The Eyes of Texas are Upon Me

"YE SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND * THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE"








I graduated from The University of Texas at Austin on May 19, 1984. I was 23 years old. Oh, the places you will go...

27 years have come and gone since that day. I remember sitting on some steps on campus a couple of days before graduation and looking out into the distance wondering what my future would hold.

Of course I couldn't have imagined all the twists and turns my life would take up until this point in time.

Back then, college was something you did to better yourself. You could get a better job if you went to college. College was also a 4 year buffer from the real world. It was the bridge that you crossed on your journey towards adulthood.

I spent about $25,000 for my college education. That amount was for room and board and all the privileges of youth we spent money on at the time. Today, $25,000 may buy you a year of college. It is really hard to believe.

College is a part of my life, a chapter in time that I remember fondly. I was lucky enough and determined enough to have that opportunity to get to know some of the truth and it has made all the difference.

Leashes for Labs - On the Trail

Are you one of those people who hate rules? Well, if it was a rule not to drink poison, would you do it?

Of course not and regulations about dogs off leash while hiking are kind of like that. They are there to protect your dog, not hamper his “wilderness experience” or yours.

Here are 4 questions I would like to ask you about your dog:

1. Do you care about your dog?
2. Do you want your dog to be healthy and live a long, happy life?
3. Do you take care of your dog, feed it, give it water, take it to the vet, etc.?
4. The dog can’t take care of itself, you have to take care of it, right?

Leashing your dog while you hike is part of taking care of your dog.

Here are just some of the things that can harm your dog by having them roam free off leash:

• Your dog can contract diseases like rabies, tapeworms, and salmonella by coming into contact or eating dead animals in the wild.

• Your dog can contract Guardia by drinking from the streams. Yes dogs and humans can get sick from drinking water that other animals have used as their toilets.

• Your dog can become dinner for a mountain lion...other large hoofed animals may just try and stomp them to death...and you may not even know your dog was bitten by a rattlesnake until it is too late.

• Your dog is much more likely to get ticks and bee stings off trail off leash.

• Hidden off trail hazards including rusty barbed wire and broken glass can injure your dog and lead to nasty infections.

• Confrontations with other dogs also off leash can lead to injury or worse.

The chances of your dog being hit in the parking lot or crossing the street, or coming in contact with mountain bikers or horseback riders on the trail, well all of these possible tragedies can be avoided if you take the simple precaution of leashing your dog when you go for a hike. And if you go for a hike to relax and enjoy the outdoors, why not increase your chances of doing so by leashing your dog when you take him or her with you?

Happy Trails begins with a leash for your dog and ends with Happy Tails of safe hiking adventures you took with your dog for years to come.

VE Day

The Vernal Equinox is upon us once again. Hello friend. It has been too long.

As I get older, the time period from September till March feels longer and longer. I don't like it. I prefer the time from March till September, my season of light.

As a kid, I grew up on a road that ran east west. On March 21st, the sun set right down the road. Around this time, the geese flew in giant v-shaped formations northward to their breeding grounds in Canada and the Spring Peeper tree frogs sang rhythmically serenading the season of Spring.

As a grown up, spring break for our daughter began our annual migration to Florida and a cruise around the Caribbean. The escape southward thrust us past Spring headlong into Summer. Spring in Colorado soon followed with the song of the meadow lark booming in the mornings.

The days lengthen. The grass grows. The birds sing. We yearn to be outside more. I wonder if we appreciate this season of light for what it is or because of what we had to endure to see it through for another year?

Backpacking 101 - Part 1

High school, senior year, a friend and I are in the school library talking about another friend that was going to go on some adventure to Kansas. We decided then and there to do something just as bold. We decided that we would go backpacking in the Smoky Mountains.

A couple of important facts to note. Neither one of us had ever been to the Smokies. We had never backpacked before either. The sum of my hiking experience, away from my forest preserve across the street in Northern Illinois, was reading adventure stories in Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines.

