The Outside Lane

Smartphones

Well, it looks like the last time I felt like blogging was over a year ago when we traveled to NYC. Since then, we’ve been back to NYC a second time, and gotten engaged, among other fun events.

Today, I return with an amusing story.

I was in the waiting room at the doctor’s office this morning doing what I (and nearly everyone else these days) does when faced with the situation of waiting somewhere alone: play on a smartphone. Suddenly, an older woman walked over to me, leaned in close, and said,

“So, what do you people do on those things?!”

It truly seemed like she had no idea what someone could be doing staring at a tiny device with a screen for hours at a time. I was surprised and I instantly felt shamed, like I should have been reading a paperback book or crocheting a scarf. I smiled at her and replied,

“Well, ah, I am actually reading emails right now on this phone.”

She kept looking at me, so I added,

“It’s like a mini computer you keep in your pocket!”

She was not impressed. She sat down in the seat directly across from me and proceeded to tell me (in a fairly friendly tone) that “those things” make the world “more dangerous” and that she wishes people would go back to “the way it used to be.” Of course, I don’t think she’s completely off-base, but I also think she’d probably have a fun time with a smartphone or an iPad if she got used to it. I told her that I do think it’s a little sad that so many people sit and walk around constantly staring at phones, listening to music, and maybe miss out on what’s going on around them. However, I added that they are quite useful for getting information, staying in touch, and providing entertainment. I would have probably enjoyed talking to her and getting to know her a little (I do love the wisdom and humor of older adults!), however, a few seconds later I was called by the nurse.

NYC

Greg and I went to New York City for 3 days and stayed with his cousin, Patrick, and fiance, Erica in Manhattan. It was especially fun to stay with them, since they were such gracious hosts and knew lots of fun places to go. I can’t believe how much we did in just 3 days! In fact, we were having so much fun exploring, I hardly took any pictures.

I can’t even begin to decide what my most favorite thing was; everything was amazing and even better than I anticipated.

We got in late on Thursday night at La Guardia airport. I was lucky to have the window seat on the left side of the plane, so I got to see Manhattan from the sky.

On Friday, we walked around Times Square. I’m pretty sure we only went inside the M&M store and the Hershey store. I didn’t buy any candy though because my mission was cupcakes. Later, we took the ferry to Ellis Island and saw the Statue of Liberty on the way. The museum was cool to see and the the ferry ride was fun. For dinner, we went to Adrienne’s on Stone Street and had really good pizza. The street had some kind of cobblestone and reminded me of Italy. The pizza came in one size for $17.50, so I was expecting to get a small round pizza. We were both kind of shocked when a rather large pizza was set in front of us. We only finished half. The couple a few tables away somehow finished the entire thing.

We found cupcakes from a bakery named “Crumbs” on our way back from dinner. They had the perfect amount of frosting and moist cake. We got 4 of them and they were so rich, there was still a half cupcake left on Sunday afternoon! Yeah, that’s right, the cupcakes won. That’s a rare occurrence for me.

On Friday night, we went to a comedy show near the apartment, and it happened to be free! It was an open-mic show of short sketches. You never know what you’ll get with open-mic, so we were especially happy that it turned out to be absolutely hilarious. I’m talking about the kind of laughing that makes your face hurt. And it was free…still can’t believe that.

The show on Friday night started at Midnight, so we ended up sleeping in until 11am the next day and then getting brunch at Fred’s. We shared french toast (about 2 inches thick!) and a spanish omelet. We spent the rest of the afternoon shopping on 5th avenue. By shopping, I really mean just looking at absurdly expensive clothing and jewelry. Bergdorf and Goodman’s men’s store had a winter jacket for $3500. I had to try really hard to walk around in the store and pretend I wasn’t in shock. While we were walking around outside, we came upon a group of men dancing to music on the street, surrounded by tourists. It’s hard not to love watching some talented dancers, even if they’re just out there asking for money; “The more you give us, the more we’ll have!” Ha. The best part was a surprise cameo dance by a random little boy in the crowd. At the very end, this little guy, probably about 3, felt like he wanted to join in and show off his moves too. (I wish I had a video!) He went out there and did his own little dance, getting just as much applause as the “real” show. You can see him in the picture below, standing on the right in jeans and a red sweatshirt. SO CUTE.

