Rhoades Family

Year in Review

2011-12-31T09:45:00.000-08:00

Christmas Letter 2011:

On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me:

One new dog. Lucy is a four year old rescue weimaraner whose favorite past time is devouring tennis balls.
Two summer camps. Sandi spent a week at Girls camp, while Ben spent a week at Boy Scout Camp.
Three day weekends. A family favorite, our last one was hiking in Loess Hills.
Four jobs a working. Ben spent the first half of the year working part time as a teaching assistant and still plays soldier in the Iowa National Guard. Sandi continues her job as a medical admin and moonlights as a waitress several nights a week.
Five half marathons. Ben completed his fifth half marathon and Sandi ran an 8k.
Six volleyball players. Sandi and Ben continue to stay active playing on intramural volleyball teams and playing lots of tennis and racquetball.
Seven days in Washington. Sandi spent a week in August with the Schlosser family hiking along the beach, at Mt. Rainier and camping at La Wis Wis.
Eight letters in Colorado. For Thanksgiving we visited Sandi’s brother in Colorado Springs, hiked the incline and drove to the top of a Colorado fourteener, Pike’s Peak.
Nine days a cruising. Sandi and a couple girlfriends had a nine day cruise to the east Caribbean visiting Antigua, Dominican Republic, Barbados, St. Kitts, and the British Virgin Islands. She left Ben at school.
Ten cesarean sections. Ben is a third year medical student. His year is spent rotating in different specialties at many hospitals. One month was obstetrics in Portland and he assisted in 10 c-sections.
Eleven motorcycles. Ben’s parents, brothers, and sisters all gathered for a week at Grandma’s cabin near Yellowstone National Park seeing buffalo, geysers and riding the 11 motorcycles we brought with us.
Twelve months of 2011. This year we are filled with gratitude for the many blessings the Lord has bestowed upon us. We are especially grateful for our family and loved ones and hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Love Sandi and Ben Rhoades

Introducing Lucy and Colorado Springs

2011-12-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

The last couple months have breezed on by. Quite a few things have happened. I would like to introduce you to Lucy. Lucy is a weimaraner and joined us around the beginning of September.
The Weimaraner is a dog that was originally bred for hunting in the early 19th century. Early Weimaraners were used by royalty for hunting large game such as boar, bear, and deer. The name comes from the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Karl August, whose court, based in the city of Weimar (now in modern day Germany), enjoyed hunting.
Time for a flashback. Funny enough, I have been to Weimar. Way back in 2002, I was living in Berlin doing an internship for an aerospace engineering firm. I took off a week of vacation and was driving to Austria to spend a week at a JAE conference near Salzburg. I took a train to Potsdam, was picked up by this guy I had only talked to on the phone. I told him in my broken German that I'd meet him outside the train station and be wearing a yellow hat. We met and couple of hours into our drive to Austria we stopped in Weimar and picked up two girls. As we continued we drove as fast as the VW Golf would take us and reached 200 kmh (125mph) on the autobahn. The radio was blaring and this weird Fred vom Jupiter song came on and the girls in the back started to karaoke at the top of the lungs. Good times........

......where was I? Back to the present, Sandi and my dog's name is Lucy. Lucy is a 4 year old rescue dog. We don't know much about her past, whether she was abused or not, but she does have some interesting behaviors. Lucy stands a little over two feet tall at the withers. Vocabulary lesson: The withers is the ridge between the shoulder blades of a four-legged animal. If you add head and neck she's just short of three feet. She weighs about 60lbs. Loves to run and be outside and will tug you anywhere.

About the tugging, I learned the hard way. I took her rollerblading one day and in the period of 30min I had turfed it three times. First was I bailed because we were going to fast toward an intersection. The second was squirrel and she took off the other direction from me. Third was when she cut right in front of me and I fell over to avoid running her over. Sandi thought it was very entertaining to watch me fall as she watched while following Lucy and I on a bike. My wrists haven't been the same since.

Other than the dog, Sandi is still working for the National Guard doing medical paperwork during the day and waitressing nights. I have been doing rotations. I actually just got back from Portland. I did an obstetrics and gynecology rotation there and Mike and Kathleen generously allowed me to sleep in the dungeon of their chateau.

It was my busiest rotation yet. Dr. Dyson is the hardest working doctor I have and will most likely ever meet. We worked every single day I was there including Saturdays and Sundays. In fact Saturday mornings were just another surgery morning. I participated in deliveries of more than fifteen babies and scrubbed for numerous surgeries. We split our time between Providence Portland and Portland Adventist. In the clinic we saw around 40 patients if it was a full day. You could split the patients roughly into thirds. 1/3 for annual exams and pap smears. 1/3 for ob checks. 1/3 for some other gyn problem. Needless to say I saw a lot and got a lot of practice.
Outside of working, I only had time to visit a few people from my list. I didn't really have a lot of time off. Nor could I predict when I would get a page to come into the hospital for a delivery. I ended up hiking Dog Mountain one afternoon spent a night with some friends on Mt Hood and drove back Sunday morning to the hospital for an induction. Another day we had a late start so I drove to the beach at 6am and was back to Portland for hospital duty by 10am.
After four short weeks in Portland I drove the 1900 miles back to Iowa just in time for Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving, Sandi and I decided to spend some time with her brother Greg. Greg is in the United States Air Force and is currently stationed in Colorado Springs. Sandi fell in love with Colorado Springs. She is really encouraging me to find a residency program in Colorado now. I think she just really missed the mountains.
Anyhow, our first day there Greg took us to the incline. Completed in 1907 the Manitou Incline was a 1 mile cable tram built to support the construction of a hydroelectric plant and waterline. After performing this service the railway was turned into a tourist attraction. It was operated until 1990 when a rockslide damaged the tracks and was closed. Some locals started using it for a tough workout. A portion of it is private property and it’s illegal to hike up the ties of the old cable car. That hasn’t stopped it from becoming the most popular hike in the Colorado Springs area.
The incline is 1 mile long and gains 2000 ft of elevation. It takes you from 6500 ft to 8500 ft. The average grade is 41% and steepest grade is 68%. It is star stepper to the max! The incline was great. Sandi thought it very gruelling and Lucy just ran straight up it. We spent the rest of the day touring Garden of the Gods and then had dinner at Edelweiss.
On Friday, we drove to the top of Pike's Peak. At 14,115 feet (4,302 m), it is one of Colorado's 54 fourteeners. Pikes Peak rises over 8,000 feet above the city of Colorado Springs.
It is famous for a couple things. First is the Pikes Peak Highway that curves and carves its way to the top of the mountain over 19 miles. It is home to an annual Hill Climb Race. Secondly in July 1893, Katharine Lee Bates wrote the song "America the Beautiful", after having admired the view from the top of Pikes Peak.
We later headed to Cave of the Winds and did a 90 minute tour and heard about all sorts of Cave legends about mummies and other ghost stories. The tour was pretty cool in that we were all given kerosense laterns and gave the tour an old school feel.
Next to see in Colorado Springs was the U.S. Olympic Complex in Colorado Springs is the headquarters for the U.S. Olympic Committee administration and the Olympic Training Center programs. Between 300-500 athletes train here for both summer and winter olympic events. We even got to compare our wingspan with that of Michael Phelps. Being only an inch shorter than Phelps my wing span was actually fairly comparable. I couldn't say the same for Greg or Sandi.
It was really fun to see Greg and get away for a bit. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and have so much to be grateful for!

Rotations and Labor Day

2011-09-10T18:16:00.000-07:00

After two years of classwork, the second two years of medical school are rotations. During the rotations you follow along with residents, interns and attendings in hopes of learning the art of medicine. My first rotation was at Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines.
Broadlawns is a community based hospital. The vast majority of the patients I saw had no insurance, or are on medicaid/medicare or the state medical insurance. Practicing medicine is quite a bit different than my last career of engineering. Two big differences I noticed where.

I was the only male on the floor I was working my first week of rotations. The resident and attending I was working with were both female and all the nurses were female. At Intel, the floor I worked on had a couple hundred engineers with probably around 10 females.
The computer work. At Intel I would try to be at my computer as much as possible to get work done and I would dread meetings because they would stop my forward progress. At the hospital I try to spend most of the time with the patients or discussing treatment plans with the other residents and attendings. The dreaded part is going back to the computer to complete the documentation. Quite the change.

I'll try to explain the day in the life of a medical student at Broadlawns. First some vocabulary:

Student - third or fourth year medical student
Intern - first year resident
Resident - Graduate of medical school who is in a 3-5 year board certification program
Attending - board certified staff doctor at the hospital

Typical day working at Broadlawns

5:30 Wakeup
6:30 Arrive at Hospital for morning handoff from the nightshift
6:30-7:30 Quickly visit the 3-4 patients on the floor from last night, review labs and other tests and come up with a treatment plan
7:30-8:00 Morning Lecture on some disease and *FREE* breakfast
8:00-9:30 Discuss all the patients on the service and visit them one by one with the attending, have the attending ask all sorts of questions about the patient you didn't think of and make you feel a little under studied
9:30-12:00 Write the progress notes, discharge patients, admit any new patients from the ER that need hospital treatment
12:00-1:00 Noon Lecture on some disease with *FREE* lunch
1:00-4:30 See patients in the family health clinic. Basically just being a family doctor. With occasional interruption when the ER calls to transfer patient to hospital.
4:30-5:30 Write/Dictate notes of family patients and then check labs to handoff any patients in hospital to night team
5:30-11:00 Go Home and study all those things you should have known, eat, workout
11:00-5:30 Sleep and then start it all over again

The patients in hospital were often acute and had many comorbidities. Diabetes, obesity, congestive heart failure, coronary artery disease, dyslipidemia, hypertension, cirrhosis, pneumonia, chest pain hold overnight to rule out heart attack. I got to see a wide variety of diseases. Dr. Ghali tells me that patients are my educators and the attendings merely facilitate that education. I couldn't agree more. When you see it in person and have to treat it. It is much easier to remember than reading from a textbook. I have many great learning experiences, many sad stories, and a few peculiar patients.
On my second day of rotations I did my first punch biopsy of a patient to test a skin growth on their forehead for cancer. I numbed the area, cut out a piece of tissue, and then put in a couple stitches. Needless to say, my hand was quite shaky with it being my first stitch on a patient and with the attending watching over my shoulder. But it was a good experience, I was much more smooth the next time.

If you are not on birth control, not using condoms, had five sexual partners recently, last period was 6 weeks ago. You should probably not be shocked to find out you might be pregnant and that you likely have a sexually transmitted disease. Risky behavior!

After four weeks at Broadlawns. I moved to the larger Mercy Hospital in Des Moines. My second rotation was interventional cardiology with Dr. Ghali. I have spent the past two weeks observing and helping with cardiac catheterization and pacemaker checks and insertion. I am really amazed at the technology and skill that the physicians have.
FYI: Cardiac Catheterization is a procedure where the physician inserts a tube into an artery in your leg or arm. The doctor gently runs the tube up into your heart. Through the tube the doctor inserts a special die while watching an x-ray machine. The physician can visualize how blood is flowing from the heart and how blood is also flowing back to the heart to keep it pumping. If there are problems with the flow or blockages the doctor can blow up balloons (angioplasty) or place stents (metal mesh tubing) to open the vessels. Search for cardiac cath on youtube to watch some videos if you are interested.
Anyhow the more time I spend in the hospital the more I realize three important things that would solve MANY of our patients problems. Here is some free advice that everyone has probably heard before:

Stop smoking
Don't eat so much
Exercise more

Enough about medicine. What else has been going on with Sandi and myself. Well for Labor Day, Sandi and I traveled to the Loess Hills in western Iowa.From the USGS website: Many Americans think of Iowa as having little topographic variation. However, in westernmost Iowa the Loess Hills rise 200 feet above the flat plains forming a narrow band running north-south 200 miles along the Missouri River. The steep angles and sharp bluffs on the western side of the Loess Hills are in sharp contrast to the flat rectangular cropfields of the Missouri River flood plain. From the east, gently rolling hills blend into steep ridges.

Loess (pronounced "luss"), is German for loose or crumbly. It is a gritty, lightweight, porous material composed of tightly packed grains of quartz, feldspar, mica, and other minerals. Loess is the source of most of our Nation's rich agricultural soils and is common in the U.S. and around the world.
However, Iowa's Loess Hills are unusual because the layers of loess are extraordinarily thick, as much as 200 feet in some places. The extreme thickness of the loess layers and the intricately carved terrain of the Loess Hills make them a rare geologic feature. Shaanxi, China, is the only other location where loess layers are as deep and extensive.
Sandi and I backpacked in and spent a night and did some hiking through the mix of grassland and forest. It was quite diverse for the small area it represented.
After some hiking we took a drove through North West Iowa and made two stops. The first was to the highest point in Iowa. It is called Hawkeye point. It is 1670 ft (510m) above sea level. It lies in the middle of a farm on a rolling plain a few feet from an old silo. You just drive up and take a picture.
The other place we stopped was Okoboji. It is a series of lakes near the border of Iowa and Minnesota. It is a recreational play place with many houses dotting the coast line of the three lakes and hundreds of people motorboating, skiing, fishing, wakeboarding, or sailing.

Island Park and Yellowstone

2011-08-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

The second to last week of July Sandi and I traveled to Utah for a "Rhoades" vacation. It was just like being a kid again for me. The whole family went to my Grandma's cabin is Island Park, Idaho. It was the first time we've all taken a vacation together in probably seven years. It was a blast.
The first thing you need to know about Rhoades vacation's is outdoor toys. We had 14 people and we brought along 11 motorcycles, 2 four wheelers, a rhino, and 2 motorboats. And just so you know how much we love motorcycles, we didn't have room to bring them all so we had to leave a few behind.
We all spent a lot of time riding and everyone pretty much went down at least once and ended up with some bruises or road burn. Along with the bikes, we had two boats. One was for fishing and another for skiing, wakeboarding, or tubing. I don't have a lot of pictures from the boating since water and cameras don't mix too well. We did catch quite a few fish and the boys were pretty excited about that.
With everyone together it was also time to play some card games. My brothers, sisters, and their spouses all sat around the first night and played some penny poker. Joe won the pot.
Aspen also happened to have her second birthday the week we were there and we had a big party and Grandma McKay showed up to celebrate with us.
Island Park also happens to be a short drive from Yellowstone so one day we loaded up and headed over. We saw buffalo

and elk
and geysers and stink pots
and waterfalls
and of course who could forget old faithful
wait for it
boom!
On top of all that fun, Sandi and I had been missing the mountains so much since coming from Iowa that we decided to go on a hike. We first drove up to Sawtell Peak and then hiked across to Mount Jefferson. In the picture below Mt Jefferson is on the left and Sawtell on the right.

Sawtell Peak has a FAA radar staiton and road, so we rode a motorcycle to the top. In the left corner of the picture you can just make out the Grand Tetons. It was an amazing view.
One to the North of Henry's Lake
One to the South looking at Island Park. Grandma's cabin is hidden in the trees somewhere in the picture. The hike over to Mt Jefferson is about a 4.5 miles and around 1200 feet of elevation gain. We followed the ridgeline in the picture below.
The ridgeline represents the border between Idaho and Montana and we saw many of these boundary markers along the ridge. It was a great hike and nice to be back in the mountains. Here is our picture on top the 10,203 ft peak. We really had a good time on the vacation. I really look forward to doing it again. So, to Mom, I owe a big THANK YOU! for organizing, planning, and just plain being amazing!

Goodbye to Youth

2011-08-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

Sandi and I just moved this summer. I survived the first two years of school and passed both my COMLEX and USMLE Step1 board exams. Since I no longer go to class everyday. She thought it would be nice to be closer to work and live in an apartment complex that accepts dogs. Yes, I said it. A Dog! Sandi is currently looking for thoughts and ideas on breeds and all that jazz and is super excited about getting a dog when we finish unpacking all our stuff in our new place.

That being said, with the move does come some remorse. We no longer live in downtown Des Moines, we've moved to a suburb called Johnston, which also means we are no longer a part of the downtown Church group and we will be attending a group much closer to where we moved.

We are going to miss our callings and the time we had to work with the youth. It was definitely challenging, but very rewarding. I thought I'd share a few photos from our times.

Carving pumpkins

Sunday evening fireside
Building snowman and igloo
Camping at Springbrook park and skeet shooting
Root beer floats
Roasting marshmallows at camp
Paddle boats at Gray's Lake
Girls Camp
Decorating cookies for Christmas caroling
Trying to bite an apple on a string. Very funny to watch

A BIG thank you to Pedro, Juan, Francisco, Tyler, Levi, Hyrum, Nephi, Moroni, Tim, Billy, Buddy, Dylan, Zorwo, Sukoza, Jerry, Joseph, Riziki, Mina, Myracle, Angel, Brooklyn, Ashley, and Cheyenne. You are the BEST!

Catchup School, Army, Sports and Misc

2011-07-12T14:27:00.000-07:00

School

After your second year of medical school you take your board exam. Step 1 of boards was a killer. I went insane sitting in the library day after day after day. I hope I passed because I never want to do that again. Second year at medical school was very educational rather than the basic sciences like biochemistry, physiology and anatomy. We spent all our time covering the systems like cardiology, respiratory, obstetrics, gynecology, gastroenterology, rheumatology, orthopedics, neurology, urology, psychology, dermatology, hematology, oncology, nephrology, the list goes on and on and on.

Each system was any where from a couple weeks to a month and most of our instructors were local physicians who would come in and teach their specialty. It was great to get to hear from the experts.

Another fun part was getting a few certifications. We retook BLS (CPR for healthcare providers) and also ACLS which is how to run the crash cart in the hospital, when to shock, when to not shock and what medications to use depending on whether the patient is in ventricular fibrillation, tachycardia, bradycardia, etc. The other certification we did was in surgery.
We got to practice gowning and also doing sutures. I'm looking forward to getting out there next year and sewing things up. We spent some time practicing on pigs feet.
The other big thing with school was finding out about where we go for rotations. Sandi and I at first decided to rank all places outside of Des Moines and after the lottery we ended up with Casper, Wyoming. We were excited. But after some thought about how Sandi and I both work for the Iowa Guard and also my friend Jared who is originally from the Casper area. We decided to trade Jared and will end up another year in Des Moines. This was quite a very tough decision.

Army

The past year I have continued drilling each month with the Iowa Army National Guard. I also was involved in the military club at the school. During the year we had a couple of guest speakers come in and tell their story about their medical and military careers. LTC Nessen came and spoke about "War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq" which is the same title of his book that he gave a copy to each of us.
Our medical school dean Dr. Reed also spoke on surgery and his path to becoming the first DO board certified in an allopathic surgical residency. Dr. Pandeya also spoke to us on his career as a plastic surgeon and Brig. General in the Air National Guard.

