Fall Begins

Although it may not feel like it everywhere, fall is beginning in Missouri. With the rain from Gustav, the temperature has dropped and this weekend my family did two things that help close out summer and begin fall.

The official close of summer for my family is the closing of Barney's Bar-B-Q. It is a restaurant that only opens on the weekend during summer. It closes this weekend and we went there twice to bring the summer to a close. The second night the owner's whole family was at dinner the same time we were. This is the family that hired me to firebreath last summer and it ended poorly. We had a good time reliving the experience and hearing about how the whole incident made me a hero. If you do not know what happened you can see the experience here.

The second event of the weekend was apple picking. This is another family tradition. We went up to Principia College to pick up my brother just to find out that he could not make it because of a survey. So my sister, dad, mom, and I went to Yate's Apple Orchard to pick apples. Last year they did not have very many apples at all and told us that whatever we could find we could take. This year the apple crop was much better. We picked a bushel and a half of apples and then went back to the college to get Michael for dinner. On the way back the Garmin led us in a new way that we had not driven before. On the way, I saw the place where I asked Brittany to go on a date with me, just one date that is all, and she denied me, shot me down right where I stood. We drove up to Pere Marquette for dinner where we had a family style dinner of fried chicken although it was the sides that made everyone happy. They brought out rolls at the beginning of dinner that they could not keep filled. They also had cole slaw, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. And yes Brittany, I ate some green beans for you.

So now it is officially fall and I can smell the apples being baked already, apple pie and apple sauce.

Repulican National Convention

I watched the Republican National Convention this evening. I came in during Rudy Giuliani's speech. and stayed through voting for the Republican nomination. Governor Sarah Palin made a very strong speech. She had a good time making fun of Obama and promoting McCain. It was a speech that was very entertaining.

When they got to the point where they started the voting I was excited to hear Alaska give five votes to Ron Paul. If you don't know, one of my friends and roommates in college was a strong supporter of Ron Paul and was very vocal supporter whenever a political conversation came up, or really whenever he brought up politics. Since I got to hear all about Ron Paul all the time I became interested in his campaign. Hearing him get votes made me happy. Anyway, Alaska gave five votes to Ron Paul. Then voting continued for a long time. It made it to Montana and McCain was only 21 votes from clenching the nomination. Every single state and territory was called and passed so that Arizona had the right to cast the final votes to make McCain the nominee. As the rest of the states continued in their voting, a few states voted for other candidates. The lady responsible for repeating the vote counts must have been falling asleep. She regularly messed up in repeating the vote count. When all the votes were counted McCain obviously won, but I was disappointed when the final count did not match what was said by the delegates. They only awarded the 5 votes from Alaska to Ron Paul and 2 to Mitt Romney. I know for a fact that Ron Paul received 12 votes, Romney 2 and I missed where 4 votes went. If they felt it was important enough to cycle through all the states before going back to Arizona and wasting a lot of time, why do they not feel it is important to at least get the vote count correct. I know it is a minor detail but it is disturbing the poor math skills demonstrated with this vote. It is ok very shortly afterward there was a movement to make the vote unanimous. It was an oral vote, most people voted yes. When they asked if anyone opposed there was a very distinct no in the background. Followed by, "Then the vote is unanimous." I just think that it is funny since there was a loud no right before saying the vote was unanimous.

Anyway that is how the Republican National Convention voting process went this year.

I Visit Brittany

This weekend the tables were turned. Instead of Brittany flying in to visit me, I flew to Dallas to visit her. The plan was for her sister to pick her up at Dallas International then for her to pick me up later that day at Love Field. That was the plan until her flight was rerouted to Oklahoma City due to storms. So I ended up landing first and driving with her sister to Dallas International to pick up Brittany.

Saturday was spent relaxing. We went to Costco to eat lunch and free samples. After that we went to Dick's Sporting Goods so that Brittany could buy a tennis racket. Then we went home and spent more time relaxing. We ate dinner and played pitch. Phil and I beat Brittany and Courtney. We started out down two games to none and then came back and won three straight to take the series.

