2014 Fire Season

This is a video about the 2014 fire season that was made.  If you look closely around the 6 minute 35 second mark there might even be a picture of me giving a fire behavior forecast briefing on the Carlton Complex.  I was actually supposed to be interviewed for this video, I got called by somebody from our region office and asked if I would agree to be interviewed about the Carlton Complex and the fire behavior that occurred on it.  I said sure, but when we started talking about dates all the times they ran past me to come up and interview me were during the hiking trip with Dad and Michael and Jeremy, so I decided to go poke through the washes and the canyons of southern Utah instead.  Here's the link, hope everybody's doing well.  http://vimeo.com/111805663

Videos from Great Wolf Lodge

These are videos from the water park at Great Wolf Lodge in outside of Centralia, WA.  Check back later for videos from our adventures today, which will include more water slides I'm sure, as well as a ropes course, and some sort of obstacle course thing.  I think.  The videos were shot using a Sony action cam, which is a wearable camera, in this case worn attached to my head.
EDIT:  The video resolution is pretty crappy when you try to view the videos full screen.  Here's a link to our youtube channel where the resolution is better:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnqy1Zafmk2Lp1wRBYGxhlg/videos

The Shooting Challenge

Our friend Brian came to visit our friends Billy and Emily this weekend.  We did an army challenge on Saturday that was more fun than you legally should  be allowed to have.  Gun safety was used at all times, even when it looks like it wasn't. The boys came out too, but only did a couple challenges.

These are 3 of the enemies we were battling for the army challenge.  The 4th one wouldn't load for some reason, but it was a filthy communist.  The one above is a generic bad guy, a drug dealer below, and an alien below that.

The group getting ready for the challenge.

So challenge one was a pistol challenge, here's the link to the you tube video.  Ponder on Dylan's question at the end.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuow9xdsQ0c

The 2nd challenge was a sniper shoot off.  The targets are down in those smaller trees mid way up the slope in the back of the picture.  Simon did this challenge with us.  We were shooting a .22 with a scope.  The 3rd challenge was with a .22 with open sites and you had to shoot from cover (a tree), move to and shoot from cover again (another tree), move to short cover and shoot from one knee (another smaller tree), then the 4th shot was up to you to decide.  I didn't have the camera with me at the 3rd or 5th challenge, so no pictures from that.
The 4th (and absolute best) challenge was with an old Enfield .303 that I have that has a bayonet!  There were 4 bad guys to shoot, so for this challenge you got 3 bullets, then had to charge the last target and kill it with the bayonet.  Link here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4QXmNGMTjk   The boys did this challenge as well, with an empty gun.  Here's Dylan:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i55C6Hkq2uk  and Simon here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i55C6Hkq2uk

Sorry, the videos look kind of pixelated, I uploaded them to you tube from my iPad, and I don't think it loaded very well.