Most drills I have spent in the clinic doing physicals or annual check ups on soldiers. One month we were missing some staff and I got to run the dental x-ray machine. The highlight though is we got to go to the range and qualify on the M16. It is always nice to plink away.
I also had the opportunity to golf with the Guard in a foursome at Wavelands golf course. We even ran into our Commander-in-Chief Gov. Branstad and snapped a picture.
Gov. Branstad is actually the former president my school Des Moines University and I often see him working out at 6:30am in our school gym.

Sports

I have continued to play both intramural basketball and volleyball. My intramural basketball teams have been ok, we have won some games and lost some games. For volleyball, after winning the tournament last year, we fell short in the championship game both semesters this year. In fact this last semester we were undefeated until the championship and than lost two competitive games played to extra points. Here is a couple picks of the teams from the last two semesters.
The team changed a little bit, Sandi was able to join the team. It was good for us to have something to do together since she spends so much time working at the office, waitressing, and working on her church calling.
I sure will miss playing with Logan, Jamie, Jodie, Amber, and Kelly. I also played quite a few afternoons with some very competitive girls and one guy who played college volleyball. Jackie, Krystle, Christina, Lauren, Ashley, Aaron, Ben and Keala. Sandi and I even had some of them over for dinner. We all seem to be going our separate ways. Playing sports with friends is one of those things I really enjoy. I really miss playing with some of my old buds from time to time, especially basketball at the Beaverton Hoop in Portland. Lots of good friends and memories.
Other than intramural leagues, Sandi and I have tried to keep in shape. We play tennis from time to time and go on the occasional run. Sandi and I ran a 7 mile cross country race through mud and streams at Living History Farms in Des Moines. I carried her across a couple of the stream crossings.
Sandi and I both ran in Drake Relays. But not with any of the super competitive ueber athletes. Sandi ran the 8k and I ran the half marathon.

And finally shooting sports. Sandi and I have gone skeet shooting a few times with friends. One time Brodi, a fellow student, brought along his AR-15 and it was funny to watch others plink away.
I also had the chance to go rock climbing a few times out to Kepler State Park near Cedar Rapids. Unfortunately I don't have any pics to post from that. I'll have to talk to Scott and get a couple.

Miscellaneous

Other random things we have done are swing dancing.
Eating out with friends.
And watching little birdies who just happened to nest on our balcony.
We also had a nice valentine's day which I spent studying since we had a test the following morning. I did make a nice card.
Unfortunately our first anniversary happened to be a drill weekend, so I spent it at Camp Dodge. But I did fashion some paper flowers for Sandi that she appreciated.
In fact she liked them so much. She coerced me into sharing my secrets of the paper mache. Which she revealed to the girl's in her Church young women's program make a bunch of them which they delivered to Eldery at a nursing home. Sounds like a good thing to me.

Catchup Thanksgiving and Christmas

2011-07-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

For Thanksgiving '10, Sandi and I decided to head down to Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri. It is a large man made lake created from the Osage River. The lake has over 1,150 miles (1,850 km) of shoreline, and the main channel of the Osage Arm stretches 92 miles (148 km) from end to end.
It has gas stations, shops, hotels and restaurants all on the water. During summer it is home to Party Cove, a rowdy gathering spot that a travel writer for The New York Times called the "oldest established permanent floating bacchanal in the country." Unfortunately not that much action was going on at the lake during the winter months and Sandi and I had a nice relaxing weekend doing some hiking and exploring.
We visited Ha Ha Tonka state park and toured the ruins of the Snyder family castle. Quite the place till a fire got the best of it. We also visited the Bridal Cave where 2000+ couples have made their vows underground.

For Christmas, Sandi and I headed back to Goldendale Washington and spent the holiday with Sandi and her family.
We built a snowman.
We did some sledding.
We also met up with Matt and Rachel and did a little hiking in the gorge.
We also visited the Maryhill Stonehenge replica along the Columbia river gorge. Night quite as impressive as visiting the real thing (I went with a couple friends to England in 2004). But still quite impressive.

Whew, it is finally summer

2011-07-12T10:45:00.000-07:00

whew/hyo͞o/ (Exclamation) Used to express surprise, relief, or a feeling of being very hot or tired.It has been a really really busy past school year. Writing about what was going on wasn't too high on my todo list. The second year of medical school was quite busy with systems classes, surgical techniques, but the culmination of it all is board exam. I just finished COMLEX and USMLE Step 1 last week. We finished school May 21st and from then till July 4th I spent 6 days a week in the library at school for roughly 12+ hours a day just studying and trying to relearn everything I learned in the passed two years. Brutal! I'm so glad that is over. I read this book twice in the last two months and did over 3000+ practice questions.
As soon as my test was done, I drove to Boy Scout camp and spent a couple days with the boys. Sandi spent the week at girl scout camp. Now I get to relax, sleep in, and enjoy the last couple weeks before I start rotating through hospitals. I'll try to catch up and post some pictures from our exploits over the past year. Thanksgiving at Lake of the Ozarks, Christmas in Portland, scouting, youth, it has been quite the ride.

Look who made ESPN

2011-01-27T14:50:00.000-08:00

So I got an email from a cousin the other day with the tagline, "look who made espn." Curious, I followed the link and this is what I found.
Yes, that is a picture of Jimmer Fredette. Jimmer is currently the national's leading point scorer in NCAA D1 basketball. He also just led #9 BYU in a 43point win over #4 San Diego State. But that is not the point!

Look at the guy on the far right who is containing Fredette. The police officer on his right happens to be my Dad. Cool, eh?
This is another shot after the fans rushed to court, I guess Fredette needed an escort. Anyhow, its not every day that you find a picture of your Dad on ESPN. I thought I'd share. Another cousin had this to say: "only a Rhoades can contain Fredette."

Here are the links:
ESPN: http://espn.go.com/espn/page2/index?id=6064411
Yahoo Rivals: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/blog/the_dagger/post/BYU-s-Jimmer-Fredette-now-has-the-attention-of-e?urn=ncaab-313094

Year in Review

2010-12-31T23:11:00.000-08:00

Christmas Letter 2010:

The hardest part is getting started. It is now December 22nd and I only have a few days till Christmas. But I still haven’t written the Christmas letter for the year. What is the recipe for this tardiness? I’ll try to remember; I think it goes 3 cups of medical school, 4 pounds of jobs, mix with 4 church callings and add a teaspoon of procrastination. Marinate this all with a trip in to visit Sandi’s and my family over a short Christmas break and now I’m sitting only 3 days from Christmas and I still need to bake, package, and (e)mail the lettery goodness to all of you.

“A” is for adventure. After four years of dating, Sandi and I embarked on a whole new adventure on March 20, 2010. We were married in the Portland Oregon Temple. Best day ever! We’ve had a lot of crazy experiences since then. In April we had two tires slashed while we were backpacking in the woods and waited around six hours in the middle of Iowa for a tow to bring a couple replacements. In June, after the school year was complete, we drove to Florida and embarked on a Disney Cruise. We did some scuba diving off Key West Florida. We also rented a scooter and weaved in and out of traffic (Ben’s favorite part) in Nassau before spending some time on the Beach of Atlantis Paradise Island. Sandi and I also spent some time canoeing the Boundary Waters on the border of Canada and Minnesota. It is a very serene area. Canoe in a couple miles, portage a lake or two and you will find a beautiful forested lake and island all to yourself. Very relaxing. One day was a downpour and we decided to go swimming in the rain on our own little island.

“B” is for basic training. In January, Ben joined the Army National Guard. During July he traveled to San Antonio Texas for officer basic training. Officer Basic Training is not quite the same as regular army training. Ben likes to refer to it as Boy Scouts with guns. He had a blast shooting M16s, standing in formation at 0500, enduring the 100 degree Texas heat, doing land navigation at night, being exposed to CS (tear) gas and so on. Ben is excited about his opportunity to serve and provide care as a future physician to those willing to fight for America. Ben drills locally every month. He works in the medical unit and gets to do physicals for the troops and spend downtime studying for medical school.

“C” is for cookies. Me like cookies – Especially frosted cookies. “C” is also for callings. Sandi and I currently attend Church at a small branch in downtown Des Moines. Ben is serving as Stake Sunday School secretary, Varsity Scout Leader and 1st Counselor in the Young Men’s Presidency. Sandi is serving as the Young Women’s president. The branch has a lot of great youth without a lot of great parental support. Sandi and I spend most of our Wednesday’s playing soccer Mom and rounding up the youth for their activities. Some are immigrants, others from single parent homes or even from a group home. It has been a challenge to inspire them, but when things come together we really enjoy it. We’ve taken them on a number of adventures including camping, paddle boating, and to the zoo. For our last combined activity we had around 10 people and we baked over 200 sugar cookies for decorating. We visited several branch families delivering cookies, singing Christmas carols and then sent the youth home with cookies to share with their families. It was a wonderful frosty sprinkled evening filled with songs of jubilee.

“D” is for driven. Sandi is driven. In April she got a job waitressing at an Italian restaurant called Mama Lacona’s. After returning from our summer adventures, she got a second job working at a grain commodity stock brokerage. Finally in November she switched her stock job for something new as a medical admin at the Iowa National Guard. Between all the typing and filing during the days and then running from table to table with heaps of food at nights at the restaurant she does get tired. But that doesn’t slow her down. She still has time to train and work out. In November she ran her first 7 mile cross country race through the dirt and mud, over hills and streams. Not to mention she also plays on our coed volleyball team. Ben may not be as driven but is definitely no slouch. Along with being a full time medical student (half way through his second year) he sports a couple jobs as well. Ben drills every month for the National guard along with several hours a week serving as a teaching assistant for first year medical school students.

“E” is for everyone reading this letter. Sandi and I are blessed to have lives connected to so many people. It is to those of you that have made a difference in our lives that we send this greeting. It may be the subtle difference made by a coworker or neighbor. Or it may be a huge difference made by a close friend or family member… but that difference you make in our lives - subtle or deep - is such that without you, we just wouldn’t be who we are today! We remember you and the times we shared. We thank God for you and pray that your year and holiday is full of happiness and joy. God bless you! Merry Christmas!

Bridges of Madison County

2010-11-24T09:16:00.000-08:00

Pumpkins in the cornfields
Gold among the brown
Leaves of rust and scarlet
Trembling slowly down
Birds that travel southward
Lovely time to play
Nothing is as pleasant
As an autumn day!

Fall in Iowa is very colorful. The leaves change colors. The mornings are crisp. Sandi and I decided to take a break and enjoy a Saturday morning drive. We drove about 45min from Des Moines and out to Winterset nestled in Madison County.
Have you heard of the Bridges of Madison County? Do you know what it is? I knew it was some sort of movie or book that I haven't seen or read. But I did a little wikipedia research: "The Bridges of Madison County is a 1992 best-selling novel by Robert James Waller which tells the story of a married but lonely Italian woman, living in 1960s Madison County, Iowa, who engages in an affair with a National Geographic photographer from Bellingham, Washington who is visiting Madison County in order to create a photographic essay on the covered bridges in the area. The novel is presented as a novelization of a true story, but it is in fact entirely fiction. However, the author has stated in an interview that there are strong similarities between the main character and himself. The Bridges of Madison County was made into a 1995 film of the same name, adapted by Richard LaGravenese and directed by Clint Eastwood. It stars Eastwood and Meryl Streep."So Sandi and I drove around the county and visited the bridges. The bridges were all built in the late 1800s by Benton Jones with the exception of the Imes Bridge which was built by Eli Cox. There are only six standing bridges left in Madison County:

Cedar Bridge built 1883, 76 feet long.
Cutler-Donahoe Bridge built 1870, 79 feet long.
Hogback Bridge built 1884, 97 feet long.
Holliwell Bridge built 1880, 122 feet long.
Imes Bridge built 1870, 81 feet long.
Roseman Bridge built 1883, 107 feet long.

Winterset is the epitomy of a small midwest town. It has a red brick downtown storefront.
It has a shiny white court house.
Finally, this is the midwest, we need a water tower.
Winterset also features some things that set it apart from most midwest towns. It sports the birthplace of John Wayne.
And a large city park. The park features one of the covered bridges pictured above as well as a hedgerow maze and castle tower.
Clark Tower is a castle-like limestone tower located in Winterset city park. It was erected in 1926, on the eightieth anniversary of the founding of Madison County, in memory of Caleb Clark, a stonemason who was the first white settler of Madison County, and his wife Ruth Clanton Clark. The tower stands at a height of 25 feet.
When traveling in Iowa you never know what kinds of animals you might encounter in the woods. But the thing you will always see is lots and lots of picturesque farm land.
I do miss the mountains, but Iowa does have its beauty.

Florida & Disney Cruise

2010-10-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

NOTE: This is for our "June 2010 vacation"

We thought it would be a great idea to go on a cruise for our honeymoon. Of course I had to convince Ben nothing less than a Disney cruise would suffice! After a 21 hour drive, breakfast with a good friend from my disney days, we found ourselves sitting on the deck of our floating resort for the next several days.

First stop, Key West. We spent most of the day scubadiving along two different reefs. Diving always seems to be the highlight of any trip and this case was no exception. The water was so warm! It's a good thing we chose to forego the wetsuit at the last moment because we would have been frying. Later that day we walked along the pier and Ben was such a good sport about going out to lunch. We overdosed on mussels galore!

Next stop, Nassau: We rented a bright red scooter and drove around the island. It rained in the morning (notice the ghost in the middle of the photo below?) but cleared away to sunshine in no time. We took a number of pit stops to hike and see the beautiful scenury, including a romantic walk on the beach.Ben's favorite beaches were along the rugged coast tucked away in nature from the prying eyes of tourists! Mine were where all the tourists were, at Atlantis!Our third and last stop was Castaway Cay in the Bahamas owned by Disney. It was a fun little island with some interesting activities, one of which included a crawdad race. Yeah, no joke, we gotta do something to entertain ourselves on a little ol' island! This day started out with a 5K run. I thought I was going to die! Ever try running 3 miles in 90 degrees, 85% humidity and absolutely no shade whatsoever? Well, we found out from personal experience, it's not easy! But we did it. After that we rushed back to the boat and jumped in the pool to cool off. It felt great. One nice thing about doing the run was that we didn't feel guilty about gorging ourselves at the buffet later that day.
In between our expeditions, we entertained ourselves on the cruise by attending shows, laying out in the sun, studying (Ben), catching up with our Disney friends (what, you didn't know we're tight with Pluto, Minnymouse, and Cinderella? We got pics to prove it), and exercising. Yep, no joke, we exercise on vacation (Ben's idea). One thing I loved doing was eating! Every night, we went out to dinner. For those who know Ben, he's not a fan of going out to eat. Sometimes I have to resort to begging and pleading, but he was a pretty good sport about it on the cruise.The last night of the cruise we had a HUGE buffett. We watched an intertaining and cheesy play on deck of pirates taking over the ship before Mickey came to save the day. Then to celebrate, firecrackers erupted over the ocean. Apparently Disney is the only cruiseline to have a firework show. That next morning was a sad day as our cruise officially ended. All the passengers, and there were thousands, slowly filed off the ship gathering luggage and completing the checkout process. Ben and I had decided to visit Kennedy Space Center that morning. We were both really excited to check this place out. I was also tired. I didn't realize how exhausted I was until we sat down to watch a documentary. I fell asleep. later we attended a seminar where an astranaut told of his experiences in space. I fell asleep. After that we watched an IMAX movie that I don't remember, because once again, I fell asleep. I was frustrated at myself for not having control over my body and staying awake. Some of this stuff was really interesting and it's not like we get to see this every day. The astronaut had some fascinating stories from his experiences and I regret missing part of it.

The next day we met up with my good friend, Heidi, who hooked us up with tickets for the parks. With the exception of a few bumps along the road, we had a great time. Apparently, Mission Space Center in EPCOT makes some people want to throw up. Hmmm....After our Disney experience we were once again on the road to visit my grandparents. We had a wonderful time and even got to see this amazing wildlife reserve, Homassassa Springs.
A couple days later, we were on the road again heading toward Buluxy, Mississippi to visit my brother who was stationed at the Airforce base. We had a great time catching up with Greg. So much fun, in fact, that we decided to take a road trip that next morning to New Orleans. On our drive up, we almost ran over a turtle in the middle of the road! Of course we had to stop and take pictures and I ended up carrying that big thing off the road. While doing so, a passenger in a passing car yelled out, "If it were me, I would've eat it!" Hmm, that was interesting.After dropping Greg off, we were once again on the road, slowly making our way back to home. Next, we decided to stop and visit the location of the Battle of Vicksburg. For those, who need a rundown on Civil War history, this battle was a turning point for the Union. The Union needed control of the Mississipi for carrying supplies and soldiers to the forefront of the war and the Confederacy was determined to stop them at all costs. Thousands of lives were lost as you can see in the picture below and the residents of Vicksburg, then a booming town, were in lockdown. This is also the location of the Infamous sinking of the Union's supposedly unsinkable steel ships made by a famous engineer/inventor of the time. One of the ships were uncovered within the past 30 years and is currently on display. That was really neat to see.Eureka Springs was our last major stop. We camped out in a gorgeous area, and went on a breathtaking hiking trip the next day. During the hike we had planned to go in a bat cave, only to find it blocked off. Apparently, bats were being infected by a contagious bat disease carried by humans on the soles of their shoes and the cave entrance was temperarely closed for that reason. Afterward, we toured another cave full of crystallights and a supposedly bottomlous lake made famous for its feature on the discovery channel a decade or so ago.Next we had to see the largest statue of Christ in North America and then tour a bible museum that was absolutely fascinating!That's what she said ;)

Chicago and State Fair

2010-09-08T11:25:00.001-07:00

The last part of summer our time outside has been fairly limited due to our time constraints. I am in the full swing of medical school, working as a teaching assistant, varsity scout leader, and serving in the national guard. Sandi picked up a second job. She is now working 3 times a week days at a agricultural stock brokerage and then at nights waitressing at Mama Lacona's. She also is the Young Women's president and does all the activities for her girls every week. It has been busy.

Outside of school and work we went and saw the Iowa State Fair. There was a giant cow made of butter.
We saw lots of horses, cows, sheep, pigs, and all sorts of other animals. Sandi accidently took a step into some droppings. It made me laugh, in fact I had to take a picture.
Not to be forgotten. Fairs also have yummy goodies like deep fat fried oreos. Sign me up for some heart disease!
Then there are the rides. Sandi enjoyed this one.
Now switch gears, for the last weekend of summer "aka Labor day" we went to Chicago. The worst part was all the toll booths and sitting in traffic. Des Moines is so small and traffic is great. Chicago, not so much.
On Saturday morning Sandi and I visited the Chicago temple.
Then we met up with Dan & Diane (formerly of Portland) and went to the Navy Pier.
Then up to the top of the Willis Tower for a view at night. What do you eat after an evening in downtown Chicago? Deep Dish Pizza! We went to Giordano's. Oh so cheesy!
On Sunday, Sandi and I went to Church, visited the Polish museum and ate at a quaint mom and pop polish restaurant and had some pierogi, golabki, borszcz and kopot. It was yummy. It brought back memories of the mission.