On Sunday, we ran through Central Park and then took another walk there later on after getting coffee at Joe. Central Park was awesome. I was surprised to see so many people riding fast on really expensive road bikes, along with the hybrids, horse and carriages, roller bladers, runners, walkers, and people with strollers.

In the park, we also saw our 2nd “adult tantrum” of the day. A woman was yelling at her family (a man, another adult woman, and 2 teens), from at least 100 feet away. She was making quite the scene, and blocking the path, with absolutely no regard for anyone else in the (crowded) park. AWKWARD. The first “adult tantrum” we saw was that same morning, in front of the coffee shop. A nicely dressed man was yelling at a barbershop employee quietly sweeping the sidewalk with his head down. The man was yelling and making threats about the barbershop and how he was going to get his guys to come beat him up. It was the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a while. The third and final “adult tantrum” we saw on Sunday was in a sandwich shop at lunch. It only had 3 small tables and all of them were in use by us and a few other people. A woman came in and started ordering her sandwich and immediately seemed extremely pissed off. She kept turning around every 5 seconds or so and would huff about and make loud sighs. She did this for the entire 5 minutes until her sandwich was ready and then she angrily shouted excuse me to get to a small area with a chair. She huffed some more and ate her sandwich and then put her nose up in the air to apply lip liner, lipstick, and powder on her face. Then she huffed some more and finally was on her way again. CRAZY LADY.

We sailed through security at the airport and had a very nice flight home. NYC was great and I really didn’t want to leave. Can’t wait until next time!

Golfing

One day, Greg and I were sitting on the couch, after dinner. Suddenly, he turned to me and said,

“hey, do you want to go hit golf balls at the driving range?”

I immediately said yes because it sounded like fun. We called our friends, Rosie and Jake, to ask if they wanted to meet us an hour later for a round of mini-golf. Greg has his own clubs and plays golf with work friends every month or so. He says he’s not super awesome, but he’s clearly not bad at all either. He has a pretty good swing and knows how to play.

We got a large basket of balls and headed to the driving range. He handed me one of his clubs and said,

“here, take a few practice swings.”

He was not prepared for how bad I am at swinging a golf club. It was absolutely terrible. After a while, I started to actually hit some of the balls, in between my bad swings where I just slammed the club into the green and completely missed the ball. The few I actually hit, only went about 50 feet. I let Greg hit the rest of the balls and was happy to just watch him and other golfers around us.

The best part was when we were getting ready to leave the driving range and Greg said,

“Well, I guess I can’t take you golfing with me in the future… I was maybe thinking I could bring you with a group sometime.”

HA. It was so funny. I joked about this driving range outing being his secret test to see if I’m good enough to come along on a future golf outing with him.

Grade: FAIL. hahaha. Anyway, we had fun, especially playing mini golf later. I lost at that too, but we had a wildly fun time. I’ll probably just stick to the mini golf from now on.

Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore

Over labor day weekend, Greg and I went backpacking with two of our friends, Rosie and Jake, up to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in the UP of Michigan. It was beautiful! I’ve only ever been to the UP in the winter, so I was thrilled to discover that we would be camping in a forest of trees right next to the beach of lake superior! We hiked along the cliffs overlooking the water and found caves and waterfalls along the way!

Some stories from the weekend:

- We had to use a bear bag for anything that was food-related or “smelled of people”. Everytime we left the campsite this meant packing up all of those items into a backpack and using a 10ft pole to hang it on the bear pole. It may not look so bad, but it was really tough. It took at least 3 people every time; 2 to hold the pole and another to direct it where to go.