The 5th challenge was Billy, Brian, and I lined up with the targets in front of us and shooting them as fast as we could.  It was so fun we did it 3 times.  Once that was done Dylan was screaming that he couldn't feel his toes anymore and it looked like it was about to rain, so we headed back to the van.  We were on some property that Emily owns with her brother and sister, and it's adjacent to a state DOT gravel pit which is where we parked.  There was a pile of sand that was about 25-30 feet tall.  Simon climbed to the top of it and jumped off, then Emily did the same thing.  It looked like fun so I decided to throw caution to the wind and do it as well.  I jumped, landed about halfway down in the soft sand, immediately fell forward and landed on my chest, then slid the rest of the way to the bottom.  Emily said "We know what happens when Ben does things like this, why weren't we filming that!?"  I could feel I tweaked my back a little so I decided not to do it again.  Dylan got out of the van and decided to jump off, then Billy joined Emily, Simon, and Dylan in jumping off it.  It began to look like a 2nd jump would probably be more fun than the first one, so, again throwing caution (and good judgement) to the wind, I climbed up, got a good running start, and flew off the edge.  I leaned back this time so I wouldn't fall forward again, but unfortunately physics decided I wasn't leaning back far enough and I fell forward, face planting this time, my legs came up over my back and head, and I rolled the rest of the way to the bottom.  I had so much sand all over me that I could pull hand fulls out of my sweat shirt pockets.  It was in my hair, beard and everyplace else.  To quote Simon, "I have sand in places I didn't even know I had."  Unfortunately, I also tweaked my back so bad that I've been laid up on the couch or in my hammock all day, and I had to miss a deer roast at our friend David and Arwen's house. They've been wanting to roast something in the ground, and decided the deer they got would work, so David dug a pit, started a big fire in it, and when it cooked down to coals threw the deer in, after it was all wrapped up.  The boys decided to stay home as well, they had a couple of friends over that they were playing with.  Faith went and hopefully she brings me home some pit roasted deer.
I'm heading to Hood River, OR on Monday to a conference.  I did a big analysis on a project my forest is working on that shows if and how much money we would save on fire suppression costs by doing fuels reduction treatments, and I did a presentation to some folks on the forest on the results.  There was an ecologist at that presentation from the regional office, and after it was over he asked me to come down to a regional conference give that same presentation again.  I'm only the 2nd person in the nation to complete that type of analysis for the project, and I did it differently than the 1st person that did it. The regional ecologist told me he would like to see other forest with similar projects do the analysis the same way I did it, so that's pretty cool.  After that is over I drive home on Thursday, then Friday morning the family is heading to Portland for a long weekend to see my friend Mark and his wife and kids.  We're going to OMSI and the zoo for sure, and whatever else we have time for.  OMSI is the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, it's a pretty spectacular place.  We went to a Star Wars exhibit there about 8 years ago.  The exhibit this time is about what people from around the world eat.  There's also tons of activities for kids, like a robotics room and some other kid centric stuff.  That's about it, hope everybody's doing well!

Grand Coulee Dam and Steamboat Rock State Park

 The boys and I went on a little trip on Saturday.  Our original plan was to go Steamboat Rock State Park, but we decided to stop at the Grand Coulee Dam visitor center since we had never been there before.  There is enough concrete in the dam to make a sidewalk that goes around the world twice.

 They had a game sort of thing where you could fly a guy with a jet pack around the dam.

 This is the picture Simon took of me and Dylan.

 This is the picture Dylan took of me and Simon.

 After the dam we headed to Steamboat rock to have lunch before going hiking.

 The trail on the way up.

 Taking a break after the first steep pitch.

 Almost to the top, we hiked up that little valley.

At the top!

It was a really fun day, we went to Omak on the way home and got some pizza for dinner.  On Sunday I went skiing with my friends Billy and Emily to set up some game cameras to see if I could get some pictures of a fox.  I'd seen some tracks that I thought were fox tracks, but the wildlife biologist said there any foxes around Republic.  He gave me some game cameras to set up though.  We ended up ditching the skis about 1 mile in and hiking the rest of the way, but it was still a fun day.  That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.  Oh, I almost forgot, we saw a bigfoot on the way to Omak after leaving Steamboat Rock.  Here's a link to the video:  http://youtu.be/do1UFNKGdOU 

Dylan's new toy

Here's a link to a YouTube video of Dylan with his guitar.  We bought him some pickups that fit inside the sound hole of the guitar and plug into a small battery powered amp.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vcQrSoyhYE

This youtube link will take you to a video of Dylan playing guitar.  I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but a musician named Blake Noble came to Republic a couple of years ago and played at the brewery and he was spectacular.  We played some of his music at home and Dylan loved it.  He would sit and watch youtube videos of Blake playing for hours.  The brewery booked Blake to play again, and Emily knew that whenever you mentioned Blake's name, Dylan would say "Blake Noble?  I'm his biggest fan!".  So Emily asked Blake if he would consider hanging out with Dylan for a little while.  Blake agreed (we found out later he was a pre-school teacher and loves working with and spending time with kids), and spent about an hour and a half with Dylan, playing guitar, teaching him some things, and just talking.  It was pretty awesome, and Dylan's been practicing playing like Blake ever since.  The you tube link is the song Dylan wrote for Simon on his birthday.  On Valentines Day Blake invited us to a invitation only "secret session" show that he was playing at in Okanogan, about an hour and a half from Republic, so we went over to see him.  We showed him this video of Dylan and he was impressed, and said all sorts of nice things, that made Dylan grin from ear to ear when we told him.  You should really check out Blake's music, he's got a youtube page that has a bunch of excellent stuff on it.  A girl named Kate Lynn Logan was also playing at the show we went to.  I liked her quite a bit, but I'm not sure that Faith did.  I listened to some of her music online before we went to the show and I wasn't that impressed, but she was pretty good live.  Anyway, here's the link to Dylan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsvYO-5Kv8&feature=youtu.be  