Sunday was the beginning of the much more active part of the weekend. We left at 7:30 in the morning to drive down to New Braunfels, Texas to go to Schlitterbahn, the largest water park in the United States. We made it there right around noon and started at Schlitterbahn West. This portion of the waterpark used only water from the local river. Fittingly, all the rides modeled fast flowing rivers with drops in them. We then went to the other side of the water park to Blastenhoff. This was a more convential water park. It had the most popular waterpark in America called the Master Blaster. It was not all that impressive, especially with over an hour in waiting. The best part of this side of the waterpark was the lazy river wave pool combination. It had a very strong current and big waves to play in. After the waterpark we went back to the Westin where we were staying for free dinner. Actually it was free hors'devours but it worked for dinner for us. After dinner we played pitch again. This time Brittany and I played against Courtney and Phil. Brittany and I were on our way to make a comeback when Brittany made a daring 4 bid that did not work out quite as well as she hoped. So we ended up losing game 5.

Monday morning Brittany got to use her new tennis racket. After tennis we went to the Comal River, rented tubes, and floated down the river. Very shortly after starting our float we found the best ride of the weekend. Whenever the river had little drops or waterfalls, they would build a chute to bypass the sudden drop. The water still had to fall the same distance, it just was spread out a little more. If we had more time, we would all have liked to ride that portion of the river a few more times. We continued down the river and had two more drops, not as good as the first but still exciting. We got off the river and started our drive home. We thought we could do it in under 4 hours, but it took almost 5 due to traffic and congestion most of the way home.

Unfortunately, I had to leave on Tuesday and Brittany had to go back to work so we did not have any time for more exciting adventures this weekend. So until next time.

New SCUBA Gear

Last night I went to Y-kiki Divers to buy all of my dive gear. I started looking at new dive gear while at home the week before going back to camp. I looked at ScubaPro, Oceanic, Mares, and Aqualung. There is a whole lot of different gear out there and it is expensive. I looked at three different dive shops in the St. Louis area. I decided on Y-kiki because it is the one that my parents have had the best experience with and they also were willing to throw in the next course in my quest to become a Dive Instructor so I will be taking O2 Provider and Rescue Diver with them.

The equipment that I bought was all Oceanic.

BC - Cruz


This BC has two features that are pretty common but I am really grateful to get to use. One of them is the alternate air source built into the inflator pump. This will allow me to leave the octopus at home when on fun dives. Whenever you go SCUBA diving you always have a primary air source and a backup one in case your buddy needs to breathe off of your tank for some reason. By having it attached to your inflator hose instead of independent, it eliminates the need of a hose coming from your tank and is one less thing to accidentally drag along the reef.

The other feature is an integrated weight system. After putting on all the gear needed for diving, you end up being positively buoyant which is not a good thing if you want to go to the bottom of the ocean. To remedy this problem, you add lead weight. If you do not have an integrated weight system, you put on a very stylish belt with lead weights positioned either on the hips or a little in front of them whichever is most comfortable. However, the weigths often slide to the position that they want. The integrated weight system means that there are pockets designed to hold weight eliminating the need to wear a belt. The weight stays in the same spot the whole dive and some of it can be placed near the tank to help trim you while under water.

Regulator - Delta 4
Octopus - Octo Swiv Mag

This regulator is the only regulator that NOAA allows their divers to use in water under 50 degrees Fahrenheit. Although I do not plan on doing much cold water diving, it goes to show the overall quality of the regulator. The first stage (the thing with all of the hoses attached to it) is environmentally sealed which is why it is able to be used in cold water. The second stage (what you breath from) has a swivel connected to it so that you can move your head without needing to pull and twist the whole hose making the regulator less tiring to use. I also have control over the ease of breathing so I can set it wherever I want based on the conditions.

The Octopus is the secondary regulator that I would need while teaching a class to PADI standards. It is bright yellow so it is easily found. It swivels and twists to allow for the most freedom in the event that it is necessary. Another cool feature of this octo is the mag part of the name. It comes with a magnet on a clip to connect to the BC. This is much easier to use then any other connection device on the market.

Computer - Atom 2.0

This watch is a dive computer that connects wirelessly to a transmitter on the tank. This system eliminates the need for another tube coming from the tank. It can gauge my air consumption rate and can calculate how much time I have left on my dive. It will display the time remaining based on air time left or non-decompression limits. The advantage for having a dive computer is that it can adjust for changes in depth where a dive table is set hard and fast. The person helping me at the dive shop said that he was able to go on a dive where he hit 130 feet and be done for one hour and ten minutes. He was not at 130 feet the whole time but on a dive chart he would only be allowed to be there for 10 minutes and then he would need to go to 15 feet for a safety stop. With the computer calculating in real time he had an extra hour.

