Small town life.

Yep. I live in a small town. I saw this going on last fall.

Yes, it is the 21st century, and no, we're not Amish.

I love living in a small town. I like being able to go outside at night and see stars. I like that I drive past farms and horse pastures as I drive home from work. I love that there are a couple of ponds a stone's throw from my house, and I love that they freeze in the winter so I can ice skate on them. I like that my neighborhood is quiet (even if I have a couple of moronic neighbors). I like that deer sometimes wander through my neighborhood. I don't like the skunks that so often get hit on the street, or the occasional smell from the mink farms when the wind is right, but I can live with that.

Even though my town is small, I just found out that it's about double the population of South Dakota's capital, and more than triple that of Vermont's. So... um... wow. I can only imagine the number of horse-drawn carriages in those towns.

I'm a Regular!

Remember Cheers -- that TV show, starring Ted Danson, that took place in a bar in Boston?  Let's sing the theme song together... 

Making your way in the world today 

Takes everything you've got. 

Taking a break from all your worries, 

Sure would help a lot. 

Wouldn't you like to get away? 

Sometimes you want to go 

Where everybody knows your name, 

And they're always glad you came. 

You wanna be where you can see, 

Our troubles are all the same 

You wanna be where everybody knows 

Your name. 

Thank you.  That was nice.  If I've done my job, then you might just have that song stuck in your head for a few minutes.  You're welcome.

So what does an old TV show have to do with me?  

Nothing.

Except the chorus of that old TV show's theme song says, "Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name."   I've got a place where everybody knows my name.  I am officially a regular at a local shop.  It's not a bar in Boston (sadly).  It's not owned by Sam Malone.  There's no one named Carla or Diane.  I've never seen a mailman inside, and no one shouts "Norm!" when I enter (which would be kinda weird, since my name is Justin).  Nope.  The owners are Chuck and Packer and they greet me by name when I come in with a "Hi, Justin.  What would you like today?"  Remembering customers' names.  Nice!

It's the Roxberry Juice Co. in Murray.  Here's their Web site.  I like Roxberry better than Jamba Juice, because the smoothies taste better, and all the employees I've met there have been very friendly.  They've even thrown in a Roxi Roll on the house once or twice.  Kudos to them on excellent customer service.

My favorite item on the menu is the Mango Mango, and I love a warm Roxi Roll with honey butter or pomegranate jam.

Sorry if this seems like an ad.  I'm just pretty happy to be a "regular" somewhere.

The story of my yard so far...

My wife and I have lived in our home for just under 2 years now, so we're just getting started with our yard.  I enjoy yard work.  I'm not a master gardener by any means, but I enjoy getting outside and playing in the dirt.  I like planting trees and flowers and I hope to start a vegetable garden this year.

Last year my main yard goal was to get our sprinker system installed and sod laid.  I did some ground prep by tilling in an entire semi truck load of composted turkey manure.  I found a Website that some guy set up to teach people how to properly design and install a home irrigation system.  I studied his suggestions and designed my sprinkler system.  I got some input from my father-in-law, who also enjoys this kid of thing.  I listened to the KSL Greenhouse Show on Saturdays for more tips.  I calculated the flow rates in each of my sprinkler lines.  I bought sprinkler heads that have pressure regulators built in so that they will always operate at 30 psi, and at that pressure, I know the amount of water that will be flowing out of each sprinkler head and how far it will spray.  Maybe I over-planned, but it sure was fun.  That was May through July, I think.  I was studying for the CPA exam during this time, too, but the sprinklers were much more fun.

Once I got everything planned out how I thought would work, I hired a guy to come and trench my yard.  What took him an hour and a half to do for $190 would have taken me a whole lot longer to do (with insane amounts of swearing, I'm sure).  Money well spent, I say.  That was August.

I spent September, October, and part of November laying my sprinkler pipe and installing the sprinklers.  That's when it really got fun.  I also spent that time trying to keep my neighbors out of my yard so that my trenches wouldn't collapse before I got pipes in them.  That wasn't so fun.  I got the pipes all glued and the sprinkler heads installed and the valves hooked up and the irrigation water turned on and it all worked great.  I was very proud of myself.  

Then in mid-November, I ordered three dumptruck loads of top soil to be delivered, and I hired a landscape company owned by a friend of mine to come and spread the topsoil and level my yard.  Again, I could have done this myself, but it would have taken me even more time, and there would have been even more swearing, I'm sure.  Definitely worth the money.  This same friend ordered the sod for me at his discounted contractor rate, too.  He said it was the premium, top of the line sod and what he would use for his own yard.  I was nervous about the "premium, top of the line" comment, because that pretty much always means "most expensive."  However, his contractor discount was awesome because that made the price less than what other people around paid for the less-expensive stuff from other sod companies.  That brought a little bit of a smile to my face.