For dinner we took off to Medieval Times for dinner and a jousting and sword fighting tournament. Good times!
We did a few more things in Chicago like Shedd Aqaurium, Science Museum and Millennial Park. It was a fun place to visit.

Army Basic Training for Doctors

2010-07-27T06:00:00.000-07:00

Many of you may know that I am a member of the Iowa Army National Guard. On June 30th I flew down to Texas to begin medical officer basic training. Basic training for future army docs is done in Fort Sam Houston which is located in San Antonio, Texas.
Week 1
The first couple things you learn about the Army is that they like to start really early in the morning and that you stand around and wait a lot (often referred to as hurry up and wait). My first day started at 04:50. That is right! 4:50 am in the morning. That morning after roll call we proceeded to in-process, receive some paperwork, and get measured for height and weight. I came in at 208lb and 75.25 inches. After the weigh in, we began classes. Just like medical school, it was death by powerpoint. Occasionally we had good instructors who shared soldiering stories of deployments to Afghanistan or Iraq, but for the most part it was the is the Army and this is what we expect you to know and how to behave. There were several things that they emphasized over and over and over. I guess they have had a few problems in the past. Basically:

Drink Water (it's hot)
Don't fraternize with enlisted soldiers
Don't drink and drive or do stupid things while drunk
Don't speed on post or talk on a cell phone on post
Don't commit adultery
Drink Water!

That was my first couple days. For those of you who went to "real" basic training or have heard about how hard or how they break you down. What I went to was nothing like that, it was cake comparatively speaking. I was lodged with another student in a hotel on base with nice AC, full bath, mini refrigerator and microwave. We are done with classes around 5 or 6pm every night. After which we are allowed to use our cell phones, computers, etc. We are permitted off post whenever we would like. In fact after a couple days of classes. We had a three day weekend. We happened to start class just before July 4th and so as a government employee on a national holiday we had the time off.
A group of us found out that Seaworld was supporting the troops with free tickets so we spent Saturday riding the rides and watching Shamu. They also had a nice waterpark to escape the heat. The next day we spent some time watching fireworks and also spent a night out on the Riverwalk in San Antonio toured the Alamo and several of the squad went to get tanked. Unfortunately one of our class mates got in a fight after drinking a little too much and ending up getting sent home. See rules above.

After the three day weekend. Things changed drastically. We were no longer going to be in our air conditioned hotel on post. We were going to the "field". Tuesday was filled with more death by powerpoint until the evening. In the evening we loaded up on buses and made our way to the Camp Bullis. We put our gear in our tents and were then issued our brand new best friend: the M16. One fellow soldier put it this way: "From that point, your new buddy is your constant companion. You will eat together, sleep together, and take a s- together." Yes, we did have to take it to the port-a-potty with us.
Breakfast and dinner are generally hot meals served cafeteria line style in a mess tent. Lunch was always an MRE or if "Mama Snacks" showed up people could buy what they wanted. "Mama Snacks" is a gut track who always seemed to know where we would be training and when we'd have a break. She would pull up in her RV and a line would form. She had a tasty spread of tacos, burgers and cold drinks.

Camp Bullis' medical FOB (forward operating base) is about 1000 square feet surrounded by barbwire and filled with tents and convoy vehicles. Texas is HOT in the summer. Most days were around 95 degrees and around 60% humidity for a heat index of 110 degrees. The worst part about the field was the 110 degree weather and the attire. We were required to always be in our boots, long pants, long sleeve jacked, vest, canteens, pouches, and cap or helmet. I was constantly sweating. Relief was relaxing in the AC of the tent. Seen below:
Different people get tasked each night with various duties (fire watch, serving breakfast/dinner, trash, filling up the handwashing stations with water, etc) for the evening and the next day. Over the three weeks I did a fare share of those tasks.

The first FTX is basically weapons training and an intro to land navigation. The first full day in the field began with PT. Get up at 04:50 in the morning, do some stretching and some pushups and situps and then run a couple miles up a mountain. Not to bad, right? The only thing is the lack of showers. In the heat and without showers you can imagine how everyone and the tent smell after a couple of days. After breakfast, we spent the rest of the day getting an intro to the M16 rifle, dissassembly, assembly, and marksmanship. Finish around 2pm and then have nothing to do until supper. Just sit in the bleachers or walk around camp in the hot weather. We weren't allowed to go to the air conditioned tents till after 5pm.

Day two started with breakfast. We practiced land navigation. Basically we were given a set of coordinates, a map, and compass. Spend 20min or so plotting the points and using our trusty protractor and then run around the hills and find the little markers they placed at the points. This day we did it in large groups of about 20. Next week we will do it in groups of two for our test.
Day three was zeroing at the M16 range and how to assemble and use a radio. Nice! The picture above is me at the range. Dead give away, who else shoots south paw? It was a fun day, except for the fact that zeroing lasted about 20min and radio training was about 15 min. They just had around 250 people that needed to complete those tasks. So while I had a great 35 min of Army experience. The rest of the day was lounging in the sun or under the bleachers waiting for our turn to go or for everyone to finish to go back to base. Most days were like this a good 1-2 hours of training and 6+ hours of waiting around.
Day four is Saturday. Everyone's skin is sun abused and we all smell like balls. We spent the whole day doing mock qualification with the M16. They take you a range, and targets pop up and you shoot at them. They tell you how you did, but no score is recorded so it makes no difference whether you shoot 4 or 40. I was one of the few who qualified. Only about 15% of the class qualified with the M16, good thing doctors aren't the ones fighting our wars. The targets were at 50m, 100m, 150m, 200m, 250m, 300m. They would pop up for a few seconds and then go down. The closer they were the shorter time they would pop up. We shot 20 rounds prone with sand bags (supported), 10 rounds unsupported (on elbows), 10 rounds kneeling. It was a blast scanning and firing. Finally you head back to the FOB, wait for the buses to show up. Then they realize that they don't have enough buses for everyone. So I happen to be one of the 30 stuck in the field for a couple more hours waiting for the buses to drop people off and then send one back to get the leftovers. I wasn't really to surprised. I kind of expected it at that point.

Week 2
Getting back to Fort Sam for the weekend the first thing you do is shower. After that you go to a laundry mat and wash the stench out of your uniform. I slept, went to Church on Sunday, played a little afternoon basketball, then Monday it was back to the field.

Monday was a mock pistol qualification with the M9. We showed up in the morning and took the buses from Fort Sam straight to the pistol range. Same as the M16 mock qualification: go to a range, shoot at targets, and get a score. No official record is made. This time though I think our class averaged around 75% passing. Much better. The targets though were a lot closer. The furthest M9 (a 9mm handgun) target was 50m. Most were much closer.
We also had some concurrent didactic training going on about convoys, IEDs, and calling in MEDEVACS. The next three days were spent on convoy training, CBRN training, or a litter carrying obstacle course. The order you went through depended on your group.

8th platoon had CBRN (gas) training first. For CBRN training you covered things like how to set up a decontamination zone, how to use a gas mask, how to use the detector kits, etc. The crown jewel of the day was putting on your mask, walking into a room with CS gas (form of tear gas), and then removing your mask. The idea being that if you were fine with your mask but burning and writhing in pain without the mask: you would conclude that the mask works and have confidence in it. The pictures below show how much fun the gas chamber was.
We entered the room with our masks on and immediately you felt a sun burn feeling on any exposed skin. It was tolerable but rather irritating. They had us do jumping jacks in the room with our masks. Then they proceeded to have each of us take our mask off, state our name, rank, and social security number and take a breath. Depending on when you took your breath your you might not finish. Then we could exit. Without the mask it was quite painful. It took about 10min for my eyes to flush and for me to be able to see again. Many had snot just running out of their nose. That was training that I would rather NOT repeat.

The next day was an obstacle course consisted of a team of four carrying a litter with a mannequin patient through a path with some narrow passages, a few walls, and under some barbed wire. A few people with blanks are hiding out in the woods to add an extra element to the task.
The third day was convoy training and it was probably one of the coolest things you get to do. It consists of three events:
1) You practice exiting a HMMWV that's rolled over. Pretty much a fun little carnival ride. You hope into a HMMWV attached to a machine and the operator rotates the machine at a moderate pace and then stops it on it's side or roof. You're then tasked with getting out.

2) The coolest thing you do is hop into a convoy simulator. They have a set of HMMWV mocked up inside of a building. Each one is in a room surround by a wall they project your virtual surroundings onto. Everyone is assigned various roles in each truck and in the convoy chain of command and then you carry out a virtual mission. Your driver drives, your chain of command communicates with each other and virtual support services (CAS, EOD, MEDEVAC, etc), and your gunners fire at insurgents (complete with air compressor recoil in the rifles).3) The last is a convoy exercise where they load a group of you into trucks and give you a magazine of blanks, assign a few leadership positions, and then drive you through the FSM area where some fake IEDs are set up and a few cadre with weapons dressed like middle easterners and blanks are ready to ambush.At the end of the fourth day there was a night land navigation exercise. After dinner they sent us out into the woods in pairs to find an assigned list of points. Depending on how you do, you end up getting to bed around midnight to two in the morning.
On the last day (Friday) we woke up, grabbed breakfast, and then did a day land navigation exercise. Same as above, but without flashlights. I'm not sure if they normally do it in that order or if this was an anomaly. Finding things in the day is much much easier than at night. After land nav, we sat around for about four hours waiting for the buses to arrive (they'd been scheduled for much later, presumably to allow time to find any people who got lost). Go back to Fort Sam, shower, sleep some, have a few classes on Army Healthcare, go to Church, play some bball, then head back to the field for the third week.

Week 3

This third week covered Army Healthcare. Army Healthcare is divided into 5 levels. Level 1 is battlefield care it consists of combat medics (68W) and a doctor and PA within about 10min or closer to the front lines. Level 2 is a couple tents with some ancillaries like xray and lab. Level 3 is a combat support hospital and the first time you see surgery. This is the largest type of in theater care. Level 4 is outside of theater (Landstuhl Germany) and Level 5 is CONUS (Care in the Continental United States).
Day one is just driving to the FOB, checking out weapons, and then a set of three informal classes on levels 1-3 of medical care. You sit around and a cadre member explains what each level does, what care it can provide, and how it's generally set up.

Day two through four involve rotating through a mock-up of each level at one per day. You go to a mock up of a particularly level each day and practice running a mass casualty event through it.
It was a fun week and for the level 1 training we had air support. Yes, that means a Blackhawk helicopter for evacuating our fake casualties. We would call in our medevac on the radio, relay some GPS coordinates, throw a smoke grenade and BAM! - A blackhawk chopper shows up, picks up a couple people, and disappears back to the home base. It was a fun experience. Unfortunately I wasn't one of those randomly selected to ride the blackhawk and play casualties. I did however get to load a litter and a 230lb buddy onto the chopper. Fun stuff!

A fellow student (aka deadcactus) summed up the experience in a forum this way: "Overall, the course was an interesting experience. You learn some interesting stuff, but prepare to "hurry up and wait" for the three weeks you are there. The only real complain I have against the course is an overwhelming atmosphere of "we're all just here because there needs to be a check in the box".

It represents a lot of people's indoctrination into the military and I feel that rather than taking the chance to hold us to the standards any other officers would be held to, it just allowed a lot of people to begin there career with the same experience and attitude that leads the rest of the Army to view AMEDD as the Rain Man of the military.

Maybe it's just me, but I would expect that three weeks of Basic Officer training should produce an Officer proficient with a rifle, able to march in formation and lead a formation, knowledgeable on how to wear the uniform and how to act when wearing it, and in better shape afterwards than before. All that would require is a little more time on the range and cadre dedicated to holding students to the proper standards. I don't know if it's complacency on the part of the cadre or the results of the simple reality that they need medical officers so badly, though I tend to think it's more of the latter.

Still, it was a memorable experience with a lot of good people to meet. If you're going, the best advice is to bring some cards and a book or two and just be patient and try to learn whatever you can. The prior service folks among your peers will be a great asset and will help you learn more of what you need to know if you are willing. Over all, just enjoy. It'll be pretty fun if you go with the right attitude... "

I couldn't agree more. It was fun. Too bad I have to go back to real life and school as soon as I get back. In fact I have missed 4 days of class already and am behind around 20 lectures. Oh well.

One last fun story, so what happens when you have a lot of guys who have a lot of free time on their hands. You get an event that Don King himself would promote. It was "scorpion vs. spider". One squadmate captured a scorpion, another a spider and then announce it to the tent and you have a pretty fun 5 min of hooting and hollering. It was quite the contest. The spider initially ran out of the box and had to be recaptured. Upon reentering the ring he was stung by Joey the scorpion. But spidy recovered and wrapped Joey's stinger up with his web. Then started the ground game and we all thought the scorpion was done. But it wasn't that much fun to watch. So the promoter decided to use a knife to split the two and placed them back in their corners for round two. When round two began Joey the scorpion struck again with the stinger and spidy was finished. It was a knock out and he never woke up.

My time in Texas was fun. A little long for the amount we learned, we could have used a little more discipline and it could have been more organized. But with just under 500 students to split up into tasks I can understand their pain in scheduling. It was a good chance to meet a lot of future doctors from all over the country and make some new friends that I may someday see in a war zone 8 years from now. Who knows what the future will hold? I certainly don't, but I feel more prepared to greet it.

Other little notes more to myself since I gave up journaling:

I need to work on being a follower better. There were a few times we had women leadership and our women student leadership go fustrated they tended to yell at the top of their lungs in a very irritating tone. I lashed back a couple times. Not so good, I even apologized to a couple. It taught me that screaming is a horrible leadership method. It's better just to wait till people quiet down themselves and also to lead by example. Instead of yelling at someone to do something, just go do it yourself and your platoon may be likely to follow suit and not resent you.
I really miss having my wife around all the time. Being married is good stuff I can't wait to get back too.
Doing a physical fitness test at 04:35 in the morning with a stomach ache maybe hazardous to your health. The pushup went fine. I got 61 in two minutes. The sit ups were ok, I did 77 in two minutes (the lowest I've done on any PT test). After which, I walked off into the darkness and spewed my breakfast onto the field. After a 10min break, we began the two mile run. I ran it in 15:24 and as soon as I was done. I went back to the field and emitted any leftover contents of my stomach in two retching expulsions. I felt horrible, but I passed.
Floating the Guadalupe river is a great end point. We floated the horseshoe the day before graduation. A few coolers of drinks, a super slow river. I bet we only traveled two miles in like 3.5 hours. The water was cool, the sun was hot. Very relaxing!

One final picture and one quote that sum up much of the Officer Basic Training experience. The photo is my squadmates "waiting" for our next training.
The quote is from Mr. Jones, a retired combat medic and civilian instructor. He said this line about 5 or 6 times anytime he instructed. "That is bulls-! Hooah!"

Canoeing in Boundary Waters

2010-07-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

Towards the end of June, Sandi and I took a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW). The area rests on the top of Minnesota and comprises the border between Canada and the United States and is referred to as the most visited wilderness area in the United States.
The lakes of the BWCAW are located in depressions formed by differential erosion. For the past two million years, massive sheets of ice have repeatedly scoured the landscape; the last glacial period ended with the retreat across the Boundary Waters about 17,000 years ago. The resulting depressions in the landscape later became the lakes of today.
The BWCAW contains over a thousand lakes and attracts visitors with its reputation for canoeing, canoe touring, fishing, backpacking, dog sledding, and remote wilderness character. The BWCAW has nearly 2,200 backcountry campsites. Most campsites in the BWCAW are accessible only by water. About 75% of the BWCAW's water area was reserved for non-motorized boat travel. Most lakes and rivers are interconnected by portage trails, resulting in over 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of canoe routes.Boundary Waters was beautiful and a nice break. Sandi and I started at Brule Lake and portaged over to Vernon Lake. Vernon Lake was a rather large lake with its own Island. Sandi and I happened to be the only people on the Lake. We had a great time relaxing, swimming, and eating Mountain House meals. I really love the solitude and time for reflection that the outdoors provides.
Eagle Mountain is the highest point in Minnesota, at 2,301 feet (701 m). The summit is inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Superior National Forest. Eagle Mountain is only about 15 miles (24 km) from Minnesota's lowest point, Lake Superior, at 607 feet (185 m). Sandi and I visited hiked up to the high point and then later that evening camped on the shore of the low point. The trail to Eagle Mountain was around 600 ft up hill over the course of 2.5 miles. It was a nice relaxing hike after several days of paddling through gorgeous lakes.
On our way home to Iowa we stopped at a Split Rock Lighthouse State Park which had handcart camping. It sits on the western shore of Lake Superior. We visited a few more parks along Lake Superior and made our way south to our final stop the Mall of America. Mall of America is located in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis & St. Paul). It is the largest mall in terms of retail space. It has parking for 20,000 and a Nickelodeon based theme park at its center. Sandi did a little shopping and bought a few things at H&M.

Nintendo

2010-07-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

Quite some time ago I saw some pictures on the internet of someone using the original Nintendo to build a computer. I have wanted to build one ever since. That plan has finally come to fruition.

The Nintendo Entertainment System (abbreviated to NES or Nintendo) is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America in 1985. Over 61 million Nintendo's were sold. My brother Joe and I received one for Christmas in the late 1980s. Super Mario, Punch-Out, RC Pro Am, Dragon Warrior, Tecmo Bowl, so many great games and good memories. Sometime I need to see if I can get my Mom to send me a picture from that Christmas we got our Nintendo. We were at our Grandparents house in Idaho as I recall.

