I've been working on a group project for school, and we needed a way to keep track of all the work that needed to be done.  In the past I have used JIRA (which I love) and Pivotal Tracker.

However, JIRA was more than we really needed and I didn't want to setupanother server and then configure JIRA on top of that. So we looked into Pivotal Tracker.

Unfortunately, PT is not cheap.  I emailed them to see if they offer free private trackers to university students (like GitHub!), but alas they do not.

Enter Trello.

Trello is awesome.  It seems to take a lot of inspiration from Pivotal Tracker, but does not cost a dime.  All interactions are made with slick javascript popups and modals.  Lists (sometimes known as "swimlanes") can be added to represent whatever workflow your group wants to follow.  Assigning "cards" (tasks/tickets) to group member(s) is made simple through the right-click context menu.

The card details modal offers great flexibility so that your team can get as much out of it as possible.  There are color-coded labels that you can name whatever you please, giving you a way to easily identify what kind of card it it (like gmail's labels).  Comment-thread stlye discussion amongst team members also takes place in this view.

I strongly suggest you and your next project team give Trello a shot.  What do you have to lose?

Here is the link.

Sure hope BD comes back someday!

There are two big reasons I run UltimateDroid: Performance and Battery Life.  After running on UD for a few months, US Cellular finally released the FroYo version of their stock Desire ROM.  At this point I was running Gingerbread with UD on my phone, but I thought I'd give the new USCC FroYo update a shot to see if it was comparable (and see if Sense was still worth it).  AS soon as I booted the new stock I quickly remembered why I like UD so much. The stock was far less performant.  Visual effects were slow and laggy; apps launched much slower; there were more than 40 processes running; and the battery life was a lot less.  I quickly returned to UD.

Some of the other smaller things that I liked about UD was the features, and the quick release schedule (I was a nightly build subscriber) that often offered the newest features and performance tweaks.

As the version numbers climbed from 2.4 to eventually 3.3.0, I began to really like UD and its community.  I'd visit often, trying out new nightly builds.  This is really the reason I like Android so much better than iOS -- the customization that open source offers is unmatched.

But then something sad began to happen.  There were no updates for a week; 2 weeks; 3 weeks -- the blackdroid had taken breaks in the past but then -- 1 month; 2 months -- nothing.  Not a word from anyone on the site!  And then: the site went down. www.udrom.com no longer made a successful connection.  And soon after, it no longer showed up in the Google Search results for UltimateDroid.

What happened? I've read rumors on various sites saying that he may have been a victim of extreme weather (maybe a tornado?) and lost his house or something.  But nothing was certain.

Is this the end of UltimateDroid ROMs?  Is the blackdroid done developing ROMs?
I certainly hope not.  If you have any information regarding the state of the UltimateDroid project or blackdroid's plans for the future, please leave a comment.  I'd like to help if there is anything that I can do. I am an aspiring developer after all (although I've never done any Android dev).

Old Setup

Here is some pictures of the old setup:

Kind of a mess.

and the mess of coax...

Pictured above is a Leviton Media Patch Panel kit that includes a traditional phone line distribution system, CAT5 patch panels and a coax splitter (that I never used).  The idea is that you can patch either a phone line or ethernet cord to any jack in the house.  All of the jacks in the house should be Ethernet, that way allowing either phone or Ethernet to be plugged in.  Just make sure you don't plug an Ethernet device into a jack that is patch to the phone distributor!  The phone line has voltage that could potentially damage an Ethernet device.

New Setup

The Leviton panel was great for a while, but as I am getting more and more cables to patch (we put an addition on our house last year and added a lot more Ethernet) it is getting to be more inconvenient. The 6-port patch modules are expensive and kind of tacky if you ask me. I decided I wanted to replace the whole thing with more of a traditional patch panel.

Enter Monoprice.com.  Monoprice is an amazing place where you can get any kind of cables, adapters, home theater/home networking/home video supplies for CHEAP!  You know that 25 foot HDMI cable you bought for $100 at BestBuy?  Same thing on Monoprice for only $15.

I found a new 24-port CAT5e patch panel on Monoprice for about $17. You cannot beat that.  After sitting on the shelf for a few months due to lack of time to install it, here it is with a new hole cut in the board:

Jigsaws are awesome, it fit on the first try.

