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Vacation | Posted by mchayes
Feb 21 2009

We had a fun trip up to Granite Peak. I didn’t take many pictures, so I got behind on the Photo-A-Day thing. But I’m back and am going to start posting those again.

I think the most memorable part of the trip happened Friday night. After Google Maps and GPS units led at least 3 cars in the wrong direction (ours included, luckily it led us close enough that I knew the way from there), the third lost truck got stuck in some ice. Note: the house we stay at is out of the way, however, it is not in an area that looks like the woods from “Blair Witch”. We had an interesting time getting the truck unstuck. Everyone that went to help (like 7 of us), fell on the ice. There was a bump on the head, and a finger shut in the tailgate (Sorry Tony). Also, it’s only about a block up the road beaten path (and only 2 or 3 times that was said). Luckily Leah had a tow rope, we found a chicken grate and my truck had enough traction with that. It ended up taking us 2 hours to get the other truck out of the woods.

Funny thing to note is that the path it was stuck on was mostly 1 car length wide and only got wider at a few spots. It was very woody and pretty dark. And I ended up backing my truck up down it quite a ways.

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Long Weekend

DMB Concerts, Music, Vacation | Posted by mchayes
Jul 04 2006

This weekend we travelled a lot.

We started out by heading to Chicago on the way to Alpine Valley for 2 days of DMB. On the route up, we tried to take a shortcut from I-57 to I-55. Unfortunately, the bridge was out and we ended driving through all sorts of weird non-marked roads. We did make it to I-55 and finally up to Tony’s house. Friday we stayed at Tony and Vanessa’s apartment. We stayed up late and played cribbage. We played 3 way and I won 2 out of the 3 games. The three people playing were Dave, Tony, and me.

Saturday we got up and at 11 we took off to meet Josh and Andrea at Josh’s old apartment in Wheeling. Unfortunately, Josh forgot his tickets and had to go back to get them. So, we just headed to the hotel near Milwaukee. Josh caught up to us there and we headed to tailgate and watch the first night of the concert. On the route over, we listened to the broadcast of the space shuttle launch. With just minutes left, they scrubbed the launch and decided to try again Sunday. Anyways, back at the concert we started drinking, Dave beat me in a very windy game of cribbage. The concert was good. We got four encore songs and I drank a ton of beer. Once out of the concert, we set up again and waitted for the crowds to thin out. I was really drunk (not the only one though). I decided to pour beer on Andrew’s sock. I was then smacked across the face with a beer soaked sock. It was funny. We discovered back at the hotel that the room we stayed in (we stayed in the 2 room suite the first night) did not have good airflow. Sunday morning it was extremely hot.

Sunday, we got up late. Went and got food at the restaurant. We waitted around for a little while and found out the shuttle launch was delayed again. We went a tailgated again (Tony and Vanessa didn’t stay the second day). I beat Dave in cribbage and partnered with him to defeat two other teams in bags. Sunday was much less windy. I drank a lot less Sunday (I had to drive back to the hotel that night). After tailgating, we headed to the concert. We set up in about the same place. Sunday nights concert was even better than the first night. It was really good. Alpine Valley is a really cool place to see a concert. There were about 30,000 people each night. Looking out over the crowd was really cool. We stayed late again to let the crowd thin out. We got back to the hotel about 2 AM Monday morning.

Monday we got up around 8:30 got ready and headed to Oak Run. We got there around 1 in the afternoon. We went out on the boat and rode the new tube with my cousins. It started rainning so we headed back to the house and waitted the storm out. It passed over relatively quickly. We decided since the rain got people off the lake to try some skiing. We went back out on the boat and I took a turn skiing. Then Todd went skiing. Then Crissy went skiing. After that I was going to try again. I got into the water and was getting ready and Jeff turned the boat off, because it sounded funny. Todd opened the engine compartment and found a fire. I swam back to the boat and pulled myself on. The girls flagged down a lady on a Seadoo for help. Todd and Jeff were looking for an extinguisher. The lady started fiving us her fire extinguisher and Crissy found ours and it was passed back to me. I put the fire out and Jeff headed to their place to get their boat to pull our boat back. Todd and I looked at the fire and decided that it was an electrical fire and told Crissy and Kim to shut off the battery. We had to tell them where it was and we could tell that the two red hot wires were shorted, since they instantly started cooling off when the battery was shut off. My dad looked at it and said that was where the alternater was located. Which is odd since there was already a recall that had been fixed for that.

