The right reason for hunting...

I've been asked many times now: "Jake, why do you hunt?"

The answer? Because nature is a beautiful thing and everyone should take time to truly appreciate it.

No, I'm not some hippy who follows a vegan diet and says that we are robbing resources from our great great great great greatgreatgreatgreat granchildren.

One of the great things about hunting is that you get to enjoy meat that you normally wouldn't dine on. But if that was the only reason for hunting, why go through all the trouble of scouting and setting up and sitting for hours on end when you could simply find a quality butcher shop and buy whatever you desire? The actual harvest of game is only the tip of the iceberg. There's so much more.

Hunters are not killers. People who shoot game and thoroughly enjoy the actual killing of the animal need help and should be committed immediately. While I personally don't take issue with pulling the trigger and ending another animals life, I don't take unnecessary satisfaction in it. It is what happens doing what I do, nothing more to me. I take time to appreciate the animal I took and, in a nonreligious way, give thanks of sorts to it for providing a good meal.

So why hunt then? Why not just go and buy that meat like I mentioned above?

Because like I said above, nature is beautiful.

I am a member of Ducks Unlimited. As such, one of the perks of membership is a every other month delivery of their magazine. One of their columnists, E. Donnall Thomas Jr., is probably one of my favorite columnists of all time. He has lived an obviously storied life and has seemingly lived and hunted everywhere in this great country of ours. A while ago he wrote a column about "Goose Day". This is not a day that is recognized on the same day each year. It is merely a day that a few are lucky enough to witness each year. Goose Day is the day that all the geese in your area seem to take off for the migration, and the sky is filled with literally thousands of birds moving. I was fortunate one year to actually be out at the duck swamp when this happened. I heard them first, and then over the tree line came "V" upon "V" of migrating geese. For about 25 minutes, the sky was alive with the sounds of honking and vibrations of huge wings flapping in earnest for the South. It was truly a spectacle. Beautiful in it's own way.

That's what hunting is about. Getting away. Plopping yourself in the middle of nature and watching how the world works without cell phones, computers, traffic, or social networks.

However you do it, whether it be watching an early morning sunrise from the deer stand, walking through the forest on your favorite grouse trail, or being fortunate to be out at the edge of the pond during "Goose Day", hunting is merely a vessel for doing what everyone should do from time to time:

Slow down, and get away for a little bit.

Good start...

Two weekends ago the duck hunting season got underway.

YIPEEEEE!!!

I'll calm down in a second.

Ok I'm good.

Nope, too excited to type again.

Ok now I'm good.

Anyhow, I ventured on up North to the Hackensack MN area where a good friend of mine works at a nature center. He recently moved into a palace of a place smack in the middle of nowhere and invited me and another friend on up for a weekend of bird hunting. We would pursue grouse in the woods and ducks from the waters. I requested time off from my household duties as follows:

Jake: "I'm going hunting with some of the boys this weekend."

{points to calendar at dates in September with this being middle August}

Elli: {rolling eyes, sighs heavily} "Well are you actually gonna shoot something this time?"

Jake: {lips quivering, voice cracks} "Why you gotta cut so deep?"

The weekend finally came and the truck was loaded with excessive hunting paraphernalia, beer, junk food, soda pop (There! I pleased everyone with referring to POP with both the correct term and the hillbilly inbred reference), more beer, and headed up North.

Our plan was simple: We would hunt grouse during the day, and shoot ducks in the morning. Duck shooting ended at 4pm, so we would mostly go during the day. However one of the members of our gang didn't buy his duck stamps, so instead all of Saturday was devoted to grousing. We had good luck, in that we saw and heard plenty of birds. But Mother Nature has yet to signal to the trees to drop there leaves, and as such most of the cover was so dense that you couldn't see the other guy, decked out in blaze orange, more than 10 feet away from you. So we didn't get a whole lot of shooting but we did get a few shots off and I managed to pull a very lucky shot off and bag one bird.

