I've managed to survive another camping trip. I met up with four of my college buddies for the annual four day trip in the Shirley Mountains near Medicine Bow. The normal drinking games, horseshoes, and story telling activities kept us busy. Before we knew it the trip was over. Nobody got hurt and it was a lot of fun catching up with friends I've known for so long.





The weather was good on Thursday and Friday, but it clouded up for most of Saturday, and rained like mad all Saturday night and Sunday. It only got up into the 40's on Sunday. The road bed was apparently made out of bentonite, so the drive out was very exciting.





I'm always amazed how good a shower and a clean bed feels after a trip like that.

On other news, the Mustang finally passed emissions last Wednesday. Two more years before I need to worry about that again.

Happy 4th of July!

Kristen and I went bowling this weekend with both her sisters and their significant others. I bowled a 129 my second game, which is better than average for me. Katie and Jordan spent the night at our place, since Katie's Kia was acting up.

We all had breakfast the next morning at Le Peeps, and then Kristen and I did some shopping. Saturday was pretty laid back.

On Sunday, I ran into work to grab my car. It gave me an excuse to play with my new heart-rate monitor/GPS unit. I can now graph my route on the computer, see my heart rate at any point, my pace, elevation, etc. Pretty cool stuff!

I then headed to Ted's house to help him level an area in his back yard. We then moved a steel shed from one end of the yard to the newly leveled area. Lot's of sweating was involved, but it was fun.

Meanwhile, the old mustang refused to pass emissions on Friday, so I've been spending time trying to figure out what's wrong. $200 later, hopefully the problem is solved. I'll find out Wednesday.

I'm taking off on Thursday to go on the annual camping trip with the college buds. A lot of drinking will be involved, along with an unhealthy amount of horseshoe playing.

I received the first box of tree house hardware today from Mcmaster. In the upper right hand corner is the 3/4" lag bolt that will go into the tree. Then a shackle that connects to the chain. The chain connects to a turnbuckle that will allow me to adjust the tension by up to 6" if necessary. That then goes to another shackle, that then goes to a giant 3/4" eyebolt that will be connected to the platform.

I did pretty good for ordering everything online, I did get one shackle too small, but that was due to the online drawing being incorrect. Each component is rated to at least 1200 pounds. Does that sound too light? If there are five (maybe 6) connection points, that would be 6,000 pounds, or 3 tons of evenly distributed weight. Certainly that is overkill, but someone correct me if I'm wrong. Do it now before I order more parts!

It was a quiet weekend, the first in a long time. My friend Joyce was in town, but we never managed to meet up. Saturday was our normal training run, we ran 6 miles around the reservoir, and a little beyond. Kristen and I went and saw "Beyond The Hedge", which I enjoyed quite a bit, Kristen was a bit mixed on it. We ate at Bloom, the food was much better than I remember, but that may have been the 6 miles talking. We then took the rest of the day easy, grilling steaks for dinner, and having a good nap in the afternoon at some point.

Sunday was a bit busier. I finished a letter to Dad about tree house issues. I also CADed up a bike part for a co-worker, and machined a prototype in the garage. It felt good to be back in the garage making stuff, it'd been a while. Around 4:30 we headed over to our friends place for a barbeque. We enjoyed watching Braiden chase around the two cats in the yard. They eventually allowed him to pet them, but it took a bit of warming up.

Another week of work approaches.

Happy Father's Day!

Kristen and I met up with her father and a good portion of her family on Friday to celebrate an early Father's day and Bruce's birthday. The margaritas were flowing, and everyone had a good time.

Saturday morning was the first day of training for the summer running session. We ran around the Boulder Reservoir, which was a bit farther than I expected, especially on the first day. Kristen headed to Estes Park for a wool festival with her two sisters, Katie and Allison. They brought Allison's new baby Maddock along for the ride. Here he is holding onto his very own alpaca.






In the late afternoon we headed up into the mountains for some car camping. We met up with our friends Ted & Kathy, and Mike & Tracy. We lucked out and got a spot at a nice campground that someone had reserved, but then canceled at the last second. The campground was near Mount Evans, which Mike had biked to the summit in 3 hours the weekend before . We had some excellent food, and had a lot of fun sitting around the campfire telling stories.



Mom has requested an updated picture of the garden. We're currently enjoying radishes, lettuce, and baby onions from it. It's been a really hot month, so we've been watering the heck out of it.

Kristen and I ran the "Sunrise Stampede" this weekend. It was our first "serious" 10k of the season. The Bolder Boulder involves so much screwing around that you can't consider your finishing time that realistic. I finished in 00:53:08, Kristen finished in 01:13:58. We were both satisfied with our times, but wished we hadn't taken two weeks off from running.

We spent the rest of the day preparing for Morrissey's surprise barbeque on Sunday. We were in charge of grilling, so we bought some bulk meat at Sam's Club.

Sunday was fairly full of further prep for the barbeque. It went off well, we had nice weather, and spent most of the day in the sun hanging out with friends.

Treehouse planning continues. I've CADed up a scale model of the tree layout. A 8' X 16' rectangle fits nicely in the trees. That's much larger than I expected, so that's exciting. I've been trying to research suspension schemes, and haven't found a great online source yet.

Ma & Pa made it back to Wyoming in one piece. Mom sent this entertaining shot of me about to climb up in the treehouse tree. You can plainly see how thrilled I am.

Tree scouting trip.

I headed to the Indiana farm this weekend to scout trees for a possible tree house. I had a lot of fun hanging out with the parents and the dog, and tromping around the woods. A few promising trees didn't pan out after we climbed up in them. The original plan of using a single tree with many limbs didn't seem like such a hot idea when we saw how the random limb placement would complicate things.

Above is the first tree we seriously considered. It was a huge sycamore. Note Dad near the bottom of the picture. After using a ladder to get up into this tree, I suddenly wasn't so confident about building a treehouse. 18 or 20 feet up in the air really changed my perspective on things.

Lena helped quite a bit this weekend. Here she is carrying a rope for us as we headed out to look for trees.

This is the tree we settled on. It's a sycamore that has five trunks coming up from an old stump. We're hoping to put the floor right at 16 feet above the ground, which should give us quite a bit of floor space. I'm hoping to return in the fall to build the platform. We'll see how it holds up over the fall, winter, and spring.

Here are a bunch of the better pictures I took: