorado where we stayed the night. After spending the previous night at a fairly nice hotel we decided to stay at the cheapest cherry-popper hotel that we could find in Limon. Fortunately there were plenty to choose from. We stayed at a bright pink hotel called the Safari Motel. The room was actually pretty nice considering how cheap it was.
• On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning both we unhitched a couple of Rosey's bikes from her truck and went riding through Limon. Tuesday night we just did a short ride through town to the Subway at the T&A truck stop. On Wednesday morning we did a slightly longer ride through the country side. It felt awesome to get out on the bike after spending so much time driving in the car.
• We managed to get back on the road at a decent hour (before 9AM) and made it through Denver and into Rocky Mountain National Park in the early afternoon. We did a short 5.6 mile hike up to Loch Vale before going to the Grocery store in Estes Park to stock up for the next couple of days.
• On Thursday morning we followed the advice of an 0ff-duty ranger and decided to hike up to Chasm Lake on the east side of the park. The ranger, whom we spoke to on the shuttle on the way back from the Loch Vale hike, gave us some good advice. He said, "You're always either having fun or building character". The hike up to Chasm Lake was a little bit of both. It was one of the most beautiful hikes that I have even been on in my life, but it was definitely challenging. The hike started at 9500 ft. above sea level and ended up just shy of 12,000 ft. above sea level at a huge lake in a hanging glacial bowl. It was wicked cool. We were actually hiking up above the clouds. We spent about an hour at the lake where we ate lunch and then laid back on the rocks and watched the clouds form and then disperse overhead. After lunch I read Rosey some poetry by Pablo Neruda. The whole experience was awesome!
• On Friday morning, sore and tired from the previous days adventure, we packed up camp for the last time. We drove through the park out the West entrance so that we could experience just a little more of the park on our way out. After a very long day of driving we finally arrived back in Spanish Fork shortly after 7PM.

This was the abbreviated version of our story. I would like to put something more detailed up eventually, but for right now I just wanted to get something up there for everyone to see.

Just Struttin' Along

Here is a recording of me playing the jazz song, "Just Struttin' Along" on my piano. It's not a terribly complex song, but you have to remember that I only started taking lessons in January. I think that I've come a long way from struggling to play Jingle Bells :)

An Evening Stroll Up Timpanogos

A took a short hike up timpanogos tonight. Here are my pictures.

Cleaning Out My Closet

As I was cleaning out my closet to make room for Rosey, I decided that today would be a good day to get rid of all the clothes that no longer fit me. It turns out that this was pretty much all of the clothes in my closet :) I took a picture of everything stacked on my bed before delivering it to DI. I must have had 2 dozen pair of jeans and slacks, a dozen pair of shorts, countless shirts, several winter coats and some snow pants and bibs.

By the time that I was done, all that was left was two pair of jeans, two pair of cargo shorts, some board shorts and half a dozen t-shirts. Hmm, I think I need to go shopping :) At least there is plenty of room in the closet for Rosey now :)

Recycling Frustration

On the morning of January 1st 2005 I looked around at all of the empty beer bottles left over from the night of New Year's Eve festivities with Marci's in-laws and decided that I just didn't want to throw them away. It seem like such a waste to put that much recyclable glass into the trash. So, I decided to start collecting recyclables with the eventual plan of actually recycling them.

Shortly after that I called up the Spanish Fork city manager and inquired whether or not Spanish Fork had a recycling program. I was and still am almost embarassed to live in a city without a recycling program. When I lived in Wisconsin recycling was just part of your regular trash pickup. I was pleased to discover that Spanish Fork was renegotiating it's waste management contract and were hoping to include recycling services in the new contract. Unfortunately, this was going to take about six months.

I decided not to be discouraged, and I just started accumulating trash bags of glass, plastic and aluminum in my garage. Six months came and went and although there was some mention about the possibility of a recycling plan in one of my monthly utility bills nothing ever came of it.

It has now been a year and a half since I first started collecting recyclable garbage in my garage. I probably have a dozen trash bags filled with various glass, plastic and aluminum containers. I want very much to get rid of them out of my garage. This morning I decided that I'd had enough and went on a quest to find a place to dispose of my recyclables. This proved to be a much more difficult task than I could have imagined.

It was trivial to find a place that would recycle aluminum but very difficult to find places to take the plastic or glass. There were a couple of places in Salt Lake that sounded promising but none of them were open on Saturdays. Damnit! In the course of my googling I discovered that Provo actually has a curbside recycling service. I dug a little further and found out that Provo also has a place to drop off recyclables at their yard waste processing station just down the street from Novell.

So, I loaded my car with all of my garbage and headed off to Provo. When I pulled into the site, it wasn't obvious where the recycling drop off was. I spoke to the redneck attendant and asked him to point me in the right direction. He replied, "Well we do have that big blue thing over there, but I don't really know what it's for. I don't give a shit what you put in there." It turns out that big blue thing was meant only for recycling computer paper.

Can it really be that difficult to recycle glass and plastic in Utah County? In deperation I drove around Provo hoping to stumble across some big recycling dumpster that I knew didn't really exist. I drove past the Provo city offices, I drove past BYU, I drove past the Springville yard waste recycling center and then I finally drove past the Spanish Fork city offices before finally admitting defeat.

I was awfully tempted to just drive by a dumpster and unload my garbage into the trash. Was it really worth all of this trouble to recycle? The thought of unloading those bags of garbage back into my garage was killing me. In the end I decided to stick it out just a little longer. I couldn't stomach the thought of holding on to all this stuff for a year and a half only to end up throwing it away in a regular dumpster. Monday I'll call around in Salt Lake and find a place to recycle my garbage. I'll also be calling Spanish Fork city to harass them about not following through on their recycling plans.

A Life Told in T-Shirts

In order to make some room for Rosey in my closet, I decided to retire my Harley T-Shirt collection (very few of which actually fit me anymore) into the closet in my spare bedroom. I took a couple of minutes and catalogued all of my t-shirts as I moved them. It was fun to reminisce about all of the cool places that I've been on my Harley (and a few that I haven't been but had friends or family send me shirts).

I'm So Excited!

And I just can't hide it. There are only 9 more days until I get to see Rosey again. It has been a long and painful 3 weeks since the last time that we saw each other. It has been so painful, in fact, that we decided that we just can't do this again in July. So, instead of going out to visit Rosey next weekend, I am flying out and driving her back with me :) We are going to take our time and have a little mini-vacation adventure as we pass through Texas and New Mexico on the way home to Utah. It's weird to think that I will have a roommate in less than 3 weeks. I'm so excited! I guess this means that I've got some house cleaning to do this weekend :) And yes, Dad, this means that she will be here to meet you in July.

My Breaking Point

I found my breaking point on the bike last weekend. I had this crazy idea that I was going to ride the Nebo loop. The entire loop is a 92 mile ride with a good 30 miles that climb a winding mountainous road. I made it about 20 miles into the ride before my legs just couldn't take any more. I rode from my house in Spanish Fork and stopped a couple of miles above the Payson Lakes campground. It made for a 40 mile roundtrip. The total elevation gain was about 3500 feet (Spanish Fork sits at about 4500ft. and I stopped just about 8000ft.). Actually, I felt like I could have pushed forward another 20 miles through the mountains, but I knew that I wouldn't have the strength to ride the 50 miles back home once I got to the other side. I need to reattempt this someday with a support vehicle waiting for me in Nephi so that I can catch a ride home if I don't have the energy to continue.