Sunday after the one guy left, my friend KC and I loaded up the duck hunting gear and proceeded to canoe over to a river running off of a lake. KC knew there were ducks holding up in there, and as it was warm and bluebird skies, we both agreed setting up shop somewhere was gonna prove pointless as nothing was flying. This plan with the canoe allowed us to flush birds holding tight in the backwaters. It produced nicely:

There should be two more there (two more wood ducks) but we spent about 20 minutes on each of them looking for them where they dropped only to never find them. I truly hate leaving wounded birds but we literally scoured every inch of the area that they went down for about a 30 yard radius. One was probably my best shot of my career too. Such is hunting. On the plus side KC shot a wall quality wood duck:

KC's woodie. Ha, I couldn't resist!

It was a great way to kick off the season. And the above harvest was only in a little over 2.5 hours (that's including the 40 minutes or so looking for downed birds on top of retrieving all the other ones). Kind of a spoil type of day in that lots of rewards for little work. But we've all earned those from time to time right?

Happy hunting all!

Man down!! Call everyone!!!!

"Elli is gonna be really pissed when she gets the phone call that I'm in the ER."

"Oh man! Elli is gonna be REALLY pissed that they are gonna cut off my softball pants. These things weren't cheap."

The above were the first two thoughts that popped into my head when I was laying on the softball field with an injured knee

Back in July, I hurt my knee. Pretty bad actually. "Severe patellar dislocation of the left knee" was the official diagnosis. I've never done this before (to this magnitude) and I don't recommend you try it. It hurts. A lot. I don't want to do it again but thanks to the mechanism that is the human body, I've now increased my likelyhood of another dislocation by 50%.

"How'd you do that?" you may be wondering. Well no one knows for sure but there is a theory. I was playing first base in a softball game. The ball was hit to third somewhat slowly so it was going to be a close play. Knowing this, when the ball was thrown I stretched out to my absolute max. I'm 6'5" tall with a 36" inseam. It was an impressive stretch. However, with that long of a stretch, it puts tremendous pressure on the knee joint. So at full stretch, the doctor believes that my knee starting buckling inwards down towards the ground. At that point, all it takes is for your to engage your quad muscle, which I did to keep from falling over, and in doing that it will throw your knee cap out of the joint.

Look down at your left knee. Now imagine the kneecap over on the left side of said knee. That's where my kneecap ended up.

I buckled and went down in a heap. I'm pretty sure I cried out and swore very loudly. Play was halted and everyone rushed over. I wasn't exactly sure what happened myself but when I went to grab my knee it wasn't there anymore. I then felt the cap off to the side and that's when those two thoughts at the beginning of this post occurred.

Someones wife on the other team was a paramedic and knew enough to do two things. One, she shouted to everyone not to lift me or move my leg too much. And two, she called 911. As a tip to others, if you're around someone that dislocates their knee, and it's the first time they've done so, leave them the hell alone! Call the paramedics and let them bring them to an ER to have it set. There could be major damage with a first time dislocation.

Back to me. I managed to keep myself relatively calm. Others were surrounding me to block out the sun as it was one of those uber hot days and the temp was around 93 or so. They managed to get ice on my knee rather quickly and then we all just waited for the ambulance to show. Which it eventually did, however so did a fire truck and 2 sheriff deputies. Everyone must've been bored that night.

I was loaded up into the ambulance and away I went. I never noticed how many looping on and off ramps there were between that field in Arden Hills and St. Johns over in Maplewood, but that ride brought all of them to my attention. Any movement of my foot in either direction sent a whole lot of pain to my brain and I reacted with grimacing. After what seemed like hours, I was being wheeled into the ER bay.

It's a weird thing to look down at your leg and seeing only a quad with no knee attached to it. Other people must've thought the same thing because the looks I got from some of the non-medical staff as I was pushed by were one's of "My God! Did you see that?!"

Once situated in the room, I was hooked up to the heart monitor and blood pressure cuff. My heartrate was in the 90's and my BP was 160 or so over 83. It was safe to say I was having some pain. As the nurses recorded what they needed, I was chastised numerous times about playing softball "out in this heat."

