I went to Chicago for 5 days to visit my sister. I decided since I hadn’t been there since 2004 I was due for a trip. Frontier recently (1 month ago) began doing commercial flights out of Provo so that’s pretty sweet, especially because they’re cheaper than Salt Lake. It was way fun! My nephew Simon was so excited he was talking about it non-stop for about 2 weeks. He was especially excited about going to the observatory and letting me use the telescope first.
We did go to the observatory Friday night and got to look out of a telescope with a lens that was hand made in 1860. It gave us a pretty close view of Saturn which was sweet. I didn’t know this but you can actually see Saturn with the naked eye if it’s in the right spot. You can even sort of see the ring without a telescope.
Chicago is an interesting place. Emily said she feels like she’s become more assertive just by living there. She said that if you don’t stand up for yourself no one else will, in a place like that I think people get a sense of that very early on. On a train into downtown Chicago on Saturday this guy was talking on the phone really loudly. It wasn’t 30 seconds before two older men also headed to downtown said “you’re talking very loudly, could you be quieter?” It was awesome. The guy unfortunately kept on blabbing and slowly got louder and louder. One guy said “you’re disturbing everyone else in this car. Please speak more quietly or move to another car.” It was simply put and effective. The rest of us were so grateful!!
These thoughts lead Emily and I to a conversation about “nice” vs “kind”. She thinks they are two very different things and I agree. Seems to me that people in big cities are, oddly, kinder than places. They will be up front and assertive, which benefits everyone.
Part of the reason I went to Chicago was every time I looked at Emily and Ross’ blog I saw their cute kids growing up real fast and I wanted to be there for some of that. Simon is the most inquisitive 4-year old I’ve ever met. That kid can ask questions until you don’t have answers any more. It’s amazing how much he remembers and picks up. He’s a really good cello player and plays cars very well. He’s really creative with what he has the toys do.
At the beach next to Lake Michigan. It’s big and looks like an ocean. We made some sand creations and buried Simon a good one.
Ingrid wasn’t so sure about me at first, it was pretty funny. She looked at me in shock at first and started making a big frowny face. She got more used to me being around as time passed and we even had some laughs. She did enjoy a good power stare (royalties paid to Ahlena Black for the phrase) in my direction. Super cute kid and lots of strangers even say that, too.
Emily and Ross have a WAY cool RC car, I love it! In grass it will do wheelies and on pavement with a little gravel it will do burnouts and donuts. (cookies if you’re from Idaho). So cool!!! We visited the hobby store where Ross picked this one up and they had a car that was 4-wheel drive that would do 70 MPH! Only $599 for that toy. What a deal! Here’s Emily and Ross’ model:
This video cracks me up, it’s nothing but wailing guitar and little cars driving around.
Hey y’all! I found out through my iPhone correcting me that “yall” is spelled y’all instead of “ya’ll” like I always thought. It makes perfect sense now. I was so blind.
This week has been amazing! Wow, so much fun and adventure. The trip to the trade show was more intense than I thought. The first 5 hours to Boise weren’t too bad, just a little rain and I was running on beef jerky and a pomegranate ‘naked’ juice graciously given by the lenders of the car. I would have been fine driving the VW Jetta all the way to Washington but my parents offered to let me drive one of their cars so I took them up on it.
I ended up driving the 2006 325i which was very very nice all things considered. First of all, you can cruise at 100mph and it feels like you’re doing 55. We didn’t go that fast the whole time but ya know, it’s nice to have it if you need it. Second, it has some pretty nifty traction control that came in handy when Benjie and I got caught in a snow storm in Washington. We couldn’t see more than 10 feet in front of the car. Intense it was. Sort of just crept up on us and I’m glad we made it out of there!
I picked up Benjie from work in downtown Boise, he works at Clearwater Analytics. It’s way cool, their office space is a floor of a taller building and they wear jeans and t-shirts to work. I’m so glad for that, I thought Benjie was getting all corporate-ed out and living under the tyranny of a no-fun boring-party poo-boss environment. Quite the contrary and that’s good for my homie.
For those new to Parker Planners, Benjie and I partnered in the summer of 2008 after Parker Planners was around for about a year. It was way fun to catch up and we had about 8 hours to do so on the way to Tacoma. Another super lucky (side story: see image below, yes, that is SUPER LUCKY ELEPHANT rice. I first saw it on my mission. Oh man that was good for many laughs) break was that our former employee Jackie Lau lives right in Tacoma now! She has a fancy marketing job with Kraft foods with company car and all that. She let us stay at her place which was super cool. We got there around midnight and left the next morning just after 6am. Quick visit indeed.