Altogether I spent 4 weeks of working at Cedars to buy all the gear making this be far the largest purchase I have ever made. And now I have to wait almost one month before I get to try it all out during the rescue diver course.

Easist Job Search Ever

It was time for me to start looking for a way to earn some money while in St. Louis for the next few months. I decided that working for either Best Buy or Circuit City could be a good option since I like technology. So I got ready to go look for a job. I put on a collared shirt and some nicer shorts. I drove out to a shopping center that had both a Best Buy and a Circuit City. I saw Best Buy first and as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a sign that said, "Now Hiring." I walked into the store and went to the customer service desk. I asked the lady working there for an application. She told me that I had to fill it out online. She then asked what my availability was and when I told her that I was flexible, she responded by informing me that she would have no problem fitting me into the schedule. I went home and filled out the application and based on what I was told, I have to imagine that getting hired will not be difficult. So I should have a job when I get back in town from my trip over Labor Day.

Brittany Visits

If you have been reading Brittany's blog, you would know that she has spent a week in DC for training and still has one more to go. When she was talking to her company setting up travel plans they were going to fly her out to DC and then home and then back to DC and then back home. When I found out this plan, I suggested that instead of flying to her home, she fly to my home. This worked out well and so I got to see her this past weekend. She was able to fly in 4 hours early since training ended early. So I picked her up from the airport and took her to my house. We started the weekend by making fudge. It was in such great demand that we were supposed to make a double batch. Things went pretty smoothly. We were afraid the mixing bowl was going to be too small so we decided to pour the chocolate into the hot mixture. In order to do this, we pulled out one cup of the marshmallow fluff so that we could add the rest into the hot mixture. After finishing with putting the marshmallow fluff into the hot mixture I set the plastic container down and poured in the chocolate. Oops. I put the plastic on the still hot burner and melted the bottom off. That was unfortunate but we were able to clean it all up. The longer lasting problem was that we had one cup of marshmallow fluff without a home. Half a cup was still in the measuring cup and the other half was on a piece of chocolate wrapping. We decided that we could eat ice cream sundaes with marshmallow fluff on them later. We made dinner, spaghetti, and played some Wii, but Brittany was too cold for ice cream. The marshmallow fluff sat on the counter.

We went to bed and the next morning enjoyed a relaxing morning. For lunch we relaxed a little less and went on a bike ride to Qdoba. We got back and got ready to go to the college for dinner with my parents and to hang out with some friends up there. We brought some fudge up with us and gave it to Christy, Brittany's RC while in Howard, my brother, and Karen. We were surprised to find out that another friend was flying in that night and was coming up to the college as well for the night. So we went to the pub to wait until Marcia arrived. All in all, it was a good reunion. We drove home and went to bed. By the way, the marshmallow fluff was still on the counter.

I took Brittany to the airport and it timed out so that I could meet my grandma for breakfast immediately after dropping Brittany off. We had a good breakfast and I drove her home. That pretty much concluded the excitement of my weekend. And the marshmallow fluff is still sitting on the counter.

My Olympic Sport

I have had lots of opportunity to watch the Olympics for the past week. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is finding new sports. The most memorable was curling two winter Olympics ago. This year I saw handball for the first time. After watching this much Olympics I went to the website to see how many different sports there are. While there I decided that when I go to the Olympics I will go as a slalom kayaker. Essentially there is a fake river with gates set up. Green gates mean you go through them going downstream and red you go upstream. There is a two second penalty if you bump a gate and a 50 second penalty if you push it past a 45 degree angle, go the wrong way through it, or miss it altogether. Here is a video of Campbell Walsh slalom kayaking to give a feel of the sport.



Unfortunately I missed this event because I was still at camp when it happened. This would be a fun event to train for, just go to rivers and start paddling down them until you are really good at controlling your boat. Then find a course and start applying your control. Now I just need a spare 2 grand to get all the equipment. Keep an eye out at the next Olympics, I might be there for some kayaking.