- On the first night, we sat by the campfire for a while and around 9pm or so, we decided to call it a night and go to bed. Good thing we did, because not more than 5 minutes later, we heard thunder and lightning roll in. Within minutes, it was raining super hard. We woke up to find ourselves sleeping with about an inch of water inside the tent. Pretty awesome. I also found out that despite using a “rain cover” for my backpack, it was not effective and my clothes were wet. We just hung things up as best as we could and went for a hike all day. Luckily, the rest of the weekend was pretty dry, although still pretty cool. Not complaining though, I’ll take cool fall weather over 90 degrees and humid any day!

- On the last night, we hiked for about 10 miles and on the way back, decided to gather more firewood. Well, actually, Rosie and I laid down and rested on the trail while Greg and Jake collected wood. They carried it back about a mile or so and then we had a 4 hour campfire. It was super fun!

Backpacking trip: Success!

The 5 F’s of Summer

Thanks to a recent facebook status from Greg, I stole his brilliant words and made them into this post. The 5 F’s of summer can be summed up with family, frisbee, fly fishing, floating, and feasting.

Family: We spent a fun weekend up in Door County with my family, camping at Peninsula State Park. Most of the weekend was spent eating, drinking, relaxing at the beach, hanging tarps, and watching sunsets.

Frisbee: This summer, Greg and I played with some friends on an ultimate frisbee rec D league team - Ken Dobbins. We played every Monday and Wednesday from June through August. I’ve never played on a frisbee team before, so my throwing, catching, strategy, and knowledge of rules was lacking in the beginning. Thanks to practicing with Greg, playing throughout the season, and my running ability, I think I turned out to be a pretty good frisbee teammate. Our team improved over the season and we made it to playoffs. The last championship game was against another team, about 3 times the size of our team. We won the game, making us D league champions. I do have to say the other team did win the most style points by wearing jorts, drinking PBRs, and riding fixie bikes to the game.

Fly fishing: After learning how to fly fish in Colorado, Greg and I got some of our own fly fishing gear. We went out for the first time a few weeks ago to test them out in a nearby stream. There wasn’t as much of a bank on the stream as we had imagined, so with my inappropriate fishing attire, I decided to fish off the dock of the pond while Greg fished over in the stream. I practiced my casting and felt pretty good about myself. After a while, a man came to the pond with his kids and was standing near me on the dock. I could tell he was watching me but I wasn’t sure why. He came over and asked if I wanted some tips and I said yes. Turns out his dad is a fly fishing instructor, so he definitely knew what he was talking about. He gave me some tips and even went to his car and got me a different fly to catch the bass with. He let me keep it, which I thought was very nice. After fishing the stream, we went to a different pond. The fish loved our flies over there. We each caught about 8 fish in a row, one after another. It was pretty fun. I also finally decided it’s ok to touch the fish and take the hook out myself. I was feeling proud.

Here’s Greg’s first bass on the fly:!

Last week, I went up to Bayfield for a work trip and stayed on Lake Superior. The hotel had fishing poles to use for free, so I woke up early one morning and went fishing on my own! I didn’t catch any fish, but it was nice to sit outside early in the morning.

Floating: Sailing with Vijay, and canoeing with Greg, Rosie, and Jake. This summer has offered many opportunities for fun on the water.

Feasting: Where do I start? I am so lucky to have family that invites me home for dinner, a boyfriend who loves to cook, and great friends who host dinner parties.

And last but not least, my raspberry lemonade bars; probably the tastiest dessert I have ever made.

New in town

Part of my new job consists of traveling to 14 different sites in Wisconsin to interview criminal justice programs. The traveling will all be completed by the end of the summer. I’m happy to say that I’m enjoying it a lot more than I anticipated. The past few days, I’ve been in the Oshkosh, Wisconsin area attending meetings. On Wednesday, my first meeting was in Green lake, Wisconsin at 9:30am. I arrived to Green Lake a little early so I had some time to look around. For some reason, it hadn’t really occurred to me that the town of Green lake would have a large, beautiful lake, full of boats, jet skis, and houses surrounding the shore. I also found out that it’s one of the deepest lakes in Wisconsin.