Notice that I added a new board for the coax "tree". I'm very glad I did that, now it's all out of the way. One thing I like a lot more about this style of patch panel is that it hides all of the wires behind the board.  Ends up looking a lot cleaner.

Next I have to wire everything up, mount the new wireless router as well as the modem, and install the new phone distributor.  I didn't really take any intermediate pictures for this part, so here are some pictures after it is all finished!

Finished product

Another view

Phone "distributor"

The phone "distributor" is simply a splitter that you can buy at Radioshack or Lowes.  It's just plugged into the Cable modem (Mediacom's phone service is through the cable modem) and it splits it into 5 ports. If you need more than 5 phone jacks in your house, just daisy chain another splitter.  Now honestly, I'd much rather just drop the phone service. Who needs phone service when everyone in the house has cell phones?  All it does is give telemarketers a way to reach you. But seeing as this isn't my house I can't make that decision.  If a home phone line is necessary, I'd also suggest not buying through Mediacom or your cable company and just getting a cheap VoIP service like Vonage or Skype.  Then buy Ethernet phones and you wouldn't have to worry about legacy phone lines at all.

View with Server on bottom, UPS and tools on the shelf, and panel.

You may notice the switches/routers on the right hand side and wonder what they are/why there are three. The black one on the bottom is an 8-port Gigabit switch and the two on top are routers/wifi routers with 4-port switches in them.  Ideally I would get a 16-port Gigabit switch and do away with those three individual boxes, but it's just not worth the money when I already have something that works.  the two older routers on top are not Gigabit, and I'm only using the switch function of them not the router.  The new white wireless-N Gigabit router does all the routing and the rest is just LAN switch ports.

Well that's about it.  I'm planning on selling the old Leviton panel, if you're interested let me know. Still works great, I just needed more patch panel ports.

Max

My Desktop Computer (which hasn't gotten it's own blog post yet almost been 1 year) has a "drive toaster" as I call it.  basically a piece that fits in a 5.25" cd-drive bay that accepts hard drives, both 2.5" and 3.5". Here's a picture of what I'm talking about.

Sorry for the poor quality. But it's better than no picture at all right!?

Well the biggest problem I've had with this is when I insert a drive while Windows is running, it doesn't mount or see the drive at all.  The only way I could get a drive to show up is by rebooting. HUGE pain.  But that pain is no longer....

Enter "Hot Swap".

Hot Swap is a piece of software that sits in your system tray. Yeah I know, you have enough things sitting in your system tray don't you?  Just be happy that Windows 7 hides them for you rather nicely.  Anyway it sits in the tray with an icon much like the "Safely remove hardware" icon but with a RED arrow instead of a green one.

Now all you have to do is insert the drive (or plug it into SATA another way, maybe eSATA) and right click on the new icon.  Choose "Scan for Hardware Changes" at the top and BAM your drive shows up just like all your other ones.  Isn't that nice?  No more rebooting.  If you can't tell I'm pretty excited about this one.

Here is the DOWNLOAD LINK for Hot Swap.

I found this from this thread.  Apparently most SATA controllers support hotswapping (note I said most, not all. If your SATA controller doesn't, you're SOL) but does not work correctly with Windows Safely Remove Hardware. Thanks to Hot Swap this is no longer an issue.

I began my college career this past fall at Iowa State University studying Computer Engineering. First semester was great! I absolutely love college. I am living in the Friley Hall dormitory with my high school friends and it's a lot of fun. I've met some cool people too. In terms of Comp E classes, I learned so C last semester with Dr. Daniels. We used it to manipulate data input from wiimotes. C is really annoying compared to other languages I have worked with, so I'm glad I won't be doing a whole lot with it in the future (I think/hope). This semester I am taking a Java class. So far it is identical to C#, which I already know. Hopefully it will expand my java and C# knowledge towards the end of the semester.

One of the more exciting technology related things that has happened to me so far in college is the 2010 ISU Cyber Defense Competition. I created a team with Zach, and 4 freshmen we had never met before. Zach and I were the only ones with past CDC experience, and amazingly we won first place! This was really quite amazing, as we were competing against much older teams who have been through more college than us. I guess operating our own home servers has really helped a lot. Because we won, our team was invited to compete in the 2011 National Cyber Defense Competition on February 19th. We are currently preparing for that competition. This year they have moved completely to visualization. Instead of each team having multiple old-ish boxes to host OSs on, each team has one new(er) server with VMWare ESXi installed. This is quite excited, as Zach and I run ESXi on our home servers. We are looking forward to the competition!