But it sounded cool. We would be walking across the entire park on a level, mountain top trail, the Appalachian Trail. And I had all the gear, like clod hopper hiking boots and wool socks, to go along with a pack that I bought at a Sears store.

My friend was a soccer player, a fanatical weight lifter, and a health food junkie. I was comparatively frail and ate food like pizza burgers. But we made the commitment to go and he gave up going to the senior prom so that he could afford to buy new tires for the Plymouth Valiant we were to drive there in. On the other hand, I mink oiled my clod hopper boots as my big preparation for the trip.

So in June of 1978, we set off and drove 15 hours straight from the suburbs of Chicago all the way to Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Tennessee. We were in awe of the mountains as we approached the park and since we had no place to stay, we slept in the car at the ranger station. The next morning, we informed a ranger of our intentions to cross the park in 7 days and off we went to park the car at a nearby trail head.

What happened next was what happens when reality meets inexperience.

Did you know that it is very humid and muggy in Tennessee in June? Did you also know that hiking boots that are a couple of sizes too big when worn with wool socks will enable you to grow the biggest blisters on your heals that you have ever seen? Did you know that hiking trails in the Smoky's go up and down and are never level? Did you know that when one of your backpack straps keeps breaking, you have to stop and try and put it back together again while nats and other flying insects attack you? Sounds fun, doesn't it?

Long story short, I was 17 years old and under the stress of the real world, wanted to go back home asap. I told my friend that he could keep going, that I would just hitchhike my way back home. Like I said, I was 17.

He cut short his trip as well and we drove all the way back home like we were escaping from East Germany. It was a devastating blow to my hunger for adventure and my yearning to explore and I would not try something like that again for a long, long time. But I did try again.

For my 30th birthday celebration, I chose to go backpacking in Grand Teton National Park. This time, I was prepared. Prepared for everything right up to the point when we hoisted our full packs onto our backs and nearly fell over from the weight. A friend of mine and I looked at each other and said, "We are gonna die."

To be continued.

Mirror, Mirror on the JEEP

Never let anyone tell you that you can't do something...

On June 9th of last year, Georgina and I went kayaking on Horsetooth Reservoir in Fort Collins, Colorado. After a fun day of kayaking, while I was loading the kayaks onto the roof of the Jeep, I accidentally bumped the kayak that was already loaded with the other one and it fell off the other side. It made a plastic drum like sound as it bounced off the asphalt in the parking lot, but I thought at the time that was about it. Wrong. I soon discovered that the kayak had clipped the drivers side mirror of the Jeep on the way down and it was hanging there like a broken branch of a tree. Not good.

At the time, it looked to me like the mirror had just popped out of place, but upon further review, one of the connecting posts got sheared off from the impact of the kayak. The rest of the mirror was fine and I figured maybe I could just glue it or something.

Well, it was then I began my quest to ask around and figure out what the best method was to fix my mirror. In the meantime, I affixed the mirror with duct tape, but it soon melted and peeled off, so I went searching for another solution.

The guy at the hardware store looked at me like I was crazy. I took him out into the parking lot to show him, but he was clueless. The guy at the hobby store literally ran me out of his store when I told him I needed some good glue to fix my mirror. He gasped "your automobile mirror, out you go, it can't be done". I visited a Jeep dealership where they have an auto body shop and they tried to sell me a new mirror for $475.00 instead. Say what? I had looked on-line and found a new mirror for like $30, but I was told my mirror was special and I needed the expensive one, and besides, they weren't going to put somebody else's part on for me. Nice.

The saga continued. The more I talked about it, the more people weighed in on the problem and told me it couldn't be done. That is until one of Georgina's friends at work told her husband and they graciously went out and bought me some form of industrial strength epoxy. I applied it to the mirror and pushed on it to hold it in place for like 15 minutes to let the epoxy set up. I let the Jeep sit 24 hours with a ladder under the mirror for support and by golly it worked. The electronics and everything were fine, until...