Then the ER doc came on in. I don't remember his name but he's one of my favorite people in the world now. He was younger (I'd guess mid early to mid 40's) and was completely unfazed by what he saw. He had a constant smirk on his face the whole time I dealt with him. He explained to me what he was going to do, which was he needed to lift and straighten my leg and then the cap should just get pulled back into place by the quad tendon. "What if that doesn't happen?" I asked. He replied with, "Well let's just start with this and go from there."

He told me to try and relax, and once he started to straighten and lift my leg I was gearing up mentally for what surely would be a long and painful process. But as I was about to begin slowly exhaling in an attempt to deal with pain, I felt the kneecap pop back into place.

And I started laughing. The relief was exquisite.

He explained to me that next time I do it (NEXT TIME?!!--See above), that I can just do what he did and then follow up with my doctor the next day. Since he was done with his part, I thanked him profusely and away he went. The nursing aid came in and put my leg into a knee immobilizer and shortly after that my nurse came back in. She explained that the immobilizer would be on for one week continuously, even while sleeping, and the second week I could take it off only to sleep. She then offered me 800mg of Ibuprofen and 2 tabs of Vicodin. I honestly wasn't in that much pain anymore and asked if I could just take the Ibuprofen. She did a very noticeable twitch when I said that, and with shock in her voice stated that I could indeed just take the Ibuprofen. She then made the comment that no one ever turns down Vicodin in the ER. The Doctor even made a short reappearance after this to say the same thing. I guess I'm just weary of hardcore pain meds.

So I walked on out of the ER with cut up softball pants and a leg immobilizer on. I was inactive for a little over 3 weeks before I got back on my bike for very short rides. And then just this past Tuesday I made my comeback to the softball diamond. The knee is holding up well but I'm once again wearing a kneebrace on what was once my "good knee", the right one being the one I hurt years ago playing baseball.

Elli has pointed out that they have made great advances in knee replacement surgery. Thanks sweetie.

Greatest Moments (so far)...

A few weeks ago I was reading one of the few blogs I follow, Jill Outside. If you haven't ever checked it out or heard of it, you should visit it. Not only is she an amazing writer, but she takes awesome photos to go with the story. Plus she's lived in a few different places, does endurance events both on the bike and on the trails (and both summer and winter seasons for that matter), and seemingly has a never ending list of ideas to write about. When I was reading a few weeks ago, she was talking about her "Greatest Moments", things she has done that have defined her over the course of her life. I'm stealing that idea and presenting my list of great moments for your reading enjoyment. They are in no particular order.

1) Conquering the Philmont Trail

I have often credited my boy scout troop with shaping me into the person I am today. It helped me build up my confidence and taught me disciplines I would've never learned on my own. That being said, I'm not gonna particularly run out and sign Dav up for scouting. Our troop was very unique, and most of the ones today are, for lack of a better word, a bunch of sissies that only care about book work and merit badges. Anyhow, one of the trips our troop did was going down to a ranch in New Mexico named "Philmont Scout Ranch". Hundreds of thousands of acres set aside solely for scout troops to hike the backcountry. Many different routes existed, and we picked on of the daunting ones. 120 miles over 10 days including going up and over Bear Mountain with full packs. To a 15 year old, this is an extremely intimidating prospect. I'll write more about the Philmont trail at a later time, but we finished the trail and I still to this day think about some of the experiences I had on the Philmont Trail.

2) Becoming a Dad

When Elli told me she was pregnant with Daven, a flood of emotion and thoughts swept over me. I was intimidated with the thought, worried that I would fail expectations, yet overjoyed and thrilled to "test" myself with the ultimate litmus test. So far I think I'm doing alright, and wouldn't want the alternative (no kids) ever again.

3) Finishing the Horribly Hilly Hundreds

2007, 2008, and 2009 all resulted in failing as it pertains to finishing this beast of a ride. 125 miles with over 11,000 feet of elevation gain all in one day during the summer solstice is not many peoples idea of fun. Paying for this privilege seems even more insane. But after being disappointed for 3 years in a row, in 2010 I finally finished all 125 miles, and didn't put a foot down once while on the course. I repeated the same feat this year. Not only is this ride challenging physically, but it is one of the hardest things mentally to do. The long course has an estimated drop out rate of 2/3's of the field. Just finishing proves your worth in the cycling community.

