Risking it All

The End

2007-03-22T00:42:00.000-05:00

Candy: Well, the time has come to put this blog to rest. Tim and I had a great time writing about our trip in 2006 and we hope that you enjoyed reading about it and seeing the pictures.

This content will stay online in archive form indefinitely, so if you want to come back and take a mini roadtrip through the posts, feel free. We just won't be writing on this blog any more.

To catch you up to speed before we close for good, Tim is still at Enterprise and having lots of good days and some bad days. Only God and time will tell whether he returns to college athletics or remains in the business world.

I have been hired as a marketing manager for a lead generation company in the south metro, and am working mostly from home, which is nice. I am also writing a business plan for a photography business and hoping to secure start-up funding by summertime.

Chase is still getting about 16 hours of sleep every day in his favorite spot in the house...our closet. Life is good!

Thanks again for hanging out with us on our road trip, and for your encouragement, recommendations, and support throughout. We appreciate you so much.

I have started a new blog which will be focused primarily on daily doses of candor, which I hope will spark some interesting conversations. If you're interested in joining the discussion, hop over to Candor is a Compliment (note the Peggy Noonan reference) and put in your two cents' worth.

See you on the other side.

New Site Goes Live

2007-01-30T14:22:00.000-06:00

Candy: I've been working hard for the past week or so to update my website, and I'm pleased to announce that the new design is finished and live. The graphic design portfolio is still in production and should be live by the end of the week.

To see it for yourself, just click the photo above or the Candy Rice Photography link at the right.

Tonight begins my first night of shooting sports photos in Colorado, with three basketball games at a local high school. I'm excited to be behind the camera again at a game.

That's it for today. I hope you're having a super Tuesday and a terrific week!

16th Street Mall

2007-01-26T00:15:00.000-06:00

Candy: On Wednesday afternoon I spent a couple hours wandering the 16th Street Mall in Denver, trying to be brave enough to approach a total stranger and ask if I could make his/her portrait.

No luck. Not enough courage yet, though I came close with a street musician.Instead, I made some images of the interesting light patterns and objects in the area.

I revisited the Denver Pavilion sign from the last post, and this time found some better angles. I also liked this one, because it's one of my initials.

While at the Pavilion, a three-story shopping area, I couldn't help but notice the way these strings of lights looked almost like a transparent ceiling of lights.

The light was incredible here and I waited for quite a while for people to walk through in the right spots, finally settling for this shot.

I liked the way the Paramount Cafe's sign was lit with the neon and partly in shadow, partly in sunshine.

When I saw this store's sign juxtaposed against the gothic building and modern skyscraper behind it, I had to stop and find an angle that would show the unlikely mix of architecture.After a little while I wandered a few streets north and south of the mall. I liked the diminishing perspective of this building's glass wall.

As I was walking by Denver's tallest building, the Republic Plaza, I was struck by the light on the numerous railings out in front. As I was making this picture, a man walked by and said to me, "Hollywood! Action!" Funny.

Then I looked up and couldn't resist taking a classic picture of a skyscraper. This is the upper third or so of the Republic Plaza.

I then made my way back to the mall and as I was walking into the bright afternoon sunlight I saw this.

As I got closer I saw the vent in the street with the backlit steam rising from it.It was cathartic to get out and spend some time by myself with the camera. The weather was nice, 40s and sunny, and although it was a little chilly (I was forced to stop at Caribou Coffee for a hot apple blast) I had a blast.

Most of yesterday and today has been spent finishing the design of some business cards. They're finally at the printer and I should have them back Friday night. I made several designs as a temporary fix and am posting several of them here for you to see.

These two are for my sports photography launch next week (if I can get my website finished...it's going to look like the top of the first card below).

This one is for graphic design services, which I plan to roll out by the end of February.

These are the other cards designed to promote my photography.Special thanks to those of you who gave me input during this process--I appreciate it more than you know.

On Friday I'm having coffee with an amazing wedding photographer from Denver, Steve Tinetti. He makes absolutely incredible images of the kind I'd like to make someday (check out his cool website). He's a fellow Minnesotan and I'm really looking forward to meeting him.

So that's it for tonight. This post was image-intensive and for those of you on dial-up I apologize.

Have a great Friday and an even better weekend. Remember this: Enjoy yourself. It is later than you think.

Downtown Denver

2007-01-21T02:53:00.000-06:00

Candy: This week we explored parts of downtown Denver, spending a good share of Wednesday afternoon at the Denver Art Museum during Tim's day off. I decided not to take the camera along so that I could more fully experience the art, so I don't have any photos of the museum to share with you.

The museum has chosen to make fun of its own abbreviation (D.A.M.) by using it everywhere, from the line to "get your D.A.M. tickets here" to "Hot D.A.M. this is exciting" in the museum maps.

The museum itself is comprised of two buildings connected by an enclosed bridge. One building is 4 stories and the other is 6 stories, with each level filled with various exhibitions including pre-Columbian pottery and artifacts, modern and abstract collections, photography, and sculpture, to mention a few.

I'm always amazed at the emotions a visit to an art museum evokes in me. I enjoy much of what I see, even feel strong attachment for some of the pieces, and also inevitably become angry at other pieces. Always insightful.

For example, I absolutely loved one of the paintings in the western art section. It was a high-contrast painting of an old drive-in movie theater, and I loved the colors, the mood, and the memories it pulled out. Then, in the abstract art section, I became strangely angry with a painting of a piece of lined notepaper. I don't know what made me angry, but I was mad just looking at it.

The experience was great, though, and I was reminded that a visit to an art museum is always worth the money in exchange for what I learn about myself.

Tonight we went back downtown, first to Invesco Field (what used to be Mile High Stadium) for the Enterprise Rent-a-Car holiday party (aka Enterprise prom, as some call it), and then to take some photos of the Denver City & County Building.

I had read online that this particular building, which forms part of the square at the capitol, is lit in a spectacular fashion twice during the year--once for the Christmas holidays, and once during the National Western Stock Show, which is going on now. So I hauled the tripod and camera out and fired away, resulting in the panorama at the top of this post.

I then turned 180 degrees and shot this photo of the Colorado State Capitol.

By then we were chilly--it was only 25 degrees or so--and decided to drive to the 16th Street Mall nearby. When we were visiting this outdoor pedestrian-only mall I had noticed a huge Denver sign and wanted to see what it looked like at night. This is one of the resulting images.

We also walked up to the mall and saw that all the trees were still wrapped in their holiday lights and shot this image looking east on the mall.

I hope to make time next week to go back downtown and shoot some candid photos of shoppers at the mall as well as explore the interesting mix of architecture with my camera. When I do I'll be sure to post some more photos.

In the meantime, both Tim and I hope that you've had a great week and that you are healthy, happy, and gaining wisdom each day. Take care.

Tim is Always Right

2007-01-14T01:42:00.000-06:00

Candy: It's true.

Last weekend I was feeling pretty sick, and by Monday night Tim forced me to go to the doctor, telling me that he was sure I either had bronchitis or pneumonia.

I kept saying, "No, it's just a bad cold. Let's stick it out another day."

However, Tim won out, and the doctor performed two simple tests on me and announced: "You have pneumonia."

I'm certain that as I glanced at Tim, a little "I told you so" gleam appeared in his eye. He was nice enough not to say it, though.

As a result, this week has been a real struggle for me physically. I don't think I've ever felt so sick for so long. It has certainly given me a lot of time to think, though, and I've come to some important conclusions.

First, Tim is always right. That's it. From now on, I'm not going to question anything he says. Ha.

Second, it's time I showed you the dining room, so here it is.

Third, it's time I believed all of you wonderful people who have been telling me that I have a little ability for photography. I'm finally going to do something about it. Starting with sports photography, and hopefully also before too long wedding photography as well.

I'm putting this out here on the blog because I'm terrified to head into photography as a profession, and so that you'll all hold me accountable if I don't do it. I need your encouragement and your kicks in the butt.

My plan is this: approach several fantastic photographers in the area and see if one of them will let me be his/her assistant. Additionally, I am preparing some marketing pieces to be printed by the end of January and launch an action sports photography campaign in the local high schools.

In addition, I'll continue to apply for work to help pay the bills and hope that I'll get exactly what we need (and maybe even more than we need) in order to continue to live.

Some scary times are ahead for me. I've never been afraid to risk everything to help make Tim's dreams come true, but I'm super scared to try to make mine come true. Tim fully supports my decision (in fact, he's practically forced me to the edge of the cliff), and now it's time for me to make the leap.

So, here goes nothing. Thanks in advance for your support. I'll keep you posted.

From 33 Inches to Fargo

2006-12-22T23:30:00.000-06:00

Candy: My mom graduated from Minnesota State University-Moorhead today with a B.A. in English/Mass Communications. Oh, and she was summa cum laude, too, the highest honors reserved for those with a 3.80 GPA or better. We're so proud of her.

We drove through the afternoon and throughout the night last night to be here in Fargo-Moorhead for her special day. If you haven't already heard, Denver got hammered with a major upslope blizzard on Wednesday, dropping 33 inches of snow combined with 35 mph winds. Both our Enterprise offices closed early that day, and it took me 2 hours to drive the 4 miles home that afternoon, while it took Tim 4 hours to drive 12 miles. Crazy.

There were hundreds of cars that were stranded and abandoned on Wednesday afternoon and evening. I've never seen anything quite like it. I wasn't sure I was actually going to be able to make it home on Wednesday afternoon, and avoided getting stuck several times before finally succumbing to the drifting in our apartment complex. I had to abandon the Element in the road inside our complex and hike across the parking lot to get out of the storm.

On Thursday, after hearing that both our offices would be closed for the day, we decided to venture out around 11am to assess the damage and to see whether we would, in fact, be able to leave Denver to drive to Fargo. This is what we saw when we rounded the corner of the garages in front of our building.

We don't own a snow shovel, so we took some plastic bowls with us to hopefully help scoop some of the snow away. You can see how much fun Tim was having with that!

Fortunately, two guys from another apartment offered to help shovel away the drift behind the El, and with their help pushing while I drove, we eventually came unstuck. After a quick check of the internet to see whether I-25 was still closed, we decided to venture north and take our chances getting out of Denver.

Fortunately, the roads were open, and except for a bad stretch for about 100 miles north of Cheyenne, Wyoming, we had great roads and ended up driving across the western part of South Dakota & North Dakota before reaching I-94 and heading east to Fargo. We arrived in Fargo around 7am and slept for a couple hours in a mall parking lot before checking in early into our hotel.

The commencement ceremony went pretty quickly, despite the large number of graduates. My younger brother Clint and 2 of his sons also showed up, and then my older brother and his family joined all of us at Clint's house for a reception/supper, after which we gave our nephews their gifts.

I would have had more photos to post from this trip except that in my hurry to pack up and get out of Denver I forgot to make sure I had the battery charger for my camera, so when we arrived in Fargo I realized I had low batteries and no way to use the camera today.

We are heading back to Denver tomorrow afternoon, planning first to spend some more time with my mom and Clint & his family. It'll be nice to have a couple days away from work to spend together, and of course the captive time in the El is always a treat.

Enjoy the holidays. I'll leave you with this photo of Chase in our hotel this morning. He's fast asleep now, having been worn out by 5 little boys under the age of 7.

Our Place

2006-12-03T20:48:00.000-06:00

Candy: We finally hung some photos in our apartment today today, and are getting close to beind fully unpacked. I'm hoping that by the end of this week we'll be all set up.

We were able to sell several of our extra IKEA furniture pieces online at craigslist, which helped both in having extra cash as well as helping us be rid of stuff we don't need.

I took a few quick snaps of some of our rooms so that you can get a sense of what our living spaces are like. The photo above is obviously our living room, with a huge vertical blind covering our patio door. This is a closeup of our media center and photos. Notice the baby picture of Tim next to the lamp on the left.

I began working with Enterprise last Monday. After three days of classroom training I spent two days at my branch in Broomfield. I have been driving around town like crazy, but it makes the time go by quickly, which is great. I'm not sure where this career path will lead as of yet, but I'm interested in exploring the several different directions Enterprise has to offer.

We were snowed on last week (10 inches) and it's been pretty cold, setting record lows for Denver in fact. I had to drive from Broomfield to south Denver for training, and after it snowed all evening and overnight on Monday, my commute (normally 45 minutes with rush hour traffic) lasted two and a half hours. I actually clocked one of the many sllllooooooowwwwwww miles at one mile in 12 minutes. Crazy. However, I arrived safe and sound to training, albeit an hour late, and all was fine.

Tim and I are working the same hours, usually 7am to 6:30pm, which are long and early. You know neither of us is an early bird, but Tim has already adjusted after six weeks with Enterprise and he assures me that I will, too. For now, I'm taking his word on it! Not sure I'll ever adjust to the early mornings. I may have to learn to drink coffee.

One good thing about being up and about so early in the morning is that I've seen some really incredible sunrises this past week. That helps. This place is so incredibly beautiful. I need to get a pocket camera and just take it with me all the time.

Chase seems to have adapted easily to being home alone again, and I think he's actually kind of happy to have such uninterrupted sleeping time. He's such a great dog, and we're really fortunate he's so easygoing.

Tim is still enjoying his job very much and has nearly convinced me that I will enjoy it too, simply because it doesn't have to consume our lives like our previous professions have. I'm having a little withdrawal from managing 16 people and having 15 projects going simultaneously all the time. When it's slow in the branch I think I'm going to go stir-crazy, but fortunately so far it hasn't been slow for more than three hours at a time. Still. It's been a little rough for me that way.

This is a shot of our kitchen. As you can see, it's all white and a bit of a mess right now. You can also see from this photo and from the photos of our master bathroom that the apartment is wheelchair accessible, which provided us with a great apartment for a great price.

Here are photos of our bedroom and master bath. We especially love the painting of the Coliseum we bought in Italy last summer, along with the photos of our two favorite beaches in France.

We also have a second bedroom and bathroom, as well as a dining room, but they're not even close to being set up, so no photos for now. I'll take some when they're done, and include them in a future post.

We bought some frames this year and have finally printed and framed some of our favorite photos from Europe and from our Pause on Purpose Tour. It's so awesome to see the places we love every day.

Not much else is new these days. We're working and learning to have fun in our off hours. It's actually kind of nice to have time outside of work to spend time doing things we like that are unrelated to our jobs. Kind of a novel experience for us. The reinvention that we've undertaken seems to move both quickly and slowly all at once. Some things are quick to change, and others not so quick. That's life, though, and we're embracing it all, even the frustrations, because we know that we'll be better people as a result.

Please write or call when you can and let us know how you're doing. We'd love to hear from you.

Enjoy your week.

Sunrise, Sunset

2006-11-13T12:39:00.000-06:00

Candy: Wow. Tim wasn't kidding when he called me on his way to work.

He said, "Candy, you've got to go look at the sky. I don't want you to miss this."

So I did, and what I saw made me quickly put on a coat and grab the camera before rushing outside to view the world in its early-morning splendor.

It was unbelievable. The sky was colorfully bright and beautiful over Denver, and when I spun around to see what was happening over the mountains, I was greeted by the most beautiful pink glow all around in the sky. The mountains themselves were bathed in a pink light, and I was awestruck.

I managed to get a few shots before the light changed completely, and I hope that you find them almost as appealing as seeing the real thing.

I never get over how lovely it is here in Colorado. I think I have truly found the place to call home. I hope each of you can get out here sometime to visit if you've never seen it, or if you already have, that you can come out and enjoy it again.

In other news, I have decided to accept a management training position with Enterprise Rent-a-Car. This is the same program that Tim is currently in, and all the research I've done on the company points to a bona fide career, something that, to this point, I haven't had.

The opportunity to rise quickly into management ranks with incredible financial compensation is absolutely incredible, and something that I've not had in any of my previous positions in higher ed. While the hours won't be much fun (really early mornings for this night owl), I also know that I'll learn a business from the ground up and have numerous choices for career paths within this global company. Did I mention that Enterprise is getting ready to open in Italy? Those of you who know me know that I've had a long-time dream of living and working in Europe, specifically in France or Italy. Exciting!

At any rate, my start date is November 27th, which gives me two more weeks of free time. Tim and I are going to try to move our things from Ohio this coming weekend, provided all the plans fall into place. That will give me a week to unpack everything, hang pictures on the walls, and otherwise make our apartment a visually pleasing place to call home.

So that's about it. This weekend Tim and I drove into the mountains again, going to Nederland and Idaho Springs before returning to Denver to explore the downtown area and the 16th Street Mall. I'll definitely be heading back there in the next two weeks to do some street photography. Lots of material there!

I'll leave you with another shot from this morning. Enjoy your day and have a great week!

Estes Park

2006-11-04T20:54:00.000-06:00

Tim: It has been a long time since I last posted so I figured I would get back into it again (as well as give Candy a break from writing so much!). Today, we headed on a quick trip to Estes Park, Colorado. Estes Park is located in the mountains northwest of Boulder. The elevation is at roughly 7,500 feet.

Estes Park is located near the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park and is absolutely spectacular. We saw so many elk in town today. They were almost tame, just walking around town like they owned the place. In one location (a golf course fairway), we saw over 70 camped out. Here are two shots of some of the elk from today below:

The town is also home of The Stanley Hotel, the hotel where Stephen King's classic 1970's horror movie "The Shining" was filmed (I am sure everyone remembers the classic line from Jack Nicholson's character in the movie: "Here's Johnny!"). It was a big hotel but seemed smaller than it was depicted in the movie. Here is a picture of me in front of the hotel:

Below is a picture of Candy from today with the mountains in the background. As you can see, the mountains are spectacular, snow covered, and quite majestic.

We are doing very well so far and could not be more pleased with our new home state. My job is going very well and the transition from coaching to business has been relatively smooth. Every morning that I drive to work is beautiful. Imagine seeing a mountain range every day on your commute to work. We are truly blessed indeed.

Have a great Sunday and we will keep the reports and pictures coming!

Tim as Artist

2006-11-03T18:26:00.000-06:00

Candy: This week I found four slides of Tim's artwork from high school. I love them and wanted to share them with you.

The lead image is a Picasso-inspired portrait of a woman.

This is an abstract pastel drawing of Tim's art teacher with her jacket slung over her shoulder.This one is a pen and ink drawing of a flower.And this is a collage of the USA hockey team from 1988, with construction paper as the medium.The lab printed a couple of these as negative images, and I'm including them for your viewing pleasure as well. I like the alternative results.I had a first interview with Enterprise this afternoon and will be going back next week for a second interview. If that goes well, I'll have a third interview next week as well, and hopefully begin working on the following Monday.

Yesterday Tim said, "Why don't we go to Breckenridge or Estes Park this weekend? You could take a bunch of pictures, we could explore the area, and just have a great time."

I think that's a terrific idea, and am looking forward to being in the mountains this weekend. It was sunny and 60s today, and it looks like it should hit 70 with lots of sunshine this weekend. Unreal.

I know the post is short today, but I hope you enjoy Tim's art. I've been hoping for years that he would get back into it for his own pleasure, and perhaps if you all tell him how much you enjoy it and would love to see more, he just might start again.

Have a great weekend!

Beautiful! Wish you were here!

2006-11-02T08:45:00.000-06:00

Candy: Here is the morning view we were greeted with as we drove up to the highway from our apartment. I never grow tired of what scene the mountains present each day.

Hopefully you're not growing tired of seeing it either. Please say so if you are.

Tim has almost finished his second week at Enterprise and is really enjoying it. It's definitely not coaching or teaching, but he is finding many ways to use in this career the skills he learned in his last career. I have an interview with Enterprise tomorrow for the same program. Tim is so impressed with the company and the career paths it offers and I've begun to realize it could be a good thing for me as well. So far my resume has not generated many good hits, and I think for once I'm ready to sign on with a good company and see where it goes rather than continue to piece together a career of disconnected jobs.

I have been playing with a few photos that I shot on film in the past five or six years. I hope you enjoy them. If you want to see others, head over to my photoblog.

This is a sunrise over Craig's Beach on Cape Cod in 1995.Have a great day and let us hear from you.

Sunrise on the Flatirons

2006-10-27T11:32:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today I got up early with Tim to drive him to work and this is what we saw coming out of the apartment. The other photos show what we "had" to look at on the way there and back. What a bummer to have to see this every day, huh?

I should have brought the tripod along, but I forgot. Still, I stopped to take a few snapshots from the El because it was so beautiful. Can you imagine seeing this every day on your commute?

This is our view of downtown Denver (you'll have to look closely--click on the photos--to see the cityscape to the left of the water). Our apartment complex (at the right of the photo) is tucked just below the ridge where the road is, and you can see the snow still on the rooftops.These two panoramas show the rest of the view from the ridge, looking west and northwest of course. I've been stuck in the apartment for two days, so it's going to be nice to get out and about today. It's sunny and in the mid-60s and the snow is melting fast. I know I'm going on like a broken record about the snow here, but I can't get over how quickly it melts. I love it.

We finally have both TV and internet at home now. It's so nice to be connected again.

I think we're going to be out exploring quite a bit this weekend, so I should have more photos and information to post early next week.

Enjoy your weekend.