It took me quite a while to rationalize building a computer. The best purpose for a computer inside a Nintendo box would be to serve as a Home Theater PC. Problem is for the past 6 years I haven't owned a television. In fact I really don't like television much at all. However things change when you get married and Sandi wanted a television. So after some research and debate I finally acquiesced to her request and we bought a new TV. We got a 40" Sony Bravia EX 1080p television and a rather expensive TV stand. As you can see Sandi was quite thrilled to fill her living room. We had to make sure the stand matched the color of her recently purchase Target end tables.
Anyhow as many of you know I am an engineer (in training to be a doctor) who formerly worked for Intel. I debated on buying the new Intel Westmere Core i5 and corresponding mini-itx DH57JG board to build my Nintendo with. But because they are my former employer I no longer get my hefty discount. Doh! Westmere in fact was one of the products that I spent 2004-2009 working on at Intel. I was a cpu design engineer working in the front end in translating CISC to RISC instructions and then issuing them for execution. Working with a close knit group of engineers on things like Verilog RTL, timing, power, DRCs, LVS, schematics, global bit lines, pull ups, pull downs, resistance, shielding, oh the fun memories.
Due to budget constraints, I decided to use an Atom based board. This way I could purchase the board and processor all for under $100 dollars. I settled on the D945GSEJT board which sports a Intel Atom N270 processor, built in graphics, DDR2, DVI & VGA output, integrated DC-DC power supply, and 6 usb ports.
My construction was to first use my dremel to gut the innards of a Nintendo, cut out a place for the back plate, do a little soldering to make sure the original power and reset buttons and led still work. I threw in a DVD player so Sandi and I could watch movies together.
I also added a Xbox 360 controller and wired an original Nintendo controller (http://www.retrousb.com/) so that it will work with it.
Now I can play Mario and watch movies all on my little PC. Nintendo! Now you're playing with Power!

Wedding Pictures

2010-06-30T20:11:00.000-07:00

I realize it has been a few months since we got married. But we finally have some of the pictures from the wedding. It took a while for us to get them. We were married on March 20, 2010 in the Portland Oregon Temple.

Sandi's Family

Ben's Family
Bride's Maids

Sandi's Niece

Best Men and Grandma McKay

Sandi being pampered (heels were killing her)

Mr. & Mrs. Rhoades

We had a week to drive across country and have a short honeymoon. We spent a night at the Oregon Garden Resort in Silverton, Oregon and spent the next day hiking around Silver Falls.

Sandi and I hiked the 6+ mile trail of ten falls along the banks of Silver Creek, from which the park received its name. The park's most visited waterfall (pictured above and below) is South Falls, a 177-foot (54 m) cascade.

Bye for now!

Liberty Jail

2010-06-05T22:20:00.000-07:00

With my first year of medical school ending in May and Sandi having a very flexible working schedule. So we took a trip to Kansas City.
As you might know, the midwest is full of many Latter Day Saint (Mormon) church history sites. A lot of them our in Missouri. Sandi and I took a drive down to Liberty Jail. Liberty Jail is a former jail where Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was imprisoned from December 1, 1838 to April 6, 1839. It was a double walled, masonry and timber structure, twenty-two and a half feet long, twenty-two feet wide, and twelve feet tall. The outer walls were stone masonry construction, two feet thick. Try making your way out of that! The inner walls and ceilings were hewn oak logs, about a foot square. There was about a foot of space between the outside masonry walls and the inside oak walls. This space and the space above the upper ceiling were filled with loose rock to discourage escape.
A little Church history. Followers of Joseph Smith from Kirtland, Ohio were among the first settlers in the Kansas City metropolitan area, locating about 15 miles (24 km) southeast of the jail site in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri in 1831. After Smith proclaimed that Independence was near the location of the Biblical Garden of Eden and the City of Zion should be located there, settlers in the area feared that they would lose political control of the county to the growing numbers of immigrating Mormons. To suppress Mormon ambitions in the area, settlers destroyed a Mormon printing press. Tensions even led to violence. In 1833, Smith led the Mormons to resettle in Clay County. Then later in 1836, Smith followers then moved 30 miles (48 km) northeast of Liberty to establish Far West, Missouri in Caldwell County, Missouri. The turmoil between the Saints and other settlers continued to grow until on October 27, 1838, Lilburn W. Boggs, governor of the state of Missouri, issued an Extermination Order. "The Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace... their outrages are beyond all description." Joseph Smith surrendered to the Missouri Militia and was placed in Liberty Jail and the Saints were driven from Missouri to Nauvoo Illinois.
In Independence is also the Community of Christ temple. The Community of Christ, known from 1872 to 2001 as the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS). They are a break from the main Mormon Church. Some changes included the ordination of women to the priesthood, and open communion. Independence is also a center for several other small Latter Day Saint break off Churches like the Hedrickites which have the Church on Temple Lot.
After visiting Liberty Jail, Far West, and Independence. Independence also happens to be the home of Harry Truman (33rd President who grew up in Independence and famous for authorizing the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan). His home happens to be a National Park Site. We toured downtown to Kansas City and visited the National World War I memorial.

Slashed Tires

2010-05-17T08:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough

2010-04-28T08:15:00.000-07:00

Sandi (like most women) has a little bit of a sweet tooth. She has a particular strong attachment to ice cream. Specifically Ben and Jerry's ice cream. Sandi and I have very different philosophies on food. I eat food so that I can live to see tomorrow. Volume, quantity, and price are much more important to me than taste. Sandi is just the opposite. For her eating is a very pleasurable and often one of the highlights of her day. For me I feel like eating is wasting productive time.
Anyhow, I was surprised to see how much Ben and Jerry's cost versus other types of ice cream. We had a conversation that went something like this.

"Honey, why do you always get Ben and Jerry's?" I said.
"It is sooo much better than other flavors." Sandi replied.
"Really?" I responded.
"Yes!" replied Sandi.
"I don't think you could tell it from other flavors." says Ben.
"I'm sure I can." says Sandi.
"Really?" I respond once again.
"Yes!" says Sandi.
"So if I bought a bunch of ice cream brands you could pick out the Ben and Jerry's?" says Ben.
"Of course" says Sandi.
"Hmmm, I think we're going to have to try that." says Ben.

Several weeks later we are shopping at Walmart and walk down the ice cream isle. With so many brands we and kinds we picked up five brands of chocolate chip cookie dough: Great Value (Walmart generic), Blue Bunny, Ben & Jerry's, Haagen Dazs, and Kemps.
A few days later, I had a break in my schedule and I invited over Pauline (fellow student) and her husband. I thought it would be better to have two taste testors. Plus Sandi and I like having company over.

The set up was as follows. Sandi and Pauline sat at the table with their spoons. I gave them each a sheet of paper labeled A,B,C,D,E and a pen to write their thoughts between each tasting. They also had blindfolds. I wanted them to vote on flavor alone and not visual appearance. I was behind the counter. I would provide them a sample of each type while they were blind folded. Then they would take their blind fold off and write their thoughts. After each sample they cleansed their palates with water and the tasting continued. At the end of all 5 samples they were allowed to retaste any they wanted to make their final decisions. I also instructed the girls not to talk to each other about their thoughts so that their taste testing would be independant of each other.

Are you ready for the results? The amazing thing is that both girls ranked all 5 ice cream types in the same order and that order was:

1. Great Value (Walmart generic)
2. Haagen Dazs
3. Ben & Jerry's
4. Blue Bunny
5. Kemps

Are you surprised? The girls sure were. I was also smiling and feeling especially vindicated ;) As an Engineer I feel compelled to provide some additional information on cost and nutritional features.

Brand	Cost	Serving Size	Serving weight	Servings Per Carton	Cost per Serving	Cost per lb.	Calories per Serving	Calories from Fat
Ben & Jerry's	2.98	1/2 cup	103g	4	0.745	3.28	270	130
Haagen Dazs	2.98	1/2 cup	101g	3.5	0.851	3.82	300	170
Great Value	2.75	1/2 cup	66g	12	0.229	1.57	160	70
Blue Bunny	3.58	1/2 cup	66g	14	0.256	1.76	150	60
Kemps	3.48	1/2 cup	66g	12	0.290	1.99	170	70

What did I learn? Girls like taste testing and Walmart makes the cheapest and best tasting chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. So there you have it!

Before the big day

2010-03-19T17:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it has been a few months since I wrote. It is too much to cover in one post. So I'll split it up and post some about the time periods. We just finished a very crazy three test in so many days, so we have about a week respite before the next set start again. The last week has been study till midnight or 1 am then back to school at 8am to resume.

I'll break up the blogging into before the big day, the big day (which we still don't have all the pictures for yet), and life together.

From what I remember of the time before the big day at this point in time, I really felt like I was in limbo. Being engaged is probably my least favorite time. You are "married" but not. It was a good experience for my patience. I did a lot of apartment searching and moved over to a new apartment closer to the school.

In school we've been doing physiology and did the cardiology, renal, and gastrointestinal portions. Cardiology was difficult but very interesting to learn about. I even had my own EKG taken and I learned a bit about reading them too.
As far as activities outside of school, there has been a few. I went with a group of friends ice skating downtown and I went with a friend to tour a Nagasaki-Hiroshima exhibit at Drake University. The other big event was Medical School Prom. Sandi had something going on that weekend and couldn't make it to Iowa, but she encouraged me to go. It was a really fun event with a lot of people. Sarah (friend from class) invited a number of people to her house for a pre prom party and then we all went down town to the convention center to dance the night away. It was really fun with a live band, pictures, and many girls all dolled up. I have to make a comment on that. It was fun to see how nice the girls can look when they don't just roll out of bed and come to class in sweats or scrubs. I have been going swing dancing off and on on Thursday's with a couple people and it was good to practice some of my new skills.
In the world of sports, Khoa (DPM student) and I have been training together for a half marathon at the end of April. We have both lost around 15 lbs and I'm excited about the race. For intramural sports my basketball team changed quite a bit, but we had around a 0.500 season. My volleyball team however was quite dominant. We ended up taking the championship and are the DMU Champs!
My final act before marriage was to convince some buddies to do a little mountaineering with me. Climbing a mountain for a bachelor party, sounds good to me! Sandi even gave me permission to go the day before we got married.
Dave, Mike, Russ and I headed up to Saint Helens. It was a beautiful day and we had an amazing view of Rainier, Spirit Lake, Adams, the Olympics, Hood, Jefferson.
The snow was fairly hard and crusty. Russ and Mike forgot their crampons and Russ didn't bring an axe. So I gave Russ my axe and kicked steps up the mountain. It was good exercise. They even gave me a memorable yet unmentionable bachelor's present at the top.

An Army of Worms

2010-02-04T14:47:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd share some experiences from medical school. This first one is from last semester in the Anatomy lab. I love learning about the body and anatomy was a real treat. You may not want to read this before lunch, but I think it perfectly demonstrates how “different” a typical day in medical is. In Anatomy class after we finished dissecting the abdomen we bifurcated our bodies in half at the waist and then also through the groin. One of the legs was given to the podiatry students and the other we used for dissection. Before we began dissection we had to “wash” the gluteal region and end of the colon. It was a very interesting experience to be in a room full of medical students carting around legs like clubs over to wash basins and then back. We are just a different breed. We live on campus and in the library. The pace is fast. This semester we have a few remaining basic sciences and are also having our first semester on physical diagnosis.
We just completed our first month back and obviously school is picking up the pace. We have three exams this week and one of them was on microbiology. The last 10 days were spent learning about microbiological infections of the gastrointestinal track. This includes viruses, bacteria, protists, nematodes, cestodes and flukes. How many organisms can you name that cause diarrhea? How about a little game of know your diarrhea?

Match the organism with its symptoms:

1. Entamoeba histolytica	A) foul smelling, greasy, floating
2. Giardia lamblia	B) bloody mucus containing
3. Cyclospora	C) severe debilitating diarrhea in AIDS patients
4. Cryptosporidium parvum	D) profuse watery common by ingestion Raspberry seeds
5. vibrio cholera	E) rice water stools

6. Which one of the above fluoresce under UV light? ______________

Drum roll please and the answers are: 1-B, 2-A, 4-C, 3-D, 5-E, 6-cyclospora

Are you in a learning mood? How about some information on beef tapeworm (taenia saginata)? My advice COOK your meet. I know there was a good reason that I always preferred well done to medium rare. Beef tapeworms grow typically to 10-30 ft long and live around 25 years. It's like having a pet that lives in your stomach. Humans become infected when they eat beef that is not cooked fully. Prevention is easy. Cook beef until it is no longer pink inside because cysticerci die at 56 degrees Celsius. Also, if beef is frozen at -5 degrees Celsius it is considered to be safe to consume.

What Is the Life Cycle of the Beef Tapeworm?

The adult beef tapeworm is usually a whopping 15 to 30 feet long (4.5 to 9 meters) and lives in the small intestine. An infected person usually has only one or two worms. The tapeworms use their head, called the scolex, to attach themselves to the intestinal wall. They have 1,000 to 2,000 body segments, called proglottids, each containing 80,000 to 100,000 eggs.
The eggs can survive for months or years in the environment. When cattle or other herbivores (plant-eaters) eat egg-contaminated vegetation, the eggs hatch and burrow through their intestinal wall. The larvae burrow into muscles and form fluid-filled cysts, which are protective capsules. If humans eat raw or undercooked beef containing cysts, the cysts develop over a 2-month period into adult tapeworms. Adult beef tape-worms can live for more than 30 years.
Treatment for cestode infection can be done with the drug praziquantel. Praziquantel opens membrane calcium channels causing paralysis of the worm, aiding the body in expelling the parasite through peristalsis. In more simple terms you take a pill to paralyze the worm. It can't swim up stream in the intestines any longer and so gets pushed out with everything else. Nice, eh? You can read me about tape worms here: http://www.humanillnesses.com/original/T-Ty/Tapeworm.html

This past month also marked my first ice storm in the midwest. They had freezing rain and I woke up to around a half inch of ice covering every inch of my car. Of course I had to take a picture. It took a while to scrape off. I spent the first 10 minutes being carefull and knocking it off my door which was obviously frozen shut. I should also mention school was closed that day. Which meant that I had a day off, yeah! Except for the fact that the test we missed got rescheduled for 6:30am before lectures.
There were a few more big things this past month that happened. We had a school ski trip to Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado. We left the Thursday before MLK day. After a very rowdy drunken 13 hour road trip with 95 work-aholic medical students we arrived in Colorado. Breckenridge is an amazing resort. There were over 30 lifts and hundreds of runs. We could snowboard all the way from the top of the mountain right into the condo porch. It was amazing. I also got plenty of double black runs in.
They had a lift all the way to 13,000 ft (Peak 8 of the Ten Mile range). From there it was easy to get to some sweet back country extreme terrain. One of the four of us that went up wiped it on a double black and left his skis and rolled 250 ft down the mountain. He was ok, but it was interesting to help carry skis down while boarding. The nights were filled with hot tubbing, drinking games, and anything else to help forget school.

As if medical didn't provide enough things to do with my time. I decided that I should get involved more in the community since I'm already in health care I wanted to try something outside of health care. I had a few friends back in Portland who had done big brothers big sisters and I decided to try it. My little brother is a second grader I get to hang out with once a week. We read books, play games, or draw stuff. Last week we drew a red and green lizard. It had 3 red spots and had 9 toes. Very poisionous and mean. I have a lot of fun going. It is a welcome break from school!
That about covers it, except for one last thing. This is pretty big news as well. Not quite as much as last post (which was huge). As an aside the wedding planning is going as well as I could expect. Sandi promptly rejected my offer to elope and has proceeded to take care of the invitations, venue, food, cake, flowers, and many other things. She is truly amazing. Anyhow sorry about getting side tracked. The last big news is I'm now "Lieutenant Rhoades."
This past month I joined the Army National Guard. I'm really grateful to live in this country and have the oppurtunities that I have had. I have been truly blessed and I think that our soldiers need great care. I hope to provide that to them when I graduate from medical school.
I decided on the Guard rather than Active duty becuase I would rather serve when the nation is in conlict (like now fighting two wars) and maintain my normal job during peacetime. Don't worry though, I'm non deployable until I finish medical and become a board certified doctor. It would pretty scary to have me take care of people now. I only know a little enough to be dangerous.

Christmas and some really BIG news

2010-01-03T01:40:00.000-08:00

For my two weeks off from school, I headed back to Utah. One of my classmates is from Idaho, so I decided to car pool back with him and his family. We split the 16+ hour drive into two parts and spent the night in Laramie with my Uncle. It was a long ride, but it went much smoother than I thought. I am really gratefull that his kids are so well behaved. I spent the ride in the backseat of a minivan sitting behind three and two year old girls watching Disney movies. I've now seen Up, Incredibles, Shrek 2, and Bolt. I've also seen them all three times each.

The first couple days zoomed by. I met up with a couple friends who used to live in Portland and we attended a BYU basketball game against Eastern Washington. We arrived a little late and the score was 31-2. A pretty boring game, but good to catch up. The next couple days I wrote and sent my annual Christmas letter and then just spent a lot of time catching up on sleep.
Sandi flew in on Christmas Eve and we did a quick hike up to Ensign Peak overlooking the Salt Lake Valley. We had dinner with her sister and her kids and then walked around temple square to see the lights with them.
We slept in a bit on Christmas morning and when we woke up my Dad took us down to BYU and we played racquetball. I hadn't played in a few years and was quite rusty. Luckily I was fortunate enough to go undefeated. We had dinner at 2pm. Spiral-Cut-Ham. I love ham. Yummy mouth watering salty goodness. My Mom is such an amazing cook, I'm coming home from Christmas carrying an extra 10lbs. After dinner we commenced the opening of presents.
The day after Christmas Sandi and I joined Robert, DeAnna, Justin and went to Brighton to do some snowboarding. My brother Adam was also nice and caught his horse for us and we got to ride around a little.
Sunday night Sandi and I drove up to Idaho to spend the night with my Grandma McKay. The next morning we went shopping at my Aunt Stacy's jewelry store. Yup, Ben was shopping at a jewelry store. Have you put 2+2 together yet? We're engaged!
The current plan is to get hitched on March 20, 2010 in Portland. (during my spring break)
Sandi is a truly amazing girl and my best friend. We've had a lot of fun together and I put a couple pictures of us doing all sorts of things together (I took the idea from my friend Mike). It has been a wild ride and I'm really excited. I just have to survive the next couple months of school.

Year in Review

2009-12-31T20:11:00.000-08:00

Christmas Letter 2009:

As you might have guess I have had a handful of adventures this past year. It was a year of moves and readjustments.

Last Christmas was a workday at Intel in Israel, but luckily it was also a Thursday which meant it was “Friday.” The work week in Israel is Sunday through Thursday and the weekend is Friday and Saturday. So Thursday after work I drove down to the Red Sea with a friend from India and we spent two days scuba diving in the clear blue waters. It was great. Over the next few months I explored more of the holy sites in Israel and also the outdoors. I spent a couple weekends hiking or backpacking including a two day trip across the Negev desert. I completed my temporary assignment and moved back to Oregon at the beginning of April.

The next four months seem like a blur now. When I returned I was assigned at Intel to perform stepping work on Westmere (a 32nm processor that has been demoed at various conferences and is expected to be released in 2010). I took two classes at Portland State to complete my last premedical requirements. I put my house up for sale and tried to spend as much time outdoors as possible. This included an amazing trip down to the Redwoods and Crater Lake along with pushing my body to the limit and vomiting my way through an Olympic Triathlon. For those wanting to get into triathlons here is some free advice: Do NOT drink the too much lake water during the swim, it will come back up later.

