Amateur Extra

Many of you know that I enjoy amateur Radio. Well the above image shows that I have achieved the highest nerdhood possible in ham radio. I took my Amateur Extra class exam this morning and passed, only missing 2 questions. For those of you that do not know how this works, there is a question pool of 750 questions that they could possibly ask you. You are given a test with 50 of those questions and you have to get a 73% to pass. I never thought that I would be able to do this but I have. It was hard but worth it. I passed my 5 words per minute Morse code test back in 2003 and I have to say that this test today was more anxiety ridden than that.

I wanted to share this movie preview with you guys. Hopefully I can get a copy of the entire film sometime.

The "I miss my Logan Man Post"

Logan and Kris have been away for a couple of days now and I have been missing both of them. I was looking through some pictures that we haven't filed yet and i saw this one. I love this little man and I think you can see why. His smile ALWAYS makes me smile!

My First Confirmed Country

As many of you know I enjoy Amateur radio. As a short explanation you use a radio wave to contact others in far away places. It is kind of like an internet chat room but over the radio. I enjoy talking with others and seeing how far I can get my signal to go. The other day I was on seeing who I could talk to and a station right below me started to call for someone as well. So I moved down and it was a man by the name of Ken. His call sign was JO7CVU and he was in JAPAN! This is not very far and pretty easy for most people to get but I had only ever talked with someone in Japan 1 other time. We exchanged information and I sent off a card confirming our contact. He replied yesterday with his card confirming our conversation and I have included it here for you to see. It may not look like much to you but I am very proud of this contact!

My Hero: "Lucky"

Many people have hero's in their lives like Michael Jordon, Abe Lincoln, President Hinckley and many others. One of my hero's since I was a child is Larry "Lucky" Chesley. WHO?!?!?!?!? Well, Larry Chesley. There is not much on the internet on him and it is hard to find the details of his heroics. One of the coolest things about my relationship with Larry is that I actually got to meet my hero. Many people never do. Larry was a top gun F-4 Fantom fighter pilot in the Vietnam War. He was a good pilot and flew many successful missions. On one particular mission he was shot down and taken prisoner. He spent the next Seven years in various POW camps and has wonderful and inspiring stories of his time there.
I am writing about my experience meeting him because it was a life changing experience to meet one of the people that you look up to. While talking with one of my friends, who is a Chaplin, she mentioned that she knew Larry and that he should come speak to the students at The school where I work. The plans were made and he was to come. I had the opportunity to introduce him to the student body and also to go to dinner with him and his wife. He is as engaging in person as he is in his book or tapes. If you would like to read more about his experiences you can check out his book here. While talking with him it is evident that he is a man of integrity and values. He also gave me a copy of his book and wrote a special dedication to me. I hope everyone has a hero and can meet them one day. Who is your Hero and why?

What if you combined Fishing and Biking?

I was looking for a cool image that I could put onto the blog of a biker and I came up with this! Please submit your ideas of funny captions.

I know it has been too long!

The time has come and gone for me to make a new post. I have been working on a project but it is top secret so I will not be able to post until it is completed. In the meantime I want to share a Haiku with you. Over the fourth of July we spent some time with the Nelsons and it was Kaye's ideas to write Haiku's about the 4th and have a contest to see who could write the best. Most of you know that I am not great at writing if you have read my blog at all but I attempted it anyway. Here it is:

When I ride my bike
The smooth road beneath my wheels
Hurts when I fall down.

As you can tell I did not follow the rules of the game and it is not about independence day, but I liked it anyway. Try writing one of your own. It needs to have 5 syllables in the first line 7 in the second and 5 again in the third. Have fun and share some with me. They can be about anything.