On August 10th, we had just finished a whitewater raft trip in Buena Vista, Colorado and were sitting in the Jeep at a Subway restaurant when a rather large woman got out of her car and without looking proceeded to bump into the mirror and once again render it dangling. This woman didn't even acknowledge her clumsiness or couldn't feel her accident due to her heft and went on her way leaving my mouth a gasp at this delusion of the gene pool. I then drove over 100 miles, over a mountain pass and everything, with that mirror hanging at a 90 degree angle, and made it back to Breckenridge, Colorado to fight another day.

The next morning, I knew what I had to do, go to a ski shop. These guys can fix anything. So, I went to a local ski shop and told them that they wouldn't see a problem like me all day and they helped me. They gave me some awesome epoxy they use for skis. I pushed on the mirror in the parking lot to hold it in place for like 15 minutes and it seemed to hold. Later that afternoon, I put it to the ultimate test and drove on the roughest 4-wheel drive road I have ever driven on, and it held. Yay.

Yay that is until last night...

Last night, in the comfort of my own garage, someone or something, maybe even Bigfoot, bumped into the mirror and this morning, I found it dangling once again. Mad, yes. Discouraged, a little. Defeated, never! As Rocky Balboa said to his manager in the movie "Rocky", "I ain't going down no more!"

That mirror will function again, you'll see. Until then, never let anyone tell you that you can't do something...

Gold Fever

There is a show on TV called "Gold Rush Alaska" that is the story of 6 families from Oregon risking it all in the pursuit of finding gold on a claim in Alaska. This claim supposedly has $15,000,000 worth of gold on it. All they have to do is find it and get it out of the ground.

Fast forward 5 months into their adventure and we find that they have extracted a total of 2.75 ounces of gold so far...worth about $3,500.

Now using their math, 8 ounces of gold is worth $10,000, so 80 ounces would be worth $100,000, 800 ounces would be worth $1,000,000, 8,000 ounces would be worth $10,000,000 and 12,000 ounces would be worth $15,000,000.

Now I hated those story problems in math when I was a kid, but let's pose the question. At their current rate, how long will these gold miners take to realize their claims supposed potential of $15,000,000?

If it takes 5 months to get 2.75 ounces, that is .55 ounces per month. Take .55 ounces and multiply it by 12 to get the ounces per year rate. That comes to 6.6 ounces per year. At this rate, it will take over 181 years to realize their claims potential of $15,000,000.

Those Oregon families will have to work that claim for the next 6 generations to get their gold! Another reality TV show exposed!

If you grew up in the Chicago area and you are about my age, you remember The Blizzard of 1967. It is the snowstorm we measure all others against. 23 inches of snow fell with drifts up to 8 feet deep.

I was 6 years old at the time and I remember helping my mom bake cookies while it was snowing. The wind was blowing off the lake from the northeast and the snow was piling up on the window ledges outside of our living room. I remember it snowed and it snowed and it snowed. We had to clear the front door of snow for fear of being trapped inside. And we didn't dare venture outside until it was over.

When it was over, we went outside and were amazed at what we saw. The snow had drifted up as high as the garage roof. We immediately got busy digging a tunnel around the garage and up against the south side of the house on the patio. We had never seen such an opportunity for adventure. We played outside until our clothes got soaked. We then came in and let them dry out in our pantry where the furnace was. After they dried, we went out again. I don't remember much more...

I do remember though seeing a picture of my grandparents years later in front of their house in Edgebrook digging out after the great blizzard of '67. My grandfather's name was John Nielsen, but my grandma called him Jack and he was 76 years old at the time. There they were shoveling snow over their heads.

Little did they know at the time that that would be my grandfather's last great snowstorm. He would die of throat cancer a little over a year later. But remembering that picture, their smiles as they proudly battled all that mother nature could dish out, is one I'll never forget.

So today, 44 years later, I sit and watch the Weather Channel as they forecast a major winter storm heading for Chicago. Will it be "an Oklahoma hooker", a nickname for a storm that curls up from the southwest and wraps around the windy city? Will it be the latest "Storm of the Century"? We shall see and if it is, memories will be made.