So we got the Hotel Murano (if you reverse the name like that it’s at least 14x more fancy than ‘Murano Hotel’) around 7am and it was mega artsy-fartsy. Loved it. Tacoma is a pretty cool city, lots of hills like San Fran and right by water like various other cool cities. Benjie and I set up our booth quickly and ate the free (ehh, kinda, we did pay hundreds of $ to be there) pastries and juice. People were busy body bees as they set up their stuff. It was fun to see. At 10am when the show was supposed to start we were primed and ready to talk about planners. The minutes felt like hours as an extremely slow trickle of potential buyers walked briskly, directly to the booths they needed to hit. Right past us. We then watched as a few more came and lovingly embraced employees at other booths. ? What? These people obviously have been doing this for years and already know each other. Can we be 20 years older and magically know all the college bookstore buyers, too? Huh? Who does this stuff anyway?
So after about 30 mins (2.2 eternities of stress and anguish) I thought we were doomed to be welcomed to a wonderful trade show and kick in the rear by a harsh reality that selling is harder still than I ever thought. Sigh.
THEN. Then a lady came up to us, she was younger, maybe late 20’s with some interesting piercings and tatoos. She was hip, funny, and seemed to like us a little. We talked to her for less than five minutes then she gave us a promising “I’ll take your info packet back to my boss and see what he thinks”. Oh good. Progress. Then after a few more comments from us she said “ok, I’ll do it, what do I need to fill out”.
This is a different BMW than normal, it’s my brother’s 2005 545i. It’s faster and cooler than the 325i but alas, this car had taken some abuse before we got it so it has issues. Last week Ammon had just started a trip up to Provo so we could hike Mt. Timp before our family gathering and his car threw a rod on the way up. Bummer deal. Right now we’re both in Hurricane, UT at my grandma’s house installing a new motor. The new engine arrived today.
I just got back from playing some guitar hero with Ammon and his friend Terrin and I’m exhausted! Ammon and I worked on that car all day. It’s tricky business because he bought a motor out of a 745i and we’re putting it in a 545i. It’s the same 4.4L DOHC V8 but because it’s out of a different car and used to be attached to an automatic transmission there are some subtle differences that have made the swap more colorful. We managed to get the engine and tranny mated and hanging from an engine hoist. We’ll see what tomorrow brings! Never worked on a German car before, kinda weird. They love to use torx head bolts.
Here’s Ammon working away while it was just an engine.
(bandaged) thumbs up! Motor and transmission together!
Now It’s heading toward the car
Ammon and the car, preparing for installation of the engine
This is tougher than it looks. Very easy to smash something important, and quite the balancing act getting 300lbs of pure power into a BMW 5-series.
We did it! Got the thing in the car. Now we have to install the A/C compressor with no belt tensioner. Not fun for those who have ever done a fan belt and had the luxury of a spring you compress to install the belt. We had to losen the bolts to the compressor and manually turn the engine with a ratchet to ease the belt into place.
This weekend has been amazing! So Thursday we loaded up the trucks, B-mer and Vibe and headed for the hills just outside Hurricane, UT. It’s pronounced “Her-ih-cun” said really fast if you’re from around here. We went to a place I’ve been many times with my dad and brothers to shoot guns and what not when I was a kid. My grandma has lived down here since the early 80’s and many a vacation day has been spent exploring southern Utah’s red rocks.
This trip we had my dad’s go-kart with us which was perfectly suited to the terrain. Way fun, and the best part is you can take a passenger along for the ride, too; this time it was a niece or nephew saying “go crazy!” or ” no jumps this time”. We also shot some guns and oddly enough there were hundreds of little tiny frogs all over the ground to entertain everyone.
Enjoy the documentation:
We went to a demolition derby Saturday night and it was they best one I’ve been to! Oh man you wouldn’t believe it! Normally they do cars, old weird cars with no traction and there’s a few bumps, but nothing spectacular. Ever seen demo-derby trucks!?! Yup, they got ‘em at the Washington County Fair! Oh yeah. We saw one get nailed from the side and flip over. So sweet.
Oh yeah. It’s spelled “Phoenix”- it’s common for non-Phoenicians to frequently ask how to spell the name of the city; especially when texting it to a friend.
Last weekend was super sweet. The trip was mostly family and partly business. Christina, Eric, and I all headed down in my dad’s new 2006 BMW 325i. It’s a super smooth car but not a perfect one as you’ll see below. We also met with the bookstore supplies buyer at ASU. Fun. Buy planners, ASU! They rock!
Here are some pics!
Wes stopped at my grandma’s house on the way down so the trip to Phoenix wouldn’t be so long. Good to see her!
She looked at me in shock at first and started making a big frowny face. She got more used to me being around as time passed and we even had some laughs. She did enjoy a good power stare (royalties paid to Ahlena Black for the phrase) in my direction. Super cute kid and lots of strangers even say that, too.
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