From 70s to 5 Inches in 12 Hours

2006-10-26T12:43:00.000-05:00

Candy: Seriously! Yesterday was partly sunny and in the 70s. Then it started snowing overnight, and by noon today we have 5 inches.

The picture above is the tree outside my patio right now. Crazy. I still have to get used to this kind of winter weather. I can live with this kind of snow, though, much more easily than the kind of snow we get in Minnesota or Ohio. At least this snow will be melted and gone pretty quickly. And then the sun will be shining and the skies will be gorgeous.

Things are going well for us in Colorado. We love it already. It's hard not to like beautiful mountain views and gorgeous blue skies nearly every day!

We have settled into an apartment in Broomfield. It's near the high-tech corridor in Denver, and yet it's off by itself so that we feel somewhat secluded from the hustle and bustle of the city. From the ridge above our apartment we have an unobstructed sweeping view of both the downtown Denver cityscape and the Flatiron Range.

We're about 10 miles from Boulder, where Tim's job is, which is really nice. I'm hoping to find work in this area of the metro too, so that I can avoid the traffic congestion, though if I have to drive into the city I'll do it with no complaints.

Tim is enjoying his new job despite missing the routines of coaching basketball this time of year. It's kind of nice having nights and weekends free to pursue some other things. I have had two preliminary interviews already this week, and am looking forward to what's next.

I know the updates have been few and far between lately, and I apologize for being so lax with writing. I intend to shut down this blog once I'm employed, and then look at starting another kind of blog that isn't so much of a travelogue. I'll be sure to let you know when that day comes so that if you want to stay connected with us this way you can.

We'd love to hear what you've been up to these days. Hard to believe that Thanksgiving is only a month away. Enjoy your Thursday.

Colorado Bound

2006-10-17T00:03:00.000-05:00

Candy: So here's the latest.

Tim has accepted a position with a company in Boulder, Colorado, and begins work on Monday, so we are packing up and leaving Minnesota tomorrow (Tuesday) to begin the relocation process.

While Tim was interviewing there last week he also looked at several apartments and we hope to move into a place by week's end.

Needless to say, we are excited to be moving in a direction, and especially since that direction is the Denver area.

I'll leave you with a photo Tim took with his camera last week in Boulder, and will update you further when we're settled.

The Latest

2006-10-11T15:11:00.000-05:00

Candy: Well, our whirlwind trip back to Ohio this week added two more states and another 1800 miles to our journey.

Here's an update on what's been happening.

Last week Tim and I interviewed for jobs (sales manager for Tim, marketing manager for me) at a publishing company in the Champaign-Urbana, Illinois area. All the aerial photos in this post are from that trip (above photo is of Minneapolis, below is Champaign-Urbana).
Here's Chicago on Saturday evening.

I've flown a fair amount but have never seen clouds quite like this before.

Chase stayed with my mom while we were gone and I think they both had a great time with that arrangement.
We decided on Saturday that we would drive to Hiram, Ohio, to pick up some warm clothes and other things that we would need for the winter, so we took off Sunday afternoon and drove straight through to Hiram. We were able to spend some brief moments with several of our good friends there in addition to about two and a half hours going through the storage unit finding things we needed. We then cleaned up and drove straight back to Minnesota.
We're definitely older than we were the last time we tried that! Yikes.

Tim then got into a rental car yesterday to drive to Denver for an interview on Thursday. I have an interview with a company in Fargo on Thursday or we would both be in Colorado right now.

It looks like some major decisions will be made in the next seven days. We're both excited about the possibilities and are looking forward to the decisions.So that's what we've been up to. I hope you've been enjoying the beautiful fall weather. Minnesota is supposed to get snow today.

Another Drive through Minnesota

2006-10-01T21:21:00.000-05:00

Tim: There are not many October days in Minnesota when the temperatures outside go above 80 degrees, so we decided to take another drive today in the area to check out some more fall colors. Candy has been finding outstanding scenic byways to travel in the state that are not too far away from our current home. Today, we drove the Glacial Ridge Scenic Byway and found some incredible places with some great photo opportunities for Candy. This scenic roadway is roughly 45 minutes from here. The first picture above is at a ski slope in Glenwood. The colors speak for themselves.

Below are some more pictures that Candy took today. We do not know what the plant is in the picture below but it was in a marshland area:

The two pictures below show sumac changing colors...very red colors and all over the place in Minnesota:

The last picture is off a fence row on the Glacial Ridge Scenic Byway...another great picture:
The fall is coming to a close quickly and I am glad that we have been given the chance to actually take it in for the first time in a long time. In the past, we were so busy with our duties in our past employment that we did not stop and take it in. What a blessing and a lesson!

Have a great week...we are expecting this to be our best week ever!

Finding Fall

2006-09-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

Candy: We found fall today. It exists everywhere in Minnesota.

We took another road trip today, this time to Stillwater and the St. Croix River area. We were hoping to find lots of colorful trees, maybe see a bunch of pumpkins or an apple orchard, and mostly just experience the river valley area and the blue skies.

We forgot it was Saturday.

It seemed that everyone else in the state had the same idea, so we decided to forego the pumpkins and apples in favor of exploring both the Minnesota and Wisconsin sides of the St. Croix River from Stillwater to Taylors Falls on the Minnesota side and from Osceola to Houlton on the Wisconsin side.

We had hoped to spend some time at Taylors Falls State Park, but it was so jam-packed that we couldn't even find a parking spot. Instead, we headed back south a few miles to the Franconia sculpture park.

Some local artists have built quite an unusual collection of sculpture out of scrap metal and other found objects and the sculptures are installed in a field with grass trails leading to each of the pieces. I was looking for abstracts today, and so unfortunately I can't show you any pictures of the actual pieces, with one exception (below). The sky was amazing today.

One sculpture was especially interesting. It was named "Lost" and was a chicken-wire fence maze with a concave reflective piece installed at the end of the maze. Tim and I had fun posing above it while I snapped away.

This is a view inside a sculpture that featured several giant balls made of curved wood inside an old, stripped-down Airstream camper.

This piece was a stucco-covered lath and wire tower. I liked the mix of textures, color, and cloud.

This unusual piece was all cast iron, and I liked the way the curlique sort of framed the tree in the distance.

My mother's family is from the Houlton area, just across the bridge from Stillwater, and I haven't been there for many years.

Stillwater seems to have undergone quite a rejuvenation in its downtown and although it was way too packed with cars and people today to really stop and take anything more than a snapshot, here's a glimpse of part of the downtown. A lovely little town.

Late in the afternoon as we traveled back to Albany, we stopped at Achman Lake near the town of St. Joseph, which is just southeast of Albany. This little lake can be seen from I-94 and is ringed with birch, poplar, and maple trees which are just beginning to show their fall brilliance.

Strangely enough, and yet not surprising to us given our recent history, what we were looking for today was really the best right close to where we are living.

We had a great day outide and I hope you did, too. I'll leave you with myriad fall images from my time at Achman Lake this afternoon. Enjoy.

It's a Beautiful Life

2006-09-30T10:46:00.000-05:00

Candy: We spent a good share of Thursday at Albany's city park. It was just before sunset and the long shadows were beautiful. The pictures are from that day. These are beautiful days in Minnesota. The fall foliage is just beginning to turn out in full color, and now that the rain of the past weeks has passed through, the skies are beautifully blue with crisp, white clouds.

Temperatures around here are supposed to hit the 80s over the weekend and into next week, so we're planning to spend as much time outside in the summer-like weather. Here's hoping you have great fall weather and sunshine this weekend, too.

I'll leave you with a translation of a saying found years ago on a brass plate on a Peking, China garden wall. It read, Enjoy yourself. It is later than you think.

The North Shore

2006-09-25T00:18:00.000-05:00

Candy: Yesterday was the first partly sunny day after three days straight of rain, so Tim and I decided to trek upstate to Duluth.

I hadn't been to Duluth since I was in college, and Tim had been to Duluth during his stint at Pillsbury, but only to whatever college campus his teams were competing against. He had never been to Canal Park and the lakefront area on Lake Superior.

We took some back roads from St. Cloud heading northeast so that we could pick up I-35 into Duluth. The trees were probably 70% clothed in their fall apparel, and the trip was lovely. The sky became progressively more clouded the farther north we traveled, but when we reached Duluth there was still a bit of sun peeking through.Canal Park is a fun little area right by the two port lighthouses, one of which is featured in this posting. Visitors to the park can walk out to either lighthouse, though the only one that seems to get any foot traffic is the one featured in most of this post's pictures.

I guess this lighthouse pier's popularity is helped because it's much easier to get to and it's quite a bit more picturesque than the other one.The park area has a three-mile boardwalk for foot traffic and paved paths for tourists renting bicycles, carts, or horse carriages for rides along the shore.

The port is also highlighted by the city's famous Aerial Lift Bridge, seen behind Tim in the picture below. Tim and I joked about how fun (or not) it would be to be the person operating that bridge all day long. While we were at the lakefront area, we saw several sailboats as well as a large freighter pass into the port under that bridge. The park was an old warehouse district that was converted in the 1980s into trendy restaurants, shops, cafes, and hotels. The Great Lakes Aquarium is located in that area as well as the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center.We walked through the area, enjoying the sunshine, and when we got chilly stopped in the local Caribou Coffee shop for a Hot Apple Blast, one of our favorite hot drinks.

When the light began to fade we headed back to the El and drove home, enjoying our time on the road almost as much as we did Canal Park.We both hope that you will have a terrific week and that you didn't spend too much time looking at the picture above to see what it is.

Need a Road Trip?

2006-09-20T23:11:00.000-05:00

Candy: We sure needed a road trip.

So we piled into the El with Chase and took off for the "Gateway to the Pines"--Nevis, Minnesota, my hometown.

When we arrived in Nevis we spotted the boat launch and fishing pier (above) and decided this would be the perfect place for Chase to test the water. Lake Belle Taine holds a unique place in my heart, as it is the site for both my learning to swim and my almost-drowning in high school.At any rate, Chase really enjoyed the water and jumping off the boat launch. You can see the famous Nevis beach in the distance.This is my old high school in Nevis. It looks very similar to the way it did when I was in school way back when, except that a few more additions have been added behind the original building.I was also drawn to photograph the pier with its seagulls. As I was exploring it with my camera, I came across several spider webs that were lit just right by the late afternoon sun. I like this one best.We drove around town as I reminisced about my high school days and pointed out the location of my parents' first place just north of town, the place where the neighbors grew ginseng back in the day, and Danny's now-closed ice cream shop in town.

We decided to head toward Bemidji so that Tim could see what it was like. They have a huge Paul Bunyan statue and a similarly huge statue of Babe, his blue ox. Tim wanted to see it, so we took off for Akeley, the next small town to the east of Nevis, so that we could pick up County Road 64 north and take the old back roads.

As we entered Akeley, I pointed out the town's Paul Bunyan statue, and Tim rushed out of the El to pose in front of it.After sitting in Paul's hand, Tim decided he didn't really need to see the Paul Bunyan statue in Bemidji, so we headed back to Park Rapids (PR, as it's called by the locals) and from there eventually back to Albany.

Oh, I forgot. As some of you know, Minnesota is filled with towns that boast "The World's Largest _______ (fill in the blank)." Akeley's claim to fame is the statue shown above. Nevis' way to fill in the blank is this Tiger Muskie fish statue. If you look closely, you'll notice that it even has its own shelter to protect it from the elements. :)Here's a glimpse of Tim outside the El as we stopped to let Chase catch up on his business.

It was a nearly-perfect day. We had such a good time driving, talking, and looking at things we hadn't seen in a very long time. It was just what we needed.

Tim has an interview tomorrow with an insurance company in Burnsville, an opportunity that arose out of the blue this week. Not much else is new.

Hope you're all doing well and enjoying the last week or two of September. The leaves are just beginning to turn colors here and it looks as though it will be a lovely foliage season in the upper Midwest. We'll do our best to capture it with the camera and share it with you.

Take great care of yourself and enjoy the rest of your week.

Pictures and some thoughts from the weekend

2006-09-18T22:20:00.000-05:00

Tim: Candy asked me to post tonight, so here goes. The picture above was taken by our six-year old nephew Isaac. The picture is of his younger brother Levi. Isaac is an aspiring photographer thanks to his Aunt Candy helping teach him some things on Grandma Joy's digital camera.

I had the chance to go to a coaching clinic this weekend down near the Twin Cities. The coach who presented the clinic is Don Meyer, arguably the best basketball coach in the nation, if not the world. A friend made a call to the clinic to get me in for free.

The clinic really focused on the peripheral aspects of a basketball program instead of the X’s and O’s. It was really something to hear Coach Meyer talk about the things he values in his program at Northern State University. Most of these values were the same values I taught in my program at Hiram. It made me feel a lot better about what I attempted to do as a head coach. Maybe that chance will come my way again.

The weather here in Minnesota is starting to cool down a bit and today was a day tailor-made for Northeast Ohio: dark, rainy, and stormy. Here in Minnesota the “month of fall” is progressing. Candy calls it this because in this state there are not really four seasons, but rather three seasons: winter, fall, and “road construction” season.

We are anxiously waiting for what’s next. It has been an interesting time for us and we have learned a lot from the last six months. We know God has something good coming, we just do not know when or what it will be. Whatever happens, we will keep you updated. To be honest, we have not had a lot going on recently that has been “post worthy.” Hopefully more will happen shortly that will be.

Well, that’s all for today. We hope you had a good one and we will leave you with another of Isaac's pictures of me "horsing around."

Ranjeet Deserves a Raise

2006-09-15T20:55:00.000-05:00

Candy: I've been working all day with technical support for my friend's hosting account and have been very frustrated.

Finally I was able to connect with Ranjeet, who seems to be the only one at the company who could fix anything, and who ought to get an enormous raise. However, even Ranjeet couldn't fix everything I needed.

The one thing that made today's tech support hassles bearable is that we finally have a high speed internet connection at home again. For two web surfers like us, that's the equivalent of spending all day on the big waves off the coast of Venezuela after being stranded in the desert for months.

On another note, I was in downeast coastal Maine this week. What a beautiful part of the world.

I interviewed for a position with the University of Maine at Machias (pronounced with a 'ch' rather than a 'k' sound) on Tuesday. The people were super friendly and the place extraordinarily lovely.

Machias is located on the coast of Maine, about two hours northeast of Bangor and about one hour from New Brunswick, Canada.

In my one hour of exploration with my camera I managed to snap a few shots of the area. None of these photos show the true beauty nor the essence of the area, but I didn't have much time.

The lead photo for this post is of the tidal area where the river meets the ocean at Machias Bay.

This is the downtown. This is a building I saw in my rearview mirror while parked near the water. I love the flag on the pole.
Finally, this photo was taken while resting my camera on the wheel of my rental car while heading southwest toward Bangor on Tuesday night. The sky was pretty and I like the way the headlights illuminate Route 1.

On yet another note, last week while visiting my younger brother and his family in Fargo, we were caught in an evening storm and saw these beautiful scenes afterwards.

Of course, the sky was lovely, but so were the reflections on the wet pavement of a supermarket parking lot.

These power lines struck me as really graphic against the beautiful sky and I hope you enjoy the beauty in the simple lines of this image too.

I know it's been a while since we posted, and we'll do a better job of writing now that we have web access at the house.

Last night we spent some time with my Mom and found these old photos from my childhood. Tim and I enjoyed them so much we thought you might also like this peek into my youth.

Here I am with my younger brother Clint and two of our German Shepherd dog Cindy's mutt mix puppies.

One of my first loves as a young girl was horses, and this is the pony on which I learned to ride. Sunny was her name and she was a Shetland pony. This photo shows my older brother Jim and me on Sunny and was probably one of the only times we rode her with a saddle.

Tomorrow we celebrate our 11th wedding anniversary, and on Wednesday Tim flies to St. Louis for an interview.

We always love hearing from you and hope that you're enjoying September where you are.

The Great Minnesota Get-Together

2006-08-29T22:02:00.000-05:00

Candy: We spent this afternoon and evening at the Minnesota State Fair and it really lived up to its name as a great get-together for Minnesotans.

The fair is held each year for about 10 days at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul, just off Snelling and Como.

On our way into the fair, we saw the travel stables for the widely-known Budweiser Clydesdales and had the unique experience of seeing one of the groomers shaving just about every part of the horse, including its boy parts. Yeah. That was compelling.

From there we headed down food alley (my term for it) and Tim began jonesing for anything he could find that was free. As many of you know, he loves to collect free samples of anything. It doesn't matter to him whether it's a pen, hotel shampoo, plastic bags, lotion, or caps. He is non-discriminatory in his approach to freebies and is definitely an equal-opportunity-collector.

Today he set his sights on locating a free writing instrument if at all possible but unfortunately, after five hours of searching he was still without a company logo pen.

We started our gastronomical experience with a vanilla ice cream cone. You can't go to a Midwestern fair and not eat something made of dairy products. It's just not right.

Then we toured some of the livestock barns, starting with the horse barn. We saw some unusual breeds of equines, including the Norwegian Fjord (photo from the web below) and miniature horses, as well as the standard breeds like saddlebred, appaloosa, donkey, and quarterhorse. I grew up with horses, but haven't really been around them since high school, and it was fun to join the other fair-goers in oohing and ahhing over each horse. The sheep barn was next. As we walked through the barn, they were judging some of the animals. Man, the way those sheep owners trim their animals was pretty cool. Imagine a plush rug that is shaped similarly to a hedge (squared off on the sides and rump) but on a living, breathing, baa-ing sheep. It was pretty neat. Also, nearly all the sheep were wearing hoods and blankets. This sheep looked pretty bored with the whole thing, even though the hood brings to mind a modified version of The Silence of the Lambs. I know, bad joke. Afterwards, we headed over to the cattle barn. It was filled mainly with dairy cows, including guernseys, holsteins, and my personal favorite, brown swiss cows. No, they aren't the ones that produce chocolate milk.

While we were in the cattle barn, the MN State Fair Milking Parlor was in operation, and we watched through the glass as cows were led in, put in their stanchions, and milking machines were attached. I didn't know this, but most cows produce about 6-8 gallons of milk each day. Got milk? We saw lots of temporary tattoos with that saying today.

After that we stumbled across the Miracle of Birth exhibit. It was a barn filled with all kinds of incubators, display pens with bleachers, etc. for viewing recently-born animals and poultry. This newborn sheep was especially cute.

There were several sows with 8-10 piglets each. Boy, were they cute. We also saw ewes that had given birth to one, two, or three baby sheep, several newborn calves, some baby bunnies, and even turkey chicks.

It was probably the most-packed exhibit of the fair with tons of baby strollers everywhere. It was like toddler alley, with baby humans (and adults too) watching baby animals and baby animals watching back. We walked for quite a while just looking around at things and trying desperately to find something else free for Tim to put in his (free) U of Minnesota backpack with his (free) WCCO bag. Finally, we came across the Promos on Patch section of the fair, supposedly packed with freebie goodies.

Unfortunately, the only freebie they were passing out while we were there was Spam on a pretzel stick. Tim, so eager to have anything free that he would even eat "spiced ham" as the promoter optimistically called it, happily enjoyed his (free) sample. The other souvenir Tim collected today was a sample of Udderly Smooth balm from the cattle barn. Yep. It was free.

We then rode the sky ride across the fairgrounds. It's a cable car system that you can ride one-way or round-trip, and provides the best view of the fair possible.

We decided it was about time for some more food on a stick. That's something that the fair is known for. You can find just about anything on a stick. Some of the more exotic things we saw today included teriyaki ostrich on a stick, spaghetti & meatballs on a stick, deep-fried candy bars on a stick, of course pickles on a stick, fudge puppies-belgian waffles dunked in chocolate on a stick, and the State-Fair-famous Pronto Pups, (you guessed it-corn dogs on a stick).

Of these items we sampled the pronto pups (as good as I remembered them from my college days) and the fudge puppies, then headed to the Pet Center in hopes that we would find lots of cute puppies and maybe even some kittens.

However, there were only a few dogs around and our favorites (of course) were the two beautiful yellow labs, Banker and Breezer. We decided to sit for 20 minutes or so and wait for the St. Paul Police K-9 unit demonstration. The demonstration included eight beautiful, well-trained German Shepherds and their police partners. Each dog was brought and put through one of four tests that included attacking on the arm, the leg, and general obedience behavior.

It was fun to watch even though the policeman who was on the microphone for the entire demo was impossible to understand. After the demonstration, we decided to support the K-9 foundation by purchasing one of their lovely dog collars for Chase.

On our way out of the fair for the evening, we we trying to determine the best thing to eat to encapsulate our fair experience, and suddenly saw numerous people enjoying roasted corn on the cob. We found out where it was being sold and got an ear each. I think that might have been the best ear of corn I've ever tasted.

"It was good," said Tim.

The last thing we saw before leaving the fairgrounds were the famous Minnesota Dairy Princess butter carvings. Sounds funny, right? Well, it is, kind of.

Somebody sculpts the head & shoulders likeness of each of the dairy princesses from around the state in a 90-pound block of butter. Each likeness is put on a rotating dais kept in a 38-degree-cooled glass booth so that people can observe these temporary dairy sculptures. Only in Minnesota.

