Crazy, it’s already February. I totally ditched my blog for some reason and I would like to apologize for that. However, I’ve been super busy.. yeah I know you’ve heard that before, but for real! it’s crazy. I’ve been living in Colorado Springs for about 3 months now. Yes, I finally moved out of my friends house and got my own place. It’s really nice to live close to everything!
School decided to be an ass and told me to get ready for transfer, so I started to look around for new places to live and schools which I could attend and effort. I think I’m going to end up in Denver, CO. I’m thinking about going to Community College of Denver to get all my gen ed done. And then going to Metro State for my bachelors? Right now there are lots of questions and it’s kind of exciting to move out of this town. I really like Denver and I am SO riding my bike to school in the summer!! haha!
After this semester I’m supposed to get 3 certificates for welding. It’ll be awesome to finally have something on paper. I should be getting my Structural, Pipe, and Basic Level Skill certificates!
Lately I have been thinking a lot about home. I would love to go see my family and have some real dutch food again. I can’t believe I have been back in the United States for over a year now! Tomorrow it would be a year and two months. Gladly enough I have good friends who keep me entertained and keep me on my feet. School, actually, does that too. This math 107 class is kicking my ass!
Yesterday (7/30/2010) I felt like doing the incline again, however, I didn’t feel like going by myself, so I decided to ask on twitter if anyone wanted to tweetup and was down to come along.
After waiting for a while, I still had no response of anyone who was willing to go, so I went to the twitter website and searched for people around Colorado Springs area, and that’s when I found @HURRAYYme‘s post.
We tweeted and scheduled to do the incline at 9:00 AM. I left the house early enough to find a spot to park. However, when I got down to Manitou Springs, almost everything was covered with cars. I drove around for about 10 minutes untill I found this spot.
Nick was obviously better in shape then I was, so I told him to go ahead and I would meet him at the top. Nick got to the top in 40 minutes, which is very impressive, believe me. It’s 5000 steps, it’s an old cog-train trail which is 43%-63% incline the entire time. Here is Nick’s post if you would like to check it out.
This was now my second tweetup, and if you ask me, it’s one of the most fun things to do if you want to meet new people!
After three weeks of staying around Yoder and Colorado Springs, Debbie, Chris, and JoeJoe had to keep following their schedule for travel, so they decided to head out. However, the Colorado Renaissance Festival was coming up and Debbie wanted JoeJoe to experience it. I had never been there before either, so we all decided to go camping at Jellystone Park at Castle Rock. It’s a RV park right next to the Interstate 25 and a railroad track. It was loud as hell, no fun! Well it was fun when there was no train coming by! haha. So anyway, Tim, Elaine, Rachel, Zach, Jessica, and their son Benjamin came along camping for two days and went to the festival. We camped there from July 23rd till the 25th. Sunday morning Debbie, Chris, and JoeJoe headed out to Wyoming.
Yesterday (July 20th) we went to Manitou Springs to do the incline! It was lots of fun! Chris, Debbie, and I left the house early in the morning so we didn’t had to fight the sun! It was a great work out, I’m definitely going to do this more often from now. Also, Tim wants to hike up the Rocky Mountains more often and do different trails with me, so I will get some hiking done I’m sure!
We did the 4,5 mile hike, we went up the incline and took the Barr Trail down. It was pretty neat, we found lots of rocks to climb on and beautiful views to take pictures of. If you want to check out Debbie’s story about the incline please do because it’s pretty funny!
On the map you can see what trail we walked. The green solid line is the incline, thats the way we went up, and we took the red trail back down.
Here are some pictures of our hike up the Manitou Springs Incline!
Here is a video of Debbie struggling with hiking up the incline! haha.
For some reason I haven’t posted anything for the past two months.
My summer started great, I went to Ohio to see my sister graduate from Bowling Green State University and saw where she lived and all that. My parents and my little brothers were there too! We had a wonderful family time! It was nice to be all back together after a long time not seeing each other.
After I went back home to Colorado from my trip to Ohio, Richie and Melinda from California invited me to come over and visit them. I took their offer and got on a plane to Sacramento, CA. I’m actually there right now until July 19th! I have seen pretty much everything around the Clearlake area which is really nice! However, I really hope I’m going to be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. If so, that would be awesome! If not, so be it. Although, I don’t think we are, because the car broke down.
Monday the 19th, I will be going home like I mentioned. I am looking forward to it because of two reasons. 1. It’s too freaking hott out here in California. At least that’s what my iPhone says. (See temperature screenshot) and reason number 2. is that Debbie, Chris, and JoeJoe from Arizona will be there! They are doing a trip all over the United States, so they are in Colorado right now. You can follow their stories right here. The day after I get home, the 20th of July we will be doing the incline at Manitou Springs. It’s going to be pretty hard to do! However, fun! Also, we might go camping and that will be totally awesome, because that will give me a reason to go fishing! I have been wanting to fish for years now, but never found someone who wanted to fish. Or did I not try hard enough? Oh well, Colorado has these beautiful places where we can fish on trout, so it’s time to get on it while it’s still summer! I need to go to Walmart and get a fishing license soon!
About school, I will be going back to school August 23rd. How nice, the day before my birthday! But that doesn’t matter! I will be taking three welding classes. I think I want to focus on welding and get certified! I will be taking: Blueprint Read-Welders/Fitters, Intro-Gas Tungsten Arc Welding, and Advanced Gas Metal Arc Welding! So that will keep me busy this semester!