4) Having the courage to move out to Montana and surviving the MT internship

Say what you want about what I do, but the internship sucks. You don't get paid for it, you're required to work a FT schedule, and along the way study, pay rent and other bills, pass quizzes, and then pass 2 bitch of tests. Elli and I both worked 7 days a week almost the entire 9 months we were out there. It was stressful, but a whole ton of fun. I would put in 4 10 hour days at the hospital, followed by 3 full days working as a liftie at the local ski resort, and then repeat it all come Monday. Just to add to the chaos, we adopted Bubba while we were out there, cause you know, we had about 10 minutes of free time for the week we needed to fill. And we didn't know where we were gonna live until the night before we left ND. We both loved MT, and if an opportunity would've arose for me to work out there, we'd probably still be out there.

5) Being the person I am today

With all that went on while I was growing up, my life could've gone a completely different path. I could've easily just went with the half assed approach, accepted things for what they were, and ended up on the other side of the spectrum. The fact that I didn't makes me proud of myself. And not just me, but my two sisters as well. All 3 of us are thriving. It is a testament to our character, and I'm also proud of them for getting to where they are as well.

There's so many more, and I could fill up this post with hours of talk. But these are kind of the ones that stick out when I think about it. It's been a hell of a ride, and I'm anxious to see what lies ahead.

1 part energy drink, 1 park toxic mold, all that adds up to rocket fuel!

Last weekend I rode the HHH for the 5th time, and completed it for the 2nd year in a row. I won't bore you with the details since they are similar to before. The main differences are that I beat last years time by 21 seconds, and that Ian stayed at my snails pace for the whole time, sacrificing what would've been a much faster ride time for himself. His company was appreciated, and I owe this finish to having someone else to ride with. Our support crew was great as always, and it was probably the most fun out of the 5 rides. More than likely I will now take a year or two off from this ride, and we are thinking of taking our talents out West for one of the rides in the mountains. But undoubtedly, I will be back in Southern Wisconsin soon enough.

As long as I got the ball rolling on cycling, let's run with that theme today. Specifically, water bottles. Behold a common example:

The example here is a podium style water bottle. All that means is that instead of having to pull the nozzle up when you want a drink and then close it when you're done, the podium style has a valve in the nozzle. All you do is squeeze and water comes out of the one-way valve and then self seals when you are done. They are great and I highly recommend them (Note to any Camelbak employee reading this: I do accept freebies. Hit me up with an email. I promise to whore out any product lovingly!).

But these and the old school style water bottles have a supposed problem. Apparently, some people find it too hard to clean the nooks and crannies, and thus mold tends to become rampant within the bottle rendering it completely unfit for use. So much so, that a company has taken action to alleviate the burden of cleaning a water bottle thoroughly. I give you the bottle of the future:



This is known as the "Clean Bottle". See that blue piece at the bottom? That unscrews, thus giving you a easy access point at the bottom to wash out all that energy juice residue that is the harbinger of diseased spores.

"But wait a second Jake", you ask, "I've never seen these new revolutionary bottles at my LBS (Local Bike Shop for all the non-cyclist)."

True that. Because they are pointless.

Cleaning a water bottle properly is no harder than cleaning a glass you drink from every day. And if you have a dishwasher, you have no excuse whatsoever. I have cleaned bottles now literally hundreds of times and I have as of yet to have any mold show up. Even when my wife leaves her bottle in her bikes cage for days on end in our hot and stuffy garage, conditions that should breed mold at rabbit like capacity, not one single spore has successfully multiplied. Here now is my foolproof method of accomplishing this.

Step 1: Acquire dish soap. I recommend the yellow stuff, cause it always smells nice.

Readers who work for Dawn soap: See comment directed at Camelbak above, just change "Camelbak" to "Dawn".