Besides college classes and cyber defense things, I have been continuing to work for the Ames Community School District's Technology Department. In addition to that, I have been growing Zach and I's DJ hobby/business, P&H DJ and Sound Services. We were asked to be the DJ for Ames High's Homecoming week, which went very well. Since then we have gotten Ames' Winter Formal, Prom, and 8th Grade Formal, as well as Boone's Winter Dance. I really enjoy doing high school dances and am looking forward to DJing more in the future.

Something I have never mentioned on this blog is Zach and I's DMX Software we are writing. We want to have full featured lighting control without spending hundreds or thousands on a good lighting console. So we have begun writing a program that sends DMX signal via a USB-DMX dongle. We have gotten it up to the point of being able to use it in gigs, but we still have a ways to go in order to get all the functionality we are looking for. It has been a great experience in terms of learning object oriented programming for me. Speaking of software, my friend David Naylor who writes the iTunes Jukebox software that we use for song requests is about ready to release version 3.0, as well as a completely revamped website complete with a Paypal cart and product key generator! I will be making a blog post when it is ready. It is truly great software and I hope it is successful in the market.

Last thing for this update. I am excited to say that I am now an Andorid user! I was able to take advantage of U.S. Cellular's Thanksgiving sale and get myself an HTC Desire. I absolutely love this phone. Experimenting with custom ROMs has been a lot of fun! Currently I am using UltimateDroid 3.0 RC which runs on Android 2.3.2 (Gingerbread). I love the customizablity that open-source Android offers and I can't wait for the future updates and market apps that will be coming out. In my opinion the iPhone dies not even compare because of the endless possibilities Android offers.

I think that's all for now. Hopefully you can look forward to posts here more often. Heck maybe I'll even finish the post about my new computer that I've been promising for 6 months. Feel free to comment as always!

Take care,
Max

Dylan wanted to hang out with his friends for a while before we left, so he went and did that while the rest of us went to "Fort Fun" to play a round of mini golf.  Cool part about that was, it was just our luck that it was "$2.00 Tuesday" so instead of paying $6.50 for a round, we only had to pay two.  It was the collective goal of the group to beat T.  A close game ensued, but T pulled away at the end to beat David.  Andrew third, then me and Robbie.  Finishing mini golf, we went tubing down the Cache La Pudre River.  We already had the tubes and wanted to get some more use out of them.  By the time we were down with that it was time to go to the Pearson's, where we were staying, and take a shower.

Noah Pearson is the friend of Dylan's who originally came with us on Day 2 to hike Mount Elbert.  We stayed at his house, but him and his dad were away at orientation in Montana.  Instead we got to meet Mrs. Pearson and Seth, Noah's younger brother by 2 years.  Mrs. Pearson (Rebbecca) was incredibly friendly.  She welcomed us all, and exclaimed how happy she was to have visitors.  She cooked us ravioli with pesto and marinara sauces, served with a home garden grown salad.  She even ate with us and got to know each of us and our future plans.

Following dinner with Rebbecca and Seth, we all rode bikes with Seth to Walrus Ice Cream Shop.  As a single small business with their own homemade ice cream recipes, it was very good!  Much better than any Dairy Queen soft serve, and I would say even better than Coldstone (and certainly cheaper!).

By this time it was dark and we were ready for bed, to prepare for the long drive the following day.

**Interesting note: while at the Pearson's we checked out Fort Collin's Newspaper, "The Coloradoan".  There was an article about Money Magazine's top ten cities for 2010.  Fort Collins was #6, and Ames was #9.