Now, for the funny part. My next interview on Wednesday was in Oshkosh. I have been there a few times before since my sister, Allison went to school there for a year, and my sister, Erica for all 4 years. What I haven’t done there much is actually drive; I’ve almost always just been a passenger. There I was, driving along, trying to get to the meeting. I had read the directions ahead of time, so I knew which street to turn on. The directions had said to turn right on Algoma street, so when I saw the street, I turned right. Suddenly I realized that there were 3 lanes of traffic, all with cars coming toward me. There was also a guy on the sidewalk laughing at me. I quickly turned around and started driving the right way again. So embarrassing. I couldn’t believe I had done it, so as I drove past the intersection again, I looked to see if there was a sign with an arrow, saying “One Way”. Yes, there was, but it was bent in such a way, that unless you already knew it was a one-way street, it was hardly visible from where I had been coming from. This was the vindication I needed to make me feel better.

Later that night, per Erica’s recommendation, I went to a cool restaurant/bar called Becket’s. I sat at a table overlooking the river and ordered a mojito, and salmon for dinner. The mint was even grown in the garden just outside the restaurant. Just before I was supposed to get my food, I saw someone I recognized out of the corner of my eye. I looked again, and thought, “Is that Jeff?” I decided it wasn’t and looked away. A few minutes later, he came by with some other people and stopped. It was him! Turns out my friend Jeff from my high school ski team was there having dinner with his roommate, co worker, and roommate’s parents. He invited me to sit with them so I didn’t have to eat alone. It was so much fun, I felt like I had known all of them for years. We shared wine and appetizers, along with funny stories. One of the stories was my experience from earlier when I drove the wrong way. Turns out I wasn’t the only new person in town that day who hadn’t seen the sign. Jeff’s roommate’s mom had been driving earlier and actually made a left turn on to the one-way road, but didn’t realize it was a one-way. She decided to make a left turn, so she put her blinker on to move into the left lane and almost hit a police car who had been driving close behind her in the left lane. He pulled her over immediately and also called in 2 more police cars who were nearby. (Yeah, 3 police cars; you’d think there might be more important things to attend to than this…) After explaining she didn’t realize it was a one-way, he gave her a written warning.

Today was my last meeting in Adams-Friendship which is actually 2 towns in Adams county that are right next to each other and share a high school. It used to be an old railroad town and the home of my great grandma McGinty. My dad and aunt told me she used to own a home there and rented 5 bedrooms upstairs to railroad workers as a source of income after her husband passed away. Coincidentally, the woman I was meeting with knew who my great grandma was and exactly which house she lived in. She gave me directions, so I drove a few blocks and found the house.

Who knew work trips could turn out to be so much fun?!

Colorado - Part 2

After a day of easy hiking on Wednesday with the family, Greg and his Uncle Tim, and I decided to climb La Plata, one of the 14ers. This peak sits at 14,336’ in the Sawatch Mountains. Greg had already climbed 2 in the past; Elbert and Massive. Ever since I lived in Colorado during the summer of 2007, I have wanted to climb one of the 14ers. It seemed like a challenge that I was pretty sure I could accomplish. When I had the opportunity to go with Greg and his experienced mountain climbing uncle, I was very excited, but also a little nervous. Could I actually hike up almost a mile straight into the sky, and all the way back down, making the day into a 10 hour hike? On Wednesday night, I started reading some recent trail reports from the forums on the 14ers.com website. There was only one recent report for La Plata from just a few weeks prior. Two guys had successfully climbed it and added some great pictures. What they also included was a little story about how they woke up early, got to the trailhead and saw green eyes from a mountain lion staring back at them in the trees. It scared them, so they ended up waiting for an hour in the car until it was lighter outside to begin their hike. They didn’t encounter any mountain lions during their hike, but after I read that mountain lions existed in the very same place I was about to go to the next morning, I got scared. In fact, that night, I was so scared, I was convinced the tiny footsteps of a squirrel outside the tent were that of a large, hungry mountain lion. That’s what my brain does in the middle of the night.