So today, we got up around 10 AM and got ready to pull the boat to the lift. There wasn’t a whole lot of action and we managed to get it up on the trailer and pulled out. We had lunch and watched the space shuttle take off. It was pretty neat to watch. I’m glad they postponed it to a time that I could actually watch it on television. The trip home involved a stop in Peoria to pick up the dogs and back home.

It was a fun weekend. But it was long and pretty exciting. And involved a lot of driving. Well, I’m tired, so I’ll type again later. Oh, and congratulations if you actually read this far.

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Random thoughts for an Early Morning

Entertainment, Vacation, Video Games | Posted by mchayes
Mar 21 2006

Well, I’m heading into work now. Yes the time is right on the post. We’re installing another set of new dist boxes today at work. This should be interesting. The conversion Sunday did not work as well as we would have hoped (I actually was in Chicago, so I didn’t help out). I did get called in on Sunday night to try and fix a problem. It ended up taking 2 hours. I cannot wait to get rid of the on-call pager tomorrow.

On a better note, Crissy and I went to Chicago for a St. Patrick’s day party on Saturday. It was a lot of fun. We played a game called “Guitar Hero.” The game rocks. and rolls. Anyways, it was so much fun, that I ended up buying a copy of the game Saturday. We are starting to find a lot of cool features in it that go beyond the freestyle play. It looks like it might be a lot of fun to have 2 of the guitar controllers.

I’ll try to type more when I have more time. I really do have to leave in this crap to get to work.

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Nascar trip

Nascar, Sports, Vacation | Posted by mchayes
Feb 27 2006

I had a good time out in California. We definately had an interesting trip out there. Because of winds in Chicago, we ended up sitting on the runway in Peoria for 2 hours (not exaggerated). So, we thought for sure that we would miss our connecting flight in Chicago to LA. When we finally got to Chicago, we got out of the plane planning on setting up a new flight to LA, but we discovered that they were doing final boarding on our original flight (it had been delayed 45 minutes). So we ran (literally), down G terminal, and down H terminal, most people who have ever flown from Peoria to O’Hare probably have had this experience. When we made it to the gate, the doors were shut. However, we talked to the desk guy and he said maintenance was on the plane and that he would open the door for us. It was funny looking at the people on the plane because they were looking at us like “who are these people that we had to wait on to board the plane.” Anyways we made the plane and ended up in LA about an hour and ten minutes after our scheduled arrival. Not bad, since we had already accepted the fact that we probably wouldn’t get in until midnight. And luckily for Kevin, we only ate 1 and 1/2 of the 3 gondolas from Avanti’s that we were bringing out (one was for us to eat on the plane, so we actually only at an extra 1/2 a sandwich).

Friday was fun because we had a 34 and 38 foot motorhome to drive to the track. We stopped at In-N-Out Burger to get our traditional burger, fries, and milkshakes. Then we raced (I’m pretty sure it was a race) to the track. I was riding in the 34 foot motorhome. I was a little scared when we missed a truck mirror by 3 inches. And that was because we were 3 inches shorter than the truck… And by the way 80 mph in a motorhome, not so much fun, in fact a little scary. Friday night they had the truck races. Those were awesome. It was a good close race, and the races are just fun under the lights. We rented these devices made by Nextel called Fanviews. They are sweet. They could do everything a normal scanner can do, but they also have a TV screen (about 2 inch square). You could pick which driver and crew to listen to, listen to the radio announcers, or listen to the Officials. You could also pick any camera at the track to watch (including the ones in some of the cars). It was $70 for the three days (and I think it was worth it).

Saturday, the racers had practice and qualifying for the Busch races. It was a lot of fun, but not quite as good a race as the trucks. There was much drinking Saturday night. Including Jello shots.

Sunday, they didn’t have anything until the big race. It was pretty good too. A couple ours after the races, we drove the two motorhomes back to Kevin’s house. It was not nearly as exciting as the race to the track.

Monday, we got early and headed to the airport. No trouble on the flight back. All in all it was another great year at the races, but as usual a little face paced (no pun intended for the actual races).

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Nascar Races

Nascar, Sports, Vacation | Posted by mchayes
Feb 22 2006

I’m off to California tomorrow to see the Nascar Races. It’s a lot of fun. We have an RV that we live in on the infield. We don’t, however, have to use the bathroom in the RV, there are permanent facilities for that. There is also a big trailor that has hot water and seperate shower stalls in it. There is lots of partying.

We’ll drive from LA to Fontana on Friday. The truck races will be Friday night, the Busch races Saturday night, and the Nextel Cup race Sunday.

It looks like the weather is going to be awesome as well. It should be in the 70′s during the day and 50′s at night. Apparently, there is no chance of rain.

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