The Great Sand Dunes were pretty amazing!  Next to some tall mountains that we are used to, lies mountains upon mountains of sand.  We spent the first hour or so exploring the dunes and summiting the tallest of the dunes (that we could tell).  The unique thing about these sand mountains, is that they are always changing.  If we were to go back next year, they would look completely different, and the tallest point might be located far from where it was today.  We started off climbing towards the tallest of the dunes, taking pictures of the formations and trying to slide down steep slopes on cardboard (which doesn't work).  Once we got to one of the taller ones, we played a game of king of the hill.  This was fun because it was very hard to get hurt in the sand and we could pretty much just through each other down the slopes with little or no pain.  At one point, I tackled Dylan low with his legs, he fell backwards and then flipped me over himself with his legs and I went tumbling down the mountain of sand.  This game quickly got tiring, because climbing in sand takes a lot of energy out of a person.  Following this game, we buried Dylan in the sand.

Next we continued our trek towards the highest peak in the sand dunes.  It is a little harder than it looks because the sand moves under your feet and absorbs a lot of the energy.  Once we got there we could see the entire sand dune area.  I would have taken a picture, but by the time I got up there sand particle had gotten in the lens area, preventing it from being able to open when I turned it on.  Soon we started the most fun part, the way down.  Some of us would sprint down the steep hills, some would roll down and some would slide.  We got to one place which was basically like a "sledding hill" where we went up and down many times.  By this time, there were a lot of other people coming to the dunes, just in time for us to be done.

Playing in the sand dunes was a lot of fun, but it came with consequences: sand.  The sand was everywhere! Pockets, ears, hair, nose, fingernails, neck, toes... The park had some outdoor showers (like you would find on a beach) for us to wash off at.  The water was freezing cold and it was hard to get completely clean without private showers.  We continued to remove sand from our hair for a few days.

After we were finished seeing the sand dunes, we began the drive to Denver.  The big city was very different from what we were used to seeing.  We walked around the "16th Street Mall" which is a road full of shops, and only buses can drive through (and the buses were free!).  In the middle where the median would be, there were pianos that anyone could play.  Dylan enjoyed this idea and took advantage of the opportunity.  Soon after, we left the mile high city.

Boulder, Colorado was next.  Dylan had told us that this was the most liberal and progressive city that we will have ever seen.  He was right.  We spent the time walking around the "Pearl Street Mall" which is much like Iowa City's Ped Mall, an outdoor strip of stores with only pedestrian traffic.  This area was full of life, with tourist, vendors, street performers, and homeless people.  T, Andrew and I stopped at one street performer's show.  His name was "Blue" and he juggled fire and knives.  He was very energetic, outgoing and friendly, which made for an enjoyable show.  Somehow, he chose me to help him with one of his stunts.  I went out there, he introduced me to the crowd, and then explained his stunt.  He was going to stand on my shoulders and juggle fire.  Fortunately he didn't weigh much, so it was pretty easy to hold him up.  All I had to do was hold onto his ankles, and then he juggled fire sticks!  It was a lot of fun.

Later, Andrew, T and I went to a place called "MaiBerry" and got some strawberry lemonade.  We had never heard of it, but it was very good!  I would highly recommend it.  Shortly after that we decided to go look for a campsite since it was getting late.  The other three guys wanted to stay longer, so we drove to the closest campsite we could find.  It was in Lyons, a town about 20 minutes from Boulder.  Pulled in at about 9:30, didn't look like there were many people camping there, which made sense because it was a Monday night.  I went up and knocked on the door of the Campground Hosts' RV.  He was an older guy with a southern accent.  I told him I needed a spot, so he grabbed for his reservation book while asking if anyone in the party was older than 21.  I said no.  He said we can't camp there.  I asked why.  He said that one time a group of kids came and had a party with alcohol and he doesn't want that again.  I assured him that none of us ever drink alcohol and that we would be going to sleep right away and not cause him any trouble.  He reconsidered, and grabbed for the book again, and asked how many people we had.  I said six.  He then scoffed, and said that I would have to go somewhere else, as he does not host parties at his campsite.  At this point I was furious with the guy, because now it was dark, we had driven all the way there to get the spot, and we no longer had a place to stay.  I pleaded with him once but he insisted that he didn't want to talk about it anymore.  So I left without saying anything.  I'm still angry with this man.  Never go to "Lyons Meadow Campground" in Lyons, Colorado.

So, the three of us had to drive back to Boulder to pick up David, Dylan, and Robbie, and drive all the way to Fort Collins, about another hour away.  I had not eaten dinner yet, and by this time we were all irritable.  We ended up staying in Fort Collins and it was fine, but I still cannot believe that guy at the campground.  His loss though, he didn't get our money.