We woke up at 4 am on Thursday and Tim picked us up. On the way to the trailhead, I asked him if I should be worried about mountain lions. He really meant to ease my fears, but in his excitement of story telling, we ended up hearing multiple stories of some of his friends who have encountered mountain lions in the past. None of which were actual stories of attack, but nonetheless, hearing about lions stalking people in the forest was a bit scary. I quickly got over my fears though, once we reached the trailhead and started hiking at 5:30am. The sun was coming up and we could see the La Plata peak in the distance as we stood over a bridge with water flowing below.

We hiked through the forest, following the stream as we went. We hiked up some stairs, and after about 2 hours or so, reached the end of the forest and took a quick break.

After the forest, the trail headed up a gulley with lots of switchbacks. It’s hard to truly describe how it looked, but it looked like it went almost straight up in to the sky. Most of the trail was clear, but there were still a few sections with snow. Next, we came to the boulder field. I think we spent the majority of the day climbing up and back down this field of rocks. It was probably the hardest and slowest part for me because every loose rock made me feel uneasy.

We felt great climbing up to the top, telling stories, saying hi to other hikers on the trail, and anticipating the summit. I was happy that I felt so great. Finally, around 10:30, we reached the summit. Incredible views.

We spent about 30 minutes at the top and then headed back down. We saw all kinds of little marmots running around, lots of tiny flowers growing above tree line, and kept hearing the high pitched sound of the pica, which I have yet to actually see.

Greg’s pinky finger next to the flowers

Uncle Tim

At the bottom!

Overall, it was a great hike and a perfect day. We had so much fun and couldn’t have had such a great time without Uncle Tim.

Friday was the last day of fun in Leadville. We spent the day fly fishing with a local guide on one of the streams from the Arkansas river. Fly fishing is fun. We learned how to cast, how to find the inlets on the sides where the trout hang out, how to watch the drift of the fly on the water, and how to sneak up on the trout. I caught one trout and was pretty excited about it. The rest of the time, I kept getting little bites, but lost them when I set the line. Fly fishing could take a lifetime to perfect, so I was happy catching one on my first day! Greg was pretty much a natural. I think he caught at least 10 fish, many of them without any help from the guide. He was so happy, he even gave one fish a kiss.

We left Saturday morning at 7am after packing up the campsite. It was probably the coldest that very last night, so it was probably around 45 degrees and dry when we left. Next stop was Omaha, Nebraska where we stayed with Greg’s Aunt Nancy and had a fun dinner and drinks downtown with lots of Coopers. We got out of the car in Omaha that day around 6pm, where it was 90 and humid. Kind of made us want to get back in the car and drive back to Colorado. We finished driving back on Sunday and also stopped to say to G’s parents in Dubuque.

Colorado trip: Super fun.

Colorado - Part 1

Greg and I spent 8 days camping, hiking, and fishing in Leadville, Colorado. It was super fun and very hard to come back. We were so lucky to have some of Greg’s family in town too. Here are some of my favorite stories and pictures from the trip.

We started out the trip on Friday and stayed the night in Des Moines with Ellen and Adam. Saturday, we drove all day, finally to arrive in Leadville that night. We stayed at a hostel in town and were welcomed with Jambalaya, and corn on the cob. On Sunday, we set up camp at Lake Turquoise and then went fishing in the afternoon. After we had been fishing for an hour or so with no fish yet, I decided to reel in and cast my line again. Suddenly, as I started to reel in, I realized I had caught a fish! Turns out it was a pretty little rainbow trout!

A little while after that, we saw a DNR warden walking toward us on the shore. He came over and asked us for our fishing licenses. We had purchased them online before the trip and saved them as screen shots on our phones. Conveniently, the official licenses were being sent in the mail and the printed temporaries had been left in a plastic bag back home in Madison. In any case, we had valid licenses, so he said it was fine if he wrote down our names and birth dates and called in to validate our licenses. While he was talking with us, Greg had set down his fishing pole. Suddenly the warden said,

“Oh! Looks like you caught a fish there!”

Thanks to the warden checking our licenses, Greg missed that sneaky fish. After the warden left, we kept fishing and then Greg caught a brown trout. We think. Or maybe it was a cutthroat.

