life|simple

331 Miles

Check out our trek to Buena Vista, Parker, and home

Julie and I slowly working our way up to an overnight ride to Durango CO. It’s about 370 miles from Longmont to Durango and Julie’s motorcycle has a range of about 120 miles per tank so we have to break that up into several smaller segments. We don’t like to push it, so we usually only do 60 – 80 miles per stop.

Our first “big” trip was to Sidney NE. It was 168 miles. This last Friday, after a crazy and difficult week, I gave myself the day off and Julie and decided to ride up into the mountains where it would be a little cooler. We chose Buena Vista CO since we’d never been there before and had heard it was an amazing place.

Our first stop was in Conifer CO for gas. Then we made our way to Fairplay CO. The next stop was Buena Vista. What a quaint little place. Had no idea it was one of the hottest (not temperature wise) whitewater rafting destinations in the country. We had ice cream at Punky’s and while sitting there decided to see if Jes and Paul wanted to have dinner at a Cheddars they had found in Aurora/Parker. So after tooling around Buena Vista for about 45 minutes we headed to Cheddars.

Then after a great dinner we headed home. 331 miles total. That was almost Durango distance. We were really exhausted when we got home though so we have some riding stamina to build up still.

Oh, the chicken nachos at Cheddars… WOW! Still the same and LOVED them.

Father’s Day Hikes

Father's Day Hike 2011

Yesterday was our second annual Father’s Day hike for the extended Kendall family. Two years ago, contemplating what I wanted to do with the family for Father’s Day I realized I wanted to depart from the normal let’s have a meal somewhere and watch a movie. I wanted something simple and something that afforded us the opportunity to take advantage of the gorgeous Colorado we moved back to in 2007. The idea for a short family hike was conceived.

Last year, our first we went to Chautauqua near Boulder. It was a great trip. The day began with us meeting at a local grocery store to purchase simple meal items and throw them into a backpack. Then a short drive to Boulder and off we went. It was a great experience.

Yesterday we all hit the grocery store or made our lunches before we met at our place in Longmont, CO. Then we took off through Lyons, CO on our way to the Sleepy Lion Trail in the mountains just West of Lyons. The drive was less than 30 minutes and then we ventured on foot into the gorgeous mountains. The Sleepy Lion Trail is moderate beginning hike for anyone who has not been hiking much. It’s got some great inclines as well as a really nice meadow of grass and flowers you hike through. Vistas include the view of Ralph Pierce Reservoir along much of the trail. The spot pictured above is a huge outcropping of rocks/boulders where we stopped to takes some fun photos.

It was a great time. Can’t wait for next year!

Temple Grandin

She had chili with cheese and onions

Occasionally you see a movie, read a book, or hear a story about someone inspiring and hope to meet the person. Then there are the once in a lifetime opportunities you have to not only meet that person, but to get to work with her (or him). Late last year I found out there was a project on which I might be working with my friend Dan (of Vendor Hippo). The project was amazing in and of itself. But then came the part about the “talent” for the video project.

I had never heard of Temple Grandin till that day. About a month ago, as part of preparing the shoot I viewed the Made for HBO movie about her life and was moved to tears by — well, many things in the movie. Today I got the rare privilege to direct a shoot with Temple explaining the ins and outs of handling sheep. What an amazing morning.

It was awesome to hear her explain the things the movie depicts but related to sheep. Her passion for helping people understand livestock so the handling of the sheep is less stressful on the animals and the humans was evident.

Claire Danes… I’m impressed. What a great job of portraying this special person. You definitely deserved the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Mini-series or Movie Oscar you won for the portrayal of this bigger than life lady.

Those of you who even think you have a tough life and need a leg up to move forward in this life… see the movie!

Teaching, teaching, and more teaching!

There haven’t been many posts here on my site/blog in quite some time. That’s because I’ve been busy!

From sheep, sheep, and more sheep to teaching, teaching, and more teaching. I was all poised to teach four courses at Front Range Community College here in Longmont (their Boulder County Campus) when Colorado Mountain College asked me to teach one of the same courses I’ve taught at FRCC for them online. They had several students who needed the course for their certificate or degree and couldn’t find anyone to teach it. That was one week before the course was supposed to start. So I’ve been pretty busy converting the classroom experience into screen casts, discussion topics, exercises, and assignments that can be completed through a Blackboard interface.

Then, I was excited to meet yesterday with the folks over at Boulder Digital Arts (http://www.boulderdigitalarts.com) about teaching some PHP and MySQL over there. It looks like that will begin just as the FRCC and CMC gigs are winding down for the semester/summer.

Whew! I love it but it’s definitely a schedule killer!

Sheep, sheep, and more sheep!