Durango is yet another town which thrives on a tourist economy, with a large and busy Main Street.  We spend a good portion of the morning exploring the various shops and looking into possibly White Water Rafting down the Animas River which flows through the town.  After seeing what the town had to offer, we decided to go tubing down the Animas.  We stopped at Big 5 Sporting Goods after a tip of cheap tubes there.  At $10 each, buying the tubes was a lot cheaper than White Water Rafting.  T chose to sit out this time and pick us up at a large park located down stream.  The river was much more energetic than the portion of the Colorado we were on a few days ago, so it was good we had tubes this time.  The tube ride was a lot of fun with the fast rapids and very warm sun.  After drying off we headed to Francisco's, an authentic Mexican restaurant located on Main Street.  The nice food and service was a welcome change after fending for ourselves on camping food for a while.

The Great Sand Dunes National Park was next on the agenda, so we started the long drive and said goodbye to Durango.  We didn't arrive at the sand dunes until around 10:00 PM, and the "Campsite is Full" sign was out.  Not a good sign.  We backtracked about 3 miles to a privately owned campsite, which appeared to be creepy, and closed for the night.  The group had an overwhelming "no" vote for trying to stay there.  On a last ditch effort to avoid sleeping in the car on the side of the road, I decided to drive up to the Sand Dunes Campground and talk to the Campground Host.  Fortunately the woman was very nice and offered us to stay in the only spot left, the Handicapped spot.

After setting up the tent we were finally ready to get some good quality sleep... until I felt some pressure down below.  It was a good thing we got the handicapped spot instead of having to stay in the car on the side of the road, because the spot was close to the restrooms and I had to run there about three times thanks to some diarrhea.

And that ended day 6.

On our way to Mesa Verde, we stopped in Telluride.  The town of Telluride is small and very tourist oriented.  It has a long, lively Main Street with many fun shops and vendors.  But the best part of the town, and the reason we stopped, is one of the tallest free falling waterfall in the state.  Bridal Veil Fall is located high up on a cliff, and to get to it we had to drive the large Suburban up a long, winding, rocky gravel road.  It had many switchbacks and was somewhat scary to drive on at times.  The drive was worth it though, as the sight of the waterfall was an experience we all enjoyed.  We took many pictures of the falls and of each other standing by it.  Up on the cliff at the source of the waterfall stood a very expensive looking house.  We drove all the way up to it, but it was gated off as private property.

On our way down we picked up a hitchhiker.  He had had hiked all the way up to the falls and was now on his way down. He was a very friendly guy, probably in his 40's or 50's from New Orleans.  He told us some interesting facts about the town and asked us about our college plans.  We dropped him off in town, and then took a walk around Main Street.  Everything there was VERY expensive, so we didn't stay long.

A few hours later and we were in Mesa Verde.  Mesa Verde is a National Park and was once home to the pueblo people known as the Anasazi, or "Cliff Dwellers."  This large park has a nice campground complete with showers, laundry room, gift store, general store, gas station, and wireless Internet (which I am using now).  The park has many exhibits of the Cliff Dwellings left over from the 1200's AD.  We took a tour (for only $3 a person) through the largest Cliff Dwelling know "Cliff Palace".  A park ranger was the tour guide and told us about how the people lived and built these dwellings.  The tour was very interesting and informative, and we got to walk around the "palace" and check it out.

About half of Cliff Palace

After the tour, we headed back to the campsite and discussed what we wanted to do with the rest of our trip.  Somehow, driving to San Francisco, California came up.  We were all really excited and wanted to go, until we found out that it would be a 17 hour drive.  Scratch that idea, we will be staying in Colorado.

Stay tuned!
Max

Waking up at 8:00 was a pleasant change!  We all felt very refreshed after a good long nights sleep.  We ate breakfast and packed up the tents.  After some arguing on how to best pack the car for a road trip, we were on our way to the Glenwood Hot Springs.  On our way we drove through Independence Pass and Aspen, two places with nice scenery.

Me standing on the overlook above Independence Pass.

