Platte River Adventure

First of all, I have to thank Dr. Squirrel for organizing this trip. I’m looking forward to it for years to come. We were originally planning to float the Betsie River but due to canoe livery issues we had to switch to the Platte River at the last minute. Personally, I find it difficult to believe we’d have had a better time than we did. The weather was incredible all weekend for floating and camping. Everyone in the group seemed to have a great time except for a small complication involving a generator at about 8am, but believe me the coffee was worth it.

Another interesting twist to the float involved a bunch of children, secret service, DNR and other state law enforcement agents. Evidently, the National Governors Association’s annual meeting was hosted by our Governor Jen-Jen in Traverse City. One of the activities scheduled for all the governors’ children was to float the river and we just happened to float with them their entire trip. At first we were a little concerned because we may or may not have been bending the alcohol per vessel limits. Needless to say they didn’t care about us as long as we stayed away from the kids.

Here are some of the pictures I took on the river:

Dr. & Mrs. Squirrel - Starting our trip.

The water is incredibly clear compared to the Au Sable.

The whole group almost to Loon Lake.

The group. Loon Lake sand bar. Some crazy naked guy in a kayak.

I believe this is a fish weir. I'm open to other suggestions if I'm wrong. This is also where the governors' kids jumped in the river.

Ride is almost over now.

That's Lake Michigan you're looking at. Absolutely amazing river to float.

Thanks to the group for waiting for me to finish looking at the lake and taking these last couple pictures. I strongly encourage everyone to check out the Platte River as well as the rest of this part of the great state of Michigan.

For my next summer adventures I'll be returning to Mio to mountain bike some of the incredible trails in the area (Hanson Hills - Grayling). Then over to the west side for a Labor Day Lake party on Silver Lake in Mears, MI. I hope to get better pictures for all of you to enjoy.

Get out there and enjoy the summer while it lasts!

Vacation again!

I'll be away from my computer for a few days as I travel to Houghton Lake. Then I'll be heading back to Mio again. When I return I'll have updates and pictures from the Platte River canoe trip and hopefully some pics from Houghton Lake.

Have a great weekend!

Michael Vick. Really!?

Thought I'd start the week off with one more shot at Vick.

Vick's future with Nike

More loss for Vick. It's still not enough. CNN Money reported that Nike will suspend the release of Michael Vick's shoe this summer. All video promotions previously found on Nike's website have also been pulled. His 4 other shoes and 3 shirts currently in stores will remain. Nike spokesman would not comment on Vick's future with the company.

[source: Nike suspends release of Vick line]

Michael Vick + Dog Fighting = Indicted

Atlanta Falcon quarter-back Michael Vick, also known as “Ookie”, allegedly used a Virginia property he purchased for $34K as the main staging area and dog training facility for his dog fighting venture, Bad Newz Kennels.

Here is a highlight of what you will find if read on. According to the indictment Vick and his boys executed a losing dog by wetting it down with water and electrocuting the animal. The indictment also claims “Vick executed approximately 8 dogs that did not perform well in “testing” sessions…”, “…by various methods, including hanging, drowning, and slamming at least one dog’s body to the ground”.

The indictment is enough to make anyone sick without additional commentary. Even if I wanted to add more, at this point I can't properly articulate my feelings of disgust in this blog. Check out the actual 18 page indictment here at The Smoking Gun.

I’ve included a couple of the pages below:

Really?

What were they thinking back then?


First viewed in Alwyn Cosgrove's blog

Memo to parents with overweight kids:

Your children are fat because you made them that way.

Lil Jimmy or Lil Susie watch you shovel that crap you call food into your pie-hole while you’ve firmly planted yourself in front of the TV and then, and then get this . . . they mimic what YOU do. Can you understand that? YOU, parents, are role-models. Act like it! Start with your diet; it’s killing your children, seriously. No more blaming “society” for the poor physical and emotional shape your kids are in. Take a step back and look at yourself, if you can see around your own fat ass, and try to understand how your poor habits are potentially abusive to your children. Nice job stacking the cards against your own offspring.

The positive flip: You can fix it if you want to. Will watching Idol really matter tomorrow? Go out and throw a ball or take a walk with your child. That will matter for years to you and them.

Signed,

AC

Reason for the rant:

A few weeks ago I wrote about how children were being praised and expecting thanks without actually earning it. (Failure Free Society) My point was that parents need to be responsible for educating, disciplining and praising their children when appropriate with the end goal of raising a productive member of society. In my opinion, and I may be way off base here, setting an example through your actions should be an understood yet unstated component in all of that.

In an Associated Press article, “Overweight kids face widespread stigma”, I’ve found more evidence to support the fact that I may not be completely ignorant in regard to developing people. The article starts out with a lot of good information based on 40 years of research:

“Overweight children are stigmatized by their peers as early as age 3 and even face bias from their parents and teachers, giving them a quality of life comparable to people with cancer, a new analysis concludes.

Youngsters who report teasing, rejection, bullying and other types of abuse because of their weight are two to three times more likely to report suicidal thoughts as well as to suffer from other health issues such as high blood pressure and eating disorders, researchers said.”