One beautiful chilly Saturday in the later part of November, my wife, her dad and brother, my sister, my nephew, and I got up and rolled out the 6000 square feet of sod that we ordered.  (No neighbors helped, even though I helped most of my neighbors with theirs.... no ward members helped, and the Elders Quorum President forgot to tell the service chairman about it... so thanks.)  We got it worked out, and the sod looked great.  We started watering it and I even threw down a fertilizer specific for new sod applications.  

Then about a week or so later, it snowed.

The snow stayed there pretty much until March.  When it melted, we were happy to see that our grass was still there, that it didn't die or anything.  We were really surprised to see that it was still kinda green, since it was still technically the dormant season for grass.

Well, a few weeks have passed.  It's now officially spring.  I haven't turned on my sprinklers yet, because it's way to early in the season for that, especially in our little desert of Utah.  But check this out...

This is the view from the street...

This is a view from our upstairs back window...

This is another view from our upstairs back window...

Can you see where my property line is?  I have the only green lawn in the neighborhood.  I'm pretty happy about that, especially because we have a know-it-all on the street who likes to tell people how they should be doing things his way because it's so much better.  I hope that this is a sign of good, healthy grass, and not just a fluke.  I hope that all of my preparations will continue to pay off.  I also hope that my neighbor with the playground there won't flood my yard again this year.

The answer is no!

My wife and I went camping this past weekend with some friends from our old neighborhood. We went up to the Spruces campground in Big Cottonwood Canyon. It was a blast with the 6 families and nearly 20 kids that were there, however, three of the families didn't stay the night since they had "stuff" going on Saturday morning. Too bad for them.

One of the best parts of camping for me is just sitting around the fire. The parents in the group sent their kids to bed after s'mores and the adults sat around the fire until about 1 am, and then we all decided to turn in. My wife and I went to our small tent and the other two families went to their (really, really nice) trailers. We're not jealous, because we like our tent and the queen-sized air mattress that we use.

Speaking of our air mattress, about a month or so ago we loaned it to some friends. They were getting married, they had a bunch of family coming in from out of town, and they wanted a place for them to sleep (I guess because the Hampton Inn was full?). So they asked to borrow our air mattress. Fine enough, but after they brought it back to us, we noticed that the charger for our air pump was not in the bag. Apparently it is nowhere to be found. We were pretty annoyed about that, but we figured we could maybe buy a new pump or charger or something. I checked the pump, and it still had a good charge so we decided we'd still take it on this weekend camp.

Anyway, we hadn't inflated our air mattress before going to bed, mostly because we were in a hurry to get going on dinner earlier in the evening. So we unrolled our air mattress and pulled out our little air pump to blow it up. I looked around the air mattress and found the hole where the pump goes, and I was about to put the pump in and start it up when I realized... the plug that goes in that hole to keep all the air in the air mattress is gone. Not there. Missing. Presumably it's in the same abyss that our charger is in.

At that point, we were pretty ticked, but we were so tired that we just left the air mattress out flat, put some blankets and a sleeping bag underneath us, and covered ourselves with blankets to try to sleep. At least there were weeds underneath the tent and not rocks and dirt. I think maybe we had a little bit more padding with the weeds.

Now our air mattress is completely useless and we have to buy a new one. They're not very expensive, but still...

So the moral of this story is if anyone asks us to borrow our stuff from now on, the answer is no. Other people never seem to take care of our stuff like we want it taken care of.

There you go... a Monday gripe. Stay tuned for some happy news!

Soggy Triathlon

Swim. Bike. Run!

So yesterday was the Salem Spring Triathlon. It was the second year that I have been to that race. Not as a participant, mind you. Heavens, no. I was a spectator both times. Kristina is the one that likes to do this kind of thing. Last year was her first year, and she enjoyed herself so much she wanted to do it again this year. I've thought about doing a triathlon myself, but then I remembered that I don't like to run and I'm not a very good swimmer. Maybe I could do just the bike part and have someone else do the other two parts. But then... it's not much of a triathlon, is it?






Here's Kristina before the race started. It was about 7:00 am, and the rain was coming down. It had been raining for about three hours at this point, and it showed no sign of letting up. Oh... and it was pretty chilly. Do you see that murky green pond in the background? That's where the swim part of the race took place.

This is Kristina with Brittany. She teaches first grade at one of the schools Kristina worked at this last year. Still raining.