One of the gripes I've heard is that people can't seem to find a good enough cleaning agent for use in their bottles. I see their point I guess. I mean after all, dish soap is so scarce to find. The only carriers of it are Target, KMart, Walmart, Walgreens, Snyders, CVS, Super America, BP, PDQ, Holiday Stations, Gander Mountain, Cabelas, Byerly's, Rainbow, Festival, Lunds, and maybe only about 214 other stores within 5 miles of a persons dwelling. But we mustn't judge right.

Step 2: Acquire hot water. May I suggest your tap in the kitchen:

Hey! I'm washing my kid there. Wait a second, where the hell did you find dish soap?!!

 Step 3 (apparently the tricky part so read carefully): Add just a few drops of dish soap to the culprit bottle. Fill about half to 3/4 full with hot water. Put cap on bottle, tighten, and shake vigorously. After 10 seconds or so of shaking, you may proceed to step 4.

Step 4: Unscrew cap, and rinse with warm water until all soap is gone. Once again, I recommend using the tap in your kitchen for the rinsing part:



Seriously. Where did you find the dish soap?

Step 5: Lay out a towel and place your bottle upside down onto it to drain water and dry out. Even better, if you have one of those fancy drying racks for bottle (whatever "cake-eater"), use that.

You'll be able to spot people that complain about cleaning out their bottles. They're the ones with velcro shoes ("laces are haaaarrrrd"), pants sagging down ("belts are hhaaaaaarrrrddd"), and constantly insist on using paper plates when they have you over ("I've looked everywhere for dish soap and have just given up").

But kudos to the folks who came up with the "Clean Bottle" and hope to capitalize on this niche of the population. Even the truly lazy should be allowed to ride hydrated right? 

New Baby+Going to Target=Hilarity!

Isn't it amazing how much brain power you lose when you have a newborn in the house?

Oh wait. I guess it isn't that amazing. Only getting 20 minute stretches of sleep for a few weeks does a number on oneself.

And with that lack of sleep and decreased brain power, simple sentences are hard to produce.

In the first week or so Hannah was born, I was summoned to run up and get some supplies for Elli as it pertains to nursing the little one. Now, I don't consider breast pads to be along the lines of other feminine products, however I still wasn't overly comfortable with purchasing them. Don't ask me why, it's just because. Anyhow, it was a chance to get out of the house, which anyone who's ever experienced the first few weeks of new babydom, you jump on an opportunity to leave your domicile. So I loaded up Dav and away we went to Target.

I figured the item I needed would be over with the rest of the baby supplies, so we made a line for that area. However, upon getting to that section we discovered that we went at the very time they were in the middle of completely redoing that area. So stuff was patchy on the shelves and what wasn't out yet was loaded into boxes. Not wanting to experience the uncomfortable and awkward encounter that would ensue from asking an associate where the breast pads are, I set upon hunting them down myself. However, after going up and down each aisle about 6 or 7 times, I broke down and decided I needed to bite the bullet and ask. I hunted down an employee, hoping that it wasn't some younger person. But the one I found was just as bad, an older woman happily stocking more bottles on the shelves. The following is the conversation that took place, with the italicised words indicating what my brain was yelling at me while I was stammering on:

Jake: "Can I ask you for some help?"

Sales lady: "Of course, what can I help you find?"

Jake" I'm looking for..."

It is at this point my mind completely blanks out on the proper term for what I'm looking for. Not wanting to completely abandon ship and run away, I stagger on as best as I can:

Jake: "Ummm...I need, uh those things for Mom (Not YOUR mom dumbass! Dav and Hannah's mom!)...I mean, not MY mom! My daughters mom (but also Dav's mom! Make that point obvious so she doesn't think you sleep around with everything that walks and have dozens of illegitimate children), which is also {pointing at Dav} his Mom...

Sales Lady: {smiles somewhat hesitantly, probably wondering what drugs I'm on.}

Jake: "You know, those things that you put on for when {now makes universal va-va-voom gesture and quickly puts hands back down once he realizes he's gesturing boobs in front of an older lady stranger} you're feeding your baby (well she doesn't wear them while she's feeding them moron. How would the baby latch on with a pad in the way?)...I mean, not when she's feeding but when she's not..."