Well, maybe you'll need to copy and paste it, it doesn't seem to be coming up as a link. Not much else has been going on, I've been skiing a bit with some friends and by myself.  My friend Landon and I went skiing on Saturday, we were doing an out and back trip on an 11 mile loop trail, though I think we ended up skiing around 8 miles.  As we were heading up we found a big open patch that led down to the lower loop of the trail, and decided to ski down it on the way back.  The trail we were on had a lot of up and down, and some kind of tight corners you had to make while going downhill, and I was doing pretty good at negotiating all the turns.  So good that I thought skiing down that opening we found wouldn't be a problem at all.  I got back to it and as I was waiting for Landon (he was skiing some new Altai Hok skis and they go a little slower on the down hill sections than my waxless skis) it was looking a lot more narrow and steep than it had when we first saw it.  Landon caught up a minute later as I was shifting water bottles to the inside of my pack so I wouldn't lose them and muttering to myself about how I wished I had a case for my glasses so I wouldn't lose them when I fell.  Landon said I wouldn't fall, just make wide, slow turns.  He graciously allowed me to go first, and as I skiied over to where I wanted to drop into the opening, I fell down.  Not a very promising start I thought, but I got up, pointed my skills downhill and took off.  I then realized that the opening was in fact much, much more narrow than it had originally appeared, I was going much faster than I wanted to be, and the wall of trees was rapidly approaching.  I shifted my weight on the skis and started to turn.  There was no way I was going to turn in time at the rate I was currently going, so I dropped into the turn a little more, then my brain reminded my body that I have no idea how to correctly turn on skis while hurtling down a steep slope, my body reminded my brain that my glasses were in the pocket of my sweater and would likely fall out if I wrecked, so my brain and body decided the best course of action was to lean way back to protect my glasses.  Then physics got involved and brought the whole thing a sliding, tumbling, snowy stop.  Luckily I still had my glasses in my pocket so I sat up and watched Landon go zooming by making a nice turn, then he went to turn the other way and he fell down too.  We proceeded down the hill taking turns falling down and narrowly avoiding running into trees.  It was a whole lot of fun.  We're going to go ski the whole loop next weekend and will probably do the same thing again.

Simon played basketball this winter.  He had practice a couple of times a week, then scrimmages on Saturdays.  For their last game they played at half time of the varsity girls highschool game, in front of all the people that came to watch the highschool game.  He said he was pretty nervous, but did great when they started playing, he even managed to get the ball and shoot at the basket, but he missed.  He had lots of fun.  For those of you that don't know our AWD van broke down about 2 months ago.  I was able to get it running again, then it died about 100 yards from the house.  I could never get it to start again, so I had it towed to the shop.  After it came back from the shop, costing significantly less money than I thought it would, we decided to buy a new to us car.  We ended up getting a 2002 Subaru Forester.  The day we got it Simon was in school and didn't know that the van was even fixed yet.  I went to pick him up from school in the new forester.  I met him at the front desk and as we walked outside I said that I had walked down to meet him, but I really didn't feel like walking home.  "It's OK Dad", he said, "It won't take us too long."  As we walked across the parking lot we were nearing the new Forester that Simon didn't know we now owned.  "That's a nice car" I said.  Simon agreed.  "Come over here for a minute," I said walking over to the passenger side of the car.  I looked around furtively, and asked Simon if he had ever stolen a car.  His eyes got a little bigger and he stammered "N-nn-no?"  I reached over and opened the passenger door.  "It's unlocked!" I whispered, "Get in!"  Simon's eyes got even bigger and he slowly sat down on the seat with his legs still outside the car.  "Dad, is this our car?" he asked.  "Get your feet inside!  No it's not our car."  I shut the door and ran over to the drivers side and got in.  "I found the keys laying on the ground."  I said.  I started it up and reversed quickly out of the parking spot.  "Dad, is this our car!?" Simon asked again with a hint of panic in his voice.  I threw the car into drive and hit the gas.  "No, it's not.  Pick that purse up off the floor and see if there's any money in it."  Simon picked up the purse and half yelled, "Dad, tell me the truth!  Is.  This.  Our.  Car?"  "No," I replied, "Now what's in that purse?"  Simon looked at the purse, then looked at me, then peered into the top of the purse.  "Dad, this is Mom's purse."  "It is?"  "Yes, it is."  "Oh," I said, "I guess we're not stealing this car then."  Simon thought it was pretty funny, and so did I.  Faith thought I probably destroyed 10 years of trust building with Simon, but I think she's wrong.  That's about it, hope everyone is doing well.