All in all, it was a really great day, from the food to the people watching to the walking to the drive home.

Tomorrow, I have a phone interview with that University in Maine and need to try to finish the website I'm helping to develop for a friend back in Ohio.

Tim says, "I'll probably wash and clean the car out for the 3rd time in the past 6 days." He's probably right. Maybe he'll even want to mow the yard.

I've teasesd him a lot in this post, but you all know how much I love him and how much fun we have together. Today was no exception.

If your state has a state fair, we definitely recommend joining the get-together.

Have a great Wednesday.

A Day of Rest

2006-08-27T19:43:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today was truly a day of rest. We hung around the house until mid-afternoon or so, then drove to St. Cloud for some much-needed internet time at the B&N.

We're definitely web junkies, and not having access at the house these days is very difficult for us to handle.

One note of interest today: I got an email from the hiring manager at Bowdoin College in Maine. I had applied for their Director of Media Relations position and they want to do a phone interview with me this week. For those of you who aren't familiar with Bowdoin, it's a private liberal arts college to which many of America's best and brightest young academics go for their undergraduate education. The job would be incredible.

I haven't taken many new photos in the past few days, so I went through my files as far back as 2001, when I had my first digital camera, a 1MB Sony Mavica. It was so much fun to use back then, but those files are not really usable at all these days. That's why some of the pictures on today's post are smaller than usual. Oh well, it's fun to go back and look at them.

I love the fireworks photo at the top of the post. It's from a fireworks show at Hiram last summer after the golf outing. I was testing our (then new) pocket point-&-shoot Sony.

This photo is one of my favorite old photos too. I took it in the rundown yard at our Mantua rental house in Ohio. I love the juxtaposition between the garbage barrel and the plethora of flowers surrounding it. This is a really old picture from 2001. I spent a few days that spring driving around Virginia with Chase, visiting places like James Madison University, UVA, and the home of Thomas Jefferson while Tim was at the Division III Final Four in Salem. This is a shot of the blossoming tree-lined drive near James Madison.This next picture is a really old photo, too. During Tim's Fall Break while we were at Grove City in 2001 we made a camping trip to Vermont. This covered bridge with the sumac in the foreground really caught my eye.The last picture in this post is a train parked on the tracks that I used to see every day we drove back and forth between Grove City, PA and Hiram, OH during Tim's first year. I always meant to stop and take a really great photo of it, but we were always either in a hurry or I didn't have the camera with me. Something. At any rate, one day I hurriedly pulled over the side of the road and hopped out to snap this photo.

Something about the worn-out colors of the freight cars, the not-so-pretty pond of water in the foreground, the power lines that are reminiscent of prison bars, and the barren trees really symbolized how we were feeling about working at Hiram and driving so much. Well, as I sit here sipping my Starbucks Strawberries & Cream I have to admit I'm out of material. Guess that's it for tonight. Enjoy your week!

It's Getting Interesting

2006-08-25T15:16:00.000-05:00

Candy: Wow. It's been a long time since I've written anything on the blog.

Well, in an effort to catch up, here's what's been going on.

We're still in Albany, Minnesota, and have been here since early July. We never imagined when we set out on this "Pause on Purpose" tour that we'd spend two months in this state. However, that's the reality of our situation.

We are happy in the present and excited about the future.

Tim had an interview for a head coaching position at a junior college in Kansas this week. They decided to offer it to someone else, and Tim had decided after the interview that he would turn it down if offered to him. It just didn't offer enough for us as a family. He is doing really well and is actually getting excited about the possibilities that lie ahead of him outside of coaching.

I took the pictures on this post just outside Highland, Kansas, while Tim was interviewing.

He has had a couple phone interviews with a national company for a position based in Cincinnati and it looks like they're going to fly him out there early next week for a final interview. The company is a great company with lots of offices around the States, and lots of opportunity for both advancement and lucrative earning power.

He has also had a phone interview with another national company for a recruiter position based in the Midwest. His potential boss is flying to Minneapolis in the next 7-10 days to interview Tim for a day, and that position is also interesting.

I have a phone interview for the Director of University Relations position at the University of Maine-Machias next Wednesday.

So things are beginning to move a little bit on the job front. It will be interesting to see what happens and where we end up.

Here are some of the things that we've been doing to keep busy this month:

Having Monday night "The Closer" parties at my brother Jim's house
Applying for jobs
Spending lots of time at the St. Cloud Barnes & Noble
Walking around the St. Cloud mall
Spending bits of time with my Mom in Fergus Falls
Applying for jobs (did I mention that already? :) )
Driving around between Albany, St. Cloud, Alexandria, Minneapolis/St. Paul, and Fargo
Taking pictures
Applying for jobs :)
Going to movies

It's been a good month, though challenging at times as we've been hammering out some changes in our life philosophies. It's been beneficial, though, because we are both at ease, happy, and excited about whatever lies ahead.

This afternoon we're going to see the movie Invicible. It looks like a really good one with Mark Wahlberg.

Here are some things that we're hoping to do while we're here in Minnesota:

Spend a day at the Minnesota State Fair. It's one of the best state fairs around, and is known locally as "The Great Minnesota Get-Together"
Have an end-of-the-season "The Closer" party at Jim and Katy's on Monday
Interview for and secure two great jobs
Spend a day with my brother Clint and his family near Fargo
Take Chase swimming in the Sauk River again
Avoid the heavy thunderstorms and tornadoes that have been rolling through this part of the state lately
Spend an afternoon with my grandpa in southern Minnesota (he's having some health problems)
Eat some great food and sleep in as long as possible every day that we have left on this "tour"

That's about it. Our internet connection has dribbled off into nonexistence, so we're relegated to hanging out at the Panera or Barnes & Noble.

Have a great weekend.

Nature, Time, and Patience: Five Months Later...

2006-08-13T18:56:00.000-05:00

Tim: The other day, Candy and I went to the local Panera Bread location to have a bowl of soup and a sandwich for lunch. Candy ordered a Jones Soda to drink and under the cap of the soda was a quote that struck us both. The quote is from H.G. Bohn, a famous British publisher from the 19th century:

Nature, time and patience are the three great physicians.

In addition, I thought the picture above fits the journey we have been on since March 13th.

Nature: During this “Pause on Purpose” trip, the places that struck a cord with us most were the places out west that were naturally beautiful. Places like the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the ancient ruins of the Chacoan people of New Mexico, the Hill country of West Central Texas, and the Oregon coastline and forests are just a few of these incredible natural wonders.

These areas inspired us to continue on this journey called life knowing that something great could be around the corner awaiting us. We can certainly understand what Bohn meant by nature being a great physician.

Time: As of today, we have been out on our great adventure for five months. In this time, we have logged over 20,000 miles in our 2003 Honda Element, been to 19 states, and spent a lot of time thinking about each other and the future.

We have also thought about the things/places that made us unhappy in the past. Ben Stein, who we have spoken about before in the blog postings, quoted in his book “How Successful People Win” the following about taking time: “when you’re wounded, let it bleed for a while. Even the hardiest cowboy cannot just spring to his feet after he gets knocked down by a crazed bronco.” We were hurt, have bled for a while and time has healed our wounds. We can certainly understand what Bohn meant by time being a great physician.

Patience: During the past five months, we have gained some patience and openness to a new experience, although I would say Candy is way ahead of me in both of these areas. We have been blessed with the opportunity to start over with our lives right now and that is something that most people never get to do. Like it or not, we have to be patient because something good could be just around the corner.

However, it has been tough to be patient when so many resumes and job applications have been sent out with little or no effect; when a job gets ripped from your hands for reasons we still do not understand; or when you look to transition into another career field and you have to start over at ground level despite the experience you gained in your other career field.

We have read a ton during this trip. I read a book on visualization while we were in Pueblo and came across the word Satori, a Zen term for enlightenment. The word literally means "to understand" or deep, lasting enlightenment. Satori can be found in every moment of life; it is wrapped in all daily activities with its goal to unwrap them to truly understand.

It is sometimes loosely used interchangeably with Kensho, but Kensho refers to an "awakening", a clear glimpse of the true nature of creation (example: we may think of a baby when it first walks. After much effort, it stands upright, finds its balance and walks a few steps (kensho), then falls). Then an example of satori: after continued effort the child will one day find that it is able to walk all the time (satori).

What I want from our lives is to be “enlightened” like a child. They never think about falling, they just barrel through their life, learn as they go, and do not even think about failure, just enlightenment. Patience would not be issue for us as adults if we just lived life in this way. Maybe, to an extent, Candy and I have been looking for this for nearly 11 years of marriage. I believe most people look for it their entire lives.

Personally, I think what Bohn said about patience being a great physician may not be felt by us for some time, but it will be felt. Even in the toughest of situations, I have learned through this experience that patience might be the greatest trait to have (other than faith, of course).

What the future holds for us we really can not be sure. However, we do have goals and dreams still and with those you can go almost anywhere.

Five months ago, we left on a trip that we thought could be a very short trip. Instead, I believe that we will continue on this “Pause on Purpose” trip for the rest of our life. We stopped our other trip to begin another one on March 13, 2006. I don’t think that we have ever made a better decision in our life.

As has been the case since we started blogging, we will keep you informed about where we are heading. We hope you had a great weekend!

Parades and Candy and Fireworks, Oh My!

2006-08-06T01:32:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today Tim conducted a mock interview to help a colleague and friend prepare for an interview in New Mexico.

The interview took place in Mayer, Minnesota, which is about 30 miles due west of Minneapolis, and approximately an hour and 45 minutes from Albany.

As Tim says, "it was a lot of winding roads!" However, the "interview" went well and Tim said he definitely would have hired the guy if it had been a real interview.

Today was Heritage Day, the town's annual festival, in Albany. We took our camping chairs and set them up on the main street through town, which is almost a block from our house.

The town was packed. Usually it's a sleepy little town with very few people around and even fewer cars, especially in the evenings.

Not tonight.

We estimated that several thousand people turned out for the parade, which started at 7pm (in my mind, the perfect time for a parade...beautiful light, great temperatures).

The parade was really good and lasted an hour and a half. You have to understand. Albany is a small town of 1,818 residents, and we usually don't see many of them until late at night when they head to one of the three bars in town (our favorite is Paul's Par-o-dice, because of the name).

The theme of the parade was "Movies and More!" and we saw floats featuring the Pirates of the Caribbean, Field of Dreams, and at least three floats featuring the Wizard of Oz (hence the not-so-subtle reference in tonight's title).

At any rate, the parade was really fun, especially the loads of candy thrown out from each float by little boys and girls with strong arms who usually managed to pelt someone sitting on the curb with handfuls of Tootsie Rolls, Super Bubble gum, and Mr. Freezies.

Of course, the Shriners on their little go-karts were great, and Tim kept saying to me, "I don't know how they don't run into each other. I'd crash if I tried to do what they do!"

Additionally, it seemed that the royalty from each of the towns in a 20-mile radius of Albany were present at the parade, riding on the backs of top-down convertibles (of course) and each waving with what appeared to be a very painful motion at the crowd lining the streets.

Tim and I both found ourselves hoping that we could be a part of a small community again just so that we could fully participate in the neighborly activities that we witnessed tonight.

The pictures on tonight's post are all from the parade, and I guess you can tell I was experimenting with motion and angles. They make me smile, and I hope they make you do the same. This one is a heavily-Photoshopped photo of the back of an old lawn chair.
After the parade, we packed up our chairs and walked back to the house, where we hung out for an hour or so before walking back through downtown to the Seven Dolors Catholic church to see the fireworks promised to begin at dusk over the golf course.

The show was good, lasting 15-20 minutes, and we saw some fireworks that we hadn't seen before, particularly one that seemed to drape down and down through the night sky toward the ground before finally being extinguished. The finale was very good, too, and it was a nice finish to the Heritage Day activities.

Our own finale to the night was a stop at Applebee's in St. Cloud for appetizers and dessert. Well, maybe that's not today's final finale (how's that for redundancy?), but at least it's one I can mention on this blog.
Tomorrow it seems Albany will put on a town-wide bazaar and so we will probably venture out into it for a little activity and sightseeing as well.

This past week or so I read several books that belonged to my sister-in-law's mom, mostly out of desperation for something to do while we're at the house and when Tim's on the computer.

I read two books by Minnesota author Lorna Landvik (Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons and Patty Jane's House of Curl), a little Walt Whitman, of course Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, and am now wading through Russell Baker's book titled Growing Up (kind of boring in my opinion--and you'll see if you click the link that people are now trying to sell their used copies for 1 penny!).

Well, that's all for today.

Here's hoping that you have the chance to get out and see a small-town summer parade. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Enough, already!

2006-08-04T02:27:00.000-05:00

Tim: As we walked again tonight in Albany, it occurred to us that maybe we should just say enough and let it all go…”We give up, Lord! Whatever happens let it happen!” We've tried everything else...what else is there to do?

We believe in ourselves and have worked hard to make it in our career paths; for me, it has been in teaching and coaching, while for Candy, it has been a lot of varied things. We have sacrificed a lot for this crazy dream of mine to be a coach. We have both picked ourselves off the floor many times in the last 11 years and tried again. Sometimes I feel like we are one with the floor.

I guess we have finally come to grips with what the reality is for us. Candy and I feel that we need to move forward with our lives and find other opportunities for employment.

I often read this poem that the great coach, John Wooden, got from a teacher in school growing up in Indiana:

At God’s footstool to confess,
A poor soul knelt and bowed his head.
"I failed.” He cried. The Master said,
"Thou didst thy best, that is success.”

The bottom line: if you’ve given all you can, that is all you can do. No one can or will ever take anything away from us; we truly gave everything we could and that is all anyone ever asks of a person.

I have been fighting for something better for so long and have made a lot of mistakes along the way. I want to believe that hard work and dreams make things possible. However, lately everything I have tried has gone unnoticed or has been ripped from my clenched fists. I feel as though I could apply for any job in this world and not be considered.

What do I know about anything outside of sport? Not a whole lot. However, I think a few of my skills will transfer over to whatever I have to do. We have struggled to achieve since we both graduated from college, but the one thing we have always done is survive. We will survive again.

What it really came down to (giving up on the dream) was an opportunity to be something more than what we have been- content with our situation no matter what. The ultimate challenge now is to make the attempt to improve and be the best we can be in the existing conditions.

Who knows? Tomorrow could be a day of absolute jubilation for us both. In the past, I thought only about the future, not the present. As for me now, I will stick to the present. The future is just that and, as we both found out through the Academy disappointment, it certainly is not guaranteed. If tomorrow brings great news or if we have another incredible adventure (I have a feeling that is coming up very soon, whether we like it or not), you will know on the blog.

Thanks to those of you who have been reading these postings. Today, as we headed down to the Twin Cities area, we drove by two truckloads of piglets. I took the photo at the beginning of the post and Candy did her Photoshop magic to make it really come to life. You can get this shot and many more at http://blog.candyrice.com/ or by clicking the "Seatbelt Sign is Off" link at the right.

Have a great day and pray that we live in the present.

A Trip to the Heart of Dixie

2006-07-26T18:28:00.000-05:00

Tim: We recently received a comment wanting to have more information on Alabama. Without further ado, I thought I would write about my recent trip to Alabama to visit with family.

For those people who read the blog that do not know, my hometown is Robertsdale, Alabama, population 4,500. If you want more information on "The Hub of Baldwin County", just click the link in this paragraph. The map of the county is posted at the beginning of the post.

It is a small town (that seems to be getting a whole lot bigger) on Alabama Highway 59 in Baldwin County, which is roughly a forty-five minute drive east (across the Mobile Bay Bridge on Interstate 10) of Mobile, Alabama and a half-hour trip to the Gulf of Mexico. It has doubled in population since I graduated high school in 1988. My parents met here and were married here in 1965. My Grandpa Rice always said that if you blink as you drive through town, you just might miss it.

Anyway, back to my trip. I flew into Atlanta, Georgia last Tuesday, then drove down in the rental car I got (I was upgraded from economy to mid-size for no extra cost). It took roughly four hours and forty minutes to make the trip. I stayed at my grandmother’s house in Robertsdale. We have called her “Grannie” for as long as we have known how to talk, apparently thanks to my dad teaching us to say “Grannie” when we were two years old (at least, that is how I was told the name came into existence).

The next day, I got to work helping my mom out in a couple of areas. Her name is Judy…she has had some tough times in her life and it certainly is not getting any easier. She has had problems getting an MRI completed at the doctor’s office (Grannie says the Doc is “from Jerusalem”) because she is claustrophobic. Well, Grannie and my sister-in-law, Tracy, took her back to this doctor in Daphne on Wednesday of last week to hopefully get another MRI. She was not having that either, so they set up an appointment to get an Open MRI in Gulf Shores, Alabama later in the day.

I drove her down to get the MRI done and Tracy met up with us there. Before we got there, we drove down the beach to see how much damage had been inflicted on the coast from the rash of hurricanes the last two years. It was still in bad shape, but nothing like the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Tracy held my mom’s hand while they took care of the procedure. She made it through with flying colors (some really powerful pills helped with this). We headed to Tracy and my brother Tony’s home to meet up with him.

For those of you who did not know, Tony is my fraternal twin brother. He works as a power lineman for EMC Touchstone Energy in Gulf Shores. He has done well for himself and has a great life. He and Tracy have been married for a little longer than Candy and I and they have a daughter, Kristin. Kristin is carrying on the Rice tradition of working at Gulf Shores for the summer as she is working at Waterville USA.

We headed to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant in town, and then Mom and I came back to Robertsdale, where Tony and I started cleaning her apartment. She has a lot of problems with details, and this definitely includes cleaning her place. I finally finished cleaning her apartment on Thursday after a nine-hour day of work. The toughest part was not the cleaning part, but rather it was hearing the same words out of my mom’s mouth over and over again (words I cannot type on this blog). I guess you could say you had to be there to get the full extent of the humor. I washed every single dish or utensil in the house. It was a chore, to say the least.

After spending three nights at Grannie’s, I headed to my dad’s house in Enterprise, Alabama, roughly a three hour drive east of Robertsdale. I stayed there two nights and had a chance to meet some of their friends and even go to a family reunion in Hartford, Alabama (my step mom Carol’s family). Heck, I even won the award for coming to the reunion from the farthest distance! I have two step sisters: Wendy and Courtney. They both live in Enterprise. Carol and Wendy both handle the operations of my dad’s cabinet business, Rice’s Custom Cabinets.

In addition, my dad teaches Instrument Flight at the Army Aviation Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama. In fact, Tony and I were born at Lyster Army Hospital on post (see picture).
He retired from active duty in 1978 as a Major. He is a great example to anyone of hard work, discipline, and believing in yourself.

Dad and I got to talk about a ton of things from the past which helped me understand some things. I headed out for Atlanta at midnight on Sunday morning. I stopped in Union City, Georgia to eat breakfast at the local Waffle House. Candy kept me awake for the trip by talking to me on the cell phone. I got back to Minnesota in the early AM on Sunday.

In both Enterprise and Robertsdale, I had the chance to drive around and reminisce about times past. It was good for me to see a lot of the places from my childhood. I am going through a life/career change right now and needed to know where I had come from to face it the right way.

Hopefully, this post gave you a small picture of my background. Have a good one!

Grandma Has a Dinosaur

2006-07-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

Candy: Things have been a little challenging around here these days.

Tim made it safely home from Alabama on Sunday and it's great to have him around again. He's been feeling a little less than great about his options to remain in coaching for this fall. I can understand how he feels about watching a dream die (or perhaps go into hibernation).

I think for him the most frustrating part is that he did the right thing in leaving Hiram and he worked so hard to earn a doctorate so that he could be even better at his chosen profession, and now it seems all the doors are slamming shut.

However, I still believe that there is something great out there with his name on it. Maybe it won't be coaching. Maybe it will. I'm just excited to go out there and see what it is and what it looks like.

We have been going to my brother Jim's house in Starbuck on Monday nights to watch The Closer on TNT since we've been in Minnesota. It's probably our favorite show, and it's been great to see our nephews Isaac and Levi each week in addition to the show.

Tomorrow we're planning to go kayaking on Lake Minnewaska in Starbuck. Suze, a family friend of my brother and his wife, owns a kayak rental and sales business there and she offered to take us kayaking as the sun sets. It has been a little on the warm side lately, but certainly not as bad as the week before Tim went to Alabama, so an evening on the lake would be perfect.

Yesterday I began reading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's (her husband was the great pilot Charles Lindbergh) book Gift From the Sea and finished it tonight.

I tend to bookmark things that make an impression, and in this case, the book is littered with scraps of paper marking phrases or paragraphs that struck me. I'll share a few of them with you tonight.

If you haven't read it, the book essentially is a cohesive collection of essays in which Anne explores the meaning of her life, her relationships, and her contribution to the world as a woman as she spends a couple weeks' vacation on an island.

Throughout the book, Anne finds several shells on the beach and considers each one in light of the topic she's exploring at the time. I won't address each of them tonight because then I'd be the one writing a book, and I really only want to share some of her insightful nuggets at this point.