In August I moved to Des Moines, Iowa to begin medical school. I am a first year student at Des Moines University. DMU is a private health professional school with a medical school, podiatry school, physical therapy and physician assistant programs. For those of you who have heard stories about the lives of students at medical consisting of nothing but hour after hour spent in the library. I will vouch for their truth. Classes for me start at 8am and go till around noon. Afternoons are spent in labs or studying. Most days I do not leave school until after 10pm and most weekends are also spent with my nose in books memorizing page after page of material. This first semester was filled with biochemistry, histology and my favorite anatomy. Five of us were assigned a table and cadaver and spent the semester working our way through the body and all the structures. It is one thing to look at it in a book or a power point slide, it is an altogether different experience to slice away with a scalpel and then spend hours removing fat and connective tissue to find a particular artery or nerve.

While 99% of life at school has consisted of memorizing mountains of material the other 1% has included intramural sports, celebrating after tests, and ten minute ping pong breaks. For intramural sports I played both basketball and volleyball. I also managed to do some running completing a couple 5ks, and a 7 mile cross country race through streams and mud.

I feel extremely blessed to have been able to see and do so much this past year. I am really grateful for my opportunity to return to school and to challenge my mind in learning the ins and outs of the human body. It truly is a remarkable creation.

In other news a particularly pretty friend of mine has had the opportunity to share many of the above adventures including visits to Israel, the Redwoods, and Iowa. What will the future hold?

Semester one is done

2009-12-20T23:42:00.000-08:00

Hallelujah! It is nice to have a couple week break. Medical school is quite the ride. Most days it begins around 8am till somewhere around 10pm spent attending lecture, lab, and studying. The last three weeks after Thanksgiving, we have had 6 tests. I've had to add a couple hours extra per day of study time and take away a couple hours of sleep. The only things I manage to do outside of school has been working out a few times a week. But I'm happy to report that first of all I've passed all my classes and secondly it really is a lot of fun. We are learning to much so fast. I just love how much of a work out my memory is getting put through.
In my "vast" amounts of free time I have managed to do a couple things outside of school. There is an annual 7 mile cross country race here in Des Moines. It is held each year at the Living History Farms which is a museum recreating farm life in the late 1800s on the plains of the Midwest. The race crosses all over their fields and includes 8 or 9 creek crossings. It was a muddy mess, I loved it! Many people get dressed up. I saw girls wearing wedding and prom dresses. People in suits, I saw Santa, Batman, Little Bo Peep. It is just a great event.
The other physical activities have been intramural basketball and volleyball. For basketball, I am on a team of first year podiatrists (DPM) students. I am the lone med student. Our team name was "Khoa Nation". He was our honorary coach for the season. Too bad we didn't win to many games. But it was good to get some exercise.
The other team was volleyball. Our volleyball was actually pretty good. My volleyball team consisted of six medical school students and two significant others of students. We had a good season and lost only one game only to fall in the first tournament game.
We have also had quite a bit of snow in Des Moines. They actually closed school one day. We received somewhere between 12-18 inches in a 24 hour period following by 30 mile an hour winds and really cold temperatures. The wind and fresh snow made it a white out like conditions. The temperature hovered around 0 degrees with a windchill of about -15 degrees Fahrenheit. As I mentioned school was closed one day and so I hopped on my bike (yeah I'm nuts) and rode a couple miles to a friends house where I dug them out from behind a drift. Then I spent some time playing in the snow, drinking hot chocolate and then rode back home. I only spent one hour studying that day. But playing outside was such a welcome rejuvenating break.
The other trip of the last month and a half was to Portland. Sandi invited me to Thanksgiving with her family and I flew out and enjoyed some wonderful turkey and ham. I actually don't have any pictures of Thanksgiving, but the day before Thanksgiving I called a couple of friends and we hiked up to Pittock Mansion in the dark for a great view of Portland and then went for dessert afterwords.
Mostly right now, I'm happy to have some time to catch up on everything not school related. So I better get to that.

Fall in Iowa

2009-11-04T11:57:00.000-08:00

Hmm, it has been a couple months. What is life in medical school like?
It is every bit as time intesive as you could imagine. Weekdays, I have class from 8am till noon, followed by labs in the afternoon and then studying till around 10pm. I also spend most weekends studying. Everything goes by so fast. The days and weeks blur together and all I do is study, study, study. Medical school is not something conceptually difficult. The hard part is the volume of information. I would agree with this, I spend almost all my time trying to memorize information. Whether that be bones, muscles, chemical equations, or diseases. It just keeps coming.

I have quite a few classmates who have families. It seems particularly tough for them. One of my classmates often goes days without seeing his kids. He leaves to school before they get up in the morning and then is studying until after they are already asleep. During the week many only see their kids if there wives bring them in at lunch. It seems tough. I guess there are benefits to still being single.
That said, learning is really fun. The material is very interesting. Learning all the structures of the body is a long process, but very fun. Last month we did head and neck dissection on our cadavers. How many people can say that they have held a human brain? Then last week we removed the heart and lungs. Fascinating!

Do I do anything outside of school? Well, I'm still trying to keep in shape. I usually run twice a week and lift weigths twice a week. The school has a very nice gym that I'm happy to make use of to take a break from studying. I also play in both intramural volleyball and basketball leagues at the school. I ran a 5k at the beginning of the school year and then another one a couple weeks back. Afterwords, I even got to treat some people using OMM (osteopathic manual manipulation).
Earlier in the year I took off and did a night of backpacking in the Woodburn State Forest. Iowa is really green and the scenery was nice and very hilly. However after a few miles walking through the trees nothing really changes. You go up 50 or 100 ft, and then down, and then up and then down. There aren't any view points and you see forest in all directions. It would be very easy to get lost. It was a fun trip and good to get away from the studies for a day and a half.
One funny story of the last couple months. I hit a deer while riding my motorcycle home from school. It was around 11pm and sort of foggy. I was driving home on Grand Ave and there were a couple shapes crossing the road. In the fog I thought at first it was just a couple people walking across the road. I slowed down a little and then as I got closer I saw that they were deer. When they saw me, they turned around (they were already mostly across the road) and then ran back across to my side of the road. I was going about 40mph. I slammed on my breaks and was able to slow down to probably around 10-15mph and my back tire was skidding out and I knocked into one of the deer. I stayed up and so did the deer. I had so much adrenaline coursing my veins that it took several hours before I could get to sleep.
The other nice thing was Labor Day weekend. We only had one test the week following labor day, and so I took the weekend off from studying.
Sandi flew out from Portland for a visit and we went to Carthage and Nauvoo.
I guess Halloween was just last week too, I ended up in Iowa City carving pumpkins.

Why medical school

2009-08-09T16:13:00.000-07:00

It is a wierd feeling leaving a settled established life and putting your house up for sell, quitting a six-figure job, packing all your belongings into your truck and a little trailer and driving around 2000 miles to be a poor student. Occasionally you second guess yourself, but really you are just excited to get this next phase going. I'm really excited about hitting the books and learning all sorts of information and meeting a lot of new people. It is going to be fun. Alas, Orientation just finished and class does not start until tomorrow the 10th. DMU did put a white coat on me and take this photo for my ID badge. It's official. This is my future.
Why am I doing this? Well, Here is one of my medical school application essays:

It was 3:00AM; the dark sky above was littered with thousands of stars. The path across the snow in front of me was lit by a dim headlamp. My feet were cold and tired, I was sore and out of breath. Yet I lumbered on. Thrust in the axe, step and kick the crampons into the ice, and repeat. I remembered the statement of George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: "Because it is there." Is that why I was awake at 3:00AM on a frozen mountain? Five hours later we reached the summit of Mount Rainier in Washington and I knew why I was there. The feeling of accomplishment numbed any soreness I felt and the views were amazing. I had arrived.

I have always felt that the things in life that are the most rewarding are those for which you have to work the hardest. I live for those challenges whether they are physical or mental. Medicine is one of the most challenging fields. The schooling is hard and intense, and learning does not stop at graduation. Doctors need to stay current and provide the best care possible for their patients. It definitely provides that challenge, but why now? I'm a 27 year old Electrical Engineer several years into his 30-year home mortgage. Why make a change?

"Seasons Greetings and Happy Holidays!" was how the letter closed. I had just finished reading Dave's holiday note and year summation. I was amazed at how enthusiastic Dave was about his job. He talked about the long hours and challenge, but also the rewards of doing pro bono work in Guatemala and volunteering at the clinic for low-income people. I thought back to the Christmas letter I had sent out to friends and family. I had rattled off a list of accomplishments: climbed my first glaciated summit, bought my first home, run a half marathon, scuba certified, played in soccer, basketball, volleyball leagues and taken a Hebrew class. I had a good year, yet I was missing something. My letter had only a mini blurb about my job. Of all the things I had done in the past year, I had spent the most time at work, yet I had the least to say about it. I realized I was not passionate about what I did. The challenges I faced at work were few and far between providing little sense of accomplishment. It had become a means of survival.

Growing up I had always been passionate about science. I always loved to solve problems and technology was the wave of the future. Having excelled in school, I wanted something that would really challenge me. There were two options: a career in medicine or engineering. I opted for the shorter path and chose electrical engineering. I attended Brigham Young University and was on academic scholarship all four years. I had an exciting undergraduate career and was fascinated by the things I worked on like designing stereo amplifiers, soccer playing robots, or web accessible mp3 players. After my sophomore year, I landed an internship in Berlin Germany working for a small aerospace company, PACE, doing contract work for Airbus. I helped develop a program that drew computer automated wiring diagrams and a database and retrieval system for document sharing among engineers. Returning to school, I completed my degree and took a job at Intel. Like my time in Germany, at Intel I spent 80% or more of my time behind a desk staring at the gentle glow of the monitor with little or no interaction with anyone or anything besides my PC. I was still missing something. Where was the passion?

"Bezplatne kurs rzucenie palenia," in big bold colored letters read the banner that my roommate and I posted on the lampposts in Gdansk, Poland. The above line in English reads, "Free class to quit smoking." When I was nineteen I deferred my college enrollment and served a two year mission in Poland for my Church. Our goals were to bring the people hope and show our love through service. Our first stop smoking class in Gdansk had 10 people and 9 of the 10 stopped smoking. Our program was so successful that it was written up in a local newspaper. I was later assigned to serve in Poznan and there we spent a day every week working in a center for abused women. Throughout my two years I served in numerous ways and the more people I touched the better I felt. I had the passion. At BYU, in addition to being a full time student and having a part time job, I volunteered as an assistant scoutmaster. Being an Eagle Scout, I wanted to give back and share the outdoors with the youth. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Reminding myself of service, fervor for science and having read Dave's letter, my thoughts again turned to the field of medicine. I would be serving others. Though not for the faint of heart and requiring many long nights, I believe that becoming a doctor will provide me with the challenge, passion and sense of accomplishment that I found scaling Mount Rainier. After three years of being an engineer, I enrolled in night school to finish medical school prerequisites. I now feel motivated, passionate and invigorated again. The other day as I was volunteering at the hospital, I retrieved a wheel chair and headed toward the elevator to a patient's room for a transport job. Dana, another volunteer, remarked: "Look at him smiling!" I thought about it and realized I was smiling and well, my grin grew even bigger.

Onward to Iowa

2009-08-01T15:37:00.000-07:00

The last three weeks have been a ride. It is sad to see friends go and know that things will never be the same. It is the simple things I will miss like the "Good Mornings" over the cube walls with Dave, Eric and Jeff. Talking to Dave about backpacking, Jeff about motorcycling, Eric about Intel's products, or Thuy about her kids. I was at Intel just over 5 years. During that five years I made many friends in Oregon and also in Israel. They are what make the company a great place to work was the amazing people I got to work with. I was always amazed at the caliber and brain power of those around me. For five years I enjoyed it, however I just couldn't see sitting in the dark at a keyboard for the next 20+ years. I worked on quite a few processors including Cedar Mill (P4-65nm), Prescott (P4-90nm), Nehalem (Core i7-45nm), the future products Westmere, Sandybridge, and Haswell. In fact some stuff I was working on when I left won't be sold until 2013. Crazy! That is the year I will graduate from medical school. The last couple weeks I spent a lot of time going to lunch and saying goodbye to coworkers and exchanging email addresses. My last day at Intel was July 27th. Twenty-two people came to lunch at McMenamin's Cornielius Pass Roadhouse. Thanks again guys!

I did several other things the last couple weeks. Played in my last Portland BBall League game and had a team BBQ at Lenny's house. Thanks Lenny! Rode around Hagg Lake with Wes and went to his wedding. Sandi also inivited me to go with her family camping near Mt. Rainier. We had a great time and I took a few pictures from our hike around Sunrise up to the Burrough Mountains and Fremont lookout.
This last Monday the 27th was a was a busy day. I picked up the uhaul trailer at 7am. Some friends helped me load it between 8-9 and I got to work about 10am. I spent the morning in staff meeting, answering a few emails and chatting with coworkers. Lunch was the end of my time at Intel. I handed my badge and laptop to manager Eric and after lunch at the roadhouse, I hopped in my truck and started the trek to Iowa. I had already packed that morning. I drove to Idaho and spent the night with my Grandma in Twin Falls.

Tuesday through Thursday I spent in Utah visiting my family. I had a great time. I was able to spend time with my other Grandma. My Dad, brothers, and I all took motorcycles and rode from Provo Canyon to Hobble Creek over dirt roads. It was a lot of fun. It was also the first time we'd all done something together other than dinner since we went snowmobiling five years ago. I also got a chance to go cycling with a neighbor. We had a great ride up Provo Canyon, Sqaw Peek, Bridal Veil Falls, and South Fork. Thursday morning I decided to hike Mt Timpanogos (11,749ft). It was a great hike, I didn't find anyone to go with me, so I went alone. I always am amazed to see the waterfalls, wildflowers, icy lakes, mountain goats, and surreal panoramas from the summit.
Above is a little map of my route. I stopped in Twin Falls, Orem, and Omaha on my way from Portland to Des Moines. 1928 miles between Mon Jul 27 to Sat Aug 1. Wed and Thu were spent relaxing in Utah.

Hendersonville Robbery and 3D

2009-07-13T16:08:00.000-07:00

The past month was crazy. Time is zooming by. I only have two weeks left in Oregon then I’m moving to Iowa and starting medical school. I often feel like I have more on my plate than I can handle. Just have to keep breathing.
When I last left off I was flying into North Carolina. Sandi had invited me to North Carolina to attend the 60th Wedding Anniversary of her Grandpa and Grandma Jones and to meet more of her family. Her Dad rented a large house in Hendersonville nestled into the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. It was a beautiful hilly area. It was just as green as it is here in Oregon. We went hiking to Chimney Rock and Lake Lure, went out to eat a lot and spent a lot of time visiting and meeting the family. One of her Uncles travels to Israel off and on and another had climbed Rainier. Her Grandpa spent some of his younger days backpacking along the Appalachian trial. It was fun getting to know them.
The crazy part of the story occurs on the return portion. I had flown in Friday and arrived in Charlotte around 10am. I drove to Hendersonville, spent the next two days there, then around 3am Sunday morning I jumped in my rental car and starting my drive back to Charlotte. I had borrowed Wes’ GPS system which had been nicknamed “Judy”. Judy simplified a few things while we were driving around the hills and was nice to have. She also led us to the middle of nowhere twice so I guess there are ups and downs. Anyhow, it is 3am and I’m driving through Hendersonville. I come to a red light and a guy walking across the street motions at me. I roll down my window. He comes over and explains that he locked his keys in his car and was wondering if I could give him a ride home. How far I ask? Around two miles. I said sure and he hops in the passenger side. He was a skinny six foot tall mid 20s African American. He tells me he had been out clubbing since his old lady had a ladies night. We drive over to his girlfriend’s apartment and her car was not there. So he asks me to take him to his Aunts house instead which is only a few miles away. Along the way he starts complaining about how much it is going to cost him to get his keys out and how he has no money. He then asks me if I can spare any cash. I tell him sorry I only have cards on me. He responds that there is an ATM nearby. I respond no thanks, I signed up to give him a ride no more. We arrive to some residential neighborhood and he says this is it. We stop and he grabs the Judy, opens his door and starts running. I grab his arm as he exits the car, but he twists free and is gone. I put the car in park, hop out and decide it probably wouldn’t be the smartest to leave my running car in the middle of this neighborhood at 3am to chase him down. As he’s running away a book pops out of his pocket. The book was titled The Healing Power of Forgiveness. Ironic, eh? That’s what I get for trying to help someone out at 3am I guess. Luckily I had picked up a state map and I used that to navigate the two hour drive back to Charlotte to catch my plane home. It added another $200 to the trip to replace Wes’ GPS. Doh.
The next weekend of June, my cousin Becky got married in Jerome, Idaho. Sandi and I made the 1000 mile round trip to see it and I got to see my Grandma, brothers and sisters for the first time in a while. Everyone seems to be doing well. We took a little bit of a tour on the way back and visited the John Day Fossil Beds, Painted Hills, and even spotted a shoe tree along the way.
For the 20th of June, Russ had a great idea. He suggested we hike the 3D mountains in the gorge in one day. The three “D’s” are Dog Mountain, Mt Defiance, and Devil’s Rest. I can’t refuse something so crazy, so at 4:30 am we met at the parking lot of Fred Meyer, piled in Russ’ car and off we went. The people crazy enough are Russ, Dave, Mark and I. Christian also joined us for the final hike up Devil’s Rest.

Dog is about 7.1 miles and 2850ft gain. Time Up: 1hr 11mins.
Defiance is about 11.3 miles and 4935ft gain. We went up in about 2:50.
Devil’s Rest is 6.6 and 2550ft. Time Up: 1hr 23min.
Total: 25 miles and 10335 ft of gain.