 We went and checked out a ghost town called Bodie this past weekend with Mary, Faith's mom.

It was pretty neat, I'd driven by it a lot, but had never stopped.  It's only a few buildings and a sign.  It was a gold mining town, and between 1911 and 1940 they mined 1.3 million dollars worth of gold.  The history of gold mining in Ferry County is pretty impressive, when the area was opened up to mining, something like 96% of all new mining patents that year were for Ferry County.  

The link below will take you to a you tube video, the video uploader on the blog kept giving a an error message.  It should be ready to view by late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.  Dylan and I made a catapult today.  The plans for it were to build a rather small catapult, that launched wadded up pieces of paper, but Dylan and I decided to "Go big or go home" and made a scaled up version that can launch a fist sized rock 20-30 feet..  Then we set up the playmobile castle they got for Christmas about 6 years ago and started the siege.  Dylan kept the catapult (it's name is Dragon Bolt,  by the way) a lot closer to the castle than it's maximum launching distance.  It was pretty awesome.  When Simon got home from school they continued the siege, then painted the catapult.  Hope everybody's doing well.

http://youtu.be/6cRA3ZQA9xY

 This is the awesome cake that Faith and her friend Shannon made for Dylan's birthday, it's a Skylanders cake, which is a game Dylan really likes.

 About a month ago Dylan said he wanted a surprise party for his birthday.  His party was on Saturday, so we sent him over to his friend Blake's house for the afternoon and got all set up, then waited for him to get home so we could all jump out and yell "Surprise!".  It was really loud, I guess.

 Dylan hugged every present he got.

 All the kids kept edging closer and closer to Dylan as he was opening presents and he kept getting pushed back into the corner.

 Here's Dylan and Mckinley blowing out his candle.  She offered her help without even being asked.

 The picture above is a cake our friend Arwen made for a themed dinner thing we did a year or two ago, I just found it on my camera and thought I'd show it off.  It's supposed to look like a horse heart.  It did not taste very good at all, I don't think anybody there finished their piece of it.

 This is my wall tent that has been at my friend Mark's house in Portland since we moved to Republic.  I went down and got it this summer for a guy on the fire crew to live in on some property he had bought.  We got it back at the end of the summer and went camping on Halloween.  I had to camp out for work, and Faith and the boys signed up as volunteers so they could come with me and ride in a work truck.  I was unsure if the boys would be willing to miss trick or treating to go camping, and when I asked them if they would rather go trick or treating or camping Simon yelled "I don't care, cancel Halloween, we're going camping!".  The reason I had to camp out for work is this:

 The Capitol Christmas Tree came from the Colville National Forest this year.  The Capitol Christmas tree goes on the lawn of the capitol building, not the white house.  We found out in April of 2012 that we had been chosen for this "honor".  We had to find a few candidate trees, as well as arrange for 80 companion trees, and coordinate the making of something like 8,000 ornaments.  Candidate trees were selected by forest service employees, we were supposed to look for them while we were out working.  Then the head groundskeeper for the capitol building came out and made the final selection, which was on the Newport Ranger District.  The tree was an 88 foot tall spruce.  The forest decided to put together a small incident management team to manage the whole operation of getting the area set up for the cutting ceremony, cutting the tree down, getting it loaded on the truck, and transported down to Newport, WA.  In typical government fashion, they selected a guy named Brian to be the incident commander, then never told him.  I heard about Brian being the IC in early September.  Near the end of September, at least 3 weeks since I had heard that Brian would be the IC, my phone at work rang and it was Brian.  He said "I'm not sure if you heard but they're setting up a team to manage the christmas tree ceremony, and I was told this morning that I was the IC."  I stopped him and told him I had heard he was going to be the IC 3 weeks earlier.  He was a little frustrated, because the government shutdown rumors were flying at the time, and there was only about a month until the cutting ceremony, and a lot of work to be done to get ready for it.  Anyway, he asked me to be the operations section chief for the team, which meant I was in charge of getting the tree cut, put on the truck, secured to the truck, and transported down to Newport.  I agreed and after a few meetings we decided that it would be best if I camped out at the tree site the night before the cutting ceremony.  The tree is about a 3 hour drive from Republic and I had to be at the site the day before the tree was cut to get the cranes placed, go over how to cut the tree with the sawyers, make sure the climber and the crane company agreed on how to get the tree rigged, and make sure everything was ready to go.  We got through that day, then I was working the next morning by 0630 finishing getting stuff ready.

 The three folks in the picture above are Jim, who climbed the tree to set the rigging for the crane; John, who made the face cut on the tree; and Adam, who did the final cut on the tree.  Everybody that was interested in cutting the tree that was a C-sawyer (the highest level of sawyers in the Forest Service) had their name put in a hat and John and Adam were selected.  I'm the one who certifies the C sawyers on the forest, so I was assigned to make sure the guys knew how to cut a tree suspended from crane, and be the back up if necessary.  None of us had ever cut a tree suspended from a crane before, so we kind of made it up as we went along, with some help from the crane company.  The top of the tree was hooked to the crane, and once Adam cut it off the stump a second crane was hooked up near the bottom of the tree, that's the yellow crane in the picture above.  It was then laid flat suspended about 20 feet above the ground and the truck backed in underneath it.

 When the team we had set up first got involved the forest was planning on there being around 50 people in attendance at the cutting ceremony.  Brian and I spent a lot of time convincing them that there would be way more than 50 people.  They somewhat reluctantly agreed to let us plan for more than 200 people, but I don't think they believed that there would be that many.  It ended up being just over 300 people that showed up.

 Here's the tree laying on the truck.  It rested on 8 cradles on the bed of the truck.  Once it was laid down the branches were all dragging on the ground and we had to get them all tied off so they wouldn't drag.

Here's the truck, donated by Mack Trucks to transport the tree to Washington.  The truck was so long it couldn't make it around all the corners to get down the dirt road to the highway, so we had a front end loader hook onto the back of the trailer and lift the rear wheels off the ground and move the trailer around the sharp corners.  It took 2.5 hours to make it 25 miles into Newport.  Once the tree got to Newport it got all packaged up so it fit on the trailer, then it headed for the Capitol.  It's making a bunch of stops on the way, right now they're in San Antonio I think.  I was going to sign up to travel with the tree, but then I found out it's a 5 week long road trip and I decided not to sign up.    Overall it was a pretty neat experience, and the boys really enjoyed seeing the whole thing, but I sure don't want to do it again.

