campus fun

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you looked at every part of your surroundings as you personal playground. Well other than getting caught by safety and security for climbing churches, you would probably find a lot of this.

Who needs slacklines anyway?

SUP p2

After punching holes out of the frame for a few hours, it is finally glued and ready for a skin! Can't wait!

Silly wabbits

When you think of a rabbit, what do you think of? For me it is the pesky little ones that are always eating my strawberry crop in the summer. When one of my hunting buddies think of them however, he thinks about the type that when you hold them by their front legs, go from your waist to the ground and weight upward of ten pounds. Those rabbits, of hares if you want to be completely correct, are what people hunt in NE. They are exactly the same color of snow, so are almost impossible to see. Luckily, when I went out with my friend, he had a dog. It a characteristic that hare will run in a circle when chased, so after the dog would get on one's trail, all we had to do was figure out where it was going to circle back to and look for a ghost. The first rabbit I couldn't even see and my friend got the shot, but by the second, I had a better handle on it. By sundown, when we left the woods, with slightly frostnipped feet, sore legs, three rabbits, and a big smile, I was glad of the chance to escape the cycle of work and school for the excitement of the hunt.

SUP p1

With a design made and printed out on the engineering plotter printer (so cool!), my dream of making a hollow wood SUP is finally coming alive! The design is meant to be a 12' 6" flatwater board that will hopefully end up fast. With hollow wood, the construction is very similar to that of an airplane wing. There is an internal frame (the spine and ribs)and an outer 'skin' of wood covered in fiberglass to finish it up. The goal is to make a successful design so that I can teach a class on it here at school next year.

Today in the shop, I had the pleasure of gluing the template onto the wood for cutting. with enough wood glue on my hand to occupy me in class for a few hours, I moved on to cutting out the 'ribs'. That took some time, but I finally have something to show for my work!

You decide.

Is it a cupcake? A pile of poop? No one will ever know for certain, but for the lack of snow (the snow sculpture team needed to get snow transported in from the skiway), the winter carnival sculpture didn't come out all that bad. I still keep waiting for someone to pull a midnight raid with brown spraypaint just to clarify things!

Queen

Of random stuff that is! I should officially get an award for the biggest number of strange looks around campus. It started off when I had to get my frozen jerky meat from the Bait and bullet freezer then didn't have time to put it in my room all day. So maybe that example wasn't too strange but butcher paper does stand out.

That same night after putting the jerky into the smoker, I finished my bleached deer trophy. On the way back t my room, carrying a deer skull in my hands, I took a detour to go to a math tutorial. Yes, I walked in, nonchalantly put the skull on a back table and joined in the discussion.

Just when I thought it was over, I went to pick up the keys to the archery range the next morning before class to be informed that they could keep the arrows at their office no longer, so I took them. For the rest of the day, I walked around with bright pink carbon arrows sticking out of my pack.

So there you have it! Now I just need to think of the next awkward thing to transport.

Range complete

I have been talking and hoping to set up an archery range at school all term and even bought all the necessary tools. I had the target, arrows, bows and strings. The only thing that was missing was a mode of transport to the range to set the whole thing up. Come Friday, and I finally solved that problem! The Bait and Bullet Archery Range is officially open for business!!

Jerky!

Nothing like homemade jerky will ruin your palate for store bought food. With just salt, honey, cayenne and smoke, the three pounds of venison that I put aside for jerky came out better than I ever could have expected. Honestly, I was waiting to chomp down on a piece of leather, but the jerky came out amazingly moist. Take it from me and make a batch, you will definitely taste the difference!

since I don't have a big fireplace mantle

After hunting season, I put aside the rack from my deer to deal with later. Well, today is later, and I decided to dig into a nice boiled down mount. A friend of mine was also boiling his mount and when we were all done, he put it perfectly. Since he lived in a house with an actual fireplace, a nine pointer was appropriate and since I was in a dorm, a teeny six pointer hanging over the door was a good fit.

Ain't she a beauty!

Grab your steins and chain mail, because I finally finished my german beer hall inspired buffet table! After almost a year of puttering away at it with my dad, we finished it up over break and it has been installed!! The funnest part was beating it up to give it a hundred year old look, then spray painting it black, sanding and putting a dark stain on top. There is nothing like seeing a project finally completed!

GNAR

As an introduction to ski culture, I felt that it was necessary for me and my friends to watch Unofficial Production's Game of Gnar. If you haven't watched it already, as I'm sure is untrue for most, gnar stands for geoffrey's numerical assessment of raddness. In other words, on the ski hill there is a rulebook that give you a score for doing certain activities. Backslapping after hitting a jump detracts for example, and 'calling out pros', skiing naked, talking to your mom on the phone while shedding a tight line, all boost your score. After finishing the film, Alex felt so inspired that he brought his board to the green and skied down the snow sculpture, after doing a pro call. Fortunately, this midnight outing escaped the attention of Safety and Security.