Work has been going ok. I’m spending most of my time doing timing and quality improvements to next year’s Westmere chips. I’m also doing work on a chip named Haswell that won’t be out for a long long time. I was hoping my last month or so would slow down. But the paths and work just keep coming. I get the feeling that Intel is definitely extracting as much as it can from me.
I am not the only one leaving Oregon this summer. A friend of mine Christian moved to Pittsburgh so we had a party for him at my house and we did a couple songs duet style with me playing my harmonica and him playing on his cello. We got quite a few laughs.
Barry is also leaving Portland for Salt Lake City. He was quite fun to have around and a good motivator. Always the ladies man and quite the athlete, the kid did a half iron at age 13. I will always have fond memories of his crazy 30th birthday party and him annihilating a piñata with the shotgun. Crazy!
The other big task has been getting my home on the market to sell. I have removed wall paper from 3 rooms. I have repainted 5 rooms. I repainted the garage door and house door. I removed moss from the roof. The house was power washed. The yard was weeded and we replanted some grass. That and just lots of cleaning. It has kept me quite busy. Wes, Brandy, and Sandi were a big help in getting it all done.
I was supposed to spend the 4th of July weekend backpacking, but I had too much to complete and get done on the house. So what was supposed to be a multi day backpack trip ended up being a long day hike. Dave and I hiked about 15 miles from Hug Point state park along the beach, then up into the hills around Tillamook head and back down to the beach at Seaside. It was a fun hike. We even veered off the trail to see a moss overgrown World War II bunker in Ecola State Park.This last weekend on the 11th of July I did an Olympic Triathlon (1.5K Swim/40K Bike/10K Run) out at Hagg Lake. 3 hr 9 min. Ouch! The swim for me was awful. I had no idea or rhythm as to what was going on till after I got around the first buoy and everyone in my wave had passed me and I was left to swim at my own pace. I felt way crowded. My first “open water” swim. I guess now I know and will be a little better prepared for next time. I still need to learn how to spot and stop drinking the lake water. I started fast on the bike and rode the 4 miles between the boat ramp and dam passing quite a few and then my stomach starting churning. It was really tight. I couldn’t figure out why. It only occurred to me later that I had swallowed too much of the lake water. I started to vomit it out. I vomited three times on the first lap near the dam. After vomiting I slowed down quite a bit and just cycled to finish. I finished the swim, so I had to keep going. The second lap I pulled my Gatorade out and took a swig. Then my stomach decided it didn’t like that either and I vomited the fourth time. My bike should have been a lot faster. It’s what I have the huge legs for. Oh well. That will be next time. Bike was just under 17mph. Ouch. The run was also pretty slow, but from the way I felt I was just trying to finish. Averaged just over 9 minute miles, which is worse than any half marathon I’ve run.

Road trip to Redwoods

2009-06-05T02:30:00.000-07:00

Where am I? Where has the time gone? It’s two am and I’m sitting in first class on a flight out to North Carolina. There is a definite benefit to flying to Israel a couple times in the past year. All those miles mean elite membership and complimentary upgrades to first class. I could get used to this. The fresh fruit and lazy-boy style recliners are great.

Anyhow the task at hand, what has been going on? The first thing that comes to me is that time is NOT my friend. He keeps marching on as much as I would like him to slow down and let me keep up. Taking biochemistry and genetics, putting my hours in at Intel, playing in basketball leagues, running, lifting, dating, …. Sleep is forever left at the bottom of the list. I’ve weathered the first two months. I have two more left, then I’m off.
Work has seemed to progressively pick up. I’ve been splitting time among several things. I have been fixing speed issues on Intel’s 32nm Westmere which according to press releases will most likely be on the market in 2010. Next I have been working on circuit and feasibility studies for new features that we will be integrating into our 2013 project. Finally I have been trying to convey some of my learning’s from Israel to the team here in Oregon. I’m not in crunch mode, but it’s more than enough to keep me feeling like I’m always a week behind. Work coupled with school has been a bit of a challenge. Four times a week I make the trip downtown to Portland State for class. The material has been quite interesting and the two topics are interrelated enough that I’m often getting double exposure to the material. Trying to keep up with the reading has been difficult. I’ve actually taken two half days from work to study before exams, which means I just spend more weekend time at work making up later. Luckily class is almost over, next week is finals and then I can spend more time working and keep up a little better.

With work and school you would think I wouldn’t have time for much else, but you’d be wrong, very wrong. Work hard and play harder! Coming back to Portland I was excited to get back into a nice schedule again.

Mon/Wed – 6am 5x5 basketball, an hour at gym lifting, then work, class in evening
Tue/Thu – 6:15am run 3.5 miles, work, class at lunch, work till late
Fri – 6am cycling or cycle to work

Hopefully, I’ll be adding some morning swimming to that soon. Weekends have been pretty good too, I’ve had to spend a few studying and working, but for the most part I’ve been able to get and explore the outdoors. Here is a quick rundown.

April 18th – Larch Mountain – 14 mile hike with Russ
April 25th – Saddle Mountain with Sarah and a BBQ at Dave’s
May 2nd - Rock climb Friday night at Rocky Butte and then cycle 70 miles from Beaverton to Woodburn and back
May 16th – Attempt on Mt Hood. Large falling ice chunks persuaded Mark, Dave and I to turn around at 10,000ft. Two other climbers made the evening news with injuries that day. I’m glad it wasn’t us.
May 23rd – Trip to Redwoods with Sandi, Wes and Brandi. We left Friday night around 8pm, camp, visit Oregon Caves, drive to Redwoods, picnic and mountain bike 17 miles. Camp, attend Church, hike Tall Trees and Stout Grove. Drive to Crater Lake, camp, visit and bike at Crater Lake.Swim in river on our way to Winston. Visit Wildlife Safari with lions, tigers, bears, rhinos, hippos, elephants, camels, zebras, and more. Drive home and arrive around 8pm. 72 hours and 1150 miles driving. Awesome!
June 5th – North Carolina – (sitting on the plane right now)

What else? Played and won a flag football tournament. I also organized a couple tame bachelor parties for Dallin and Dave. We duck taped Dallin, tossed him into a duck pond, let him change, took him to the batting cages and burgers. Dave’s was pizza, root beer, and watching Vertical Limit. Vertical Limit is now one my favorite over exaggerated corny comedies. Nitroglycerin on K2? Climbers sprinting at 26,000 ft? Climbing without a helmet, forgetting to set anchors or even wear gloves. Classic Hollywood.
I guess that about wraps it up. Wait you say, what about medical school? Where? When? Well, unless I get off a waitlist (highly unlikely), I will be going to Des Moines University in Iowa. Class of 2013! School starts August 10th. Anyone want to buy a house in Oregon?

Two old family pictures

2009-06-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

I was looking for a picture the other day and I found these pictures. Wow, it's been a while. Both of these pictures were taken a little over 10 years ago in 1999 just before I moved to Poland for my mission.
DeAnna is married. Joe is no longer a bean pole. Melanie is also no longer a little girl. Little Adam is now 6'5"

Parents in Israel and Return to Oregon

2009-04-12T17:19:00.000-07:00

I finished up at work. I had a little vacation with my parents and now I'm back home in Oregon. Reflecting on the trip is hard. I miss it already. The first annoyance in coming back to Oregon is the driving. People come on, it is ok to drive at least the speed limit or at least move over so I can zoom by you. I miss my speed racer rental car driving. Other than that superficial change the biggest change is that I am no longer on vacation and I feel 10 times more responsible. In Israel I only had two tasks. I had to work and I had play. Nothing else. No school, bills, family obligations, etc. As soon as work was over I was free. This is why I spent so many weekends traveling and enjoying. Coming home is like reawakening to reality. I have bills, a mortgage payment, roommates, people asking when I'm getting married, classes at University, and my full time job. Too bad I can't just fly back there and go back to working, learning Hebrew and playing. I miss it. No more care free fairy tale 75 degree sunny winter days. I'm back to the rain of Oregon and the "real" world.

In the end though, I have to say that I feel like I have had my time in the sun. I speak a couple languages, have lived in four countries and visited 25 or so. I own a house (at least part of it), motorcycle, have a pilot's license, and am scuba certified. I've run a marathon, triathlon. I cycle, rock climb, and mountaineer. I am very grateful for all the blessings and amazing opportunities I've had. It has been an amazing ride and maybe its about time for me to delve into that second half of life. I'm really excited for what will come. Life never ceases to amaze me or cause me to smile.My last week in Israel, I had invited my parents and a good friend Sandi. I was really glad that my Mom came. This was her first time really outside of the country. She had only crossed the border to Canada and Mexico before. I was quite surprised she talked my Dad into it. But they made it. I really pushed them all week long. We started around 6:30 every morning and were not back till after dark. We had to make sure not to waste daylight. Here is a run down of all we saw in their week.

Thursday : 4pm pick up at airport, walk the Tel Aviv beach to Jaffa, have a pita and hummus dinner
Friday: Caesarea, Haifa, Bahai Gardens, Bet Shearim, Megiddo, Nazareth
Saturday: Jerusalem: Garden of Gethsemane, Garden Tomb, Church at BYU Center, Citadel, Church of Holy Sepulchre, Damascus Gate, Falafel, Western Wall, Dinner at Whites
Sunday: Jerusalem: Dome of the Rock, Hezekiah's Tunnel, Yad Vashem (Holocaust Memorial), and Bethlehem
Monday: Desert viewpoint with Jerico, Ein Gedi waterfall hike, Dead Sea, Masada and driving through a sandstorm in the desert to Eilat
Tuesday: Petra, Jordan with camel riding
Wednesday: Snorkel and Scuba Dive in Red Sea from Eilat
Thursday: Bet She'an, Belvoir, Jordan River, Sea of Galilee, Yehudiya Hiking, Capernaum, Tabkha
Friday: Mt Beattitudes, Zippori, Korazim, last minute Nazareth Shopping, drop parents at airport (they went to Egypt before home), play in Mediterranean Ocean
Saturday: Fly back to Oregon

The two interesting things were the sand storm on our way to Eilat. The wind would pick up and blow sand across the road so you weren't able to see 200 ft in front of you. You would slow down and then the wind would die down and then you'd speed back up. And repeat. The other funny thing is our first day in Jerusalem we left our car right outside the old city walls near the Dung Gate. When we returned to our car it had been spray painted. They didn't really draw anything though just a couple strokes. If you are going to spray paint, lets see some creativity. Anyhow it cleaned off easily with acetone and we were fortunate not to have the car broken in to, which happened to a car two lengths away down from us. Moral of the story, do not park outside the south city walls even during daylight hours.

That about sums up Israel, I arrived back in Oregon on a Saturday and two days later on Monday I was back at work and I had class that evening. I am taking my last prerequisites for medical school. I have biochemistry and genetics. I go to class downtown at Portland State Monday through Thursday. Add in the typical 50+ hours a week at Intel and then unpacking stuff from my garage, getting my cars back up and running (replacing batteries), car insurance, cell phone, etc. It has been a hectic return.

Right now I just have this feeling of being in limbo. Medical school starts this Fall and I still don't know where I will be. I have April, May, June and July in Oregon. After that it could be Utah, Iowa, stay in Oregon, or maybe I just lose it and move to Africa. Who knows?
I close with a line from William Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing, "He that hath a beard is more than a youth, and he that hath no beard is less than a man."

Political land mines

2009-03-22T23:27:00.000-07:00

Whew, I've almost made it. I finally closed my last design at work and now I'm just in clean up mode. What a ride. This past weekend a couple of designers from Oregon came to Israel for face to faces and it was fun to show them around for a couple days. We stopped to take some pictures at an overlook near the Sea of Galilee and I got this one.
It is a silly picture and looks like I'm about to do something really dumb. It was only for show. Though as I think about it and returning home I think about the fact that I will no longer be returning home to the USA but the USSA (United Socialist States of America). The change has been slow and gradual but constant especially in the last 70 years since FDR. I shake my head. The world of politics is often like a field of land mines. It is a taboo topic. Discussions can lead to explosions and fierry arguments.

The ideals of the current movement I cannot fault. That everyone has a house and is fed. That everyone has health care or a job. But the way we will go about doing it is flawed. How does care at a VA (government) hospital compare to a privately run hospital? Remember all the problems and people resigning a few years back. Do you want that for your health care system? I don't. I've seen other health care systems. I've lived in Poland, Germany, and Israel. I don't want 40-50% taxes and a sub par system. Don't think our attempt will be any different. Government has proven and continues to prove time and time again that whatever it touches gets worse and costs twice as much.

I am a firm believer in free will. However big government, universal health care, large welfare programs take that free will away from me. If I choose NOT to support certain programs I will go to jail for not paying my taxes. I think the better way has and always will be charity. Churches, public non profit organizations are much more efficient at delivering and caring for others than anything else. Why? Because the people that work and donate their time believe and happily work in those systems. Private American's donate more to charities around the world more than any other nation. That we do by choice. I was thinking the other day about how much fun it is to volunteer. Over the years I've volunteered at in libraries, woman's shelters, boy scouts, food banks, and hospitals. I've loved all the time I have spent and have met some truly amazing individuals. In fact if you want to find someone to pattern your life after than begin volunteering. Volunteering at St. Vincent's Hospital in Portland the caliber of my fellow volunteers was amazing. They came from all walks of life and always with a smile and warm heart ready to help those in need.

I have opinions on many subjects. If you have time or want to share your own views I'd love to sit and discuss them with you. I read a book the other day on my flight back from Europe. I agreed with most of it. It touched issues from foreign policy, taxes, health care and personal privacy. It is titled "The Revolution: A Manifesto" by Ron Paul. I highly recommend it. It is a quick read (under 200 pages).
On to a slightly related topic. Living abroad I get to see different mentalities. Returning home there are two things I dislike about the current mentality in the United States. 1) Why are work and personal life so separate? 2) Why is it so frowned upon to talk politics and religion?

Living in Israel I've noticed a difference in the unity of my coworkers at Intel. We are more of a team here. I have met several of my coworkers wives. They have invited me to dinner at their homes or to go out and see the sights. I have been grateful for it and developing those relationships has helped our unity at work and ability to work together. I think being friends we become a more efficient well-oiled machine. However, America is typically different. I met an anesthesiologist here in Israel who did a two year rotation at OHSU in Oregon. During her two year stay there she was never once invited for dinner by any American coworkers. The only times she was invited anywhere outside of work was by fellow foreigners. She said everyone was nice at work, but there was a line there and it was never crossed. As an American I felt sad and apologized for our lack of camaraderie. I hope I have learned my lesson and I plan to take that with me as I return home and try to be a better coworker.

On the second subject. I understand that politics and religion are personal views and as such they shouldn't be forced down other peoples throats. People get so passionate over those two things that it can turn from a friendly discussion to a heated argument in a matter of moments. One needs to tread lightly. I find open discussions very enjoyable. If you want to really know someone you need to know what they believe. It makes us the people we are. Learning those I can gain a better perspective and understand where my friends and coworkers are coming from and what makes them tick. I will learn many new things and maybe even change some of my own beliefs in the process.
For me getting to know people will create a love and a great friendship. The master teacher once said: "This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

Weekend to Warsaw and Berlin

2009-03-10T03:29:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I took a really quick trip to Europe. I was closing down my second of three blocks I'm working on and decided I needed a break so I bought last minute tickets and flew to Europe. My flight Thursday morning was at 5:30 am from Tel Aviv. The Ben Gurion airport requests that for international travel you arrive 3 hours before departure. That is 2:30 am. This along with the fact that I'm still very busy at work meant that I just simply worked till about 1:45 am and then drove straight from work to the Airport on Wednesday night. After a quick stopover in Frankfurt, I was in Berlin around 11am. Stella was there to pick me up.
It was funny to be back in Germany again. Everything just seemed to rush back. I remembered the streets, the restaurants, and best of all I still remembered German. Unlike in Israel, where my language abilities are lacking. The trip had a nostalgic coming home kind of feel. I was completely comfortable. I didn't really feel like a tourist just that I was going home to visit friends for a few days. Stella and I visited the Gedaechtniskirche next to Zoo, had some Italian pizza, then wandered from the Reichstag to Alexanderplatz.
As we went by the Brandenburger Tor we decided to visit the new Madame Tussaud's museum. Even though I've been to London and other places that have Tussaud museums I had yet to visit one. They were always cost prohibitive. This one was no different. They wanted 20 euros each for entrance to see a bunch of wax figures. Yet this time was different. I was in the company of a female which left me little choice but to cooperate. After I forgot about the cost it turned out to be fairly fun.
The sculptures were impressively done and incredibly lifelike. As I walked from room to room my eyes were constantly telling me they were real until I got a little closer and noticed they didn't move or blink. We both posed with several of the figures.
When I decided to fly to Berlin I had noticed that there was an ACDC concert playing in Leipzig the same night I arrived. I've always wanted to go to one of their concerts. They haven't been on a world tour since Stiff Upper Lip in 2000. I would have gone when the were on tour in North America, however I was living in Israel during that portion. Anyhow since I decided last minute to go to Germany it was of course sold out and the only tickets online were hovering around 300 euros. No, thank you. However, it turned out that Maccabbi Tel Aviv was in town playing Alba Berlin in a Euroleague 16 game. We got tickets fairly easily and enjoyed the game.
Friday in Berlin, we slept in a little and then went out for a breakfast. It was delicous. I later met my old manager Andre from Pace Aerospace for lunch. It was fun to catch up and hear about the company, his family and also his perspective on the current economic and political climate. Later that evening I met Dirk and we went bowling and played billiards.
Once night arrived I found myself meeting up with Volker and Silvia. We went clubbing to AMPM under the s-bahn station at Hackescher Markt. After stomping around to techno and hiphop for a number of hours it was time for me to leave. I headed to the train station and caught a train at 4:30am to Warsaw, Poland.
I fell in and out of conciousness on my train ride trying to sleep a little bit. The biggest change was the lack of passport control. Now that Poland is part of the EU there is no longer border patrol officers that check you when you cross the border. I can't wait for when they also get the euro. That will be one less inconvenience. I arrived in Poland around 11 am. Walking out of the train station I was greeted by ominous landmark to communism the Palace of Culture and Science.
Arriving in Poland once again meant I had to switch languages. The lack of sleep and lack of practice in Polish took their toll and left me initially taking seconds at a time to search for words deep in the back of my head. It slowly passed and I was soon speaking fluidly. I was amazed though that the understanding was always there. The more I heard, the more I remebered. Doors in the back of my mind were constantly being unlocked.

In Poland I spent my time with the Zielonkas. I had the priviledge of teaching their family eight years ago while I was on my mission. It is amazing how much they have grown. The Warsaw branch is now split into two parts and Leszek has been the Branch President for the past four years. Wow! Leszek still does remodels and construction work. Dorota finished a masters degree and now is working in more of the management side of nursing. Weronika is studying at University and Blazej is attending 4th grade. They also bought a home to remodel in the country. Yet things seem so similar to old times. The sun was absent during my stay in Poland just like the winters I recall. The gray skies and large gray communist housing blocks painted the same gray landscape I remembered from some many years before. The Zielonkas live in the same small two room one bath apartment and were kind enough to let me spend the night at their place. The grey was broken up slightly by a small dusting of snow on Sunday morning.
We attended service at the Chapel and I saw a few familiar faces like Karina, Bogdan, the Zielewskis, Slawek and learned a little more about how things were going in Poland. I was teased quite a bit for coming back unmarried. Marina even felt the need to give me some advice. 1) Always open doors and be a gentleman. 2) Let them know how you feel by buying flowers or chocolates. 3) Don't be a scrooge and spend your money on them. I had a good laugh. I'm pretty good about the first part. But I'm not very with two or three. After the service and dinner it was already time for me to go. I left the Warsaw airport just before 8pm and arrived in Tel Aviv around 3:30am. I drove to my apartment, showered, took a two hour nap and then drove to work.

