Elder Crapo vs the Coconut

A few weeks ago, we received the first memory card from Elder Joseph Crapo's camera that included photos from the MTC and photos and videos from Pohnpei. I selected and posted 16 of the photos on Facebook. They can be viewed with the followining link on Facebook:

I was going to post some videos on this blog post, but Blogspot limits the videos to 100MB and the largest of the three videos is over 250MB. Click on the Facebook links to the three videos. In the first video, Elder Crapo explains where he got the coconut. In the second video, Elder Crapo does battle with the coconut. In the third video, Elder Crapo enjoys the spoils of victory over the coconut.

Geocaching in the Hills Above San Jose

On Saturday evening, while Mom and Becky went to the Relief Society Dinner and satellite broadcast, John and I decided to search for a few geocaches. The first ones we looked for were in the hills of the south part of San Jose (South of where Leigh Avenue ends). We found the first geocache right where we expected to find it in a pine tree, but the area was protected by a guard lizard. John was not afraid and he caught the little guy. Once the lizard found that John's had was warm, he decided that he liked it.

The next two geocaches were higher up on two hills. As we started up the hill on the trail, this was the view of San Jose.

We found both of the next two geocaches also. This was the view from the third cache.

From this view, you can see that it was a bit of a hike up the hill. Next time we go into these hills for other geocaches, we will have to take rocky with us. He would love the trails.

We looked for three additional geocaches down in the city close to Brian's house. We could only find one of the three. It was dark by then, so it was difficult. We told ourselves that we would be able to see better if there was more light.

We then went to the store and bought ice cream and went back to John and Becky's house. When Mom and Becky got home from the RS broadcast, we had ice cream and magic shell. It was quite tasty.

How does a one year old chug ice cream?

We had a big family dinner at Grandma and Grandpa Blank's house Sunday evening. There were lots of incredibly good foods, including two kinds of homemade ice cream. The ice cream batches were large to have enough for everyone and the ice cream was somewhat runny but tasted really really good.

Lucas had a glass of the runny ice cream. He liked it so much that he chugged almost half of the glass without breathing.
Some of the ice cream did not go all of the way in his mouth.

Oh oh, I think he has a brain freeze.

Some of it got on the shirt. Oh well, Mom will wash it.

I need more, how does this scooper thing work.

It still looks empty.

I'll just have to lick the scooper.

Our New Old House

With help from friends and family, Mom has don an amazing job of transforming our old house in St. Louis to an amazing looking new house. It is now listed on the Coldwell Banker website. There are lots of photos showing almost every room inside and many views of the outside of the house. Cick on "More Images" to see all of the photos. When I saw the website, I thought "This looks great. I could live in a house like that." Hopefully, someone looking for a new house in north St. Louis county will also be impressed and want to buy it.

Elder Crapo at Pohnpei Zone Conference

In the links on the left is a link to Joseph's mission blog Micronisia Guam Mission. In the last entry, there are photos of the various zone conferences. Many of you have already seen the photo of Joseph at his zone conference, but for those that have not looked at it, I am putting it in here.

Joseph is behind the mission President on the left. I noticed that in most of the zone conferences that there were one or two senior couples. Mom and I could enjoy doing that in a few years.

Road Trip with the Rocket Dog

After more than two months of no blog entry, I am finally posting my most recent adventure. Since most of the people that read this blog already know that I have decided to leave Emerson and work for NovaTorque in Sunnyvale CA, I will relate the adventure in getting to California.

Due to an annoying law in California, our scooter cannot be registered in California unless it has 7500 miles on it. At 35 mph, that is a lot of riding, so our scooter will need to live in Utah instead of California for quite a while. The best way to get Rocky to California was to bring him in the back of the pickup truck when I made my initial trip.

I bought a kennel for Rocky to ride in. He did not like it at all at first. I tried to get him used to it by throwing a ball into the kennel and have him retrieve it. He was still pretty nervous about it. I put a towel in the kennel and I think that masked the plastic smell enough that he would go in on Monday morning. I left the baseball with him.

The scooter, Rocky and I left early Monday morning headed for Utah. I stopped frequently to give him water. This is a stop we made somewhere in the middle of Kansas.

When we stopped at a gas station, a lady came up and started talking to Rocky about how he was a good boy to ride in a kennel. She explained to Rocky how that was the safest way for him to travel. I am pretty certain that Rocky did not understand anything that she said except that he was happy to have someone talk to him.

We dropped the scooter off with Sarah and Nate and then went on to Pleasant Grove. We were both happy to get to Julie and Christian’s home. Rocky got to get out of the kennel and I got to get some wonderful sleep.

Julie fixed omelets for breakfast. This is what mine looked like.

After throwing the ball for Rocky and letting him run a bit, Christian and I got Rocky back in the kennel for the trip to California. We arrived at John and Becky’s house at about 10:30 Tuesday night. Rocky was happy to have the back yard to run around in.

Rocky was happy to meet Bubba, but Bubba had some reservations. Becky took some photos and posted on the California Crapos Blog.

The new job is going well but has been very hectic. There are several things at work that they wanted to get input from the new VP of engineering on so the first three days have been pretty packed with getting up to speed on everything so I can be productive and helpful. I believe I have already made significant contribution in the first three days.

Mom will be leaving St. Louis on Wednesday night or Thursday morning and will drive to Utah to spend a few days. I will fly to Utah Saturday morning and then drive back to San Jose with Mom. I am looking forward to seeing Mom again.

Geocaching in Illinois

A couple of weeks ago, I took the scooter in for its first service. While I was waiting, I went to look for a few geocaches in Illinois nearby. The photos in this blog entry were all taken with the camera in my cell phone so they are not very high resolution. About 0.2 miles south of the bike shop that servicing the scooter is a confluence observation tower. This tower is about a half of a mile from the Illinois side of the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. There is supposed to be a great view from the top. The cost is $4 to go up the tower. There is an elevator that you get to ride.

The bike shop is to the left of the tower in the photo above. There are supposed to three geocaches very close to this tower. I could not find the one that is supposed to be between the tower and the bike shop. There is one close to where I took the photo, but it is on a structure that was surrounded by mud and water about knee deep. I chose to save this for a dryer time. There has been a lot of rain and flooding in the last few weeks. There are more examples of that to come. The next geocache I came to was supposed to be about 10 feet into the woods, but the poison ivy was so thick I decided that January would be a better time for that one.

I next went north to the Melvin Price lock and dam. There were a few geocaches there. I found 2 of the 3 that were close by that I looked for. The one I did not find was called “Headwaters” The clue was “Warning, You might get wet”. This is where it is supposed to be.
At first I thought that they did not really expect people to go into the falls and get wet finding the cache, but then I saw the sign.
I thought this one would be better another time when I was dressed for getting wet.

There is supposed to be a geocache within about 30 feet of John’s eagle project but I could not find that one either.

There was also supposed to be another one less than a mile from John’s eagle project near Ellis Island. There was no statue visible on this Ellis Island. I only saw birds. I also did not find the geocache. On my way back I saw some interesting views of the flooding. I wonder if the water is affecting the transformer in this photo. It looks like this land/marsh/lake is for sale. If the water drops just a little more, the phone number will be fully visible for those interested.

I ended up finding 4 of the 10 geocaches I looked for. I got to walk several miles, getting some good exercise and I got to see some very interesting sights. Next time I go to these places, I should take some help to spot the hard to find caches.