After we were done fishing, we drove back to our campsite. On the way, we saw the DNR warden in his truck and waved hello from our car. To our surprise, he recognized us, quickly turned his truck around, and turned his lights on to pull us over! We got out of the car and he asked us when we had bought our fishing licenses. We told him we bought them last week and they were valid for 5 days, starting that day. He wasn’t mad, but seemed to think we had lied. He asked when we arrived in Colorado and we said yesterday. As it turns out, the person who he’d called to validate our licenses had told him the wrong dates. Everything was fine but it sure made me a little nervous. It was also funny how he threw his co-worker under the bus, saying, “he didn’t seem too sharp anyway”.

That night, we decided to eat pizza from High Mountain Pies. Best restaurant in Leadville. We had a small pizza, half Tuscan Sun, half San Luis. We were so hungry, we ate the whole thing!

On Monday, we decided to go for a hike in the mountains to Windsor Lake, thanks to advice from Aunt Vicki. We drove to the trailhead and started hiking. Since there’s been so much snow this year in Colorado, the stream coming down the mountain was like a small river and there were many large patches of snow covering the trail. The trail wasn’t really marked; we just followed the worn path. There were a few times where we thought we should have crossed the stream, but I’m pretty sure if we had tried to cross, we would have been swept away with the raging water. Later on, we came across an old abandoned mining town on the trail - Douglas City. It’s hard to imagine people lived in tiny log homes up the side of a mountain a hundred or so years ago. Plus, it appeared there was snow up there just about all year long!

That night, we made hobo dinners. Potatoes, ground turkey, peppers, carrots, onions, oil, salt, and pepper. Combine in foil. Throw in fire. Dinner complete.

Tuesday, we canoed with some of the Koch family at Twin Lakes in Leadville. We canoed the lake and stopped for lunch at Interlaken, an old lakeside resort when the train used to go through that area.

On Wednesday, we hiked with both Koch families to St. Kevin’s Lake in the mountains. It was a long drive up to the trailhead, over a narrow, road with lots of potholes and steep inclines. Luckily, Uncle Tim is an expert off-road mini-van driver. When we reached the lake, we could see part of it was still frozen. We ate our lunch on the rocks, watched Greg and Uncle John fish, and Uncle Tim and Joe slide down the snow on the other side of the lake. I spent most of the 2 hours basking in the sun (with my hat and sunscreen on, of course.)

Snowball fights on the way down:

After the hike, we enjoyed great pizza from High Mountain Pies with the whole group. We also had some rain that forced us to finish eating inside. However, after that, we were lucky to see a double rainbow in the sky. < Insert “double rainbow” jokes here >

The best is yet to come. Colorado Part 2 coming soon.

Favorites

Here is a list of some of my favorite things from the past week, in no particular order:

1. Margaritas are delicious when made with Simply Limeade juice. (And of course with tequila and triple sec too.)

2. SPF 110 sunscreen exists. Yup, 110. How is that possible? Is it really that much better than SPF 50? My sister Erica and I have a joke about sunscreen SPF because she knows how “crazy” I am about wearing sunscreen. I think 110 is the highest either of us has ever found.

3. Sailing in “blue flag” weather with my friend, Vijay, is a lot more exciting than “green flag” weather. It was the first time I actually had to use the straps in the boat to hike out and keep the boat from going over! (Translation: blue flag means winds above 18mph and hiking out is when you place your feet under straps anchored to the boat floor and lean your body out over the edge to counter-act the wind on the sail.)

4. The best kind of BLT sandwich is made at home with: bacon, lettuce, tomato, avocado, fried egg, cheese, and spinach.

5. We won our first ultimate frisbee game of the season last week. Our team had only 5 subs and the other team had about 20. They even had a few players acting as coaches, calling out plays, and practicing at half time. (Most of our team laid in the grass during half time.) Felt pretty good to be the winners.

6. We won our second game of ultimate tonight in 93 degree weather with less subs than the other team. Still feels good to be the winners.