Anne presents a German word "Zerrissenheit" in her chapter about the moon shell. Zerrissenheit means "torn-to-pieces-hood" and she describes the modern woman (keep in mind that the book was written in 1955) as living in this state. Here's what struck me:

"She [woman] cannot live perpetually in Zerrissenheit. She will be shattered into a thousand pieces. On the contrary, she must consciously encourage those pursuits which oppose the centrigual forces of today. Quiet time alone, contemplation, prayer, music, a centering line of thought or reading, of study or work. It can be physical or intellectual or artistic, any creative life proceeding from oneself. It need not be an enormous project or a great work. But it should be something of one's own...What matters is that one be for a time inwardly attentive."

Then, in the chapter about the oyster bed (the time of life when women are raising children, often in addition to their work outside the home), Anne says this about looking ahead to the next stage in life: middle age.

"Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells: the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and possessions, the shell of the ego. Perhaps one can shed at this stage in life as one sheds in beach-living; one's pride, one's false ambitions, one's mask, one's armor...Perhaps one can at last in middle age, if not earlier, be completely oneself. And what a liberation that would be!"

Then, in the chapter about the argonauta, Anne says this about the marriage relationship.

"A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern...There is no place here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back--it does not matter which. Because they know they are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by it. The joy of such a pattern is...the joy of living in the moment...One cannot dance well unless one is completely in time with the music, not leaning back to the last step or pressing forward to the next one, but poised directly on the present step as it comes."

This one means a lot to me especially now as Tim and I are struggling to stay in the moment and not lean to the past (why did the Academy job fall through?) or press to the future (what are we going to dowhere are we going to go next?).

Finally (I know this is getting long, but it's so good), in the chapter entitled a few shells, Anne has this to say.

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few...Gradually one discards and keeps just the perfect specimen; not necessarily a rare shell, but a perfect one of its kind. One sets it apart by itself, ringed around by space--like the island. For it is only framed in space that beauty blooms. Only in space are events and objects and people unique and significant--and therefore beautiful. A tree has significance if one sees it against the empty face of sky. A note in music gains significance from the silence on either side. A candle flowers in the space of night. Even small and casual things take on significance if they are washed in space, like a few autumn grasses in one corner of an Oriental painting, the rest of the page bare."

Besides the obvious conclusion I draw relating to my photography, this takes on another meaning for me as well: our four-month effort to wash ourselves in space and return to what is significant to us is like a wave far out from the shore.

That wave is only starting to become visible, but before we know it, it'll crash onto the beach. As we focus on emptying our lives of unnecessary activities, crowds of people, and things we don't really need, our lives and the valuable people in them will continually become so much more significant.

Ok. Enough of the heavy stuff. I hope you didn't find it too stuffy to wade through.

I also want to share something that my mom found last week and passed along to me. I'm guessing you'll at least crack a smile, if not laugh out loud.

The essay below is one I wrote in the third grade as a writing assignment for Mr. Havamaki. It's called Grandma has a Dinosaur and it goes like this (third grade grammar and spelling as written).

"My grandma has a dinosaur. She calls it "Pet" and she feeds it every day. She takes him for walks all the time even if it is raining. Well if it is raining she takes her umbrella with her. She says that he gives her rides on his back. He is a nice dinosaur. She just loves him.

My grandma lives in the country because she lives just north of us so we get to ride on him he is so gentle that he'll do what ever we wanted him to do.

He is very big. He has four feet like usaul [usual] but here's the funny part, he has ten fingers on each hand. That's all Folks!

The End!"

Well, that made me laugh to read it again, and I imagine Mr. Havamaki wondered what the heck was going on in the imagination of that Candy Minion girl.

No photos today. Hope you enjoy your Wednesday.

A Photoblog is Born

2006-07-20T02:15:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today I spent all day at the computer.

Literally.

I was in front of this machine for 14 hours, doing a variety of things.

One thing was the creation of a photoblog for my digital art and some photography, too. It's rough right now, but if you're interested in looking at it, it's called Seatbelt Sign is Off (a not-so-subtle reference to last night's post).

I'm always looking for feedback and suggestions, so feel free to comment on the photoblog.

I wasn't feeling too well today and spoke to T several times throughout the day. He has been working hard at his mom's house, and was also able to see his twin brother and family, along with his mom and Grannie.

He'll be spending tomorrow with his mom's side of the family again, then heading to his dad's in Enterprise for Friday and Saturday before flying back on Sunday morning. I'm really missing my best friend.

Here's something that may surprise those of you who know my preference in music (jazz, 40s crooner songs, and anything in any genre even remotely considered a ballad).

I bought George Strait's 50 Number Ones CD set yesterday and have been playing it over and over again all day, just as I used to constantly play those old 45s on the record player as a little girl.

Yeah, I'm not really a country music fan, but listening to those 50 songs really takes me back to one high school summer when my younger brother and I were building a log shed with only hatchets and axes. We listened to a lot of country during that summer, both on the radio and on contraband cassette tapes (our parents were opposed to "secular" music).

At any rate, aside from feeling less than great, it's also been fun playing with some of my images from this "pause on purpose" tour that haven't yet made it onto the blog.

The lead image is one of my favorites from today. It uses a cross-processing technique that I learned this summer and which I think gives the condos at Cannon Beach a sort of nostalgic look.
This one is, of course, from the pineapple shoot yesterday.
Finally, this one is a simulated charcoal drawing of a section of the Eureka marina with the old town area in the background.
I read a couple chapters today from Po Branson's book What Should I Do with My Life? and a quote from one of the people he interviewed for the book really struck me. Here it is.

"Life is a great opportunity to try out all the things I'm interested in. It took me a while to realize that I was born to wonder what to do with my life, and in the wondering, experience constant metamorphosis."

Wow. Sounds familiar. Also somewhat appropriate in light of The Academy situation.

Well, that's it for tonight. Tomorrow I have some cooking to do and then I'll be spending the night at my older brother's house in Starbuck. You'd never guess it from the name (wink wink), but the town has as its mascot a statue of a deer (buck) with a star above its antlers. Always makes us chuckle to see it.

Enjoy your day!

Well........Maybe Not

2006-07-19T02:08:00.000-05:00

Candy: This photo of a toy I found in the house made me smile because it seems to summarize what being on the road for four months can feel like. Really fun but sometimes it makes our hair stand on end and occasionally it feels as if we're moving at walking pace of a centipede.

We received some unexpected and not-so-pleasant news late last night. The principal from The Academy in Colorado called Tim and told him that they might not be able to hire him because of a policy she wasn't aware of.

Yep.

It's a long story and they tried to do everything possible (and they feel really upset about it) but the short version is that Colorado has passed a "no child left behind" law that prevents anyone not already state certified from teaching in the public school system without having taken a teacher qualifying test AND being enrolled in a teacher-in-residence (TIR) program.

Here's the catch. The next available test date is in mid-August and in order to be enrolled in a TIR program you have to take the test. The Academy tried everything they could today to find a way to work around it, but no dice, and this evening the offer Tim accepted last week fell through.

The captain has turned off seatbelt sign and the Rices are again free to move about the country.

We're both a little bummed, but our prevailing attitude is that it just means that something better is in the pipeline. It's disappointing to abandon the dreams we had become attached to about living in Colorado, but who knows? One day we may end up living there after all.

Tim flew to Alabama this afternoon to spend some time with his family and will be there until Sunday morning, when he returns to Minneapolis. I'm planning to spend some additional time with my brothers, their families, and my mom while he's gone.

After four months of 24/7 time with T, I'm experiencing some withdrawal. Chase is the next best thing, though, and we're making it.

This past week I've been experimenting with photographing some toys that were left behind in the house we're renting. I like the way the duck appears to be peering up at the camera.
This rubber cow turned out to be one of my favorite subjects in the shoot, and here are two resulting images that I like.
Today I also took some pictures of a pineapple on the kitchen counter with my zoom lens. I like how moody this image is, and the colors are somehow comforting to me.
Here's hoping that you have a great Wednesday!

The new head coach of the Wildcats is...

2006-07-16T11:13:00.000-05:00

Tim: Well, it is official. I recently accepted a offer for a coaching and teaching job at a public charter high school in the Denver metro area. The school is called The Academy (www.acsk12.org) and it is located in Westminster, a northwest suburb of Denver.

I will be a high school physical education teacher, head coach of the varsity cross country teams and the boys' basketball team. The school is a Class 3A school (5 classes in CHSAA) and is only eight years old. They just built a brand new $15 million school building with two gyms and just joined a new league. In its short existence, the school has already won a state title in Colorado in baseball and the football team was 6-3 last year.

I will begin my duties at The Academy on August 15th and Candy and I still need to find a place to live and move our things from Ohio, so it looks like more driving for us (the trip from Hiram to Denver is roughly 1600 miles).

The ironic twist to it is that I accepted the position four months from the day that we left Hiram, Ohio. I guess you could say we have been "studying abroad" for the last semester. It has been an educational adventure. We have driven over 17,000 miles (and counting) in the Element.

Over the last four months and the journey we have made, Candy and I are really at peace with this decision. I am excited about what lies ahead for us both. The Denver area is considered one of the most livable cities in the US with a lot of opportunities for Candy. In addition, the school is growing and, I believe, will provide the support for me to be successful in my role.

We are currently living in Albany, a small town outside St. Cloud, Minnesota. St. Cloud is about an hour and fifteen minutes northwest of the Twin Cities. I do not know about how the temperatures are where you live, but it is very hot here. In Minnesota, it seems no one has air conditioning in their homes. We are living in a home without air conditioning, as well, and are making more trips to the mall and bookstore lately just to stay cool. They have not received much rain in the past few months so the grass is dying here.

It was 99 degrees for a high yesterday and they expect the same for the next four days. In Pueblo, it would get up into the the low 100's during our stay, but it never felt that hot. It is so humid here and that really makes it uncomfortable.

We have been blessed the past four months to see some amazing things and will never forget this time in our life. If someone asked four months ago if I would be interested in a high school job, I would have said no instantly. I guess the time out on the road has given me a new perspective on what life should be all about. I have even started to do a daily diary since my birthday. I want to keep a record of my life from this point forward because I know it is going to be a fulfilled life from now on.

With this position, I have to go back to school to get my Colorado teacher's license. I should have known that I would not be finished with my formal education after the doctorate...maybe next I can go to school and become a vet or something else! The crazy thing is I am actually looking forward to taking classes this year. I only have to take classes on Monday nights this year and next year will be all in the classroom. The program is called the Teacher in Residence program and helps the schools with the teacher shortage in Colorado.

Just wanted to give an update on the latest. We both apologize for not posting in a while. If anything exciting happens, we will post about it (we still have a long move from Ohio, so I am sure we will see something else to write about). Have a great weekend!

Another Colorful Friday in Colorado

2006-06-24T00:31:00.000-05:00

Tim: Today, we decided to head up to Colorado Springs to see an matinee movie... the newest Adam Sandler movie "Click." It was a typical funny Adam Sandler movie, but it also had a message of living for the moment that was appealing, especially since we have no clue what is coming up for the fall.

As is always the case in Colorado Springs (and Colorado in general, it seems), the traffic was ridiculous and the drivers as bad as ever. We have witnessed our fair share of poor drivers in our many road trips through the years, but Colorado has the absolute worst drivers anywhere. One day, we were up in Colorado Springs and there were over 10 car accidents in a matter of seconds. The radio traffic person even said that "I-25 was jacked up" with car accidents. Candy and I just about got in our own car accident laughing so hard.

Before the movie this afternoon, we took a stroll at a local mall. We stopped at the pet store in the mall and checked out the available pets. Candy took the leading picture with our cell phone of a posing snoozing pooch. We found it pretty amusing.

The pictures below were also taken with the cell phone camera, which is certainly not even close to the camera that Candy normally uses for her awesome images. However, these shots will give you an idea of how amazing the skies get here in Colorado. It seems that every night is a colorful sky show here. Add the mountains to the mix and it is even more spectacular.

As the days here come to a close, we know we have been blessed to be here the last two months. It really is a great place and offers many great exploration opportunities. We have gained a great appreciation for the natural beauty of this place. It will be different to be heading east from here and back to sea level again.

Until our next post, have a great weekend!

Chaco Canyon and Saturn

2006-06-22T02:38:00.000-05:00

Candy: Hot. Rough road. Amazing structures. Milky Way in full glory.

These are all indicative of the Chaco Canyon national park. What an amazing area.

Tim and I decided to drive to Farmington, New Mexico, around 8:30pm on Monday. Thirty minutes later we were in the car and 6.5 hours later, we were climbing into bed at a hotel about 40 minutes north of Chaco Canyon.
Our impulsive departure, which was originally intended for Tuesday, turned out to be a great idea. We arrived at Chaco Canyon around 2pm on Tuesday, and after a quick stop at the visitor's center to get a camping site for the night and a map, we claimed site #18 in the campground and proceeded to drive the 9-mile loop around the canyon, stopping to explore the various "great houses," dwellings, and petroglyphs.

Here's our temporary petroglyph. I call it "guy with trail guide reads while girl with camera looks for pictures."

I should mention for those of you who haven't been to Chaco Canyon that it is a collection of ruins of "great houses" and villages built and inhabited by the Chacoan people between 800 and 1200 A.D. They were quite advanced in their engineering, building thoroughfares 30 feet wide connecting all of their villages and aligning all of their dwellings to take advantage of the rising and setting of the sun and moon.

The Chacoans were very concerned about the shape of their villages, and they took great care to build each one in a similar fashion with a long, rear wall, a plaza with several circular structures, and three to four stories of living quarters.

They also had a great, generational knowledge of engineering and also of the rising and setting patterns of both the moon and the sun.

They built numerous circular structures that had roofs of timber supported by huge beams. These were called kivas, and were apparently where the Chacoans worshipped. Most were sunken, and some were elevated in tower structures. It was really amazing to see the perfect circular walls they built out of stone. Here's an unexcavated three-walled circular structure at Pueblo del Arroyo.Quite impressive. Below is a photo of part of one of the largest kivas that has been excavated, which was apparently a communal kiva located at Casa Rinconada. Nearly every kiva featured the keyhole-shaped entry that you can see in the photo below.
The park contains only some of the ruins left by the Chacoans (many more are located outside the park), and we visited those that were accessible from the paved "loop road" in the park. There were four or five other sites that could be reached by hiking into the back country. Since we had Chase with us, we did not hike to those.

Views like this were visible from nearly every nook and cranny of each site.

There are two or three ways to reach the park, and each route consists of pavement until approximately 15-30 miles from the park. Those last miles are very rough dirt roads, which a park ranger later mentioned had shredded a tire on her vehicle. We unwittingly managed to choose the best of the three routes and encountered a 16-mile washboard gravel road.

Still pretty rough, but manageable.

It was really hot when we arrived and so we explored Hungo Pavi, Chetro Ketl (below), and Pueblo Bonito (panorama below) for a couple hours before deciding to rest in the El at the campsite while the sun traversed the canyon and cooled the temperatures. We ventured back out at 7pm and explored the Pueblo del Arroyo and Casa Rinconada ruins. It was easily 10 degrees cooler, and we watched the sunset from the walls of Pueblo del Arroyo (pictured below). Don't worry, we weren't sitting on the walls of the ruin. This trail actually led down a series of steps through the site and we sat there totally alone as the sun went down.

It was quite a moving experience to sit there and imagine what the Chacoans' lives were like and to simultaneously realize that we were seeing the exact same terrain and setting of the sun that they had seen a thousand years before. This is what we saw.
As it turned out, the park rangers hold night sky programs on Tuesdays (& Fridays & Saturdays), so at 9pm we joined several other park visitors lined up to peer through three separate telescopes pointed at Jupiter (and its 4 moons), Mars, and Saturn. I was especially impressed by the sight of Saturn's rings. It was pretty cool.

By then it was very dark, and with no lights in the park other than those of the visitors' vehicles, the sky was a veritable Milky Way display. Growing up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota, I'd seen the white band of the Milky Way several times, but I don't believe I've ever seen such a display of stars in my life.

The enormous number of stars visible in the darkness combined with the bigness of the sky to create an awe-inspiring moment from our prone position on the picnic table.

We slept in the car overnight and made our way back to Pueblo today. It was an inspirational trip, and we highly recommend visiting the area if you're ever near Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Gallup, or the Four Corners area.

I took a bunch of photos, as you can see from the number of images included in this post. Here is my failed attempt to capture the canyon's Fajada Butte in complete darkness (I managed to figure out what went wrong). The streaks are from airplanes passing high overhead.

Although it's not what I hoped to capture, maybe it'll give you some idea of the night sky at Chaco Canyon.

Enjoy the rest of your week. I'll leave you with a quote by Maya Angelou.

"I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights."

Garden of the gods

2006-06-19T00:19:00.000-05:00

Tim: Today, Candy and I made a trip up Interstate 25 to Colorado Springs to take some time to visit the Garden of the Gods Park, a registered natural landmark located at the base of Pike's Peak. It is a 1,340 acre free park which is known for its magnificent red sandstone rock formations (see panorama above). The rock formations are so surreal that it looks like Mother Nature teamed with Salvador Dali (the melting watch artist) in forming it.

One of the rocks that is featured in the park is considered by some as the most famous rocks in the country. It is called Balanced Rock and is pictured below. According to the park's website, a layer at the base of the rock has more shale formed from mud that wore away faster and left a small support on which the huge rock is balanced. I had the chance to climb up onto the rock and it really is huge and incredible up close.
Here are some more photos from today. As you will see, the colors are amazing:

Our time in Pueblo is coming to a close, so we are getting ready to head out on June 30th. However, we have one more educational trip to make before we leave. On Tuesday, we are heading down to Chaco Canyon, a remote national park and an ancient urban center of spectacular public architecture in New Mexico. It is part of the sacred homeland of Pueblo Indian peoples of New Mexico, the Hopi Indians of Arizona, and the Navajo Indians of the Southwest.

Candy and I hope all of the dads reading the blog had a great Father's Day. Have a great week!

Great Sand Dunes Rock

2006-06-13T02:06:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today we drove to the Great Sand Dunes National Monument & Preserve. It's about two hours southwest of Pueblo, near Alamosa, Colorado, and we saw some really amazing things.

On the way to the dunes we looked to our left on Highway 160 and saw some rocky outcroppings that looked a bit like a "great wall." So we took the next left and drove through La Veta, Colorado, and drove right by several of the unusual rocks. We're still not sure whether they have an official name, but to us they are the "great wall of Colorado."
The dunes are, of course, very sandy, with about 6-8 inches of soft sand on the surface. It was a real workout just to walk from the parking lot to the edge of the dunes, which is about 3/4 of a mile. It was also fairly windy, which increased my concern of getting sand in the camera, so I didn't take as many photos as I would have liked. There are 30 miles of dunes and two of them stand taller than 650 feet.

We arrived at the park around 6pm and were able to enjoy the wonderful light at dusk and the fabulous shadows created by the slanting rays. It was gorgeous, and this is my favorite shot from today.
When we returned to the El, we both had tons of sand in our shoes, as you might imagine. We didn't see as much wildlife as we had hoped to, but we did come across several deer, a couple of elk, and what we're pretty sure was a coyote running across the highway.

On the way back to Pueblo tonight, the pastel tones that hit the mountains from the sunset were astonishing. The mountains truly looked purple. We were oohing and ahhing all the way home.

It's supposed to hit 101 in the next day or two, so I expect we'll be hanging out at the pool a bit more, along with all the other apartment dwellers.

Oh, I almost forgot. Tim had a phone interview this afternoon with a charter school in the Denver area. They want to bring him to campus yet this month and although it's not exactly what he's looking for, it was encouraging for him to get a bite. Perhaps it'll start to roll now.

Enjoy your week and let us know how you're doing.

A recap of the "Pause on Purpose" tour, future thoughts

2006-06-10T02:33:00.000-05:00

Tim: For those of you who have been keeping up to date with the blog since we left Hiram, Ohio on March 13th, this posting will be a rehash of all of our adventures. So here are some of the places we have visited during our 10,000+ mile journey through the Western U.S. (I have attached above a map of our current home, Colorado):

Corpus Christi, Texas- World War II aircraft carrier;
USS Lexington, crossed Mexico border at Reynosa, Mexico;
Tombstone, Arizona, Boot Hill, and the OK Corral;Saguaro National Park outside of Tucson, AZ;
Hoover Dam, AZ;
Las Vegas and Western Nevada;
Mono Lake and Enyo Forest, California;
Shasta-Trinity National Forests and Eureka, CA;
Cannon Beach, Seaside, and the Oregon Coast;
Trip to Minnesota through Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota;
Colorado: Pike’s Peak, Royal Gorge- Bridge and Trainride, Cripple Creek, Bishop’s Castle, Seven Falls;
Four Corners trip to Shiprock, NM, Route 66, and Albuquerque, Santa Fe, NM.

Whew! That is a lot to be thankful for, huh? I would put down the Interstate highways we have driven on but that would take a lot longer than this has. The amazing thing is that we saw even more on this trip than I put down on this post. Maybe in the next post I could put down all of the books we have read. I feel like I am in some summer library reading program. It has been an interesting time for both Candy and I.

Another thing that I thought about today…this is the longest I have ever been unemployed in my adult life. I know something great is on the horizon, though, and we both are ready for what is next.

