Our first niece!

Last Monday Kellen and I became an Uncle and an Aunt!  My sister-in-law, Val, gave birth to Ileana Lucille Draper - 6 lbs. 10 oz.

Isn't she a cutie?

I haven't met her yet, but she has the same chin as me.  I think she looks a lot like my grandma Jackie, which is apt since her middle name comes from grandma Jackie's mom, Lulu.  That's Ileana's great-great grandma.  And speaking of which, our great grandma Burgess is still alive and kicking in Indiana, so there are 5 generations of the Burgess family living today.

Ileana joins her three older brothers, David, Josh and Colin (Val's three children from another marriage), to make my brother's family 6 people!  Kellen doesn't have any siblings, so this is it for us to have nieces and nephews.  We look forward to spoiling them all.

Stem Bend

After the strongback and mold was set up it was time to bend the stems. The stems are made of 1/4 inch thick ash strips, 3/4 of an inch wide. Six strips are bent around the stem mold, the inner 3 strips comprise the inner stem, the outer 3 comprise the outer stem. Above: left) stem mold, center) steaming tube, note tea kettle and propane burner, right) a bit of the canoe mold.

Above: Ash strips bent and drying

After the strip are have thoroughly dried they are separated and coated with epoxy. The inner three strips get epoxied together separately from the outer three strips. This results in perfectly matched inner and outer stems and should save time on shaping in the future.

The next step will be to straighten the mold and start shaping the stems.
hmm...these posts are a bit boring aren't they?

CANOE!

Well, seeing as how all of the activities that I once enjoyed are now a bit difficult to partake in, I've started building a canoe.  I got the idea from my buddy Murray, who, most of you know, is the kind of guy who is rather particular.  Building a strip canoe is definitely one of those things you need to be rather particular about during the construction process because every f*** -up becomes an order of magnitude worse as the canoe progresses.  I thought it would be a good challenge for me, seeing as I'm not the most patient person in the world.

The first step is to make the strongback.  The strongback is the foundation, or platform, for which the canoe will be made 

around, so it needs to be sturdy, straight and relatively level.  The last bit there, level, was kind of a challenge in our garage here because it is far from level and is constantly moving.  Yup, thats right, MOVING!  The ground here in Houston is far from stable...thats what you get when you combine clayey/sandy sand with lots of rain.  Oh well.  The strongback I decided to make is a nearly identical version of the plans designed by Ted Moores' Canoecraft.  I completed the strongback last November...I'll get some more canoe updates soon.

 

Tax Rebate Successfully Reinvested!

This weekend we took the plunge, did our part to stimulate the economy, and bought a sweet new IMac using Uncle Sam's rebate money.  It is everything we could have hoped for, absolutely brilliant.  This came after a long agonizing battle with our better angels and one too many episodes of screaming at my dying laptop to "just load the damn webpage already!".  Judge us if you will, but our consumerism made us happy this weekend.

Doin' it Desert style

Well, this is my first addition to our family blog... Woohoo.

Not much to report as of yet... I've been staying out of trouble mostly, going to school, workin' on the canoe and trying to figure out my schedule for this summer (Sarah is probably more concerned with that than I am).

A few weeks back, well, over a month ago now actually, I helped (went along as a teaching assistant, didn't do a whole lot of teaching however) with a week-long geology field trip out to Big Bend National Park. Big Bend National park is about a 10 hour drive west of good ole' Houston, yeah, thats about how long it takes to get to some good outcrop in Texas. Its funny, because even after 10 hours of driving at 80 mph (thats the speed limit on I-10 through west Texas) your still in the same god-forsaken state!

Day 1: Getting ready for a long day of mapping in the desert sun

Anyway, there were 50+ students on the trip, so, to say the least it was a bit of a logistical nightmare. You have to understand, many of these kids (juniors in college) have never been "camping" before, so, yeah...

Weather was nice, lightly rained one day, but other than that the winds stayed calm and it never exceeded 80 degrees.

Day 3: Students finally getting the hang of their Brunton compasses

The usual shenanigans associated with geology - based field trips was certainly exceeded on this trip, but nobody got hurt and tears were kept to a minimum. Overall a fantastic trip to pretty much the only topography in Texas.

"Peddling" for a Cause

My atrocious sunburn has started to peel so I took that as a sign that posting about how I got that sunburn is long overdue. On April 12th and 13th Kellen and I rocked the MS150, a two day bike ride from Houston to Austin. The distance from Houston to Austin is not, in fact, 150 miles like the misleading title of the tour says. It is approximately 190 miles from Houston to Austin. I must admit, though, that the Chervon cycling team started at the "easy" start (there are a total of three race starts), making our journey a mere 170 miles.

I'm the one making the goofy face.

We arrived at the start all bushy-tailed at 5:30AM, only to wait around until 6:45 when we could get on our bikes and go. Not so bad, though. The first day is about 86 miles, we end at La Grange where we camp for the night.

Our friend Pauly (left) and Kellen at the La Grange tent. They arrived at the tent nearly two hours before my slow, tired ass. They're both pretty hard core.

The wind was fierce the first day. It's hard to decide which is better, 90 degree stifling heat with a 10 mph tailwind? Or 70 degree pleasant weather with 10-20 mph headwinds? We got the second situation, which was a pain in the ass while on the bike but wonderful when you stop. Every time I stopped to rest I just basked in the sunlight.

See? I'm pretty happy!

The following day was better than I thought it would be. I hadn't predicted that after biking all those miles, sleeping on the ground, and then getting up at 4:30 AM, I would still feel not too bad on the bike. But it's true, and after a while, the shear fact that I didn't feel like I was going to die motivated me. Kellen of course still beat me to the finish line by a wide margin, but I closed the gap a bit.

Kellen rockin it.

So I did manage to finish, in actually fairly good time, with a wicked headwind and really not enough training. If I did it, so can you! Kellen and I raised $3200 between the two us, not too shabby, yeah? It feels nice to do something nice. We're already looking ahead to next year, it's going to be a party. Next year's roster should include: Our friends Paul (who rode this year with us), Cara, Ben, Catherine (maybe, she remains unconvinced. I think Catherine regards biking the way I do running and ain't no one going to peer pressure me into some running for charity gig), Jason, Mindy, Joe and Jenn! Maybe soon we'll have our own team? Any out-of-towners interested in giving this a try? Here's some incentive:

16,000 (literally) other people are doing it! Don't you want to be cool like them?

ps. explanation of the title. This totally shouldn't bother me but it did. There were lots of signs along the side of the road cheering us on and nearly all of them misspelled the word pedalling. I really lack generosity of spirit, don't I?

Oy

Hey y'all,
Our blog has been post deficient for a while, we apologize. I plan on having an MS150 report up soon. Stay tuned!
-Sarah