58. Visit Judson college

As you saw in the last post, I made it out to Judson College last week. I had initially planned for this to be with Melissa, and I am sure I will make it back there with her sometime soon. Things have changed a lot there. Many things are still the same, but there were a few changes.This is Ben Calhoun and his daughter Eva. He lived a couple doors away from me our freshman year and we became good friends while in school. He set us up for dinner in the cafeteria. It was delicious!It was especially nice to be able to eat fresh fruit and multiple entrees. He is currently an admissions counselor and frontman for his band The Least of These. They are going to do great things!
This is a bad picture of Volkman Hall. This is where Melissa lived when we met. I lived here my last year on campus. Ben tells me it is now the home for the Chicago Bandits (Womens professional softball team) who play at Judson.

The Harm A. Weber Academic Center. I used to play intramural football where this building now sits. The grassland in front of it used to be a parking lot. It looks a whole lot different than when I was there.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any more pictures. While we were there for awhile, we were pretty tired and not up for too much of an elaborate tour. It was nice to be there and I look forward to my next visit.

73. Canoeing the Fox River

We made it! The trip is done. Just under 100 miles. Three nights under the moon, and a bunch of memories. We started out on the Fox River in Waterford, WI and made it all the way down to Aurora, IL. It was a good trip. It was nice to have time to hang out with the guys on the trip. We'll all remember it for one reason or another. Here are some pictures from the trip:



The trip started with a 4:00 am wake-up to be able to make it up to Wisconsin at a decent time in the morning. We were very fortunate to have my Dad drive us up. The trip couldn't have been done without him.


We were only on the highway for 5 minutes and one of the ropes broke. Not a good start! It took a few minutes to get things figured out, but it ended up fine.

The starting group. Rob, Matt, Mike and Me.Matt and Rob crossing the Wisconsin/Illinois state line.

Our master chef Mike at our first camping spot. It was a little trail just off the river. There were some creepy fishermen there, but they went away soon enough and we had no trouble with anyone in this spot.

Here we are going through the McHenry Dam. This was a fun experience. Not too eventful, all we did is wait for the lock operator to let us come in, grab a rope, then wait for the water level to lower so we could pass through. It wasn't a huge lock, we had both canoes in there. I'm glad there weren't any other boats with us inside there. There was plenty of space, but I wouldn't want to compete with another boat in there.Camp spot #2. We talked with one of the park rangers here. They said we couldn't camp there, but we had no other options. We found a spot that looked comfy and out of the way. We had no issues and had a nice area to camp for the evening. Mike made a nice cheezy tuna pasta dinner for us.


Matt and Rob paddling up Tyler Creek at Judson College in Elgin.


Here I am in the cafeteria at Judson with my friend Ben Calhoun. He treated us to dinner. It was nice to catch up with Ben to see what new and exciting were happening at Judson.
Camping spot #3. This spot was nice. It backed up to the creek and was out of the way from everything. It was nice to hear the water rushing and to hear the fish jumping in the creek. A natural sound machine!
Here we are in downtown St. Charles. This was an interesting portage. There was some sort of festival which brought in a lot of people. There were many people interested to see us carry the canoes and hoping that after re-entry to the water that we would tip. I'm happy to say we disappointed them on that one.Ryan, John and me at the Batavia portage. This one was really easy as we just walked it down the rocks.

Ryan and Matt at Red Oak Nature Center in North Aurora. Ryan is doing his best Forest Gump impression.

Overall it was a good trip, many miles, a bunch of portages, no injuries and many memories. Thanks guys for trekking along!