Pueblo, Colorado has been a great place to call home, although we know it is not a place we could stay forever. We have started to look into what our options are for the end of June when we head out of here. It looks like we will head for Minnesota for the month of July.

If something does not happen job-wise by August, we will head for a specific place to settle for the duration (the school year) and find jobs. At this point, our “contingency cities” are Dallas, Texas; Austin, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; Nashville, Tennessee; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; and Tampa/St. Petersburg or Jacksonville, Florida. We expect that it will not come to this, but we have started planning just in case. I will volunteer with a basketball program wherever we head.

Candy has been doing some work getting in contact with some professional photographers lately and has had some great feedback from these pros about her website. I think she is on the verge of breaking through with this side of her skill set. She really is incredibly talented.

As for me, no real leads on any positions. I have really been focusing on the moment lately…we do not have any guarantee of tomorrow and it is not always great to look to the past (although I have learned so much about what I could have done better in my most recent position). I guess I have been making everyday my masterpiece. I have also been using positive affirmations and visualization lately.The great John Wooden has become one of my role models lately…he really had it right.

We had planned to head down to the Great Sand Dunes National Park southwest of here this weekend, but the weather was forecast not to be so good, so we have put the trip off until this week. Hope you have enjoyed this rambing post and you have a great weekend!

A Trip to Seven Falls

2006-06-07T22:48:00.000-05:00

Tim: Today we made a trip to another area attraction, Seven Falls (picture above). It was relatively affordable ($8.75 each) and is located just ten minutes from downtown Colorado Springs. Nestled deep within Cheyenne Canyon, it is Colorado's only waterfall to be listed in National Geographic's "List of International Waterfalls." It has been called the “Grandest Mile of Scenery in Colorado.”

It cascades 181 feet in seven distinct steps down a solid cliff of pikes peak granite. Wildlife is everywhere, including hummingbirds, rainbow trout and the rare, waterfall nesting- American Dipper. The picture here is of another of the interesting birds in the area, the Steller's jay:

There were also a lot of chipmunks that were nearly tame and a lot bigger than the ones back in the Midwest. Here is one of them:

Blasted 14 stories straight up through solid granite, a mountain elevator can be used to safely transport all who venture here to the “Eagles Nest” platform, where the most spectacular view of Seven Falls is experienced (or you can climb up there, which is over 170 steps).

The picture below is one Candy took of some dolls in the window of one of the gift shops at the park. They look like little people sitting in a window:

In addition, Native Americans present interpretations of Indian dances at the park. However, today they only performed one show at 6 p.m. and we were there too early for the show.

It has been pretty darn hot here, but interestingly enough, it does not feel too badly. We have been in the upper 90's for the last week, but it is so dry here that the heat index is way lower than the actual temperature.

Have a great day tomorrow!

Candy Rice Photography Goes Live

2006-06-04T03:37:00.000-05:00

Candy: Well, it's official. My photography site has been revised for the first time in nearly three years. I was so crazy busy that it languished with old images and weird design.

At any rate, the link to my site is now available at the right. I'd love to hear what you think, and if you find any areas of the site that can be improved please let me know. It's built completely in flash and today's photo is a screen shot of the home page. Enjoy!

In other news, we went to see The Breakup this afternoon. It was pretty good, though for that kind of story I would have preferred a happier ending.

We are planning to spend some time at the pool tomorrow. Temps here have been pretty warm lately. It was 96 today at 4pm, but it doesn't feel all that hot, at least to me. We've spent summers in Alabama where the temps were lower but the humidity was much higher, and it felt miserable to this Minnesota girl.

Here's hoping that you're having a great weekend. We'd love to hear how you're doing.

Pike's Peak Hurts

2006-06-03T03:05:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today we took the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railway Cog Railroad up to the summit of Pike's Peak--elevation 14,110.

The train ride was pretty cool and took about an hour and 20 minutes each way, averaging about 6.5 mph both ways. It was a clear day, so we could see quite a ways as we traversed up the mountain.
We both felt pretty well until we actually got off the train at the summit. Then I got kind of woozy and we both got whopper headaches from the altitude. Beth, I don't know how you did it for a whole summer.

I had to sit down a few times while we walked around at the summit. Tim took the photo at the top of the post during one of those recuperative sessions.

We learned something new on the trip. At one point on the Cog Railroad trip, Katharine Lee Bates was so inspired by the view that she wrote a poem that was later set to music. America the Beautiful. Pretty cool. There's even a marker at the summit to commemorate it.
At any rate, we spent the 30 minutes allotted to us by the train company wandering around the summit house, observation decks, and oohing and ahhing over the view.

Pueblo is in the distance in this shot.
We were suckered into the typical tourist shot in front of the sign by another well-meaning tourist, as you can see below.
Here are the trains. We were in the single Aspen car at the back, but we had the best seats at the very front of the train (back of the train from this direction).
By the time we got back to the depot in Manitou Springs, we were both happy to be back to elevation 6,500. We managed to make our way to the nearest Italian restaurant in Colorado Springs, where we downed some Aleve with our diet cokes with lime.

By the time we had finished dinner we were feeling much better and headed back to Pueblo for the evening, using the half hour drive time to discuss the lessons we have learned since leaving Hiram.

All in all, it was a great trip and we enjoyed ourselves.

I've been working on my website lately, and have finally finished it. It should go live by Monday and when it does, I'll put a link on the blog to it so that all three of my photo fans can check it out. :)

Have a great weekend!

June 1st...a sunny day

2006-06-01T23:41:00.000-05:00

Tim: After arriving back last night from our Four Corners trip, we decided to take it easy today here in Pueblo. We had an opportunity to go to the bookstore again today and also took Chase to the Pueblo City Park to hit tennis balls for him to fetch. He had a lot of fun, especially when he found a cool mud puddle in the park to roll around in. I guess it was hot, so he deserved it. Some of you have seen him muddy before and it is definitely a sight to behold. The picture below is from today:

The first image on the blog today is a picture of Candy's that she processed in a different way to make it look grainy. It is from our visit to Oregon. The picture below is from our trip last summer to Venice. It really is hard to believe that we were on that Europe trip a year ago:

What's up for the Rice Family tomorrow? We are heading up to Pike's Peak to take the Cog Railway trip. We are planning to get the most out of our time left here.

Have a great day and we will post again tomorrow.

A journey to the Four Corners

2006-05-31T23:46:00.000-05:00

Tim: Yeah, I know...it is about time we got off our lazy backsides and posted on the blog. In reality, our life the last two weeks has been, well, boring. We have done the typical daily trip to the bookstore and have learned a ton of things during those visits. We have also started going to the pool here at the apartment complex on most days. We have taken a couple of days off from this as we got fried one day and needed to recover.

We decided to take a trip the last two days to the four corners area (Candy's so cute in the picture above!). The four corners area is the only area in the U.S. where four states come together at one spot (Utah, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona). The area was very interesting and the mountains were incredibly colorful. Along the way, we drove past the Ute Mountain Tribal Park, which has Chimney Rock, an interesting rock formation that is legendary in the Southwest and similar to Devil's Tower National Park (image I found from web below):

The exact spot of the four corners is on the Navajo Nation area of New Mexico and the park, which is owned by the Navajo, closes at 5 p.m. Well, in typical Tim and Candy fashion, we arrived at 5:45 p.m. The fence said "No trespassing" (see picture below...I acted like I had the key for the lock),

but we decided that we had traveled for seven hours and we were not going away empty handed (so to speak). We joined a lot of other people and walked to the exact four corners spot, which was about half a mile from the fence area. Here is a picture of me playing Twister on the four spots:
After seeing the four corners, we headed to Gallup, New Mexico for the night. On the way, we saw the legendary Shiprock, or Shiprock Peak. It is a rock formation rising nearly 1,800 feet above the high-desert plain on the Navajo reservation, near the town of Shiprock. The name derives from its resemblance to an enormous 19th-century Clipper ship. This is a picture of it I found from the web:
We stayed over night at a Holiday Inn on historic Route 66 in Gallup. This morning, we headed out of Gallup and drove on part of the old Route 66 to Albuquerque, where we briefly visited the Old Town. We have been on this route before back in 2002 on another of our journeys, so it was really just a rehash of that trip.

After Albuquerque, we headed back to Pueblo, which is about five and a half hours from Albuquerque. We drove through Santa Fe on the way home, as well as Trinidad, Colorado. This area of the country is really an incredible area that is almost untouched. On the way, we actually got hail and had a great deal of accumulation., which was very interesting. I guess when you are at 8,500 feet above sea level anything can happen.

The entire trip was around 1,100 miles and was well worth it. Chase was along for the ride again and had a great time, as well. We decided to rent a car for the trip. Our Element has nearly 115,000 miles on it and we figured we give it a well-deserved break.

We promise to start posting more often. We still need to go to Pike's Peak and to the Sand Dunes National Park, so more posts will be coming soon. We only have a month left here in Colorado, so we want to get the most out of it.

Have a great day and we will post again in the coming days!

Rushing to Cripple Creek

2006-05-16T00:20:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today we took an impulse trip up to Colorado Springs, ate some great Mexican food at the On the Border restaurant (yummy), and then pulled out the atlas to see what would be a great back-roads route to take home to Pueblo.

We ended up driving west on highway 24 to 67 south, traveling around three sides of Pike's Peak (beautiful), and ending up in Cripple Creek, Colorado, which is about 60 miles northwest of Pueblo (as the crow flies) in the hill country behind Pike's Peak.

The lead image in this post is a roadside vista we pulled over for. Tim played fetch with Chase down the sloping hillside where we stopped, which was great b/c it tired Chase out really quickly, both from the high altitude and the uphill running.

The town of Cripple Creek, at 9,494 feet above sea level, marks the area where a cowboy named Bob Womack discovered gold in 1890. Today it's a National Historic District commemorating the fourth largest producing gold camp in the world. There are still two large gold mines in operation today, and tourists can take mine tours and pan for gold.

There are tons of historic mine shafts and lots of old, abandoned buildings that dot the mountainsides. We could easily imagine what it must have been like in the gold rush days. The town is filled with quaint red-brick buildings and there are quite a few cool shops for the thousands of people living in the town and surrounding hills.

By the way, as we entered Cripple Creek from the north, this is the vista we saw. There was quite a bit of haze and I don't yet own a polarizing filter, so you can't really see the snow-capped mountain ranges in the distance in a way that would be much more true to what we saw this afternoon.

However, the Sangre de Cristo (blood of Christ) mountain range is to the far left in the distance, and several other mountains were within view. Mt. Pisgah is the dark, pointy peak to the right.

The other photos in tonight's post are from the same vantage point as the panorama above, except that they show the areas behind or to the side of where I was standing for the panorama.

This is Mt. Pisgah again. I like the lens flare effects of shooting into the sun on this shot.

We arrived back at our apartment in time to watch the rest of the season finale for Grey's Anatomy, one of our favorite shows. Shortly after 11, Tim started having some pain in his stomach, and we hoped it was just gas, but it now appears that he has food poisoning.

What are the odds that we'd both get food poisoning in the same week?

Today I finally felt back to normal, and we ate essentially the same foods and drank the same drinks, with one exception...a Big Gulp brand cola Tim drank this afternoon.

He loves those non-namebrand drinks. I'm guessing that's what caused it, though there's really no way to know, of course.

He's been vomiting and getting chills and all the other usual symptoms, and has been doubled up on the couch as I write this. I'm hoping that it'll move through his (much faster metabolism) system quickly and that he won't be miserable for as long as I was. He's finally gotten warm enough and comfortable enough to fall asleep.

Well, I'll leave you with my favorite photo from today. I love the clouds and how brilliant the sky was against the contrasting yellow vegetation.

Have a wonderful Tuesday.

Update from Pueblo

2006-05-14T00:48:00.000-05:00

Tim: It has been a couple of days since we last posted, so here is the latest with us. On Thursday evening, after our daily trip to the Barnes and Noble, we watched the final round of “American Inventor” on ABC. We are not huge reality TV fans, but we have really enjoyed watching this series. The final four contestants have shown us the true meaning of commitment to your dream. One contestant in the final round works in a factory in Detroit, owns a small gym in his community and had to declare bankruptcy on his small gym during the show. Another contestant in the semi-final round was fired from her job in pursuit of her dream. Still another contestant spent $80,000 over a five year span to build his new computerized word game. All of these people risked so much with the possibility that only one person would win the $1 million prize. That really spoke volumes to us, especially looking at what we have done in the last two and a half months.

We have been weighing where we should go next, but the one thing we do know is that we will have a level of commitment that will be unwavering. Ben Stein, an author that Candy has spoken about in the last post, used an analogy in his book, “How Successful People Win: Using "Bunkhouse Logic" to Get What You Want in Life”, regarding “being at the table.” He said that in order to be successful at a casino, for instance, you have to be competing at the table, not by watching, but by taking a risk. You have to be at the table. We have decided that whatever happens, we will be “at the table.” So many people do not take chances in their lives and never reach their true potential. Failure is not final or fatal…this is something I have learned about my recent experience in coaching.

We had planned to go to Pike’s Peak on Friday, but decided to wait until next week to make the trip. Instead of going to Pike’s Peak, we made a trip to the bookstore, and then went to the local drive inn movie theatre in Pueblo. We saw “Poseidon”, which in our opinion was not as good we thought it would be.

We had not been to a drive inn movie in over a year. One of the things we loved to do when we lived in Grove City was to go to the Butler Drive-Inn in Butler, PA for a Friday night double feature. We would always stop by Sheetz and pick up a sandwich, chips, and a drink, then head to the movie. Going to the movie this past Friday night brought back some good memories of that time in our life.

After the movie, Candy started to feel sick. She apparently ate something wrong at lunch on Friday. After a very long night of chills, a sour stomach, and a lot of vomiting, we deduced that it was food poisoning. She has had a tough Saturday and is very dehydrated. I have gone through being food poisoned twice in my life, so I can understand how painful it is for her. She has gotten a lot of fluids and rest today and we hope she feels back to normal by tomorrow.

Chase update: that rambunctious puppy is healing very well after having his bandages taken off this week. He finally got to exercise yesterday.

Sorry we do not have any pictures today. With the resident picture person doubled over with food poisoning, we do not have any cool images for the blog today. Thanks for reading again and to all the moms out there, have a great Mother’s Day!

Art and Words

2006-05-09T22:31:00.000-05:00

Candy: Last night and today I worked on some older photos in my collection. I'm working hard to redo my photography website and while collecting and processing the photos, I played with a few. I'm including them for you tonight.

The lead-off image is a panorama I took while standing inside the Pantheon in Rome last May. It's what you see when you look out between the columns. I can instantly put myself back in that plaza when I look at this photo.

This one is an artistic rendering of what was a really blurry photo of a gondolier I took from a bridge over one of the canals in Venice. I wasn't sure what would happen from that not-very-good photo, but I really like how it turned out. This one was produced from a photo taken after dark near Elbow Lake, Minnesota, in July of 2004. You'd never know it was pitch black, would you? It's really colorful, and these type of renderings have been really appealing to me lately.

Here's a piece based on a photo of the pier and cable cars at Daytona Beach, Florida. Tim and I were there between Christmas and New Year's with his basketball team, and the photo was taken from the balcony of our hotel room.

This one is one of my favorite images so far. It's a little blue elephant bank that I photographed in our attic in Hiram this spring. I love the colors that came out as I played with it in Photoshop.

I read half of Alice in Wonderland today at B&N. I haven't read that story since I was a little girl. It was really great to go back through it and rediscover some really clever truths hidden in the story.

Part of a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat struck a chord with me today. I've been struggling for most of my life with what I should do as a vocation, but especially lately as I contemplate what direction to take next. Here's the conversation.

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice.

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where--," said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

"--so long as I get somewhere," Alice added as an explanation.

"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if only you walk long enough."

Funny, right? Except that it's indicative of my professional path. I haven't known where I wanted to go so it didn't really matter which way I took. This fictional conversation symbolizes the frustration I have with not knowing the destination before I head out.

The flip side, though, is that it really opens the door to some adventures that I might not ever have experienced had I known the destination and taken the shortest path to it.

Because I'm working on my site, I also read a couple books on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Flash, but nothing was really interesting enough to include in this post. Go figure!

I'll tell you what, though. Last week I read a book by Ben Stein that was really incredible. You know Ben Stein, the guy from the TV show Who Wants to Win Ben Stein's Money?

Anyway, he's written several books, and this one is How Sucessful People Win: Using "Bunkhouse Logic" to Get What You Want in Life. It addresses the issues of making a contribution to your world and how to live a big life modeled after the way people we consider successful live.

The two basic tenets are this: you have to use your "inner mobility" and "activity" to keep yourself going. He uses the analogy of a cowboy driving a herd of cattle to market throughout the book, and talks about how to prepare for the game of life, then identifies ten rules of the game that he has learned from his observation of successful people.

Here's an excerpt that I found especially interesting.

The cowboy doesn't simply abandon his cattle 20 miles from the market and wait to see if they arrive by themselves. He herds them every inch of the way.

Similarly, your ideas, your creativity, and your energy are your charges. You cannot just abandon them to the free play of the cruel world. You must guide them and take care of them by doing for yourself. That is how you win the game.

Think enough of yourself to do for yourself. That is how you'll thrive in the world, and that's the only way.

Here are Stein's tenets:

Prepare for the game
1. Decide what you want
2. Ask for what you want
3. You can't win if you're not at the table

Rules of the game
1. Concentrate on "How To"; Forget "Why Not"
2. Notice what is, not what should be
3. Luck is catching
4. Life is a process, and the process never ends
5. Nothing happens by itself
6. The best is the enemy of the good
7. Personal relationships are golden
8. Persistence: the one indispensable ingredient
9. Make time your ally
10. "Nice guys" finish first

#6 especially hit me because it's about perfection and how that often keeps people from doing what they are good at. Stein wrote that "the compulsion to do something perfect is the exact equivalent of the compulsion never to get anything done at all" and that "perfectionism is the great crippler of young adults." Interesting.

Well, I guess that's enough for today. I hope that you have a great Wednesday and that when you encounter frustration that you can remember this: the cowboy doesn't give up or cry when he reaches the watering hole and finds that it has dried up. He simply moves on in search of another watering hole.

Here's to moving on from dried up watering holes!

Royal Gorge Takes Our Breath Away

2006-05-08T01:35:00.000-05:00

Candy: Wow. The Royal Gorge of the Arkansas River took our breath away today. Literally.

First we took the Royal Gorge Route Railroad. It was kind of boring, but it was a nice two-hour train ride through the gorge. This photo shows what the Royal Gorge Bridge looked like from sea level. The little blob near the top of the picture is the Royal Gorge Aerial Tram, alleged to be the longest aerial tram in the world.

Here's the train and the river as it appeared from our seats in the first class car.

After our return to the depot in Canon City (should be a tilde over the "n" in Canon--pronounced Canyon) we drove up to the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park, about 10 miles west of Canon City.

Here's what the highest suspension bridge in the world looks like from the verandah outside the gift shop at the park. It's 1,053 feet above the river and 1/4 of a mile long. When I took this picture Tim and I were about to board the aerial tram.

I'm not normally afraid of heights, but I have to admit that the thought of riding the tram across the (really deep) gorge took even my breath away. As you can see from the picture above, Tim isn't completely comfortable standing that close to the edge yet either.

Here's a photo of the tram up close.

Here's what the bridge looks like from the tram while hanging over the center of the gorge.

We then walked around the other side of the park and saw some buffalo, including a rare, white American bison. There were three baby buffaloes, one of which had just been born minutes before we saw it. Its little wobbly legs barely held it up.

We also saw elk and some bighorn sheep. I took a photo of this guy because his horns were so curved and because he looked like he was chewing on a piece of straw like a country bumpkin.

After we passed the western wildlife, we saw the Skycoaster and heard lots of screaming coming from that general direction. When we arrived at the base of the ride, we saw three people strapped into harnesses and being pulled up by a cable to the top of a pole.

A ride worker on the ground yelled "Three. Two. One. Fly!" and one of the people strapped in pulled a ripcord which released them from the cable. They free-fell for about 2 seconds before swinging forward out over the gorge, then back and forth until they lost momentum and returned to the ride platform. No way I would do that. No way.

Here's what the ride looks like as seen from the bridge. The little dot in front of the tower is the person on the ride. Scary.

We then proceeded to the bridge itself, and began to walk across it. Tim was a little freaked out, but he went right up to the side several times and even enjoyed it. The bridge platform itself is comprised of eight-inch-wide planks and many of them look to be really old. They're uneven, also, and there are gaps between them, which makes it a little more scary to walk across because you can see the river waaaaaaaaay down below.

Here's the bridge from one end.

It was a lot of fun and we stopped several times in the middle of the bridge to feel it sway in the wind.

Finally, we rode the steepest incline train in the world down to the river (I know, a lot of world's biggest, longest, steepest for one day). It runs at a 45-degree angle for 1550 feet down to the banks of the Arkansas River. Each way takes about five and a half minutes. Here's a photo of one of the trains (there were two--one red and one blue) before we boarded to ride it back to the top.