Here's Kristina in the transition area. She has her official Salem Tri silver/gray swim cap and her wetsuit on in preparation for the swim. Good thing, too, because... go back up and look at the picture of the green pond. You can also see the cool road bike we rented for this race. Sadly, by this time, the race officials had cancelled the bike portion of the race. Since part of the bike course was in a canyon, they felt that it was too dangerous to have 600 people riding in the rain down a canyon. Something about wet brakes making it very difficult to stop or slow down. Too bad, because Kristina had a really cool bike that she was excited to use.

Here's Kristina's heat, getting ready for the swim to start at about 10:00 am. At this point, the rain had mostly stopped, but it was still kinda chilly, especially when the wind would blow. Oddly enough, the water felt warmer than the outside air, so racers generally didn't mind being in there... even though the water is green. Here's a fun game: look at the above picture and see if you can find Kristina. It's kind of a Where's Waldo sort of thing. Enjoy!

Here's the women 35 and under starting the swim. See Kristina in there?

Here's Kristina, swimming to the end of the 500 meters (because of the weather, they shortened the swim course from 800 meters).

Kristina is finished with the swim at this point and is running to the transition area.

Still running to the transition area.

Here she is in the transition area. On a normal Salem Spring Triathlon, she'd be getting all set to ride her bike about 12 miles. Not this day.

She's off on the run! They kept the running portion at 5k.

Here she is, coming back from the 5k, headed towards the final few feet to the finish line. See how happy she is? That's because she knows she's almost done. Okay... actually we staged this picture because when she was actually coming back from the run, I pushed the button on the camera too late, and all I got was her leg as she passed me by. This pic was taken about a half hour after she crossed the finish line. Here's the real picture as she was finishing the race:

There weren't as many people at the race this year because of the weather, and because they cancelled the bike portion. Of the approximately 600 people that signed up, only about 400 actually did the race.

Here's Kristina with her bike after the race. Look at those clouds up against the mountains. When they moved a few minutes later, they revealed snow pretty low in the hills.

They write on your arms and legs your race number and your age. You also have a race number that you pin to yourself and one that you stick to your bike. I guess they write them on your arms and legs so that if they pull you out of the pond they can identify you.

So Kristina said it was a fun race, even though they cancelled the bike part. Last year there were three of our friends from our last ward there who were also racing. This year, only one of them raced. The other two took their wives on an Alaskan cruise. They still paid their money for the race to get their shirts, though. Hmm...

This last picture is of a sign we saw as we were driving home from Salem. Salem is just south of Spanish Fork, and as we entered Spanish Fork, we saw this:

"Home of Pride And Progress!" I really thought this was funny. I know when I think of progress, Spanish Fork is the first town that comes to mind.

Run, Forrest, Run!

Kristina, my wife, likes to run races. She doesn't necessarily enjoy running, but she likes races (and the shirts you get for participating). I think she's a little disturbed. She talked me into running a 5k once. Once. It wasn't a horrible experience, I'll give you that, but it's not one that I would say I enjoyed. I did get a long-sleeved T out of the deal, so that's pretty cool, I guess.

A few months ago, she got the idea into her head to run the Wasatch Back Relay, a race sponsored by the renowned Ragnar Race Series. Yeah, I've never heard of them, either. Apparently Ragnar does several of these types of races throughout the year to help people punish themselves. I think they're secretly run by Opus Dei (this is a reference to The Da Vinci Code -- so if you haven't seen the movie or read the book, you might not get it).

Anyway, Kristina put together a team of 12 runners to run a relay race from Logan, Utah to Park City, Utah. I'll save you the trouble of looking it up on MapQuest: it's 178 miles. Each of the 12 runners take 3 legs over two days. Wait... that sentence looks a little weird. Let's try again. Each runner runs 3 different sections of the race, and the race takes place over two days in June. Yes, they run through the night. People think this is fun. People are sick.

I have been recruited to drive one of the support vehicles for Kristina's team. I'm actually pretty excited to be a driver. I've seen pictures of the race course from the Ragnar Web site, and it looks very pretty. Maybe I'll have to bring a camera and take some pictures. I just hope the vehicle I drive has good A/C. I don't want to be stuck in a large van with a bunch of smelly runners.

So Kristina has been doing a little bit of training to get ready for the race. She's been going to our local gym to run and to take some spinning classes to build up her endurance and increase her speed. This last weekend she ran a 5k that was sponsored by our local junior high school. Proceeds went to Primary Children Medical Center, so that's good. Anyway, she ran this race and did pretty good. In fact she actually got a medal. I should have taken a picture of it to post on my blog. That would have been cool of me. Probably I'll have to do that sometime. Here's a link to the results of the race: http://www.lehijrhigh5k.blogspot.com. As a side note, the overall race winner is a friend of mine from high school. He's also on Kristina's Wasatch Back team. Apparently he's pretty speedy.

So way to go, Kristina! Way to win a medal in a race. I think that's really cool.