Marching towards tapeout

2009-03-01T14:02:00.001-08:00

The days have begun to blur together. At work we have begun the death march towards tapeout. Tapeout is the handoff of the final layout and design to the fabrication facility. It is the process where all the designs across the processor are hand tweaked, cleaned up, and sent through many layers of verification and quality checks. There are way too many t’s and i’s to cross and dot. In my roughly five years at Intel this marks my fourth initial design (A0) tapeout. I worked on CedarMill, Nehalem, Westmere and now Sandy Bridge. The last couple months before tapeout are very grueling. I kept track of my hours last week and was in the office 83 hours. Ouch! Every week since mid January I’ve put in at least 70. Long hours, but at least I'm not bored at home.
In the current economic conditions, I realize I am extremely fortunate to have a really good job. While I work a lot, I’m glad to have an ability to support myself and see a truly remarkable part of the world. During my travels (as you can read below) I had occasion to remember the parable of the Good Samaritan and how we who have are obligated to give and serve. The past several weeks I’ve had the opportunity to tutor several students in English, which has been rewarding. Yet I feel like I need to do more. I don't know what that is yet.

With all the work my sleep has dwindled to 3-5 hours a night. Some days consist of me waking up at 6am, running 7km, then working till 1 or 2 in the morning only to repeat the process the next day. A funny thing happened about a month back. There are two places I park at work. I can park in the garage under the building or I can park outside. One day I had parked in the garage and worked all day till around 1:30 am. I went down to the garage to drive home and then I noticed that the large garage doors to exit the garage were closed. There were no after hours phone numbers posted. My car was locked in! Doh! It was 1:30 and I work a half hour from the city and my apartment. It would take too long to call a cab. I didn’t want to go back to the office and sleep on the floor. I thought that too embarrassing. So I decided the only logical thing was to curl in the back seat of my compact and nap till 6am. Yup all 6’3” of me stuffed into the equivalent of a Geo Metro. I actually slept really well and the only side affect was a kink in my neck. Because I run every other day before work I had extra clothes in my car and so I returned to work at 6, showered and cranked through another day. I later asked and found out the garage closes at 11pm. Needless to say I’ve been parking outside since.
The every other day running was training for an upcoming half marathon at the Dead Sea. It was scheduled for the 21st of February. However due to a storm and flooding it was postponed till the 28th. It rained again and was again postponed. They have yet to reschedule. I can’t complain too much, the rain is a welcome blessing as drought and increases in farming continue to drain Lake Kinneret. Beyond the work and running, I still manage to play 3x3 once a week and even though I’m only going to Hebrew class about 50% of the time I still enjoy that.

To reach 70 hours a week, it is obvious where I spend a most of my weekends for the past two months. I’ve taken two breaks and done two hikes. I also spent one morning before work mountain biking with Major Boyd. The best part were the crashes. A few bruises and some embarrassment and live to ride another day.
The first hike I took was to Mt Meron. Just shy of 4,000 ft it is Israeli’s highest mountain outside of the “disputed” Golan heights which includes Mt Hermon. I went with my Serbian friend Oliver.
It was good to see the green in the north of Israel since we've had a little bit of rain. We also encountered ruins along the way. The flowers had started to bloom as well. The best part was probably that Oliver's wife had packed sandwhiches for us. Maybe that marriage thing isn't all that bad.
The other hike I went with a Swiss friend from my Hebrew class. We walked a large swath of the path between Jerusalem and Jericho.
The path begins with several springs and as the canyon grows deeper and deeper it grows dryer and dryer. The water then is diverted into modern and ancient aqueducts.
Located yet further down the narrow canyon of Wadi Qilt lies the blue domes of one of the oldest monastic communities of the Holy Land. It is surrounded by caves and cliffs that have served as refuge to hermits and robbers alike. St. George monastery’s present building dates back to the 19th century, but the site has been occupied since the 5th century. The monastery had many paintings and amazing mosaic floors.
The road from Jerusalem to Jericho is also mentioned as the sight of the parable of the Good Samaritan. The ruggedness of the terrain, caves and canyons make excellent spots for robbers. Luckily for us we escaped unscathed, I even had time for a little swim.

Mind-Boggling people and a Makhtesh

2009-01-20T11:17:00.000-08:00

Everywhere I travel whether in the states or living in Israel I am always running across so many interesting people with amazing experiences, talents and skills. The last time I was at the airport I was sitting waiting for my flight and I noticed the women next to me had a Polish passport. Having spent two years in Poland, I started up a conversation. It turned out she was a ballerina in a protestant dance troupe (Ballet Magnificat) that had just finished a tour in South America and was touring Israel. As 99% of Poles are Catholics I asked about her being Protestant. She told me an amazing story about her conversion and trip on a humanitarian mission to Africa.
The other day I was sitting in my Hebrew class speaking in German with a classmate, Louie, from Berlin. After that, he started a conversation with a couple of the French students. Then after class finished Louie was speaking in Spanish with some of our South American students. How many languages can one speak? He has had quite the life traveling. His jobs have only been for sustenance and he is now in his 30s without really any plans for the future or retirement savings. Definitely a different lifestyle. Another girl in my class is a makeup artist for movies including those funded by Hollywood. She is from Prague and is always flying here or there for the next film. Yet another friend, Martin, from Switzerland is doing research in Tel Aviv for a Phd in physics. Martin has shared also many rock and ice climbing stories about growing up in the Alps. Those at my office have equally interesting experiences. One of my coworkers that often runs with me in the morning is an F-15 operator in the Israeli Airforce and spent two days a week for the last several weeks dropping things that go boom on Gaza. I am constantly amazed by people and grateful to be surrounded and have opportunities to meet them.
Another group of amazing people is the people of the Tel Aviv Latter Day Saint branch. It is a small ranch with generally around 30 to 40 attending each week in a very small room. The last couple weeks were fairly interesting. A new bar opened up right next to the place we rent for Church and when we meet at 10am they are still playing music (from night before) and the shared ventilation for the building causes our rented room to be filled with smoke. They cancelled Church a few times or held a short sacrament meeting. Later they finally moved Church to one in the afternoon when the bar is finally closed for a few hours and brought in several air purifiers. One thing that has been spoken and reiterated to members living in Israel is that we as latter day saints are not to proselyte. The Church built the Brigham Young University Jerusalem Center under conditions from the Israeli government that the Church will not proselyte. Many coworkers often ask about the Church. I respond by explaining the above and then will offer a direct short response to their questions. Anyhow the members of the branch come from all backgrounds. We have Russians, South Americans, Filipinos, Danes, Germans, and a few Americans. Several are diplomats, several work in health care for the elderly, one is the president of Ford Israel and several work with the Israeli and US militaries. Each has an amazing story and love for adventure. As a group we had a Christmas party about a week and a half before the holiday. It is a small close knit bunch.
The first two weekends of January I took several trips. The first was to Haifa. It is the third largest city in Israel and sits on the horn of Israel overlooking the Mediterranean down to Mt Carmel. Haifa is also a large sea port, filled with high-tech companies, and one of the only cities where the buses run on Shabbat. The main attractions are the beach, cave of Elijah and the Baha’i World Center.
The Baha’i Faith is a monotheistic religion begun in the nineteenth-century in Iran. On May 23, 1844, in Shiraz, Persia, a young man known as the Bab announced the imminent appearance of the Messenger of God awaited by all the peoples of the world. The title Bab means "the Gate." Although Himself the bearer of an independent revelation from God, the Bab declared that His purpose was to prepare mankind for this advent. Swift and savage persecution at the hands of the dominant Muslim clergy followed this announcement. The Bab was arrested, beaten, imprisoned, and finally on July 9, 1850 was executed in the public square of the city of Tabriz. Some 20,000 of His followers perished in a series of massacres throughout Persia. Today, the majestic building with the golden dome, overlooking the Bay of Haifa, Israel, and set amidst beautiful gardens, is the Shrine where the Bab’s earthly remains are entombed. Surrounded by terraced gardens, the Shrine is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Haifa and has attracted millions of visitors. The Baha’i’s consider the Shrine of the Bab and the surrounding gardens to be a "gift to humanity."
Born in 1817, Baha’u’llah was a member of one of the great patrician families of Persia. The family could trace its lineage to the ruling dynasties of Persia’s imperial past, and was endowed with wealth and vast estates. Turning his back on the position at court which these advantages offered him, Baha’u’llah became known for his generosity and kindliness.
Baha’u’llah’s announced support for the message of the Bab. He was engulfed in the waves of violence unleashed upon the Babi’s after the Bab's execution. Baha’u’llah was subjected to imprisonment, torture, and a series of banishments. The first was to Baghdad where, in 1863, He announced himself as the One promised by the Bab. From Baghdad, Baha’u’llah was sent to Constantinople, to Adrianople, and finally to Acre, in the Holy Land, where He arrived as a prisoner in 1868. The Baha’u’llah passed away at Bahji, just north of Acre, and is buried there. When I visited the shrine I borrowed a Baha’i prayer book and sat in the midst of the garden and read some other their prayers on different topics. It was a peaceful experience. Few Baha’i’s live in Israel today; their leaders have said the region has enough religious conflict. Their sites are manned by a volunteer staff of 700 from around the world. Their core beliefs include the unity of God, religion, and humankind. They stress peace and the oneness of everything. They do not proselyte.

After visiting the two Baha'i shrines I stopped in Acre and visited the port. It was an ancient port and later Crusader stronghold. It was the final stronghold of the Crusader state and fell to the Mameluks of the Ayyubid Sultanate in a bloody siege in 1291. It was like a small Jerusalem and a lot more relaxed with a less touristy feel. I enjoyed walking the walls, fortresses, and underground crusader tunnels. The market did not lack in offerings. They even had sting-ray.
The second weekend began after Hebrew class, I met Omri and some of his friends to watch the Maccabi basketball game. Around one am we headed to the Negev to go backpacking. We arrived around four and slept a couple hours in a small park on the side of the road next to Sde Boker.
The next day we began our journey into the desert. We hiked from Sde Boker to Makhtesh Gadol (מכתש גדול). A makhtesh is a geological landform regarded to be unique to the Negev desert of Israel and the Sinai Peninsula. Although commonly known as "craters" (a literal reading of the Hebrew), these formations are more accurately described as erosion cirques. A makhtesh has steep walls of resistant rock surrounding a deep closed valley which is usually drained by a single wadi.
The weather was sunny and around 70s. Perfect for backpacking. The barren landscape was very scenic.

The first night we slept under the stars in the desert valley. We had a small campfire with some wood we had picked along the way (mainly dried out bushes). The funny thing about their trail maps is in the desert the trees are so sparse that they often show them individually.
At camp we enjoyed a colorful sunset followed by a delicious pot of rice, beans and tuna fish.
The following day we hiked up a dry stream bed and over a small mountain to the south east ridge of the crater. We traversed the ridge along the crater until our exit. During our traversal across the ridge we could hear large booms in the distance. IDF? I thought we were a little too far from Gaza, but after a little post trip internet research it turns out large explosions can travel quite some distance.
Along the trail I was amazed to see thousands of fossilized shells. I guess at some point in time in the past million years it used to be an ocean floor. Neato!
It was great and we saw only two other people out during our travels. Most of the path we traveled was along the Israel National Trail. It travels from the springs of Banias at the foot of Mt Hermon to the Mediterranean Sea then down across the Negev desert and finally arrives at the Red Sea in Eilat. As it meanders through the country it covers a distance of 580 miles (a kin to something the Pacific Crest Trail in the States). Between the two days, I think we hiked just shy of 30 miles (50km). After we made it to the road on the other side of the rim. We hitchhiked our way back to Sde Boker. We were lucky and got two rides without waiting more than 5 minutes either spot. We arrived back at the car and headed back to Tel Aviv. We payed forward and gave 3 hitchhikers a ride to somewhere near Beer Sheva.
Since the second week of January work has really picked up. We are now in the last 10-12 weeks before the project is due to be finished. The designs and circuits I am working on have been switched from automation to full manual control. The manual control is a lot more tedious but it is the only way to ensure that everything functions correctly. Needless to say the extra work has put a strain on my time and sleep. This past week I worked all 7 days of the week. With several of the days going from 7am to 1am. It is demanding, but the work is clear cut. In some sick way I kind of like it. I still take a few hours off here and there to be a volunteer tutor, attend Hebrew class, and exercise (bball or running). Yet, I have to make sure to plan ahead. Of my original Israeli to do list I only have two things left to accomplish: Bethlehem and to hike Mt Sinai. I would also like to do a 3-4 day weekend trip to visit some friends in Poland and Germany. Only time will tell.

Year in Review

2008-12-31T01:01:00.000-08:00

Christmas Letter 2008:

I sit awake in the dark, staring at the gentle glow of my monitor. Surrounded by the darkness I hear only the faint Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock, Tick Tock. The clock in the corner of the room continues its solitary yet diligent march on as I continue working late into the night. Hold on, stop, wait a minute. I think I’m painting too dark of an image. This year hasn’t been that bad, while I have spent way too many nights working late, I’ve had some pretty good times. Let’s start again. I lace up my shoes as the sun slowly rises over the skyscrapers in the east. I leave my apartment and jog to the west to the sand and the beach. It’s only 7 am, but the beach is already coming to life. I join the dozens of runners moving along the shore. I admire the views and think about how lucky I am. Where am I? Well, Intel had a project in Israel that needed some extra help, so I volunteered, moved and setup shop in Tel Aviv. I should be here at least through March next year and perhaps longer.

The move has provided me with a great opportunity to visit the holy land, I’ve also traveled to Egypt to see the Pyramids and Jordan to visit Petra. It doesn’t stop there, in January, an old college friend and I went on a Caribbean scuba diving trip. We dove with sharks, turtles, and more fish than I can remember in Belize, Honduras and Grand Cayman. We also spent a little time visiting some Mayan pyramids in Mexico.

After running a marathon last year, I decided to try branch out some. In May I completed my first triathlon. For all you non swimmers out there just spend twice a week in a pool for a couple months and you’ll be ready for it. Tri’s are a lot more entertaining than plain old running. I plan to do more next year and if I get enough training time maybe a half iron. To do the triathlon I invested in a nice road bike, which I also put to good use. Two friends and I rode the Seattle to Portland 200 mile cycling race in one very long day in July. My roadie is not the only two-wheeler I bought this year. I also bought a dual sport motorcycle. I love riding to work, spending occasional weekends in the mountains riding trails, or taking girls on joy rides. I also managed to spend a few weekends backpacking and climbing. We spent four weekends rock climbing at Smith Rock and I picked up several sets of quick draws to lead the sport routes. The highlight for backpacking is a toss up between summiting three snowy peaks in the Eagle Cap Wilderness and taking a celebratory swim into a lake still containing floating ice chunks or spending a few days in the lush rain forests of Olympic National Park where my roommate and I saw as many bears as people.

The job at Intel has treated me well the past year. I moved to Israel in September. Along with work, I’m even taking Hebrew classes twice a week. Intel also released the Core i7 processor for sale in November. This is the processor I spent most of the last three years working on. However this line of work may be coming to a close. For the past two years I’ve been taking night classes and reapplying to graduate school. The exiting news is that I’ve been accepted to medical school. Next fall, barring something crazy happening, I will begin training to be a physician. Where? I don’t know, I have been accepted to one school and am waiting to hear back from several others that I interviewed with.

Reflecting on the opportunities and experiences of the past year, I can only consider myself truly blessed and incredibly grateful. Let me say that again, I’m really grateful for my friends and colleagues and the hard work that has made it all possible. I hope and pray that life has been as kind to you as well. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Some assorted photographs:
Writing my name in the snow

Diving in Belize

Ruins in Tulum, Mexico

Rock climbing at Smith Rock

Bears in Olympic National Park

Seattle to Portland Finish

Goofing at the Beach

Portland Starlight Run

My 2006 DRZ400S

Summit of South Sister

Monastery of Petra, Jordan

Floating in the Dead Sea, Israel

Walking like an Egyptian

Nazareth and Eilat

2008-12-28T08:11:00.000-08:00

Two weeks back and loving it.