On the way out of the park, I saw some redwood pieces lying near where one side of the bridge's cables attach to the mountain. Here's a composition that caught my eye.

It was a great day. It was warm (in the low 80s) with blue skies and occasional puffy white clouds and intermittent gray rain clouds.

Tim will be flying back to Ohio tomorrow to pick up a few urgent things from our storage unit, and returning to Denver on Wednesday. If you want to connect with him on Tuesday, call his cell phone. I'm sure he'd love to see you.

Chase is healing well and will return to the vet for his final visit on Wednesday as well.

I hope you have a good Monday and that all the moms out there enjoy a great week leading up to Mother's Day.

Friday in Colorado

2006-05-06T00:49:00.000-05:00

Tim: Today, we took Chase back to the vet to get his “boo boo” looked at again. The vet cut off the bandage and the cut was healed well, but moist from Chase’s incessant need to lick. She decided to take out the stitches and put another bandage on. Wouldn’t you know it, Chase was at it again with the licking and we had to redo the dressing tonight. The vet gave us plenty of dressing supplies for Chase until his next and final vet visit on Wednesday.

Chase was crazy at the vet today when another Lab came in. He has not gotten his necessary exercise since the accident, so he has some pent up energy, I guess. We did get to see some Lab pups today that a vet client brought in. They were adorable and made our day.

We went to see "Mission Impossible 3" tonight and although I am not a big fan of Tom Cruise, it was pretty good. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is in it as well and is an awesome actor.

Yesterday, we went up to Colorado Springs to a mall and found a store called Steve and Barry's University Sportswear. It was a cool department store like Old Navy, but it had tons of cool t-shirts from universities nationwide, as well as other cool stuff. The best part was the price of everything...under seven bucks for each item, which included shoes, blue jeans, jackets, etc. I felt like I was at an outlet store.

Candy and I found two great t-shirts. I found one like the one John Belushi wore in "Animal House"...navy blue with the word"College" in white lettering on the front, while Candy found one with the words "Rules are for suckers."

The plan for Sunday (weather permitting) is to go to the Royal Gorge Bridge near Canon City to ride the train along the Arkansas River and visit the highest suspension bridge in the world. We have also been to the second highest suspension bridge in the world, New River Gorge Bridge in West Virginia, on one of our other trips in the past.

By the way, the picture at the top of the post is another of Candy's Photoshop works of art. It is a picture of the San Antonio Riverwalk from the 2004 NCAA Final Four trip we made. Pretty cool, huh? She keeps finding ways to make her pictures stand out.

Well, that's all from here. We will post again on Sunday night if we go to the Royal Gorge with some more cool pics. Have a great Saturday!

Impulse Trip Turns Fantastic

2006-05-04T00:22:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today we spent a little time at B&N before deciding to go exploring. We hopped in the El and headed south on I-25.

The terrain become much more hilly but without much of real interest to see, except for Greenhorn Mountain (13,347 feet). We thought, "We'll turn around at Colorado City (20 miles south of Pueblo) and see if we can find the Riverwalk area in downtown Pueblo."

However, as we turned off I-25 at Colorado City, we saw an intriguing road that headed toward the mountains, so we decided to drive for a little bit and see whether we could find a great overlook.

Soon we entered the San Isabel National Forest, and almost immediately upon entering we came upon two deer grazing by the roadside. We stopped and took a few photos, and by then were jazzed up and decided to keep going. A quick survey of the map showed that we could take the road we were on back north and connect with CO 96 back to Pueblo, so we kept going.

At nearly every turn there was something spectacular to see, including the Bishop Castle, which I had discovered when Googling "things to do around Pueblo." I didn't know exactly where it was, but when we saw the sign we had to stop.

It's the craziest hodge-podge of a building, but it has some really cool elements. I've included a few photos of the place. It had a central loft-type space on the second floor, and the towers had circular stone steps all the way to the top. It was really cool, even if a bit quirky. Yep, that's a dragon head on the peak of the roof.

It seems that the guy is a little bit of a crackpot who has had some problems with the U.S. government while trying to build his castle. There are tons of hand-painted signs with misspelled words and statements such as "you don't need a driver's license," according to a certain Amendment to the Constitution. It was humorous and we spent nearly an hour wandering the place.

There was a ton of stained glass and lots of really cool industrial windows, doors, and wrought iron elements. The image at the left is one end of the loft-type space on the second floor. Pretty cool.

The steps below are some of the many intriguing staircases in this castle. Here are some of the stained glass windows I mentioned. Aren't they pretty?
Here's a picture Tim took of me sitting in a little niche in one of the tower staircases.

There were lots of interesting sculptures and oddball items in the castle. This was the top of what appeared to be a weathervane that had not yet been installed, and I really liked the way it stood out against the stone and windows in the background.

As we were leaving, I realized I hadn't taken a picture of this huge wooden chair in the front of the castle, so Tim hopped out of the El and climbed up in it to provide this fun shot. I love his expression.
We kept driving through the mountains and saw this great little barn and shed around another turn in the road.

Here's another view of it that I liked, too.

We saw some cattle and I stopped to take this cute calf's portrait. I couldn't resist his little white face. We also saw a herd of elk grazing by the road and I took some pictures of them, too, but didn't really like any of the shots.

As we kept driving back toward Pueblo, dusk brought with it some spectacular sights, including the magnificent rays of sunshine above the mountains (panorama at the top of the post) and these views below.

We found the Riverwalk area and walked around for a while before heading back to the apartment. It's a neat little area around 5 or 6 blocks along the Arkansas River. It looks like the city of Pueblo is trying to revitalize its downtown area and the Riverwalk is a good start. It's cute, with benches and waterfalls, and a little lake, too.

We worked out yesterday and are both a little sore. We'll be lifting tonight, so I'm betting that tomorrow we'll be even more sore. However, the results will be worth it.

I'll leave you with a funny photo of Chase taken last night. Have a great Thursday!

Chase Cannot Say No to Drugs

2006-05-02T00:51:00.000-05:00

Tim: We took Chase into the vet today. For those of you who did not read the blog yesterday, Chase had an accident at the lake and cut his leg on some rocks. He was a good boy at the vet and was very cooperative with the staff there.

He was given some heavy drugs like morphine during the stitching procedure, so he was a funny dog all evening long. He has been wobbling around like a drunk. I suppose he must feel drunk. I wonder what that must be like for a dog? Needless to say, Chase has been amusing to watch tonight. The picture says it all. He has been doing this crazy leaning thing all night long.

He has a bandage over the wound that he cannot lick or get wet. Of course, he is doing his best to lick it off his leg. We are both watching him to make sure he does not do any licking. We have not decided whether or not to do shifts overnight to make sure he does not lick the bandage. If he messes the dressing up, we will have to take him back in. The visit to the vet was not exactly cheap.

We went grocery shopping last night at our local Wal Mart Super Center. We have not done this in so long that it was actually a treat for me (ask Candy and she will say that this is definitely an accomplishment). We started eating at home today and it was really a lot of fun to prepare food again.

Last night after shopping, we came out to the car and found some college kids messing with Chase through our car window. When we saw this, we decided to see if we could get the kids scared by saying, “Hey, Chase, do you want to come out and go for a run?” We let him out and the kids got a little scared, but they do not know Chase Dog Rice. His bark is far bigger than his bite. We got a little chuckle out of it.

Other than Chase’s visit to the vet, we made another trip to the bookstore today while Chase got his treatment. We get so much out of these trips, because we get to refuel our passion even more. I have really looked more at today, not tomorrow, during this time. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “One today is worth two tomorrows; what I am to be, I am now becoming.”

Have a great day and I leave you with something I found today at the bookstore. It is called “The Life Builder’s Creed” by Dale Witherington:

"Today is the most important day of my life. Yesterday with its successes and victories, struggles and failures is gone forever. The past is past. Done. Finished. I cannot relive it. I cannot go back and change it. But I will learn from it and improve my Today. Today. This moment. NOW. It is God's gift to me and it is all I have.

Tomorrow with all its joys and sorrows, triumphs and troubles isn't here yet. Indeed, tomorrow may never come. Therefore, I will not worry about tomorrow. Today is what God has entrusted to me. It is all that I have. I will do my best in it. I will demonstrate the best of me in it: character, giftedness, and abilities; to my family and friends, clients and associates.

I will identify those things that are most important to do TODAY, and those things I will do until they are done. And when this day is done I will look back with satisfaction at that which I have accomplished."

Mishap at the Reservoir

2006-05-01T01:30:00.000-05:00

Candy: Well, today was supposed to be an uneventful afternoon spent hitting tennis balls to Chase into Lake Pueblo. However, our rambunctious puppy launched himself off the shore and managed to cut himself on a rock in the water.

It's a shallow cut but it opened up about an inch and a half flap, so we called a vet and she said to just pack it with Neosporin and bring him in tomorrow to look at it. It doesn't seem to be hurting him, fortunately.

We put some stretchy gauze tape on it and, surprisingly, he's not licking it. He's not real sure how to walk with it on his leg, so it's kind of funny watching him move around. Have you ever seen a dog try to walk while wearing socks? Chase is doing that even though his leg is wrapped, not his paws.

We didn't do much else today because we were a little concerned about Chase. He seems to be doing ok and is really cuddly right now. Probably hurts a little.

I took this funny picture of Chase tonight just before he fell asleep. I think he actually likes having the bandage on. Even a puppy must like having a little TLC.

Tim and I are launching our first month-long physical, spiritual, professional, and mental fitness program. We hope to establish some good habits in each of these areas by the end of May, and also hope to achieve some great results from our efforts.

Enjoy your May Day!

Things to Consider

2006-04-30T02:32:00.000-05:00

Candy: We moved into our apartment in The Villas at Park West yesterday and we have cable and internet to call our own, along with a rental furniture package. It's amazing how much we missed the small, luxurious things in life after being on the road for nearly seven weeks now.

If you'd like our address for the time being, just email or call us.

We've been spending a fair amount of time at the local Barnes & Noble bookstore (we call it B&N), as well as getting to know the Pueblo area a bit more. Our apartment is on the very western edge of Pueblo, between Pueblo proper and the new, planned community of Pueblo West. We're in a pretty new complex that is out in the country and there's lots of open space all around.

The other day at the B&N I came across some great quotes, of which my favorite is this: "Happiness is not a station to arrive at, but a manner of traveling." Margaret Lee Runbeck is credited with saying it, and it struck me that our traveling has been filled with happiness, even when it's been challenging to keep moving.

Tonight I was reading a book (at B&N, of course) entitled The Joys of Much Too Much, by Bonnie Fuller. She's the editorial director of American Media, which owns some 20 magazines such as Shape and Men's Fitness.

Some interesting things struck me from my reading, the first of which is a statement made to Ms. Fuller by David Brown, the producer of the movie Jaws. He said to her that "under no circumstances, face the facts." I had to read it twice to grasp the concept, but it really could change my life (and yours, too) if I apply it. What if I didn't face all the "factual"' obstacles that keep me from reaching my professional dreams? What if you didn't face them?

Ms. Fuller also wrote that "if you ask with enough conviction and frequency, someone will definitely answer in the affirmative sooner or later." Of course I've known this for a long time, but it was a great reminder in this time of job (& soul) searching for both Tim and me.

Ms. Fuller doesn't believe there is any such thing as balance. There's juggling, but you can't give equal treatment to everyone and everything. You can give your whole effort to what matters most to you--your family, your work, your passions--and that's enough. The rest is not that important.

I also realized through my reading tonight that a fairly large portion of the obstacles I faced at my last place of employment were because my bosses were threatened by my work ethic and my talent. Unfortunately, there's not much that can be changed in that type of situation, except to change one's boss and/or place of employment.

I know, it's a lot to garner from one book, but I guess I was especially open to the concepts in it tonight.

On another note, I printed some of the photos from our blog today in 2"x3" sizes to make a photo collage. Here's my idea: they could be "Tiny Art" and could be collaged either on the wall in a frame, or laminated and magnetized for really cool fridge art. I'd love to know what you think about that. I made a little collage for our fridge and it looks pretty sweet.
We went to see the movie Akeelah and the Bee tonight. It was great. I was especially struck by a series of quotes by Marianne Williamson featured in the movie. Here is what she had to say.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be?

We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. As we let our own Light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."

Wow. Did that hit you as hard as it does me?

The photo at the top of the post is what I saw in our living room today. The shadow struck me as pretty cool, and I hope you like it as much as I do. I'm planning to set up some photo projects for myself during the month of May and will definitely share them with you.

Also, I dug up a photo from our trip that was taken near St. Cloud, Minnesota. Here it is.
Well, I guess that's it for tonight. We're both having a great time in Pueblo and are eager to keep learning while we wait for whatever's next. We'd love to hear from you, and hope that you're doing well also. Take care.

Move-In Day Looms Near

2006-04-27T23:24:00.000-05:00

Tim: It is Day 4 in Pueblo and we are anxiously awaiting our move into our new apartment tomorrow morning. We finished tying up loose ends today by setting up power, utilities, etc. for the apartment. In addition, we drove up to Colorado Springs to set up our furniture rental. "The Springs", as the local folks call it, is about 40 minutes away and is huge compared to Pueblo.

Speaking about rental furniture, man do they have a racket going on there. It really is amazing what you have to pay for cheap furniture. Hey, it is better than sitting on the floor I guess.

We really are enjoying the area. It is definitely the west, as there is a lot of open space out here. When we drove into the KOA the first day, we saw a tumbleweed rolling by...almost like something out of a western movie. Pueblo is a modern city and seems to be growing everyday, especially Pueblo West, the area we will be living near in our apartment. The area is pretty affordable and has exactly what we were looking for...a Barnes and Noble Bookstore and a Wal Mart Super Center (actually, the area has two). Both are staples in the Rice lifestyle.

Speaking of Barnes and Noble, Candy has been learning a great deal about using Photoshop lately and she has produced some pretty incredible works of art. The picture above is a colored line drawing of Candy's nephew Austin and the picture below simulates a fish eye lense (according to the book) of a flower shot from Monaco. It really is amazing what she can do with her photos, which are already incredible, by using Photoshop.

Just as much as Candy has been looking to learn more about her craft, I have been looking at other new ways to coach. I still have a lot of coaching left in my bloodstream right now and want to be prepared if I am given another chance. I read a quote the other day from author James Michener that made me feel a little bit better about my specific situation right now. It goes like this: "Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries."

For now, Candy and I are looking forward to moving into our new digs tomorrow. We still have some things to work on before the "next thing" happens. Have a great evening and stay in touch!

Fun in the Sun

2006-04-27T00:59:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today was beautiful. We discovered the Lake Pueblo Reservoir this afternoon and Chase had a blast swimming in the clear, blue water. He really needed the workout and has been pretty sleepy ever since.

We spent more time today at the bookstore, and each of us learned some new things. I scanned a book that addressed the issue of introverts living in an extraverted world. It seems that 75% of the world is extraverted, and that makes for interesting experiences for those of us who are introverted.

Tim read some more about the shuffle offense, a basketball offense with which he has become enamored as of late. He drew a couple more pages of plays as well, which always amazes me. He has so much original creativity, which I seem to lack. I do, however, possess plenty of ability to take something original and make something new out of it, so I guess it balances out.

Tonight was another beautiful sunset over the Rockies and I couldn't resist, so there is a panoramic photo at the top of this post that was taken just behind our Kamping Kabin. Beautiful.

I also spent a little more time playing with some photos using the techniques mentioned in the books I bought yesterday. Here are a couple samples for your viewing pleasure.

This one is based on a 17th-century Dutch portrait technique and features a photo of my maternal grandfather taken on his 80th birthday.

The image below is a photo I took in Europe last summer. It has been cut up and reassembled in the joiner fashion made famous by David Hockney.

We'll find out tomorrow whether our apartment will be ready for move-in or if we'll need to wait until Friday.

Have a great Thursday! :)

Learning Some New Tricks

2006-04-25T22:15:00.000-05:00

Candy: Today we decided that we'd like to rent a place in Pueblo and began the paperwork. It's kind of weird to be taking action on sticking around one place for a little while, especially with all of our things in storage back in Ohio. We're supposed to be able to move in on Friday, or possibly Thursday night, and when it's official we'll be sure to let you in on the specifics.

This afternoon we did four of our favorite things: we spent a couple hours at a Barnes & Noble, saw a movie (The Sentinel--didn't really like it), ate a nice Italian meal at an authentic place called Rosario's, and explored the area as the sun was setting.

It was another beautiful sunset behind the Rocky Mountains, which are visible about 30 miles to the west, and the sky was amazing. I didn't have the camera in the car today, which was fine, because I think I've taken enough photos of sunsets to last all of us for a while!

While at the bookstore, I found two great books on Photoshop and began experimenting with some of the techniques demonstrated. This post includes a few of the experiments. It was cool because it opened up for me a whole other world of art that I can produce with my photographs.

The image at the top of the post is, of course, an Andy Warhol-esque pop art image of my nephew Austin. The image below is a simulated lith print, and the one at the bottom of the post is reminiscent of Les Fauves artists. I had a lot of fun creating these and hope that you enjoy them too.

Tim and I have both been struggling a little bit with adjusting to the altitude. Pueblo is situated at 4,695 feet above sea level, and we've had minor headaches for the past two days. However, we're confident that our bodies can adjust, and we've decided to spend a few nights in (what else?) a KOA Kamping Kabin. Yep, we're at the Pueblo KOA just north of town and the heaters are running.

It's been chilly here, with temps in the 30s overnight and in the morning and evenings. However, the blazing sunshine during the day pumps the temperature up to the 70s and it's supposed to hit 80s on Thursday, so we're ok with the cool nights.

This weekend we intend to visit Canon City (the n should have a tilde ~ over it) where there's apparently a pretty cool train ride to be had. It seems the Royal Gorge is in that vicinity of the Rockies and there is a 2-hour train ride that offers great views of the area.

There is also a very high bridge (1,053 feet) that crosses the Arkansas River gorge (1/4 mile long). That should be really fun to walk across. We are looking forward to the wildlife and the scary tourist human life that is bound to be present.

We hope that you're enjoying the start of your week and that you, too, are learning some new tricks. We'll write again soon.

Hail in North Platte

2006-04-24T03:36:00.000-05:00

Candy: We're in Pueblo tonight and couldn't publish this post last night. So here it is a day after the fact.

I couldn't resist putting up more photos I really dig of our nephews Austin Miles (above) and Jack (below).

We are in North Platte, Nebraska, tonight and it hailed a bit during a thunder and lightning storm. Chase wasn't too thrilled with all the noise, but he managed to survive the storm hiding behind the easy chair in the hotel room.

Tomorrow we'll trek the rest of the way to Colorado Springs and Pueblo. We're very excited about what we'll see and what kind of apartment we'll find. We have several really good leads for places to live and are eager to see whether they look as good in person as they do online.

Not sure when we'll have access again, but we'll write when we do. In the meantime, we'd love to hear from you!

Back on the Road

2006-04-22T21:39:00.000-05:00

Candy: Well, after 10 days spent with my family, we are now back on the road heading toward the Denver, Colorado, area.

We spent a couple days with my younger brother Clint and his family. Here's a picture of them [Clint's wife Becky, boys (left to right) Jack, Austin, and Caleb] I took today when we all got together at Mom's.

We also spent a couple days with my older brother Jim and his family. I didn't get a family photo of them today, but there are a few photos in this post of their boys Isaac (a series at the top) and Levi.

Here's a picture of my Mom and her five grandsons. She sure loves those little guys, and they love her right back.
This is Levi. Here's Austin.
This is one of my favorite pictures of Jack.
Here's Caleb, with Chase in the teepee.We've located a few apartment complexes in Pueblo and Colorado Springs that have short-term leases and take large dogs, so we're going to look at them on Monday and see what we can get, then settle down for a little while.

We'll keep you posted as things develop (or don't develop) and you're all more than welcome to come visit us while we're there. :)

The Land of 10,000 Lakes

2006-04-13T03:11:00.000-05:00

Tim: We arrived in Candy's native Minnesota tonight after our trip from Dickinson, North Dakota. As we have found out on our trip out west (especially in the states of Montana and North Dakota), everything is very big and it takes some time to get from point A to point B. The picture above is a good example of this...it is part of a collection of some very large metal sculpture in North Dakota east of Dickinson. There were roughly seven of these pieces scattered on a roadway for miles, but we only had time to see two of them.

We also saw some buffalo today as well. Here is an interesting shot of them:

We are staying in St. Cloud tonight, then heading to stay with Candy's mom for undetermined time. Today, we stopped in Fargo to visit briefly with Candy's brother Clint and his family for dinner. We will see them some more during this trip, as well. Tomorrow we will see Candy's older brother Jim and his family.

We thought it would be cool here, but these are the warmest conditions we have seen since we left Arizona. The weather folks say that it will be nice here for the next week.

As is always the case, Candy got some more amazing photos of our scenery from the trip. The bottom two pictures are great pictures that illustrate the tranquility of this part of the US. Enjoy the great pics. Oh, I almost forgot. We drove over the 110,000 mile mark in the Element today, 7,000 on this trip alone. We have had it for only three years in May.

Until next post, have a great adventure with your life and make a great day tomorrow!

