Slashed Tires

Another week and I will be done with the first year of medical school. Wahoo! A lot to look forward coming up this summer too. Sandi and I are driving to Florida to visit her grandparents and go on a cruise. Then in July I will be attending Army basic training in Texas.

The first few months of married life have been fun. It took a while to get unpacked and back into the routine. But we managed. After we moved her Sandi wanted a dresser. So we spent a few weeks looking on craigslist and found a dresser.
Problem is we didn't do a very thorough smell test and guess what? It came from a smoking environment. Doh! So Sandi lysoled and oranged glowed it. It still smelled. Then I got out some rubber gloves and spend a few more hours with vinegar. The smell is mostly gone. But we still need to hit it one more time to finish it off.
The middle of April was pretty fun. Sandi had a birthday. So for her birthday I bought her a tennis skirt and we went and played some tennis. She also got some flowers. Then after tennis, we took a trip to the Cheesecake factory. Doesn't she look adorable!
After a few weeks of unpacking and getting settled, Sandi began the job hunt. She went to a number of temp agencies and also had a couple interviews but didn't really find a good desk job. In the end she ended up picking up a waitressing job.
She is now a waitress at Mama Lacona's restaurant in Urbandale. She gets a little stressed out some times at work, but she loves being on her feet and she is also grateful to have a job were she doesn't have to worry about falling asleep on her keyboard. She enjoys it a bit more than the desk job she used to have. Plus with tips the pay is pretty good.
Other things, Ben and Khoa have been training together since January for a half marathon. We ran the half marathon at the Drake Relay's. It was my slowest half marathon (about 40min slower than my last one), but Khoa was a trooper. He ran all 13.1 miles and finished strong!
ACDC also happened to be in two in town and I convinced Sandi to go with me to a concert. It was a lot of fun to rock out for a while. I had been wanted to see them in the concert for a while, but the last time they were on tour was when I was on my mission in 2001. In 2008, they came to the Northwest specifically Tacoma, but guess what I had moved to Israel already. Doh! Then when they were in Europe touring, I tried to get tickets and fly over from Berlin to go to a concert, but tickets ended up being 250 euros a piece. Then they added some dates in Des Moines and I got tickets, but Brian Johnson got sick and underwent a operation for ulcers and they cancelled the Des Moines show. Doh! Finally they rescheduled it for April 2010 and I was there! Sandi also came along.
Lastly in between classes we have taken same time out to get outdoors and do some camping. I was called to be the Varsity Scout Leader and Sandi was called to work with the Young Women in the branch. Last week was a young men's camp out and we camped at the new Church campground and I ended up roofing a cabin (with tin).

The other camp out we went on two weeks ago is the strange experience of the month. Sandi and I decided to go backpacking in the Woodburn Unit of Stephens forest in south central Iowa. It is about a half hour from Osceola in the middle of nowhere. It is down a gravel road about 10 miles away from the nearest paved road. We arrived at the parking lot around 4:30pm on Friday evening and the only other car in the parking lot was packing up to leave. We thought, Nice! We're going to have the place to ourselves. We loaded up our packs and hiked in through the lush green forest and rolling hills.
We passed one site and at around 2 miles in we came to the second site and saw a tent or two. We kept and hiking and a gentleman at the camp came out and flagged us down. Our conversation went something like this.
They asked, "Are you guys from the Rainbow Tribe?"
Ben is taken back by the word rainbow and responds: "Ummm, No!"
He responds: "Well, we are a group of peace lovers from all over the Midwest and we are getting together at this site to pray for peace and love."
Ben repsonds: "aaaaahhh, ok. Do you happen to know if the next site is taken?"
He responds: "Yeah, one of our guys is down at the next site. You can feel free to join us. We have good food and will be playing drums together till late."
Ben responds: "oh"
He responds: "Yeah, we planned on being here the whole month of May. We had about 60 people here, but the cops came yesterday and kicked us out. There is only about 6 of us still left."
Ben repsonds: "Ok, I think we'll just head back to the empty camp the other direction. Thanks, BYE!"
So Sandi and I turned around and hiked back a half mile or so to put some distance between us and the hippie drum players and camp in our own spot. We build a nice fire and make some oh so yummy tin foil dinners. Beef, red peppers, onions, potatoes. Good food!
We have a nice quiet evening and sleep well. We get up in the morning and then while we are eating breakfast at around 8 am, we hear some ATVs and then a bunch of guns going off in the distance. We don't think much of it. Perhaps some locals doing some target practice. We hiked back out and get to the car just before 10am. What do we find?
Slashed tires. Two of them. Doh! We're stuck. Plus we don't get cell service in the middle of nowhere. Someone happens down the gravel road and calls the County Sheriff's department for us. The deputy comes around an hour later and takes a report. There were two cars in the parking lot and both cars had two tires slashed each. The deputy called the local tow and auto place and took off. After the deputy leaves the other cars drivers show up and isn't too happy about being stuck here. The other car was a couple people from Iowa City including an EMT that had just come out for the weekend. They hiked around the south part of the loop and closer to the "hippies". They tell us that when the ATVs cruised by and guns started going off. They could here the people yelling get out of our town hippies. Doh! I think our tires got slashed by some ticked locals who thought we were hippies. I'm sure the Oregon plates didn't help our cause.

Anyhow, around two and a half hours later the local tow guy shows up in his quad cab pickup. We jack both cars up and remove the 4 slashed tires. He drives back and comes back 90 minutes later with brand new snow tires. At least he was fair with the price. We paid 60 for each tire and 30 for a call out fee.
So six hours after hiking out we were finally back on the road and headed to Des Moines. Sandi ended up being a little late to work.