. . . since I last posted. I'd like to say I've been busy, but for most of that time I've been laying low in Dallas. Hanging with family and friends, helping with various around-the-house type projects, learning French. The usual.
I suppose there is quite a bit to catch you up on, so here goes.
After returning from Europe last September (see previous post), I made my way back to Dallas. Upon arrival in Dallas, I calculated I had driven approximately 22,000 miles over the course of about 4 months. At one point, I racked up 10,000 miles in six weeks. Yowza! I crossed the country completely three times and half-way four times. I also drove up and down large portions of California at least three times.
On the way to Dallas, I stopped through Oklahoma City for a night to see Jason Rossi. Before heading out of town, I stopped by the memorial for the Oklahoma City bombing of April 19th, 1995. Pictures of the memorial are here.
I was in town only a few days before I flew to New England for a wedding. Two good friends, Becca Graves and Erik Costello, decided for some reason it would be a good idea to get married. Not one to miss such an event, I made the long trek (via airplane this time) back to Connecticut for the ceremony. Photos here.
Back to Dallas very briefly, then off to Utah to go rafting in celebration of another wedding (Chans Rich and Emily Donelson). Good times were had, both on and off the water. A lot of photos were taken too. I put mine online here, and also collected a lot of others and put them into a video here. Enjoy!
It's mid-October at this point in time, and it looks like I'll be staying in Dallas for a while. A lot of time is spent getting used to the fact that I don't have much to do, but I try to find ways to keep busy and help out friends and family whenever possible. One way I can do this is to help my buddies Jack and Kelly Paradise build a giant boathouse at their lakehouse on Lake Limestone. Step one is to remove the old, tiny dock that is being replaced. This is easy because the lakebed is bone dry after the 2011 drought. Photos of step one (including a time-lapse video that condenses the bulk of the work) are posted here.
It wasn't long (early November) before I got whisked away to help Jason Rossi move some of his parents' belongings from Dallas to Denver. Naturally, I turned it into a week of visiting with friends in Colorado. Photos of that week are here.
Back to the lakehouse in mid/late-November, this time to obtain and stage all the lumber we would need to set the posts for the boathouse into the dry lakebed. It was a hell of a process involving two trips to Houston to pick up timber, several issues with the second-hand trailer Jack bought on craigslist, the hammering of a nail into a tire to stop it from leaking, a tire guy we decided was named Pedro and whom we miss to this day, and a lot of laughing about how poorly we went about most of this process. The parts I remembered to photograph are documented here.
A couple of weeks later we returned to the lake for a weekend of raising "Beers and Piers". This required digging a lot of holes with a gas-powered auger, building a rig to tilt the posts into a vertical position, and then using said rig to accomplish said tilting and to drop the posts into the holes. It was a ridiculous amount of work and it is documented here in a few photos and here in a video that shows the whole process.
In early December I returned to the northeast, this time to attend an interview with Doctors Without Borders in New York! First, I visited some friends in Connecticut and Massachusetts (photos here), and then I got to spend a few days in NYC (photos here). I felt good about the interview, though not as good about the test I had to take after the interview.
Back to Lake Limestone once again, but this time to work only a bit on the boathouse. The focus would otherwise be on having a good time for New Years. And good times were indeed had. Check them out.
In late January a test unit for NASA's next manned space vehicle (Orion) passed through Dallas. We went to see it and here are some pictures. It was pretty cool to see it up close.
In early March, I returned to New York for an "Info Days" workshop with Doctors Without Borders, which is the final step in the recruitment process. It was an informative three days, during which I got to meet a lot of people that work in the New York office as well as a couple dozen other potential field workers going through the same recruitment process. Of course, I turned the three days into a week in the city. I didn't take a lot of photos, which is unusual for me, but the ones I did take are shared here.
Easter weekend I went back to Lake Limestone with Jack and Kelly. Another weekend of getting some work done but also relaxing. We made progress on the walkway, completing the decking required to get to the actual dock area of the boathouse. Photos here.
That's it for photos I have to share. Assuming you made it this far into this long-winded post, I'm happy to share with you the fact that I got the gig with Doctors Without Borders! I am officially entered into the pool of field workers, and now I wait (and wait and wait) for my first assignment. It could take several months to get assigned. In the short-term meantime, I am driving with my friend Kana from Colorado to Alaska in early May:
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She got a job at Denali National Park for the summer, and needs to get her truck up there. Naturally, I gladly accepted her invite to come along on the road trip. More to come as that adventure progresses.
