Jonathan’s Mindless Blog

I was able to take a little vacation this summer to Colorado Springs, CO! It was on the heels of a company trip to Cisco Networkers in Anaheim, CA. I took a few more days and got to go see Tom & Corinna and Hollis and chill for a few days, then Tom & I went camping for a few days and did some really cool hiking from Farish Recreational area to Rampart Reservoir and another day to Stanley Reservoir. The area is beautiful and the weather was great. The temperatures were in the low 80’s(F) humidity was very low, and the sun was out almost the entire time; at night it was cool enough that a fire was a very welcome thing. We were hiking at an average elevation of about 8600 feet, and I really didn’t have a problem with it, even on the day we did over 10 miles! I was pretty happy with that considering my recent illness. Now I’m back in town and super busy getting ready for lots of change! I was able to get some awesome pictures of Pike’s Peak on the last day we were camping; it was morning and the clouds had cleared just for me! Hopefully after next Thursday I’ll have more big news… how’s that for a teaser?

On Thanksgiving day a friend of mine, Landon, and I left for Honduras, Central America to work on Mission Lazaro’s computers. It’s an organization that is church of Christ based and is an enabling agency for the local churches, helping them find pastors, administer programs and the like. They also run four schools, three that the government allows them to run and one that is just thiers. They have a farm where they have beef and milk cows, chickens, pigs, horses and turkeys. The milk from the farm allows the children in the school to each get a glass of milk each day and the chickens allow for a couple of eggs per studen per week. This is really needed nutrition in these areas where the school meal is usually the only meal these kids get for the day. The farm is becoming a childrens home as well, with the goal being to teach the orphaned/abandoned kids how to sustinance farm. Anyway, it’s a really cool organization.

On the trip down, we made it to Miami with no problem, but we got on the plane to depart from there and just sat there for quite a while. The captain came on and said that someone who checked their bags didn’t get on the plane, therefore their luggage had to be removed. This involved unloading almost all of the luggage looking for these 2 bags. After they found them, someone noticed a leak in one of the wings. After waiting 30 more minutes or so waiting for the maintenance crew to arrive, they told us it would take too long to fix, so they found another plane. We all piled back into the terminal to wait for another hour before boarding the new plane, then finally took off to Tegucigalpa, Honduras. One of the things we were a little worried about was getting through customs in Tegucigalpa, since we had a ton of computer equipment, like internal and external hard drives, a complete computer tower, routers and a really cool little Linksys device that is a network attached storage solution. Anyway, the customs line was long and slow and several of the folks in line were getting frustrated, so there was a guy came out from the back and looked at us and asked if we had our form, which wasn’t the one we had, so he just looked a little disgusted and told us to “pass”! No customs check for us! Chad was there waiting to pick us up and we went across the street and ate at the Burger King (yes, third world countries have fast food garbage too), and took off on the three hour drive to San Marcos de Colon, which thankfully was incident free. Friday we started in on all the machines and by Saturday evening, had the bulk of everything done with only a very few loose ends to finish up, which we took care of on Monday morning.

Sunday we went to the ranch/farm and saddled up and rode horses around a bit of the ranch where they had been clearing for planting. Clearing consisted of a bunch of guys with machetes cutting grass and scrub and piling it all up out of the way on the sides. No mechanical help, all manual labor. We got to see some of the new cows, pigs and turkeys on a new 100 acre farm that was just purchased on the back side of the property. They have also acquired a coffee plantation not far from the back side of the ranch where they have already been harvesting some beans. They have a contact in Houston, TX, who is going to let them try selling their stuff at a Publix grocery. After puttering around at the ranch we went to Jarrod’s house and ate a thanksgiving meal, then went to church. On the way to church we rode in a 12 passenger van with 17 people in it! I took some pictures of the kids outside after the service was over.

Monday morning we got up early and drove to another part on the back of the ranch where the Shine Missions group built two suspension bridges this past summer. The bridges allow the children to be able to cross the creek that becomes a river during the rainy season so they can go to school. Before, they just didn’t go because they couldn’t. On a different note, Honduras is the only place I’ve ever seen pine, mesquite and palm trees growing wild in the same field, totally weird.

The local food was awesome, just like I remember. The tortillas are all corn since there is no flour there, or very little. The tacos were quite different than what passes for tacos around here. They take steak and roll it in a tortilla, fry it, put it on a plate, then cover it with the sauce, cheese and lettuce. It’s really good, just not like here. One night I ordered a steak with onions, and when it came out it was a huge steak with what looked to be an entire onion piled on top that was still dripping butter from being sauted. Man it was some really good stuff.

Tuesday, we stopped by their offices on our way out of town and answered a few questions, bought some of the coffee from the plantation, and made the trek back to the big city. We stopped by a grocery store before we got to the airport and I bought six big bottles of clear vanilla for less than $1 each. Landon bought some cookies and crackers and soft drinks too. We made it home on time and with all of our stuff and I can confidently say we had a successful trip!

Pictures will be coming soon, I forgot to bring my card reader home with me this weekend, so hopefully by mid-week I’ll have some photos for everyone to be bored with

I have finished uploading all the pictures from the Colorado vacation.  The last set was from the Garden Of The Gods, an incredible park full of all sorts of weird rock formations.  Most of the rocks were really red due to their high content of iron oxide.  I was even able to get a tiny flower in a macro shot, fairly well focused without a tripod!  Here are the two of my favorites from the park:
 

This year’s first of two Fall vacations was taken to Colorado Springs, Colorado. My friends Tom & Corinna and their daughter, Hollis,
have moved from Anchorage, Alaska, to Colorado, and we were able to make it out to visit them for a long weekend. Tom is now stationed at the Air Force Academy, so we got to drive around base and take pictures and harass the overpopulation of white tail deer. We even got to see a coyote! While at the Academy, we went to the visitor’s center and watched a short film about the school, saw the building of the chapel, saw several other displays and bought trinkets. After that we went to the Chapel which was just weird. Really neat architecture, but all of the school buildings were very shiny metal finish, kind of cold in appearance. If I keep going into all this detail, I’ll never get through this thing, so on to the important stuff… I did not go by myself, I was able to go with Judith! She’s an absolutely wonderful lady that I love spending time with, and was lucky enough to convince her to go with me and we’re both glad we went! I also snuck some pictures of her in so I could show the world a beautiful lady.

She got to meet some of my close friends and we got to hang out and see a bunch of really cool stuff. After the Air Force Academy, we visited Garden of the Gods, just outside of town. It was very surreal, the rocks were very red and it seemed like they were turned 90 degrees from what they should have been, like all the strata was left to right instead of top to bottom. There was so much to see that day, there were mule deer, a homestead, awesome coffee, Pike’s Peak, Cripple Creek and just way too much to process in one day.

I’m done posting pictures for tonight, but there is one more group to come… Garden of the Gods pictures. Sometime this week I’ll get those posted. There are some really cool pictures in the group to come.

Well, it’s Labor Day and I didn’t do much of anything . It was a lazy good day with some hamburgers and hot dogs and my nieces were in town. It was Elizabeth’s birthday celebration today and I played the part of human jungle gym. It was a very nice day with sunshine, mild temperatures and a good breeze. I’m really wishing I hadn’t stayed in town, but since I did, I got some great pictures out of the 100 or so I took yesterday like this one: This is an excellent example of the local agrigulture and general culture mentioned in the previous post. This week will only be 4 days long and it’s payday on Friday!!