Continues…

Lynn McAfee, 58, of Stowe, Pa., said that as an overweight child she faced troubles on all fronts.

Her mother, who also was overweight, offered to buy her a mink coat when she was 8 to try to get her to lose weight even though her family was poor.

Her mother could have saved years of emotional abuse to Lynn had she simply set a better example rather than try to bribe her. The last line brings up another interesting question. Was her mother overweight because she was poor or was she overweight because she may have been less educated which resulted in her being poor? Might I also suggest that similar questions surround the demographics of smokers? Chicken or Egg scenario, I guess.

I’ll leave you with this: Just take responsibility for your lot in life. If you don’t like something about yourself only you can change it. Very few, about 1%, have actual medical reasons for being overweight (ie hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome and depression). The rest just need to break some difficult habits learned at a very young age. Good luck to anyone on that road; my best wishes are with you.

Lost in YouTube

I’ll admit I feel like I’m a little late to the party. Before I continue I feel I must warn you of the power YouTube can have on unsuspecting viewers. I was sucked in for a good…many hours. I kinda lost track of time. Just be careful. OK! Now that that’s out of the way I can get to the point.

We’ll start with a more common “youtuber”. Lonelygirl15 has a lot of subscribers to her YouTube account. I’ve never heard of her until I saw LisaNova do a parody of lonelygirl15. LisaNova is another one…HOLD ON! Maybe I should start from the beginning; entrance to the rabbit hole, if you will.

See, what had happened was I’m trying to learn Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritville” on my guitar and found that youtubers will teach strum patterns which makes learning new songs much easier. Anyway, I’m searching for the song and find this goofy dude playing margaritville. I’m what you might call “easily entertained” so I continued to watch. I find out that Dan Rohde (aka Rohde51) has a collection of random videos he has created and has collected a couple subscribers (88), which I’ve learned is the goal of YouTubers. I see Rohde has a couple videos dedicated to some LisaNova chick. In my twisted mind I’m thinking this guy made a video about some girl he knows that dumped him or something miserably entertaining like that. So I watch a couple of his LisaNova videos and realize I was way wrong.

I hit the search engine. “LisaNova”. There she was. This is when my trip down the rabbit hole takes a nasty turn. Up to this point I was looking at the clock and thinking I needed to get something done, but when I started watching LisaNova’s “sketchies” as they’re called, I lost all comprehension of time and frankly I didn’t really care. LisaNova is the director but it appears she has help creating, writing, acting in, filming and editing her videos. I’m not a movie critic or anything, I just like what I like and that’s good enough for me, but I thought her sketchies were very good. I’d encourage any of you to check out some of the work LisaNova has on her YouTube profile. Oh and evidently a lot of other people like her work considering she has over 47,000 subscribers.

Being a fan of “smack”, “talking trash” and other competitive banter I found it very amusing that YouTubers make parodies of each other as well. In my opinion, one of LisaNova’s more entertaining videos is a parody of lonelygirl15. Of course I had no idea who lonelygirl15 was. Yeah, I’ve been living under a rock. I get it. But, it didn’t take me long to figure out what was going on with these YouTube geniuses. Lonelygirl15 “Bree” is actually an actress by the name of Jessica Rose but started her profile as if she was simply doing a vlog as a 16yr old girl. Lonelygirl15 and her creators have nearly 96,000 subscribers and almost 140 videos. She’s been on Leno and I’m sure other shows that I don’t watch.

Lonelygirl15 is currently the #2 most subscribed to profile. LisaNova is currently #11 all-time, but I think she’ll soon be sitting on top, that is if she can catch smosh who is the clubhouse leader with a mere 132K subscribers.

I know you’re going to go check all this out, but please tie on a life line or set an alarm or something.

Summer & Blogging

I'm finally back to a computer with a little time to put some thoughts on the web log.

July is one of my favorite months of the year for a couple reasons. 1) Summer is my favorite season. You’ll probably never hear me complain about it being too hot. I’d rather it be hot than cold. 2) I spend most of the weekends in July “up north”. This term “up north” is relative, I know. My first year in college I had a roommate who went “up north” to a town about 25 miles SOUTH of where I grew up. Specifically, my “up north” is Mio, MI where my family has had a cabin long before I was born, located about 1.5 miles off the Au Sable River. I’ve been going up there since I was born and will probably continue to do so until I die. My dad and I have both spent our summers there and I imagine my kids will as well.

This year is a little different though. I’ll also be visiting Houghton Lake and a little town I don’t know the name of near Traverse City. Those vacation destinations mixed into 4 weekends in Mio make for a full and enjoyable summer. I guess what I’m really getting at is don’t expect a regularly updated blog around the weekends for about a month.

Mio, MI. See it way up there? Click the image then.

OTHER INTERESTING NEWS:

Along with going to school, working, Tigers' games and vacationing; TJ and I are working on something that should end up being pretty cool. (At least we think so). BUT that's all you get for a teaser at this point. Stay tuned for more in the next couple weeks.