At work things are busy and the designs I'm working on are very large. The tools I use when working on these designs are ever changing and have constant issues. Hopefully they will be resolved soon and I'll be back to making forward progress at more than a snails pace. Roy and I have continued to run just over 7km in the mornings and have now switched to three times a week rather than twice. With the recent rain we've had it has become a sandy slog along the dirt road by the train tracks and then a muddy slip and slide through the orchard.
Along with work I'm also still attending Ulpan class. I attended Ulpan on December 21st which was the first day of Hannukah. Hannukah is the jewish festival of lights that generally takes sometime place in December. It marks the re-dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem and victory of the Maccabees over the Greeks and commemorates the "miracle of the container of oil". There was only enough consecrated olive oil to fuel the eternal flame in the Temple for one day. Miraculously, the oil burned for eight days, which was the length of time it took to press, prepare and consecrate fresh olive oil. So each "Hannukiah" candelabrum is nine-branched. One light for each night of the holiday. An extra light called a shamash in the middle is used to light the other eight. In my ulpan class and also at work we celebrated each by eating sufganiyot (jam filled donuts), lighting candles (which involved prayers) and singing various hannukah carols like Moaz Tzur; Sivivon, sov, sov, sov; Hava Nagila; Ner Li and more that I've forgotten. The cultural experiences in class are great. It has also been a lot of fun to hang out with the students in my class. The other night I went to a pub and spent some time telling jokes with two Swiss, a Spaniard, two Irish girls, two Brits and myself. Or I'll often spend time practicing old language skills with the germans.
In my time here in Israel I have been grateful to have made good friends with the Whites who are also in the Tel Aviv branch. Brent and I spent time travelling in October while his better half was visiting family in the states. They have two little kids Autumn and River full of engergy and enthusiasm. It is a lot of fun to spend time hanging out with them or playing hide and go seek. The funny part about hide and seek is that if you take too long they'll call out "look here" to give you a hint. The excitement is in being found and then screaming at the top of your lungs. Anyhow the Whites invited me to go to Nazareth with them. We went and visited the Basilica of the Annunciation. It was probably the cleanest and neatest Church I have been to in Israel. We stopped at the one or two stores carrying Christmas decorations and then headed over to Nazareth Village. At Nazareth village they have a recreation of a town setting at the time of Jesus Christ. That evening we attended a live nativity where they acted out a mix of Matthew 1, Luke 1-2. We followed Mary and Joseph as they rode a donkey to the inn only to be refused and then to a real stable for the ending. Very memorable. The nativity was followed by a "first century" dinner of lentil soup and pita. Yum!
Christmas in Israel is an interesting holiday. As they are pedominately Jewish it is just another day of the work week. My original plan was to travel to Bethlehem and watch the Christmas parades and attend midnight mass there. Unfortunately I do not have a passport in my possession. My Israeli visa I received in San Francisco is a single entry only good for one month. After receiving it and coming into the country I needed to submit my passport for a multiple entry work visa for the length of my stay. I have yet to receive it back. So, on Christmas Eve I had dinner with the Whites and Scofields (also in branch) and watched their kids reenact Luke 2. Once again I'm thankful for kind people inviting me so I didn't end up spending the day working late. On Christmas day I came into work at 6:45am and ran with Roy. I worked until about 4pm. Then I took off for Eilat.
Eilat is the resort town in Israel. It is the their Miama, Park City and Las Vegas rolled into one. It has huge ultra luxorius hotels, many expensive shops and boutiques and joy rides. It also has great beaches and what I was there for great scuba diving in the Red Sea.
Avinash is a coworker of mine in Haifa. He is from Southern India and on temporary assignment in Israel working on the same project as me. He just recently became a certified diver and was looking forward to doing some scenic diving in Eilat. He picked me up at 4pm Christmas day from work and we drove the 5 hours to Eilat. In Eilat we opted for some very cheap 50 shekel hostel accomadations.
The diving was a lot of fun and very scenic as you can see from the pictures. The diving instructors and other divers sometimes left a little to be desired. Many of the divers were very very quick to deplete their air, others hadn't worn enough weight and kept popping to the surface. Then some instructors were a bit over zealous, giving an "ok" sign and expecting an "ok" at one or even half minute intervals. We did have one good dive guide who simply let us swim along and never bothered us or asked our status. As long as we stayed in his visual range it was fine.
Avinash and I did six dives. The first was to the sunken ship Satil. This is a former Israeli Missle Boat that was sunk as an artificial reef. The next was to the Neptune tables and Coral Reef. The final dive for the day was through the Caves which was a very scenic shore dive. The second day of diving we did boat dives to the Japanese Gardens. The were very scenic and had a lot to explore.
As a side note if I were asked to compare Eilat to the Carribbean (specifically Belize and Grand Cayman where I dove last January). The Carribbean would win hands down. In Belize, Grand Cayman I saw more, the prices were cheaper, the water was warmer, better visibility, and the guides were a lot more laid back. However, I may be back in the next few months to dive in the Egyptian Red Sea. We'll see how that goes.

Snowboarding and Olives

2008-12-16T03:47:00.000-08:00

The past month and a half has seen me do a lot of traveling. I bet around 20,000 miles or more. At the start of November I began taking a Hebrew class twice a week at night. I go to Ulpan Gordon in Tel Aviv. My class is really diverse. The 30 students represent 19 different countries. I wish I had got started with ulpan sooner. Our teacher Edna speaks hebrew all the time, it is great.

I only have one new adventure in Israel to write about and that would be olive picking near Nablus. My Italian friend invited me to go olive picking with her in the West Bank. I agreed and she told me she would meet me in Ramallah. I drove my car to Jerusalem, left it at a car park and paid 6 shekels to take mini-bus number 18 to Ramallah. I was the only non-Arab to make the trip. Ramallah appeared to me just like any run down town of several hundred thousand. Most of my coworkers had counseled me not to go. It was after all the West Bank and I can understand their view as Israeli’s (lookup lynchings in Ramallah and understand yourself). Miki told me that the only time he was in Ramallah was in an armored vehicle carrying a rifle and wearing a bullet proof vest.
Anyhow I arrived in Ramallah and walked around the center of town until Sara picked me up and we took a minibus to a large house near Nablus. It was a multi family house. The father was Jordanian and moved to Venezuela after world war one and then had 8 kids, who moved back to Palestine in the 1960s. I think 4 of the 8 kids and their families still live in the house. They had an orchard of maybe 100 trees next to the house. We picked olives the old fashioned way. We laid down tarps or blankets under the tree and just pulled them off by hand. It reminded me of picking cherries as a kid growing up in Orem Utah. Though there aren’t really any more orchards left in Orem. Around 10:30am, the women of the family brought out several platters of food and we all sat cross-legged and ate pita, hummus, fried goat cheese, and other food. So Yum! Then back to the work, it was fun to be around the family and watch them and all the kids interact. There were probably around 25 people. The kids weren’t really picking and were making jokes or running around laughing. The family spent a lot of time catching up with each other and telling stories. We picked until dark. I thoroughly enjoyed the work and camaraderie. It reminded me of how much I want to have land one day, to just putter around and work outdoors. All the summers as a kid where I would spend days/weeks on the farm are some of my fondest memories.

Work stayed pretty busy throughout the month and I spent a few weekends working rather than touring. I took a shopping day and walked through the markets in King George in Tel Aviv and not finding much I decided to drive to Jerusalem. Bartering with the Arabs I picked up some presents for my family for Christmas and then I decided to walk around the Mount of Olives. Visiting Jerusalem is always a surreal experience I want to pinch myself, am I really here? I enjoyed visiting Gethsemane and spending some quiet time lost in thought then watching the sun set over the old city.
I left for Utah the last weekend of November the day after thanksgiving. In Utah, I spent most of the time visiting with my family and catching up. My brothers and sisters seem to be doing well. I went to see my sister DeAnna’s new condo and I also spent a lot of time playing with Justin her step-son. My brother Adam bought a horse and I hoped on it and rode bareback around the corral for a few minutes. DeAnna and I also went to Brighton snowboarding and I later spent another day there by myself. It was good to be in the snow again. I miss it!
My Grandma Rhoades is doing ok. I feel sorry for the condition she is in. She lives with my parents and my mom is basically her 24 hour care nurse. I really admire the hard work and love that my mom shows her. My grandma is on oxygen and requires help in doing everything, to get out of bed, to a chair, or to use the restroom. My mom is a trooper. Thanks Mom for taking care of grandma! I enjoyed spending time listening to Grandma’s stories and the genuine love she shows when she talks about Grandpa and how much she misses him.
I had several purposes for travel back to the states. One of which was medical school interviews. I interviewed with OHSU and University of Utah. Both schools seem like good places to learn, if I had to pick between the two though I think I would go with Oregon, I really liked their approach to curriculum, though Utah has advantages like being so close to great snow and recreation. Both schools have long admission cycles and I won’t have a final answer back from them until March or April. While I was in Oregon I even stopped by Intel for a few minutes and caught up with some colleagues and discussed my school and work plans with my manager. Later in the evening after my interview, Sandi and I went out to dinner at Jake’s and to a play at the Schnitz. I fell asleep during the play, but I still had a great time.

After about a week of being home I began to grow restless, I am one of those people who can’t stand to be still for very long. I felt like I was in limbo. My other purpose in going home was to pick up an Israeli work visa. My application was submitted for processing at the beginning of October. The processing takes around 45 days and so I scheduled my interviews to be around the same time I expected to be able to pick up the visa. Well it wasn’t ready on time and I had to postpone my flight back to Israel. My Dad and I used the extra weekend to visit my other Grandma in Idaho and drive around some of farms of my uncles in the Jerome area. Anyhow because I didn’t have the visa I couldn’t return to Israel. I was a guest at my parent’s house and it has been so many years that I feel it is not really my home either. My house in Oregon is being rented by three friends and so while I was there for interviews I slept on a couch in the front room. All my stuff is boxed up in the garage. I just feel like a roamer without a place to call home. The word on the visa finally came and I flew to San Francisco to pick it up.

In San Francisco the Israeli consulate is open to the public from 10am to 1pm. I arrived around 10:20 and went through both layers of security. Talking to the lady behind the desk, I was told they had my visa ready for issue; however the consul that needs to sign the visa was on a last minute holiday so they would be unable to issue it. They would take my paperwork and passport and then overnight it to me once it was signed. I said ok and left to tour San Francisco. I walked around the piers, then over to the golden gate bridge and had a cheeseburger at In-n-Out. I just starting touring the SF aquarium when my phone beeped and I had a voice mail. The consulate had called and said they neglected to ask me for two photo pictures. If I would return I could drop them off even though it was after 1pm. I left the aquarium and walked the 20min or so back to the consulate. At the consulate the building security called the Israeli consulate security saying I was there to drop off pictures. The Israeli security told me I would have to come back tomorrow during hours to drop them off. What? I was a little flustered. I had a flight back to Salt Lake that evening and didn’t really want to find a hotel and spend another day in San Francisco. I tried calling the consulate number (which every time I had called previously I was always sent to the answering machine). Anyhow the person who had left me a voice mail picked up and I explained the situation. She called Israeli security and the guard came down to the lobby and took the pictures from me. Whew! Thinking I was done I headed back downtown and had dinner and then headed for the BART back to the airport. At 4:40pm I got a call from the consulate. If I could be back at the consulate in 10 minutes they could give me my passport, they had my visa ready. So I ran back to the consul and picked it up. What a day.
That night I scheduled my flight back to Israel and my rental car and hotel. I flew back to Israel and arrived Saturday evening ready to start the work week again Sunday morning. Work is very busy. Before I left I had handed off two designs to other coworkers and was given two larger more complicated designs. Sunday was also my first day of volunteering as a tutor. Every Sunday between 4:30 and 6pm a group of local disadvantaged students come to the Intel campus. Several employees (myself included) have volunteered to tutor them in various subjects like math, science or English. We work one on one with the same student each week. I am tutoring Daniella whose parents are from Ethiopia. She is quite shy, but it was fun to help her with her English homework.

Jerusalem and work

2008-11-03T08:27:00.000-08:00

Time flies, up for documentation today are Jerusalem, losing a fight with a barb wire fence, work and more. The last three weeks have seen me increase the time spent at work. At work I’m nearing closure of one of my designs and about to pick up another. The last two weeks have seen me spend around 60+ hours a week working. In related news Intel has finally removed the NDA’s on Nehalem. Nehalem (aka Core i7) is a 45nm processor that I spent the last two and a half years working on. The reviews are all over the web now and the verdict is that it is the new performance king.

The week after Yom Kippur is Sukkoth (feast of Tabernacles). For Sukkoth we get a half day the day before and the full day of. So I left work about 4pm and headed downtown. I decided to go to the sportek in park HaYarkon for some three on three basketball. I really like the park. It is the “central park” of Tel Aviv. Miles of jogging trials, soccer fields, a rock wall, skate park, roller rink, tennis courts, paddle boats, and a water park. It is always packed with people. I headed to the basketball courts and got into some three on three games. I really like the 3x3 here. The competition is fairly good and it is fun to play street ball. They are out there playing every night it is great! After a few hours of basketball (mostly winning) I had that natural high feeling. I decided to burn some more energy and do a jog around the park. I left my shirt at my car and took off. The sun had already set and I crossed to the south side of the river and began to run east. After a few miles the trail went from pavement to gravel and then to single track and then abruptly stopped. On the other side of the river the trail was still present and even sported street lights. Doh! I decided to keep going along the forested river till I came to the end of the park. The park is in the middle of the city and so it has to end somewhere. I went from jogging to hiking to crawling as the path narrowed and I was forced to climb stumps and avoid bushes along the river’s shore. Eventually it opened up enough I could jog a little and I started back up and ran right into a barb wire fence. Ouch! It was too dark to see and I felt stupid. I turned around and hiked back along the river shore to the paved trail and started jogging back to the car. I was quite the site a big lumbering guy, no shirt, blood covering his chest. It amazed me how fast though I could go from natural high and loving it to bleeding and frustrated. I just had to laugh at myself.

The next day (Sukkoth holiday) I went with a friend Sara to visit the some ruins, Israeli museum and the Soreq cave. After quick stops in Castel and En Hemed we were in west Jerusalem at the Israeli museum. The museum has a large outdoor model of what the city would have looked like in the time of Christ. The other cool part of the museum was the shrine of the book. In here they have on display some of the Dead Sea Scrolls along with some of the oldest bibles ever found. It was fun with my horrible Hebrew to read 2000 year old books in their original form. After the museum we headed out to Soreq cave. It is full of stalactites and stalagmites. The cave was very spacious inside. It was about 300 ft deep and roughly 20-50 feet tall and several hundred feet wide. In the open space were hundreds of columns and part columns of limestone that through centuries dripped together.

For the weekend of October 18th I headed to Jerusalem. The drive to Jerusalem is a scenic one. You climb up from the coast and travel through forests and orchards on rolling hills to the center of monotheism. The city sprawls out into the surrounding hills. Before entering the old city, I headed to the Siloam tunnel. It lies on the south west corner of the old city near the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane. The tunnel was built during the reign of King Hezekiah about 701BC. It is 533 meters long. It was used to allow the water from the Gihon spring to flow from outside to inside the city walls so the people of the city could survive a siege. King Hezekiah built it before the oncoming by Sennacherib of the Assyrians. Jerusalem held but would fall 200 years later to Nebuchadnezzar of the Babylonians. The tunnel has no lights and is only about two feet wide with a height that varies from 5 to 7 feet. The water in the tunnel varied in depth from one to two feet.
After visiting the tunnel I headed through the Dung Gate into the Jewish Quarter and visited the Western Wall. The Western Wall is the holiest of Jewish sites, sacred because it is a remnant of the Herodian retaining wall that once enclosed and supported the Second Temple. The plaza was created as an area for prayer when Israel captured the Old City in 1967. Hundreds of people were praying when I was there.

After the wall I continued through the old city. The Old City is a 0.9 square kilometer area within the modern Jerusalem. Until the 1860s this area constituted the entire city. The Old City is home to several sites of key religious importance: the Temple Mount and its Western Wall for Jews, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians, and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque for Muslims. The old city has a small and confined feeling to it. The whole city was narrow alleyways leading from one crowded narrow marketplace to the next. I tried to head to the Dome of the Rock but soon found out that it is closed to non Muslims on weekends and I’d have to come back during the week. I walked the Via Dolorosa which is traditionally held as the path Jesus walked on his way to the crucifixion. At the end is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The site is venerated by most Christians as Golgotha, (the Hill of Calvary), where the New Testament says that Jesus was crucified, and is said to also contain the place where Jesus was buried (the sepulchre). The Church like the rest of Jerusalem was a mass of humanity when I visited. Monks running around yelling hurry or “come come come” to get people to keep moving along. It hardly seemed like a place of reverence. On the south side of the entrance via the ambulatory is a stairway climbing to Calvary (Golgotha) believed to be the site of Jesus' crucifixion and the most lavishly decorated part of the church. The main altar there belongs to the Greek Orthodox, which contains The Rock of Calvary. The rock can be seen under glass on both sides of the altar, and beneath the altar there is a hole said to be the place where the cross was raised. To the left, or west, is The Rotunda beneath the larger of the church's two domes, in the center of which is The Edicule of the Holy Sepulchre itself. The Edicule has two rooms. The first one holds The Angel's Stone, a fragment of the stone believed to have sealed the tomb after Jesus' burial. The second one is the tomb itself. Under the status quo the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches all have rights to the interior of the tomb and the rest of the Church. Physical fights have occurred over the years over which Church can do what at what time and where. The last brawl of monks was actually in April of this year. None of the Churches controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned responsibility for it to two neighboring Muslim families. The Joudeh were entrusted with the key, and the Nusseibeh, who had been the custodians of the church since the days of Caliph Omar in 637, retained the position of keeping the door. This arrangement has persisted into modern times. Twice each day, a Joudeh family member brings the key to the door, which is locked and unlocked by a Nusseibeh.After visiting the Church, I traveled to the Jaffa gate and there visited the Tower of David Citadel. The museum contains 2700 year old archeological ruins as well as an exhibit depicting the 4000 years of Jerusalem’s history. I thoroughly enjoyed getting more depth on the history of the city, from Melchizedek to Jebusites, then David to Solomon and the first temple. Then the destruction by the Babylonians, rebuilding of the temple by Herod under Roman rule, the second destruction of the temple, the Arab conquest, building of the Dome of the Rock, the Crusades, Ottomans, British, then independence and two wars. From the tower I had some great views of the old city and Dome of the Rock. As I wandered back through the city I came across the Roman colonnade ruins which are 30 ft below the current street level. The city has so much history.
My next stop was the Garden Tomb. The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem is considered by some to be the site of the burial and resurrection of Jesus. It is just outside the city walls, quite near the Damascus Gate. It was a quiet and reverent spot. Many visitors relaxed on benches in the small garden reading their scriptures or pondering. The spirit was very different from that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. After pausing to meditate I walked over to Mea Shearim. This is orthodox area of Jerusalem. Visiting was like traveling back in time to the 1800s. On my way out of town I stopped to visit David’s tomb and the traditional site of the last supper on Mt Zion.

I traveled home and the next day I returned to Jerusalem for a Church district conference. The BYU Jerusalem Center sits on Mt Scopus overlooking the old city. The front of the meeting room is filled with large bay windows that offer amazing views of the city including the Dome of the Rock.

The next week was spent at work (even the holiday) and on Friday/Saturday went on a 10k and spent the rest of the time working. This next part may not make much sense, but I also did something incredibly dumb. Sometimes I do something that I don’t really mean to, but I just do it anyway. Well, this particular folly was more stupid than usual and I ended up with the “fear of man” guilt. I was very disappointed with myself and resolved not to be so careless or let it happen again. Nonetheless I had a poor attitude for the next couple of days and my productivity plummeted. During the plummet I spent some time reevaluating my time here. I have seen now 36 of the 64 main national parks and reserves (which includes all the ones I classified as must). Now I can switch gears from go-go-go tourist to guest. My new focus is to spend more time hanging out with the locals and doing the things they do.
For the last weekend of October I spent Thursday night playing pool and hanging out with Dor and friends for his birthday. It was interesting to observe their motor control for playing pool degrade with each “shot” they took. Thursday night I also spotted an advertisement for the adidas Tel Aviv half marathon which was in one week. Friday I decided to see how good shape I was in and ran 10 miles. Turns out I’m not in that great a shape. It took a lot out of me and my legs are still sore. Saturday, I went with Omri (student and part time Intel employee) and some friends to the Dead Sea. We hiked the Wadi Darga. It is a river bed that cuts a canyon down into the Dead Sea. The canyon is deep enclosed by hundred foot high walls and littered with pools and ponds. The pond water was yellow and brown. Yet so fun to climb or jump down from pool to pool in the canyon. Several pools you would wade across. Others were so deep you had to swim. We finished off the day with dinner at a Lebanese restaurant in Abu Gosh. I woke up the next morning and headed to work. I met Roy at the entrance at 6:45 am and we went on a 6k jog. It was a great way to start the work week.