When we arrived in Glenwood Springs we parked at the Hot Springs resort and had lunch.  After suiting up, we were ready to go swimming in a naturally heated pool.  When we got to the entrance we found out that it cost $16.75 per person.  Three of us still wanted to go and three didn't.  An argument ensued.  The "no" side argued that $16.75 was way to much to go swimming in a pool.  The "yes" side said that vacation experiences can cost money and sometimes costs must be put aside in these tourist attractions.  In the end we got back in the car and drove another hour to Grand Junction.

In Grand Junction we found a State Park on the Colorado River.  The argument over the Hot Springs disappeared when we decided to take a swim in the Colorado River.  We had fun building a dam out of sand and shale on the side of the river where a small spring dumped in.  Then we took a ride to find the next closest place downstream, where we would float to from the state park.  David didn't want to, so he drove the car to the take out place and the rest of us took a swim down the river.  Swimming down the Colorado was extremely thrilling, with the small rapids every now and then that we got to float through.

The next destination was Ridgway State Park in Ridgway, Colorado to spend the night.  The campground was full, but the lady at the park office called the sister campground three miles up the road to reserve the last spot for us because, "she couldn't look Dylan into the eyes and tell him she had no more spots."  This campground was located high on a hill with a great view overlooking the valley and mountains.  After a spaghetti dinner we were off to sleep.

End Day 4.

Hiking up the mountain is the single hardest and most physically strenuous thing I have ever done in my life.  I have been canoing in Canada twice, which sometimes involved carrying a 90-pound canoe on my shoulders through a "trail" for as long as 1-2 miles to the next lake.  Climbing Mount Elbert was harder than any of those portages combined.  We started at about 11,500 feet and the summit is 14,433 feet.  At first we were the only people on the mountain.  The journey looked challenging, but not too harsh as we could see the summit up ahead (or so we thought).  We took breaks often to catch our breath and drink water.  Every time I turned around, the new view took my breath away.  Such an amazing view!  It took a lot of energy and determination to get to what we thought was the summit.  Each of us had about a 60+ pound pack on. But as we rounded the "summit" we found that it was a false summit and the next high point was even farther.  We were not even halfway there (from tree-line to top).  This false summit thing happened at least 2 more times, maybe 3.  As we climbed it became noticeably harder to catch our breaths, and we had to take even more breaks.  Dylan took on some more of T's weight, it became very much of a team effort to succeed.

Skip ahead to about 14,200 feet with only a couple hundred left.  David had gone ahead and reached the top.  T was having a hard time making progress, and my headache was getting almost unbearable.  I took two ibuprofens and ate some gorp.  We rested for awhile without much recovery progress.  Then Dylan said we should turn back, as it was becoming unsafe for most of us to continue.  After hearing that, I felt a horrible feeling.  Will I have hiked all this way, to fall short a few hundred feet?  Absolutely not.  I got up and somehow found a second wind.  Within 10 minutes I joined David.  Such a happy feeling that was!  T, Dylan, and Andrew decided to summit but leave the packs behind.  This means that we had to go down the same way we came up.  A small sacrifice for a large reward of summiting.  I was able to call my parents from the summit, somehow there was cell phone signal.  There we were.  5 Iowa boys coming out hiking for the first time in most of their lives, and summiting Mount Elbert, the second highest peak in the contiguous 48 states.  What an accomplishment!

Standing at the summit. We did it!

Then came the descent.  It was easier, but still taxing on the legs.  As I was going down, I kept thinking, "Woah, we actually just climbed THAT far?!"  I honestly couldn't believe it and I still don't know how we did it with 60 pounds on each of our backs.  The descent took about half the time as the climb.  We had to go all the way down to the car at 10,000 feet and then drive to the campsite where Robbie and Noah were.  We were all extremely relieved and exhausted upon arriving at the car.  A short drive later and we were at the campsite (around 2:00PM).

It was a regular car/RV campground with a friendly campground host.  Cost was $15 for the night.  We got the tents setup and most of us took a short nap.  It started raining at 4:30 and didn't stop until around 8:30.  We hung out in the car during most of that, and ate spaghetti with pesto sauce (tasted just like Spaghetti Works in Des Moines!).  After dinner we found out that the four person tent was sitting in a pool of water, so we slept in the car.

I've got a lot more pictures to upload and post, but the Internet connection through my phone is too slow.  I will post them later.