Well, I’ve been kind of more silent than normal but I have an excuse. I’ve been traveling weekly shooting (video of) sheep. It all began in late July with a trip to Sacramento followed by trips to Ohio, Iowa, Meeker CO, and Greeley. Below are some photos of the folks we shot interviews with for the American Sheep Industry. The interviews will break up the panel discussion segments during a live television broadcast on the RFD-TV channel in September. It was a very interesting set of shoots and the editing is going great. I learned so much about sheep and what it takes to raise them here in our country… oh and I met some GREAT folks who put food on your table every year.

Great times! Thanks Amy Trinidad from the American Sheep Industry and Dan Borgmann of Vendor Hippo for all the help!

Spread-arden

I’ve dubbed it our “spread-arden” because we’re using small places across the yard to grow our veggies rather than one big section. The seedlings we planted on May 2 are transplanted into a large brick area around a tree, but we’re going to have to move them since they don’t seem to get enough sun. More on that later.

The tomato plants we got from a friend that were in a little Target starter pack (seeds, soil, envelope — just add water) started out great in the starter pack, but once transplanted went to pieces. So we replaced them with a starter plant from a local nursery and added two other types of tomatoes as well as red, green, yellow and orange bell pepper starter plants, a jalapeño starter, an Anaheim green chile starter plant (thank you Rod Grice for introducing us to these as hors d’oeuvres to be placed on the grill as it’s heating up and eaten while the real meal is cooking on the warmed grill), and last but certainly not least a cucumber starter plant.

It’s only been 2 months and we’ve already learned so much and can’t wait to set out next year’s “crop” based on what we’ve learned so far. Nonetheless I’m really enjoying tending the small plants and watching the beginnings of the fruit (or veggies) of our efforts. Today we added tomato cages around the tomatoes and bell peppers so I thought I’d snap some photos to share.

"Caged" Tomatoes

"Caged" Yellow, Orange, and Red Bell Peppers

"Caged" Green Bell Peppers, Jalapeño, and Green Chiles

Three Years Ago

Yesterday was a busy day and an important anniversary slipped by. On June 12th 2007 I was summoned to the office of my supervisor to find out I would be part of the sweeping annual layoffs at LifeWay. I’d watched a number of friends go through this experience as it happened about this time every year. There was little anxiety.
Today is the more memorable anniversary. On June 13 on my way to lunch with some of our very best friends it became clear it was time to return to Colorado. The events that followed from June 14 – August 26 when we arrived back in Colorado were unmistakeable. We put our house on the market in early August and had a contract for our asking price within 5 days. Closing wad in two weeks. We loaded up all the stuff and headed to CO.
Three years later were still delighted to be here. Starting your own business during a horrible recession (no doubt fueled by a volitile election season) I wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Herb Garden & Veggies

Week 4 plus a few days we planted the herbs and we got some starter plants for our veggies. Here’s some pics:

Herbs Planted & Sage Transplanted

Tomatoes

Green Bell & Jalepeno Peppers

Cucumbers

Seed Nursery Day 14

So we are 14 days into our seedling nurturing. As you can see several FINALLY have sprouted and are beginning to look hopeful. Lavendar, Spearmint, and Parsley pots still show now sign of life but the others just popped out one day over the last week (Basil was first) and seem to be progressing quite well. Today we may spend some time prepping their outdoor home for transplanting in the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday we bicycled around town to a couple of nurseries to look at starter plants for some flowers, fruit, and vegetables we hope to add to our horticultury mix for the season. Other than a few pretty flowers for Julie, we’re planning to put out some tomatoes, peppers (jalepeno, anaheim, bell), squash, cucumbers, cantalope, watermelon, and I want to try some beans of some sort… green, peas… not sure yet.

The last time we attempted a garden was in TN and we planted a number of seeds for tomatoes and peppers. What we got was WAY too many. Yesterday we were thinking one or two tomato plants initially. Then we remembered we could make fresh salsa and decided to up it to four or five. YUM!

TV 2.0

After many years of a love=hate relationship with paid cable tv we decided last week to give it up. There were several longstanding annoyances that led up to us finally deciding to pull the plug:

1. paying for someone to advertise to me
   I actually remember when cable tv was appealing because it had few or no commercials.
2. paying for 800+ channels 24/7 when I only really DVR’ed and watched a handful of shows each week.
3. whenever I did sit down to just watch something live while sipping a cup of coffee or something clicking repeatedly through 800+ channel and finding NOTHING worth watching.
4. the simple reality that all the shows we watch are now posted online for free by the network, or they can be bought for a much smaller fee than the sum total cable tv bill for a month.

That’s just a few, but the most obvious and highly contributory factors. Last night I watched my first two shows from the computer that I did not have DVR’ed due to no longer having the service. It was easy (fewer commercials too) and overall a pleasant experience. I had to wait one extra night after they aired but usually we don’t watch shows the night or even the week they were aired.
So, that’s a report on our latest experiment. We are now paid (subscription) tv free!