The Pain Gain

 The boys and I went backpacking for the first time on Friday.  The GPS program on my computer said the trail was 2.3 miles long, Google Earth said it was 2.8.  My gps track after we got there said it was 3.5 miles. However long it was to get in there, it took us 4.5 hours to hike in.  We stopped for breaks.  A lot.  But it was a nice hike along a ridge to a place called Emerald Lake.  We got in and found the huge rock pictured above, the boys spent most of the time lifting rocks onto the top of the big rock and throwing them in.  If you click on the picture to make it bigger you can see a fire ring out in the middle of the lake.  Apparently it dries up in late summer.  We got to the lake and started to set up camp, but it was bloody hot, so we decided to go swimming instead.  The lake is mostly snow melt, so it was super cold.  We swam for a few minutes, then decided to get out.  I walked back up to camp barefoot and was getting dressed when I noticed blood all over the place where I had been walking.  I then was lucky enough to discover a gash in my foot about 2 inches long and 1/4 in deep.  Simon (who was very eager to help and very concerned) and I got it cleaned up and mostly held shut with a couple of bandaids (the butterfly bandages wouldn't stick on my foot for some reason). After the emergency room trip today, I discovered that if you come in more than 8 hours after getting a laceration, they won't give you stitches because bacteria has likely established and would have a greater chance of causing an infection.  So, steri-strips and a huge bandaid are in my future for the next few weeks.   Cue the next picture.

 After assisting with first aid, Simon crawled up on the rock and fell asleep.

 We brought hammocks and tarps in to sleep in.  The blue hammock is mine.  It took 100 feet of parachute cord to string up the tarps into a semblance of shelter when it looked like it would start raining.  I was initially planning on using the p-cord to make a bear hang for the food, but shelter seemed more important at the time.  I ended walking a few hundred yards from camp and sticking the food bag way up in the branches of a tree.  We all went to sleep and I was awoken in the middle of the night by a strange noise.  As I lay there listening for any follow up weird noises I heard what sounded like something splashing in the water at the edge of the lake.  Then I heard a bunch of really strange noises that in the dark that at 1 in the morning I was sure was a bear snuffling around the camp. Turns out it was Dylan snoring and clicking his teeth together in his sleep.  As I replayed the noise in my head I thought it sounded like a tree cracking, whooshing as it fell over, then hitting the lake.  Thinking that was unlikely, I stayed awake straining my ears for the sound of a bear getting ready to tear us apart.  I finally fell asleep again, and woke with the sunrise around 4.  I got up and decided to walk along the shore of the lake to see if I could figure out  what the noise was.  Turned out my first guess was right, a big dead tree had tipped over in the middle of the night and fallen into the lake, the splashing I heard at the shore was branches that had broken off bumping against the rocks at the edge.  Crisis narrowly averted.

 Here's Dylan asleep in the morning.

Simon won the award for the best camp this weekend.  He had the only open spot that allowed the tarp to be set up properly.  We started hiking out at about 9, and started up a series of switch backs out of the canyon the lake was in.  We stopped to take a break (one of several) and I was standing talking to the boys and looking up the hill.  I saw a band of cliffs that we had hiked along the base of on the way in, and it looked like I could almost throw a rock and hit them.  I convinced the boys to take a short cut, and we ended climbing 100 feet in elevation over about 300 feet distance (it had been raining and there were some tense moments on a fairly steep rock face), but we ended cutting over a 1/2 mile off the return trip.  After many breaks we ended up getting back to the car at about 1 pm.  Both kids promptly fell asleep as soon as the van was moving.  It was a great backpacking trip.  Dylan is a little power hiker, he didn't want to stop at all on the way in, while Simon needed a break every 10 minutes.  On the way out they switched roles, with Simon charging down the trail and Dylan needing a break every 10 minutes.  It was a lot of fun though, and while Simon is voting for car camping on the next trip, Dylan wants to go backpacking again next weekend.  I may have created a monster, but that's OK, monsters are cool.

Edit:  The boys named the hike the Pain Gain, after Dylan fell down a couple times on the way in and skinned his knee, I gashed my foot, and Simon convinced himself he had gotten poison ivy while standing the midst of a thimbleberry patch.

If you want to see one of the coolest things that has ever been done, you should google "Chris Hadfield Space Oddity" and watch the awesomeness that the you tube video brings you.  Chris Hadfield was the commander of the International Space Station for the past 5 months, and he did all sorts of great web demonstrations of different experiments on the space station, capping it all off with what you should be watching right now instead of reading this. 