Max

Noah, one of Dylan's friends from when he lived in Colorado, came with us.  After picking him up we began the 3 hour drive to Leadville, Colorado.  I drove the Suburban and Dylan rode with Noah.  Now I had never driven in the mountains before... it was quite an experience.  I got to learn to downshift down steep drops.  It's a lot more fun than driving in Iowa.  During the drive we drove through the Eisenhower Tunnel, a long Interstate tunnel and the highest point that the Interstate gets.

Upon arriving in Leadville we stopped at a Safeway to get lunch, and then headed for the trailhead.  We geared up, and began a 2 mile hike to where we would camp.  During that 2 miles we went up about 1,500 feet, for a camping elevation of 11,500 feet just before tree line.  The hike was a little long and steep, and we had difficulty finding water at first, but it was nothing compared to what was to come.  We had rice and peas for dinner with Tony's seasoning and dried apples.  The dinner turned out to be pretty good, but we made too much of it.

Immediately after we finished cleaning dinner up, we hung our packs in trees and went to sleep knowing an early morning was ahead of us.

The guys arrived in my driveway around 4:15 A.M. eager to begin the trip.  After final goodbyes to the parents, we left the driveway at 4:37 A.M.

Dylan started off driving, most others slept.  The ride from Ames to Omaha was uneventful, except for a small incident when were were leaving Ames.  As we were turning left from Stange to 13th Street, Dylan missed the "Keep Right" sign and was on the wrong side of the road for a bit.  (The group decided this needed to go in the blog ) No big deal, no one drives that early in the morning.  Other than that and some really cool looking fog, the road didn't bring any surprises.  Stopped in North Platte, Nebraska for lunch, and a few hours later we were finally out of Nebraska.

We arrived in Fort Collins at about 3:00 P.M. MST.  We had some extra time to spare so we hit up REI and Jax.  Interesting note, the only two Jax stores in the world there are only 4 or 5 Jax in the world, and one is in Ames, two are in Fort Collins.

After everything we needed was bought, we headed to our first host home, The Fellers.  They were extremely friendly and welcomed us with open arms.  They have one son, Chris, who is the same age as us and grew up with Dylan.  Immediately after meet and greet we all got our swim suits on and jumped in the lake in their backyard.  A really nice way to end an 11 hour car ride.  Following the swim, we sat down with the family for a delicious spaghetti dinner.

Evening activities included a nice walk around the downtown ("Old Town") area of Fort Collins, a drive up to Horse-Tooth Rock overlooking the city, and dancing at a cowboy bar/restaurant called Sundance.  Chris took us to Sundance with some of his high school friends.  They had a live band, DJ'ed music, billiards, and a mechanical bull.  The country line dancing didn't work out so well for most of us, but we enjoyed watching Dylan and Robbie and others ride the bull.

Tomorrow we leave for the trail, not sure when the next post will find its way to the Internet so stay tuned.
Max and the Gang

UPDATE:  Something I left out.  While driving through Nebraska, we hit a bird.  Here is a picture.

We found out at a Rest Stop in Nebraska, and we entertained a lot of bystanders with out reactions and methods of trying to get it out of the grill.

Several ideas were thrown around as to where we wanted to go, but when Dylan mentioned hiking in Colorado, it was almost as if the decision was made.  Dylan is from Fort Collins, Colorado, and he didn't move to Ames until the beginning of our freshmen year in high school.  He has been hiking many times in Colorado and was really excited to start writing up our itinerary.  After the plan was written up, 7 of us were "down" for going.  One would drop out later to bring the number to 6 bros.

We embark on our journey on the Tuesday of July 6th at 4:30 A.M.  We will drive 11 hours straight until we arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado.  The following day we will be leaving for Leadville, Colorado where we will begin our 6-night backpacking/hiking trip.  We will climb two mountains over 14,000 feet:  Mount Elbert and Mount Massive.

I am planning on writing daily blog updates each night.  They may not be posted until I get back to civilization, but they will still be separated by days.  Unfortunately this is all the time I have for now to explain because I need to get some sleep... we are leaving in 5.5 hours.  I encourage you to Google those mountains if you are curious.  I would have provided links but I don't have time.

Stay Tuned!
Max