Beautiful Montana

2006-04-12T01:11:00.000-05:00

Candy: Montana is truly amazing. We drove from Butte all the way through to North Dakota today, and saw some really incredible varied scenery.

Three scenes that caught our attention today were the sunset you see at the top of this post, the beautiful, wide end of the rainbow that I'm goofing around with in the picture below, and the moonrise at the end of this post.

The morning started off with the big, beautiful, snow-capped mountain peaks of the Rockies to our right. Then, as we headed east, the mountains became steadily smaller with different vegetation, then the buttes, then finally ranch and farm land with lots of horses and cows.

We finally drove out of the state around 9pm mountain time, and have stopped in Dickinson, North Dakota, tonight.

I found out today that my older brother's wife Kate's mom passed away on Sunday and so we will be attending a funeral on Thursday. Tim also found out today that a buddy from the University of Mobile basketball team passed away over the weekend.

"We shouldn't answer the phone any more today," Tim said after we had gotten the two calls.

I had a major revelation today. I decided that I'm not going to spend even one moment doubting that something great is coming down the pipe for both of us soon.

Seriously. It would be really easy to doubt, especially since neither Tim nor I have had any bites on our resumes as of yet. However, I'm not going to waste a minute of my life doing that. I'm just going to enjoy whatever comes next, whether it's more relaxation or a new position.

Either way life is great! Or, as Tim's shirt asks, are we just lucky? :)

Well, tomorrow we head to Fargo to see my younger brother and his family briefly before traveling across the border to my mom's house in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, where we'll spend the night. Then it's the funeral on Thursday, and then time spent with my family over Easter.

I'm not sure whether we'll be able to post tomorrow night or not, but we'll write again as soon as we can. In the meantime, Tim and I both hope that you take a moment to think about the events of this Easter weekend and what it means to you and your families. We're thinking of you.

Big Sky Country

2006-04-11T00:07:00.000-05:00

Tim: We headed out for our drive today after we stayed in Spokane, Washington last night. We drove through the northern Idaho area, which includes the tourist area of Coeur D' Alene, then headed into Big Sky country in Montana. We traveled through some pretty incredible country again as you will see in the photos today.

We decided to drive to Butte and stay the night. We had a chance to drive through the campus of Montana Tech today, which is one of the schools that I applied for a coaching job at recently. Butte is an old mining town and it reminded us of some of the old steel towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The scenery was spectacular today...the skies were incredibly blue and the mountains just never seem to end out here. We will drive tomorrow to Bismarck, North Dakota and will stay at a KOA again. Here are those pictures. Enjoy and we'll talk with you again tomorrow!

Falls & Dr. Seuss Trees

2006-04-10T00:29:00.000-05:00

Candy: Last night the light from the laptop on Tim's face was especially interesting and I took this shot as he was writing the post. I think he's so incredibly amazing, and goodlooking too.

Today we spent one last time on Cannon Beach with Chase before we piled into the Element and drove through Portland and on to Spokane, Washington, where we're staying tonight.

As we drove along the Columbia River Gorge on I-84, we decided to take a brief detour from the interstate and drive a short, scenic route.

Was it ever scenic! Turned out that the road went right past several waterfalls, and we were able to stop and see Wahkeenah Falls and Multnomah Falls within 3-4 miles of each other. Here's a shot of Wahkeenah Falls after its drop and where it trickles over the rocks on its way down the hill (right).

We walked about 2/10 of a mile up a switchback trail built in 1915 that went up to the bridge crossing Multnomah Falls. The spray from the waterfall drenched both of us and was slightly chilling on what was a mostly overcast day at that point. I imagined that it must be a really refreshing place during the summertime, though, when it's hot.

Here's a panorama I made of the falls (left). The trail continues upwards all the way to the top of the falls. We didn't feel like walking that far today!

Another interesting thing we had seen since our arrival in Oregon nearly a week ago were some funny-looking trees that were completely covered with a light green moss.

I think they look like Dr. Seuss trees, and I took a few photos of them for you to see whether you agree. Here are a couple (below).

See what I mean? They look shaggy and have interesting curves in their trunks and they look like they should be in any book by the famed wizard of funny-sounding words.

Later, as we drove across the Columbia River just south of Kennewick, Washington, the terrain became more ranch-like. It was almost reminiscent of the hill country in west Texas, except there was much more green grass. We saw several mountain goats standing on the hills and grazing as we drove by.

The skies were several shades of brilliant blue, which, combined with the green on the hillsides made for a very energizing drive through southern Washington to Spokane.

We're looking forward to seeing the "big sky" of Montana again tomorrow. Our intention is to stop between Butte and Billings tomorrow night.

The pictures speak for themselves

2006-04-09T01:29:00.000-05:00

Tim: As you all know, it has been a while since we last posted on the blog. Our apologies...we have been soaking in what could be the most amazing coastline anywhere. We have had a great time here in Cannon Beach. We will be heading out for eastern destinations tomorrow morning.

We arrived here four days ago and have been staying in a nice, cozy hotel in Cannon Beach on Ecola Creek. The hotel is supposedly on the very camp site used by the Lewis and Clark expedition team when they arrived here in 1806.

We had an incredible trip from Eureka up the Oregon coast. We have been to a lot of coastal towns/destinations in our time together, but nothing compares to the Oregon coast. The beaches are sandy white beaches much like the Gulf Coast, but the beaches are much bigger and the coastline is very rocky.

The beaches have been perfect for Chase. He has had an incredible time here and he is in good company, as it seems everyone has a dog here and they are not on leashes. He has been swimming everyday and has been a tired puppy every night. Here is a good picture of everyone's favorite travelin' puppy dog in front of the Pacific Ocean surf (he is a pretty good looking dog if you ask me):

Cannon Beach is known for Haystack Rock, a 250 foot rock formation right off the coast here. Here are some pictures of it (the first one here was taken at night on the hood of the Element- forgot the tripod):

The rock with Ecola Creek in the foreground:

The pictures below are of the northern part of the Cannon Beach area (lots of birds in the area as you can see in the pictures):

By the way, isn't Candy an incredible photographer? I know...I am a little biased!

We have also been up to the more well known Oregon coastal destinations of Seaside and Astoria during our stay. All of these towns are similar to resort towns anywhere, yet they are very quaint and have a lot of interesting shops and restaurants. In fact, Oregon to us seems like the west coast equivalent of Vermont. We will definitely come back here in the future.

We are heading back east to visit with family in Candy's native Minnesota. We will stay tomorrow night in Spokane, Washington.

Monday marks the end of the first month of our journey. As throughout the entire trip, we are unsure what will come after the visit to Minnesota. Have a good Sunday!

Magical Oregon

2006-04-05T01:09:00.000-05:00

Candy: We LOVE Oregon.

We drove up Highway 101 along the coast from Eureka to Tillamook, Oregon, which is straight west of Portland on the coast.

It's amazingly beautiful. We saw huge redwood trees in northern California intermingled with wide glimpses of the sea crashing onto rocky outcroppings just off the shoreline.

The surf was so big, especially compared to what we've been accustomed to seeing, and it was a sunny, pleasant day. I can't imagine how big it is when there's a storm.

I goofed on our accommodations, thinking today was the 5th, and reserved a room for us at the Ecola Creek Lodge in Cannon Beach for the 5th through the 9th. However, it's the 4th, so we ending up stopping about 45 miles south of our destination at a Shilo Inn in Tillamook.
It's a super nice suite and there's an indoor pool open 24 hours. We feel so luxurious after our week in a tent, followed by almost a week on the road, followed by our recent week in a KOA Kamping Kabin. The smallest luxuries seem gigantic after extended days of living simply.

We saw a small herd of elk today just lounging and grazing in a meadow off 101. We stopped to let Chase run a bit while I took some photos. Here's one that shows the elk looking back at us. Apparently they'd never seen people from the Midwest as you can tell from their perplexed looks.
We also stopped to eat in Lincoln City, Oregon, then continued north, stopping at a scenic overlook to photograph the sunset. It was beautiful and I'm looking forward to several more opportunities to capture the western sunsets.

I'll leave you with another shot of the sunset tonight.

Week 4 begins

2006-04-03T22:27:00.000-05:00

Tim: Today is our last full day in Eureka and we have had a good one. We did have some rain again, but much less than we have had any day since we arrived. We were at the Border's today and overheard a worker in the cafe say that Eureka gets more rain than Seattle...after being here for the last week, I certainly would agree with him. Being a Gulf Coast native, I have never seen more rain in a week back home than I did this week and it is very wet there.

The picture above is of the Fisherman's Memorial in Eureka Marina, with a good shot of the Old Town area behind it. We enjoyed our brief stay here but are definitely ready to hit the road again. Our next destination: Cannon Beach, Oregon and Ecola State Park, the final destination of Lewis and Clark on their journey west. We will be staying at a resort there for at least four days. We have heard that the Oregon Coast is just gorgeous and apparently the northern coast has some the best beaches in the nation. It will be something else. The beaches here are not too nice and we are looking forward to seeing sandy white beaches again.

Today marks our the beginning of our fourth week on the "Pause on Purpose" journey. During this trip, we have stayed three nights in hotels with the rest of the nights being in Kamping Kabins or tents. We are looking forward to staying in a resort with actual bathrooms and showers in the room. Additionally, we are looking forward to having Internet access in our room again. That will be a good change!

Have a great day and we will post when we get to Cannon Beach!

Fruitless Search for Oregon Lodging

2006-04-01T21:23:00.000-06:00

Candy: We slept in until about noon today and spent most of the day at the coffee shop online.

As we were finishing the day's search for a place to stay in Oregon, a little four-person band came in, set up, and began to play. They're pretty good and we're enjoying the live music. There's a female singer, a drummer, a bass guitarist, and a slide guitarist.

Tim took a picture of them with his camera phone, but our extended network coverage won't let him email it to me to post here. i'm sorry, but I guess you'll just have to imagine it.

So far we've been unable to find anything reasonable on the coast of Oregon, though we did find a place that takes dogs and has internet access for about $75/night for 2 weeks. Just not sure we want to pay that much at this point. I guess we'll continue to look. In fact, we may just skip Oregon all together and head for some other place.

Highlights planned for tomorrow include paying bills, eating breakfast, and hanging out with our dog. Sounds like a good day to us!

I'll leave you with another memory from my childhood. This one is called Matt Grunewold Kick. It should provide you with some real insight into my youth (yikes!).

I’m in the fourth grade. The bus from Storden has just dropped me off in Jeffers and I’m waiting for my bus home. I’m outside. I hear kids yelling and laughing and I look around to see what’s going on. It’s coming from the group of kids waiting for my bus and it doesn’t sound good.

I was right. It’s Matt Grunewold and some other boys and they’re picking on my 7th grade brother, Jim. They always call him names and wrestle with him on the bus and while we’re waiting for it. I’m sick of it, so I say, “Why don’t you just leave him alone?” I’m a dorky looking tomboy and they ignore me. I’m feeling a little scared and am getting a little mad, too.

Finally, I walk over to where they’re picking on Jim. I walk up to matt and without saying anything I kick him. Hard. In the nuts. I’m wearing cowboy boots.

He doubles over and the teasing stops. I go back to where I was and wait for the bus to get there so I can go home.

I’m a little scared about what I just did, mostly because I wonder if I’ll get in trouble at home from my Dad. Jim doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t thank me or anything.

Hope you are having a great weekend!

A Taste of the Pacific Northwest

2006-04-01T00:15:00.000-06:00

Tim: It is Friday and we are halfway through our stay in Eureka, California. Today has been a very rainy, cool day…the kind of day that makes you want to sleep all day long. We did not get any real significant rainfall during our entire trip until we got out of the Eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains and came into Sacramento last Sunday. Since then, it has been very wet. Fortunately for us, the KOA Kamping Kabin we are staying in has a great heater in it. We are staying toasty warm at nights.

Today was Laundry Day for us. We have not done any laundry since Corpus Christi, so it has been a while. We saw an incredible movie tonight, “The World’s Fastest Indian” with Anthony Hopkins. It was a really inspiring movie about a guy from New Zealand who had a great passion about racing motorcycles. This guy achieved his dream of racing at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and broke world records in the process. As he was trying to achieve his dream, people kept telling him he was too old, that his motorcycle was not up to snuff, and so on. However, he bucked the odds and held firm to his passion and his dream. Just what we needed to see right now.

On our first night here we saw “Inside Man” with Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. It was very good…we highly recommend it, as well!

Eureka has a ton of movie theatres and even more coffee shops. There are so many different kinds of restaurants here, too. We are thinking about going to the Jamaican restaurant tomorrow. We had an authentic Mexican meal the other day. It was really good and very quiet…we were the only customers in the place.

Just as we mentioned in the last post, there are a ton of transients here. They love to wear camouflage fatigues for some reason. Even though it rains a ton here, no one uses umbrellas here, just rain parkas with hoods on them. I guess if it rains this much, you might as well have a parka instead.

Candy has had some success the last day or so getting started on her website. She decided she needed to use Flash on the website, a multi-media software. She had not used it for over two years. It took her an evening to learn how to work with it again. She definitely has technological chops!

As the sun went down tonight, we saw the most amazing rainbow we have ever seen before…we almost thought we could find the elusive “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow. The pictures can be found below.

We still have not made any progress on where we will head next. We want to find a place for about two weeks to a month if possible so we can keep working on the things we need to get right. Stay tuned daily for the latest on your favorite blog on the web, “Risking It All.”

Everyone in Fleece

2006-03-30T13:15:00.000-06:00

Candy: Well, we decided to stay in Eureka. We found a really cute little coffee shop/bakery in historic old town Eureka that offers free wireless and lots of great seating.

So we're sticking with the somewhat nasty KOA for the week. Turns out that they have experienced four severe windstorms in a two-month span that destroyed the entire campground. There are no trees left standing, but tons of stumps everywhere. They seem to be working really hard to get it back in shape.

Tim: The town itself can be described in one word: transient. I guess it's the perfect place for us. We're the only transients that are non-hippies. Some very interesting people here. It's northern California, I guess, and we're near the Oregon coast. There are so, so many people here who appear to be homeless or are hippies. Not trying to be judgmental. Just not something we're used to.

Candy: He's right. The historic part of the town is really cool. Vibrant, lots of cute little shops and restaurants. There are a ton of people who look like the stereotypical Northwest Coast people--wearing lots of fleece, ponytails and rasta everywhere. It's cool how laid-back it is.

Chase has been swimming twice already and loves it. He's having a blast.

On tap for today: hanging out, reading, some more work on my website, more reading, and hanging out some more.

I'll put up some more photos tomorrow.

Mountains Mountains Mountains

2006-03-29T10:42:00.000-06:00

Candy: Wow, another four hours of driving through the Shasta-Trinity National Forests yesterday as we trekked from Redding to Eureka.

When we arrived at the KOA we realized that it had been grossly misrepresented both online and in the print directory we have. There are no trees or grass and the free high-speed internet promised in both is nonexistent.

We're heading to Borders in town to see whether they have internet access and then we'll make a decision as to whether to stay here for the week or not.

We'll write More later.

A day when snow was okay

2006-03-28T00:19:00.000-06:00

Tim: Today, we headed from the Nevada/California border town of Bishop, California through some of the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range. The original plan was to go through Yosemite, but the road through the park was under 15 feet of snow.

We did get a chance to see Mono Lake, a huge lake that is known for tufas, which are limestone structures that naturally occurred in the lake over the years. This lake is known throughout photographic circles for the incredible sunsets that occur there. Unfortunately for us, we were there a little after mid day, so we did not get great pictures. I guess we'll have to come back on another trip.

The drive today was a winding and incredible four-five hours of driving through snow capped mountains (see picture above). The highest we got on the road was 8,300 feet above sea level, but some of the peaks were in the 10,000-foot range. Chase really seemed to struggle throughout the day today with his ears. When we came out of the mountains, he seemed to just collapse and fall asleep. He was very tired.

Some of the homes in the Inyo Forest were completely covered in snow. It was amazing to see them...literally 15-20 feet of snow over mountain side homes. Some of the vistas we saw were just amazing, including Lake Tahoe from roughly 20+ miles away.

When we got out of the mountains, we drove through Sacramento at rush hour. We headed north toward Redding, CA on I-5 and stopped in Corning, CA tonight. We are staying tonight at the Holiday Inn Express in Room 120. Last night we were in Room 120 at another hotel. If we were superstitious, should we be freaked out?

Today topped an already awe-inspiring four days on the road since Corpus Christi. We are roughly 3-4 hours away from Eureka right now and will head out tomorrow afternoon to try to arrive by early evening. We will be staying at the KOA in Eureka for the next week and are excited to take a break from the road for a little bit.

We feel like we have gained so much from this journey. It really does not feel like we have been on the road for two weeks. It has already been a life-changing experience and it has only just begun.

Thanks for reading our blog and for keeping up with us. We will post again when we arrive in Eureka!

From Hoover Dam to the Inyo Forest

2006-03-26T23:04:00.000-06:00

Candy: For the past few days Tim and I have been asking each other what the top 10 things are that we've seen so far since leaving Hiram.

That day's sights have usually made the list.

Today topped the list, no question. We drove over Hoover Dam and stopped to look at the amazing feat of engineering. Talk about a lot of concrete. It was pretty spectacular, though it did make me think about what it has done to the people who live downstream.

Then we headed up the west side of Nevada. Talk about a lot of desert. The road was mostly flat and fairly straight. There was a kind of rugged beauty to it, though, with the various hills and the desert vegetation.

Then we turned onto a road that traveled through a small mountain range and we saw some breathtaking vistas. I think I captured a really great photo of the white-capped mountains we saw as we hit the summit of the small range (above).

We were at about 7,000 feet elevation for the whole time, and there was snow on the ground all around us. While it was cool to see after being in the desert for several days, we certainly don't miss living in snow.

My favorite memories from today will include the stillness of the mountains, the snow-covered peaks, and the vast amount of concrete at Hoover Dam.

On to Mono Lake tomorrow, and Yosemite. Then to Eureka on Tuesday, where we'll stay for a week.

We're staying in a hotel tonight in Bishop, California. It's nice to stay again in a place that has a bathroom and shower attached to the room. :)

The Magical Mystery Tour Continues in the Old West

2006-03-26T00:47:00.000-06:00

Tim: We drove another long day today in our quest for Eureka, California. Today was probably the best day we have had on our trip thus far. We started off the day after checking out of our new official lodging provider, KOA Kampgrounds. In addition, we are calling this journey the "Pause on Purpose" Tour (pretty catchy slogan, don't you think?).

We headed out of Benson, Arizona this morning to arguably the most historic site in the wild west- Tombstone, Arizona. It was roughly 20 miles away from Benson and was very interesting. First, we toured Boot Hill Cemetery, the legendary final resting place of many residents of this town as well as the notorious three cowboys who were shot down by the Earps and Doc Holliday at the OK Corral: Billy Clanton, Tom McLaury and Frank McLaury. Some of the grave markers there were just down right funny and it seemed everyone who was buried there died a violent death. You can find all kinds of mini-essays on wooden grave markers, such as one that marks the grave of an innocent man: “Here lies George Johnson/ Hanged by mistake in 1882/ He was right/ We was wrong/ But we strung him up/ And now he’s gone.” The grave marker for Lester Moore reads: “Here lies Lester Moore/ Four slugs from a .44/ No Les/ No More.” (see picture below)
Next, we headed into town and walked around Fremont Street near the OK Corral. After eating lunch at the OK Cafe (right across from the site of the shooting with a sign above the door saying "Cowboys! Scrape s*** from boots before entering"), we headed into the OK Corral for the 2 p.m. daily reenactment of the famous gun fight. (See picture below)

The actual site of the gun fight was very small, which never seems the case in all of the movies.

After the show, we drove out of town and headed for our next destination: Kingman, Arizona. We drove through two of Arizona's largest cities, Tucson and Phoenix, today. Just outside of Tucson we stopped in Saguaro National Park to view all of the magnificent Saguaro Cacti, the state flower of Arizona. The park was basically a forest of cacti. The largest plants, with more than 5 arms, are estimated to be 200 years old and can be 30 feet tall, like the one I am posting up right here (okay, it is March Madness and I could not resist). Pretty big, aren't they?

Visiting this park was a truly spectacular experience that we both highly recommend if you are ever down here.

As we headed across the state toward Kingman, we saw another incredible sunset. Every sunset has been different and spectacular. At night, the sky is so big and you can see stars everywhere.

We will head out tomorrow for Hoover Dam (about an hour and a half north of here), then onward to Yosemite tomorrow night. We have seen so many things already and expect to see even more in the coming days. We will leave you with a picture of our trusty Honda Element (the "El") in Saguaro National Park. Have a great day tomorrow and we will post up more tomorrow evening.

So Much Sky

2006-03-24T23:14:00.000-06:00

Candy: Well, we didn't have internet access last night in Fort Stockton, Texas, where we stayed, so this is a catch-up post to bring you up to speed.

We packed up the tent and the El and left Corpus Christi yesterday afternoon, driving through San Antonio and into the Texas hill country. We saw tons of mountain goats, deer, and (Tim's favorite, and Chase's too) jackrabbits!