 

Simon and I spent the day hiking and geocaching a couple weeks ago, all these pictures are from that day.  We're still waiting for winter to be over up here, there's still a couple feet of snow once you get up out of the valleys.  Not much else has been going on.  At least there's picutres this time though.  Oh, and if any of you were wondering, yes, I can in fact break into a house with a swiss army knife and a fencing stake thingy.
One of the girls that works on the district lives in the bunkhouse, and there were a bunch of students from WSU staying there this weekend, so Tena (the girl that works here) was given the option of staying in one of the rental houses that is currently empty until the WSU students left.  On Friday, my allergies were really bad and it kind of made me feel like crap, so I went to bed at around 9.  Faith was already asleep, and the boys were watching a movie downstairs.  I heard Oona start barking around 10, but I figured she was hearing the boys movie come up through the heat vents and I ignored here.  Then I heard her charge to front door barking like there was a crazed murderer hacking down the door with an axe, so I figured I better go investigate.  I crept down the hallway thinking about what I can grab as a weapon (the keys to the gun safe weren't in my room at the time, which is probably a good thing).  I peer around the corner into the living room, and I can see out the front window someone is walking away from the house.  It's dark outside and I can't tell who it is, but I see them turn the corner and start walking down the hill.  I run over to the back door and look out the window there, and see the mysterious figure continue down the road towards the bunkhouse.  I figured it was a college student wandering around.  So, my adrenaline was up and I knew I wasn't going back to bed soon, and I thought I would watch TV for a bit.  I turned on the TV and went into the kitchen to look for some allergy medicine and fill my water bottle.  One of the cats was following me around trying to trip me, so I walked over to the front door to let him out.  I opened the door while I was looking back towards the cat, and when I looked back toward the door there was the mysterious figure standing on my doorstep, with a clenched fist menacingly descending toward me!  I had a full stainless steel water bottle in my hand and my initial thought was to smash in my opponents face before they punched me.  My second thought (as the water bottle was starting to rush forward) was "Hey, that's Tena".  So I stopped the water bottle from smashing her nose, and she stopped trying to knock on my door, as it was already open before she could knock.  (As a side note, I'm always curious about fight or flight responses in those kind of situations, apparently mine was fight that time.)  Anyway, I asked her what the hell she was doing wandering around my house in the dark, and she informed me she had locked herself out of the house she was staying in.  I told her we'd go find some keys in the office, but the lady that keeps all the keys in her desk also keeps the codes to nuclear missiles in there, judging by the complex iron bars, loops, and padlocks securely keeping the world safe from spare bunkhouse keys and errant nuclear weapons.  So we left the office and started walking down the hill to the houses.  Tena asked what we were going to do, and I informed her we were going to go break into a house.  I inspected the door, asking Tena if she had opened any windows, searched usual places for a spare key, and how hard it was turn the deadbolt mechanism.  No windows had been opened, there was no spare key, and the deadbolt was easy to turn.  Now this door appears to have been built sometime in the late 1800s, with an old style keyhole you could see through, and a deadbolt kind of thing, that you have to turn up to get out of the house, and flips back down on its own unless you hit a little button to keep it up, which Tena had not.  So, after my inspection of the home's defenses were complete, we walked over to the fire cache and searched through the fencing supplies until I found a stake that could be bent with a little effort, and generally hold its shape after that.  We walked back to the house and I tried to insert the stake into the key hole and reach the deadbolt, but the doorknob was in the way.  So using my swiss army knife (that I got as an award at work about 2 weeks ago) I took the outer doorknob plate off, and was able to take the doorknob apart and poke the other half of the doorknob through into the house.  Then I used the bent stake shoved in through the door knob hole to push the deadbolt up and get the door open.  Tena was suitably impressed with my breaking and entering skills, then noted "Ben I watched you look at this door, come up with a plan, and break into a house in less than 15 minutes.  Have you done this before?"  I assured her I had not, then put the door back together with only part left over.  It all seemed to close, open, and lock just fine, and since the left over part looked like a 22 bullet I figured it wasn't necessary.  That's my Friday night adventure.  We're going over to our friend David and Arwen's house in a little bit to burn down a green house and cook dinner in dutch ovens.  The green house was demolished by a tree during the windstorm last summer.  That's about it, hope everybody's doing well.