Sales Lady: {sensing great discomfort from me, puts hand on my shoulder and tries not to laugh too hard} "You mean breast pads. They're over here."

Brandon...

In my last post I described an incident that occurred when I ran to get some medicine to help Dav along with one of his ailments. For most people I know, this would've never happened to them, or it would've only been an isolated incident.

Sometimes it pays to live amongst the stupid.

As all kids do, Dav got sick quite a bit when he was first starting out with the whole daycare thing. As such, it seemed we were always dealing with something. Most of the time, our end tables looked kind of like this:

Once Dav's nose started running, it was going for the rest of the month, the next month, and basically lasted until August. Anyhow, it was no surprise that after he got over the illness that caused the incident I mentioned last time he came right back down with something else. So, I once again volunteered to run back up to the store for the goods. After all, something else couldn't go down could it?

(Chh chh chh, shh shh shh, ahh ahh ahh)

So I drive back up to the same store as last time. I park, get to the crosswalk, and make a mad dash for the door to get out of the cursed crosswalk as quick as possible. Once in the store, I get things going mind wise so as to not be caught off guard:

(Let's do this!)

It was a week night, and I took note that there wasn't many people to be had in the store. This time around though, I wasn't just there for the medicinal drink. I had some other items to get, so as I got into the front doors, I grabbed a shopping cart on the way by. I then set off to get the items quickly and efficiently.

All was going well. I was making my way through the rows, having most of the aisles to myself, quickly checking off the list as I got the appropriate item, and the anxiety level over last time was going down. So much so, that I didn't even take note of the loser making his way down the aisle in my direction. This isn't him, but it will give you an idea of what I saw:

(Pseudo "flock of seagulls" hair, Elton John'esque glasses, irrelevant finger point...yup, you're a tool.)

To complete the package, he had his wanna be arm candy, well, on his arm. He was doing that walk where as to say "Check me out and my lady on the arm. I am something." All the while said arm candy was yapping rather loudly on the phone. To give you an idea what she was like, I present this:

(I'm sexy in a way normal people don't understand.)

Anyway, I was paying them no mind. My shopping cart was all the way to the side of the aisle, and I was marveling at how many different choices one has now when attempting to conquer the spice rack. The couple approached and the spunky arm candy came off the arm, and proceeded to pass me first. She was uttering phrases such as "like" and "OMG!" quite frequently. Impressive since I eavesdropped on her conversation for about 4 seconds. But when poser made his way by, he made a point of deviating his line and running into my cart. I was flabbergasted. "Yet another incident is going down over a Pedialyte run?" I thought. But again, I'm not really that confrontational, but when dealing with the galactically stupid, I cannot let things slide. As I've told Elli numerous times, stupid people don't know they're stupid. It's up to people like me to inform them of their stupidness. As such, after the initial shock wore off I commenced to action with the following verbage:

"Easy friend, there's no fire here. No need to push."

At this point, Mr. "Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino is my hero!" turns and says, "Was up!"

(Seriously, what IS up?)

I don't think of myself as imposing, however I stand close to 6'5" tall. I'm not built like a brick shit house, but I've been told I have a presence. On this particular night, I had on my Carhart stocking hat, a flannel coat, and jeans along with boots. I was tired, probably not clean shaven, and when confronted by this sort of BS, I do get confrontational.

Testosterone both gets people hurt, and hurts people.

As such, I had a popular brand of Paprika in my hand. I let it fall from my hand into the cart, turned rather slowly in poser's direction, and stared at him with everything I had.

"Excuse me?", I bellowed.

At this point arm candy returns, still talking on her phone. She seems to take stock of the situation, and makes a move. Grabbing tool bag's arm, she very directly says to him:

"Brandon. Don't. He'll kill you."

And they retreated rather hastily around the corner and down the way. I chuckled to myself, pushed the cart to checkout, paid, and went home with another story to tell.

And to think, when I was a kid I thought the grocery store was boring.