#37 Obama, From Promise to Power

I FINALLY finished up one of Obama's biographies! I had to renew it twice at the library. It took forever to finish. It's 387 pages, but really, I wasn't the most dedicated reader for this one. It was not because of the content, but rather, I had so many other things going on that I thought were far more important to do than read a book. I knew when I was writing my goals back in August that one of my biographies would be our next president. I'm glad I read it. The book was written by a journalist from The Chicago Tribune. He followed him from his first election the state senate races all the way to the big time. I got to learn about our leader and get a feel for what his life was like from when he was growing up all the way to his announcement as a presidential candidate. I liked learning about the family dynamics that he had growing up, and getting to know about his schooling. It also gave an idea for what things he did as a community organizer and things he did with his law degree before entering politics. I will be honest, it wasn't much, but he made a name for himself as he did it. He is the 'golden boy' of America. He can't do wrong. It talked about how he was treated that way well before running for president, and I have to say, it is still going on. I'm interested to see how long it lasts. We'll see.

It was a good book, but also lengthy. I'm glad I read it. I don't know what my next book is going to be. I'll keep you posted!

3 more to go

Three movies to go before I will be done with goal 81. See all of the Oscar winning best picture movies from my lifetime. I started the movie Chicago yesterday. I own the movie Silence of the Lambs(yes mom, I own it), and I have the movie The Last Emperor on hold at the library. I'm guessing at the pace I have been going, this one will be done sometime by the middle of next week. It's been awhile since I have checked one off, so I'm excited that I will be able to get it done.

By the way Million Dollar Baby was a pretty good movie. Just in case you cared.

78. Ride my bike to work ten times

It has begun. The weather is finally nice enough to get out and ride. I rode my bike to school on Friday last week. I had some motivation in that I had to drop the van off at the mechanic in the morning. I figured that rather than inconvenience people to pick me up, I would just throw my bike in the back and use that to get me to school. It worked perfectly. (Well, the plan did, my bike needs a few adjustments in the gears. Hopefully I will get that figured out soon.) It felt good to have a nice morning and afternoon workout on the bike. This is a goal that is definitely achievable by the end of this school year. I am going to have to pick my days wisely, but I think it will be done by the first week of June.

61. Visit Every Park in Aurora

Yesterday was beautiful! It was the first weekend day that we couldn't miss being outside for. Melissa and I took the girls to Phillip's Park. It is a great place for any family to go on a nice weekend. It has a great playground and a zoo that is free to visit. We finished it off with a nice lunch under the pavilion. It was a good afternoon. Here are a few photos from our trip.

Madeline didn't like the swings. She was very quick to say, "All Dumb" (All Done) when she started swinging.

The peacocks had their feathers up. It was really cool.
This is in the reptile house at Phillip's Park. I had never been in there. It was really neat in there. I want to check it out next time we go there.

One park down. There's probably only one more that I would go to with the family. After that (or maybe before), Matt and I are planning a bike tour of Aurora to visit the rest of them.

12. Run a 5K in under 20:30 minutes

This is an ambitious goal I took on. Last weekend my brother and I headed down to Champaign, IL to run a couple of races. Matt ran a marathon (7th in 7 months) and I took it easy with a 5K. Matt and I had run a marathon just two weeks earlier so I thought it might not be the best idea to run another marathon in such a short time. Matt has been on a mission so he went forward and ran 26.2 miles again. I took on the goal of 20:30 for the 5K because I knew it would be quite the accomplishment. That is the point of this undertaking, when I wrote my goals, it was comprised of things that I knew I would want to accomplish and wanted to be proud of after completing. This is one of the goals that I knew would be tough and knew would require dedication to complete. This weekend showed that I would truly need to keep training to get the time I need to successfully fulfill this goal.
The race started out good. I was in the front of the pack and didn't have anyone ahead of me to get in my way. This proved to be a good strategy because there were not many people that passed me and the whole time I didn't have to worry about maneuvering around other people. During the race, there were many times that I wanted to stop running and stop pushing, but I knew I needed to do my best. My best for that race was 22:22. Yep, I have a long way to go in order to get the goal of 20:30. I have been running marathon speed (slow) for quite awhile, so I now have to work to be able to get my speed up. I've got 7 weeks until the next 5K. I don't know if I will be able to get in shape by then, but I'm going to do my best to get it done.
By the way, the picture was taken hours after I had finished my race. I didn't run the race in jeans, Matt helped me sneak down on the field with him when he was done to get the picture.