"They look like miniature deer," I said to Tim as we pulled into the KOA at Fort Stockton. They were huge. No kidding.

"You know what they say," said Tim. "Everything's bigger in Texas." That's what he's been saying the whole trip.

This state is HUGE! Fort Stockton is about three hours east of El Paso, which is on the very western edge of the state. We drove and drove and drove and we were still in Texas. Good thing the speed limit was 75. That helped.

In our 500+ mile trek yesterday, we were amazed at the difference in the terrain and climate between Corpus Christi and Fort Stockton. It was much cooler and much less windy. All in all, much more to our liking.

This morning when we left the KOA, we headed into historic downtown Fort Stockton, and took some amusing photos of Chase and the city's mascot, a roadrunner. Here's one of them (left).

We drove another nine hours today, crossing into mountain time zone. The sign at El Paso said that half a million people live there. It was like a big city, with the traffic to match.

The scenery was amazing all day. One minute cactus and shrubs, the next minute hardly any vegetation.

One constant today was the mountain ranges that would appear blue and hazy in the distance (bottom), then sandy as we drove past them, and another set appeared.

Tim saw a good photo opp today and this is the outcome (right). In case you can't read the sign, it states "Poisonous snakes and insects inhabit the area."

The sun shone all day, which we love, and the temps were high 50s. Nice and comfortable.

We stopped at two ghost towns in New Mexico, but they were both closed. Go figure. Private property. Funny that a ghost town would be closed.

Chase got to play ball three times today, and he's getting into triathlon shape. Ok, so he won't ever be able to ride a bike (sorry, Martha).

I hope you enjoy some of the photos we managed to capture along the way today. The one at the top of this post is the awesome sunset we saw tonight as we entered Arizona. I used my sunglasses lens over the camera lens to achieve this effect.

Tonight we're staying in another KOA in Benson, Arizona. We intend to drive to Hoover Dam tomorrow, then to Yosemite and Mono Lake in California the next day, then to Eureka, CA, on Tuesday and stay there for a week.

I'm not sure whether we'll have internet access between now and Tuesday, but we'll certainly write whenever we do.

A Good Plan is in the Works

2006-03-22T21:29:00.000-06:00

Candy: So, here's what we've decided.

We're planning to leave Corpus Christi tomorrow for northern California (and, of course, parts in between). We are planning to stop in El Paso as well as in New Mexico and Arizona before arriving at Eureka, California, on the 28th.

That means tomorrow will be a day of last-minute laundry, taking down the tent, and repacking the El for the trip.

We have reserved a Kabin for one week at the KOA in Eureka (which, of course, means "I found it!"). I have to say, I for one am really looking forward to sleeping indoors.

Eureka, on the coast in northern California, will give us many good opportunities to visit some beautiful places and should provide excellent fodder for great photographs.

Here's a glimpse of our proposed itinerary through the end of April. Of course, this is tentative and subject to change (our standard disclaimer).

March 23-28: Drive and explore our way to Eureka
March 28-April 4: Explore northern California and coastline
April 4-18: Rent a beach house in Oregon (exact location TBA)
April 18-23: Drive and explore our way to Minnesota
April 23-30: Spend time with our family and speak at the Sport Marketing class at Minnesota-Moorhead

We spent about 5 hours at the bookstore today. It was great--nice to sit in a clean, pleasant environment and think, read, and work on the computer.

I began thinking seriously about my photography website today. Many of you know that I have had a site for several years, and that I haven't updated it in at least two years (disgusting!). I have a plan for it, now, and am on the way to having a better design for it as well.

Tim did some more reading and note-taking in the Integrity: The Courage to Meet the Demands of Reality book by Dr. Henry Cloud. He loves it and has learned a ton from it already.

I wrote a couple of short pieces based on my childhood memories. I thought I'd share one with you tonight.

Here goes. This one's named Jill Drags Clint and is a true story.

I’m eight or nine. It’s summertime and I’m in the haymow of our barn. I’m playing in the loose hay and trying to ignore my brothers. Jim, my older brother, is doing something down in the barn below me and Clint, my younger brother, is riding Jill, one of our mules.

Suddenly, I hear some yelling and crying. I run to the door of the haymow that faces the house and I see Jill running down the driveway between the barn and the house. Clint is yelling for help as he bounces along on his stomach behind Jill. She’s running at a full gallop and he looks like he’s trying to belly ski on gravel.

“He’s not smart enough to let go of the reins,” I think to myself. “I hope he doesn’t get hurt really bad.”

Jim has heard Clint yelling, too, and now we’re both watching him get dragged down the driveway. We scramble out of the barn and run to where Clint is getting up. He’s finally let go of the reins, thank goodness. He’s still crying and it’s getting louder.

Mom has heard the commotion and comes out of the house. Jim and I are trying to see if Clint’s hurt or not, and Mom comes running over.

“What have you two done to him now?” she demands.

“Nothing,” we say. “He fell off Jill and didn’t let go of the reins. We didn’t do anything to him.”

Jill, meanwhile, has run down the driveway to the road and now Jim and I have to go catch her and put her back in the pasture.

“Why does Clint always jump off when the mule starts running?” I think to myself.

Oh well. At least after we catch Jill we’ll have even more ammo to use when we tease Clint.

Well, that's it. Chase is getting ready to hit it and I guess we will, too. Off to see West Texas tomorrow.

PS: No photo tonight because it's not letting me upload it. Sorry.

Rices make a "run for the border"

2006-03-21T21:34:00.000-06:00

Tim: No, we didn't go to Taco Bell. We actually drove down to the Mexican border today to walk across the bridge over the Rio Grande into Reynosa, Mexico. The trip from Corpus Christi was about two hours and we needed to have more to mark on our big wall travel calendar when we actually get a home somewhere. We parked at the border crossing for three bucks. It was interesting...it is a quarter to cross the bridge to Mexico and 3o cents to come back. We did both in less than half an hour. Needless to say, Reynosa was not very charming and the Rio Grande is quite muddy. People were swimming in it, though, so I guess they did not have a problem with it.

I drove the first half of the trip today. I had a chance to listen to music and check out all of the cactus plants and birds flying around in what seems to be the always strong winds that blow down here. I am always amazed at how out in the middle of a desert-like area I can be totally amazed by nature. It made me think about how hawks and other birds were made to fly...that it is their purpose for being. It may seem simple to some, but that is what Candy and I are searching for right now...what our purpose is. We are searching for even more than what our purpose is...we are also searching for where that purpose will take us next. It has been good for both of us to think more about these things lately.

The picture above was taken by Candy tonight here in Corpus Christi at sundown. Isn't she amazing? She had been waiting for the perfect moment to take this picture. Looks like she found it!

By the way, for those of you wondering how Chase, our wonder dog, is doing, I have asked him to type up his thoughts. Here goes:

ufdefvmspvjgn[sodhvf[sdmvsdjnvsodvspdkpso

Yeah, I had a tough time reading it at first, too. I will decipher it for everyone:

"I am enjoying myself thoroughly! Lots of running around, swimming, chasing tennis balls, riding in the car...yeah, good times. I am a little miffed about not going into Mexico with my peeps, but I will get to go to "New" Mexico shortly and I think it will be nicer. Man, I am tired. I think I will crash now."

I do not know who raised that dog, but he is pretty doggone smart...he recently aced his PSAT's (puppy scholastic aptitude test). He should get into the finest schools in the country. I think "Aunt" Martha Schettler should be commended for her work with Chase during the always awesome "Camp Martha".

As I type this post, I have just finished listening to some of Candy's recent writing. I laughed so hard I almost got sick.

Now, onto to the last of the serious stuff. We have not decided where we are heading next from here. We have looked at vacation rentals for the Pacific Northwest and may make our choice tomorrow. Stay tuned on that one...

Until we post again, have a great day and do what we have started to do...

Laugh a little!

The Blue Ghost

2006-03-20T23:05:00.000-06:00

Candy: Today was a great day!

We spent several hours touring the aircraft carrier USS Lexington, aka the Blue Ghost. This plane is one of about 10 that sit on her flight deck. We got to visit the bridge, eat at the Mess Deck cafe, and wander through the ship's hangars and other parts.

We also spent some more time at Barnes & Noble, reading and discussing various profundities. Tim spent more time with the book I referred to in yesterday's post, while I read most of a fascinating book entitled The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One by Margaret Lobenstine.

Talk about right up my alley! It was encouraging to read about so many others who, like me, have been interested in too many things to settle on just one (in terms of a career). I've read a bunch of "find the right career for you" books in my lifetime, and for the first time I actually read something that applied to me.

The essence of the book was that focus is the key to making multiple passions work. The analogy used by the author was that of a wonderful ice cream shop, with hundreds of flavors of ice cream, gelato, frozen yogurt, and custard. For a Renaissance Soul (Lobenstine's phrase for someone who is multi-talented and passionate about many things, based on the Renaissance Man idea), being asked to "choose just one thing and stick with it" is like being told by the ice cream shop owner to pick one flavor and have only it forever.

The opposite aspect of her analogy is that without focus, the gazillion interests that a Renaissance Soul has are like being told by the shop owner to taste a little bit of each and every flavor in the store...overwhelming because you don't know where to begin.

The balance in the analogy is to try a four-flavor sampler that can be modified each time we visit the store. I found it really helpful to think about which activities I'd like to pursue next in those terms. The key is just to begin. Find a focus, put your sampler together (four activities) and begin pursuing them. Then modify or replace those activities with other passions as time goes by. That way it's not "one thing" nor is it too overwhelming because it's everything at once.

We then ate some great Mexican food and headed back into downtown Corpus Christi once darkness set in so that I could take some nighttime photos. It was a beautiful night, cool, and of course windy. Every day is windy here. :)

Thinking that we'll drive to the Rio Grande border towns tomorrow for the day. Hoping to find some great photo opportunities as well as some interesting artifacts.

Tim and Chase are both out cold tonight, and I'm about to join them. Hope you have a great Tuesday.

Turning the Corner

2006-03-19T20:43:00.000-06:00

Candy: Well, I think we both turned a corner today.

All day yesterday I felt like junk, dealing with lots of negative emotions carried over from my recent professional experience, and just feeling out of sorts.

This morning, Tim felt similar emotions.

Then, we decided to go to the nearest Barnes & Noble bookstore for some reading time, and an interesting thing happened. We have a habit of frequently visiting bookstores for long periods of time and each time we go to one we split up and find books that interest us, then sit together in the cafe and read.

The interesting thing today was that we both picked up books that addressed the same subject, but from different angles. I began reading a book by Byron Katie called Loving What Is. It addressed the idea that it's really our thoughts about reality, not reality itself, that create problems for us.

Katie said that we should write down on paper what is bothering us about another person or situation, then ask these four questions about each of the thoughts we wrote down:

Is that true?
Can you know absolutely that that's true?
How do you react when you think that thought?
Who would you be without that thought?

The essential idea was that if we applied this inquiry process to our negative thoughts and our problems, that we would see what the reality of the situation is and be able to accept it for what it is. Then we could move on to being able to be more free mentally and emotionally from the negative situations and people around us.

Tim's reading addressed many of the same ideas from a businessman's perspective, with the focus on being able to utilize integrity in negative situations to regroup, recover, and succeed after failure.

There were many more ideas that struck both of us today as we shared passages of our books over a diet coke in the cafe, and we both left the bookstore feeling as though we had crossed the first hurdle in this journey, that of finding something of value that mattered to each of us.

It felt really good to know that despite a couple of emotionally rocky days that we were going to be able to break through.

We also discovered several fun things to do in the area and have made plans to experience them in the coming days.

We hope to spend some time touring the USS Lexington, a World War II aircraft carrier permanently docked in the Corpus Christi bay, tomorrow. We also realized that there are several border towns within a two hours' drive and we intend to visit them, walk through the mercados, eat some fabulous Mexican cuisine, and maybe even cross the border if we're able to do so with Chase.

We have been missing our friends and family recently, but know that we need to pursue this quiet time with passion and dedication in order to earn the benefits from doing so.

We'll keep you posted and hope that perhaps despite our rambling entries that you, too, will be encouraged to reassess your circumstances and attitudes.

We are here...now what?

2006-03-18T17:09:00.000-06:00

Tim: Candy and I have settled into our new "home away from home" here at the RV park in Corpus Christi. We drove three days to get here, to relax and figure out what we need to do better and what God wants from us for the future. We are so used to being busy in our careers that we have had a difficult time figuring out what to do with so much free time. Yesterday, we had the opportunity to drive around in town to see what is here. It is a town that is similar to Mobile, Alabama...very industrial in nature. It has been very difficult getting used to driving here as well. Every exit has a one way road on it which is also a frontage road. We have done a ton of u-turns here.

We went on a drive today on Padre Island. It is the national seashore that is right off of the coast of Corpus Christi. We had the chance to take Chase swimming again today (as you can tell in the picture, he is one tired puppy dog). As I type this, Chase is napping and dreaming which can be funny to watch. In addition, I am listening to Wittenberg's national title game at Salem on the computer. For those of you who do not know, they are in the same league as Hiram. We faced them twice this year. We have been trying to get used to hanging out at the tent and just reading and surfing the web. Today was a windy day here and not as hot, which was good for us northern folks.

I found out yesterday that I was not being considered any longer for the Gonzaga job. It was tough to accept, but maybe it was a blessing.

Well, not much else is going on here. We will be posting again tomorrow with hopefully more exciting stuff from the Texas Gulf Coast. Have a good one!

Texas: Cowboy Churches, Green Grass, Sunshine, and a Lot of Highway

2006-03-17T11:25:00.000-06:00

Tim: We have arrived in Corpus Christi and have set up our new home (a three dome tent) this morning. We arrived last night to the campground at midnight and decided to set up the Element and sleep in it last night. Yesterday was a day full of lots of driving. Texas is huge and we drove from Texarkana all the way here yesterday (roughly 600 miles).

We decided to get off the Mapquest path and take US highways from Texarkana to Corpus Christi. We saw a whole lot of nothing on this journey, but it seemed every little town in Texas has won the state football title at one time for another (at least that is what most of the water towers had painted on them). In addition, every town's football stadium looked like a Division I stadium.

We also saw a ton of "Cowboy Churches", which was something that makes sense, but I never heard of before. We drove through Houston on this journey and it has to be one of the biggest cities I have ever been through. The traffic was almost Chicago-esque...bumper-to-bumper all the way through it. We drove right past Lakewood Church, the church that Joel Osteen pastors with his wife. It was the home to the Houston Rockets for many years. Boy, what a big church...I guess they have 20,000 for services.

As I type this post, I am sitting on a picnic table at our campsite. We are right beside the shower house and are in a secluded section of the RV park. The people here have been very friendly so far and really like pets, so Chase is in a good place. The temperature is around 85 degrees and overcast skies with some sun peeking out. We are a stone's throw from the water here, so Chase will be loving this place.

Candy and I will start our reading marathon today. I know that during the trip yesterday I really started to think about the great John Wooden's definition of success and what my thoughts are about it. I brought two of his books with me (as well as many other books from other authors) and will be searching for what I believe success is. I am sure it is identical to what his definition is, but after how tough the last three years have been, I have to refocus on this.

Candy and I both have a lot of work to do. It may be a nice, warm place, but we are both on a quest...a quest for what is really important in our life. We know that this is going to be a trip that will be a turning point in our lives and we are ready for it.

Regarding what we are doing, I found this great quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson regarding sticking to your guns: "What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

This quote fits what we are searching for. People think we are crazy to just jump in our Honda Element and go out into an uncertain world and future. We say we would be crazy NOT to do this. It certainly is not a life for everyone, but it is the life for us right now. We are both looking forward to just doing what Jesus did many times in His ministry- getting away from the world and praying and resting.

Alright, I will get off the soap box now and stop preaching (plus, I think I might be getting a sunburn on the back of my neck). We both hope you all have a great day and we will have another post ready for tomorrow. We need to get out and see what is actually here in Corpus Christi!

Elvis Sighting: Chase Not Impressed

2006-03-15T22:27:00.000-06:00

Candy:

Chase began the day in the way that all water dogs wish they could: swimming in a clear, cold pond and gnawing on a huge branch.

After the walk back to the cabin and KOA showers, we loaded the Element and headed to Ryan's.

"It's the restaurant everyone has to go to," said Tim, "if they visit the south."

A few hours later, I decided that a scenic route was necessary in order to find something to photograph. Tim agreed, and we turned off I-40 around Jackson, Tennessee, heading toward Covington, where, according to the map, we would join the scenic Highway 51.

"There was nothing scenic about it," said Tim.

He's right. It was simply a four-lane road back to Memphis.

So, we returned to the interstate and decided that we would try to make it to Texarkana (another KOA Kabin) before stopping for the night. The temps today were in the high 60s with sunshine and hardly a cloud in the sky. Tonight's sunset (above, via camera phone) generated navy blue light on what clouds there were in the sky, and Tim thought it was pretty nifty.

Some funny things happened today.

We met a cross-eyed lady from northern California with two beagles; Indy and Elvis. Chase was pretty much indifferent to both their invitations to play. Hence the title of this posting.

When we stopped to play fetch with Chase this afternon, Tim went ahead to scout out how muddy the ground was, and before I knew it he was running back to the Element (El) in trepidation. He said, "Did you see that?!" as a puffed-up kildeer ran toward him in a vain effort to protect its nest. Guess you had to see it, huh?

As we were driving tonight through Arkansas, I worked on my resume while Tim did some channel surfing on the stereo. He came across a couple of stations whose call letters began with the letter "k" and we knew then that we had reached the southwest.

"It's pretty amazing, isn't it?" said Tim. "That you can go from Hiram, Ohio, to Texarkana, Texas, in a matter of two days and everything changes? Culture, scenery, weather, accents, everything."

Chase has been a little grumpy today...I think he's just exhausted and is jonesing for his queen-sized futon mattress. The KOA bunkbed last night and Element seats just aren't the same.

In case you're wondering why there were no photos yesterday, I was unable to load any because the KOA web service was a little slow.

As our good friend Nicole says, "'Til our paths cross again may you always have a smile on your face, two Twizzlers in your hands, and sunshine in your hearts." We can't say it any better than that.

Have a great Thursday. :)

Towards Bluer Skies

2006-03-14T20:25:00.000-06:00

Candy: As we headed south today, an interesting thing happened.

The skies in northern Ohio were completely filled with gray clouds, but as we approached the central part of the state, we began to see small patches of blue sky between clouds that were beginning to be less gray and more white. The further we drove, the fewer clouds there were, and by around 4pm the skies were completely free of clouds and we were no longer in the state of Ohio.

We were also no longer in the same mental state.

I thought about how we had just witnessed a metaphor that describes our lives at this point. The more we began to raise our heads and look around, the clearer the skies became. The more we were bathed in the sunshine, the more aware we became of the brilliant blue of the sky.

This has been a difficult period of time for us in our professional lives. We let it affect our personal lives, too, but today it occurred to me that if we just raise our heads, change our perspective, and look around us, the skies are blue and waiting to be noticed.

The entire day was magical, and the sunset this evening was a perfect finish. The sun became really orange as it began to sink into the western skies, and the soft glow of honeydew melon at the horizon turned first to violet and pastel pink, then deepened into a vibrant orange and yellow.

The colors lingered in the sky for what seemed longer than usual, and then the moon began to rise in the east. It was bathed in the colorful glow of the sunset and hung low on the horizon, gleaming in its full, pale glory. It was spectacular!

As I sit on the porch swing of our KOA Kabin in Bowling Green, Kentucky, it seems fair to say that more blue skies are in the forecast in our lives.

Here's hoping you can look up and see the blue skies around you, too. We're thinking of you and missing those of you we left behind.

Head 'em up and move 'em out...

2006-03-13T10:38:00.000-06:00

It has been an interesting couple of days for us. We decided that we will leave Hiram tonight and hit the road to what is next. Both of us have worked hard the last week to get everything packed up and moved into storage in Garrettsville, a town just minutes from Hiram. We have our inspection for the house today to move out and I (Tim) have been here at home all day waiting for it to take place. I have also become an outstanding oven cleaner...it may be of use in the future (just kidding)!

In addition, we sold most of our furniture like hotcakes to Hiram folks...something like 10-15 people wanted our stuff. We sold it all in 4 hours. All it took was an email with pictures...an on-line garage sale. Boy, the power of email and pictures!

For those of you who did not hear yet, I had a phone interview with Gonzaga University's basketball program last Thursday (academic advisor job). The interview went well and I did a good job of answering the questions they zinged at me. They are going to move fast so I will find out this week if I am heading out for a campus interview. The job would start almost immediately.

Here is the plan for the next three days...just drive to wherever, get a place to stay, then drive some more each day. We will get to Texas on Thursday and then start over. It is an exciting time for us both. We needed to get back to our grassroots...it will definitely be interesting.

Well, I guess I will sign off for the wayward Rice clan for now. Until Texas...

Tim and Candy

2006-02-28T23:38:00.000-06:00

Getting closer to the big day. March 13th can't come soon enough.

Both of us are looking forward to the day when our things go into storage, our dog goes into the Element, and we go out on the road in search of ourselves and the next big opportunities.

Stay tuned for what's next.