As told by Ryan & Jessica.

It’s been a good year and we are looking forward to another one!  We put together a video of pictures we’ve taken throughout the year – good times.  Thanks to all who sent us holiday pictures and letters; enjoy the show!

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The water is receding, for now.

I wasn’t able to get as many shots as I would have liked as I really felt too guilty during all of the sandbagging efforts to sit “idly” by, taking snapshots of everyone else working so hard.

Jess and I spent Saturday, March 21 filling sandbags in a neighborhood in Moorhead for residents to take back to their yards.  This was before most of the craziness had started so the mood was light, people were having a good time with the pleasant weather (it was probably 45 degrees and sunny).  We were all working hard but the “flood” was still a long ways off – we couldn’t even see that it had risen at all though were were officially at flood stage, above 18 feet.

The only thing of note from that Saturday was a silly dump truck driver who tried to pull away after dumping sand with his box still up.  He caught the overhead power/telephone wires with the box and started to bend the pole until some of the wires gave way from a house down the street.  Everyone was yelling at the driver who probably couldn’t hear us anyway.  I think it was just a telephone wire that came loose but there were a few tense moments as it looked like there might be a live electrical wire about to come down on us.

We took Monday off since we were still sore (my body telling me I need more regular exercise) and tried to fill sandbags on Tuesday at the dome but it was crawling with people – so many that we just felt like we were in the way of all of the bobcats and machinery on the dome floor.  By this time the water was significant and some neighborhoods were in real danger.

Meeting was cancelled on Wednesday and we took off to Oxbow after the volunteer hotline said they desperately needed volunteers down there.  It had started to snow earlier in the day so the conditions as we headed south on 29 were less than ideal.  The temperature at this point was a few degrees below freezing and there was water coming up on both sides of the interstate.  It looked as though were were on a narrow bridge that was about to be covered by the rising water.  We took it slow.

Once we arrived at the Knickerbocker Liquor Locker (aka headquarters) things were chaotic.  There were cops from all over, the National Guard, various rescue crews, and even the Coast Guard.  Yes, the Coast Guard in landlocked North Dakota.  That was probably the strangest thing I saw during this whole event.

Eventually we found someone who told us just just to wait around until a red pickup could take us over the water to where they needed help.  The red truck never came but a WWII-era crane truck did come bringing haggard volunteers back from the font line.  We threw a couple heavy packs of empty sandbags onto the back and everyone climbed on (except me – I got to ride in the cab).

We were transported through waist-high water to a little island that was the parking lot of the country club in a former life.  The bags were wet, the sand was wet, the ground had standing water, and, after not too long, our hands were wet too.  Combined with the worsening blizzard, the urgency of the sandbagging, and the chaos, it really felt like we were in the middle of the flood fight.

The worst and saddest part of it all was that there wasn’t really much coordination.  Homes were being lost in just a matter of minutes and we couldn’t get the bags where they needed to be in order to build up the necessary dikes.  No one had authority to tell the various groups to go here or there.  There were enough people but they were all filling bags in the parking lot island and homeowners were left to their own devices to try to get those bags to their homes.  We eventually caught a National Guard truck back to the staging area and creeped our way home on a very icy I-29.

Over the weekend we assisted the Nelsons at the Moorhead Country Club.  The National Weather Service raised the crest prediction from 41 feet to between 42 and 43 feet.  This caused the entire metro area to need to raise their dikes to meet the new prediction.  We helped fortify some of the existing dikes and raise them a bit more.

It’s been an interesting and tiring week or so.  The Microsoft campus finally opened again this Thursday after being closed for a full week.  It’s good to get out again and have the city pretty much back to normal.  They’re now predicting that the second crest that will come after all of the remaining snow melts could be even higher than the first.  We’ll see what the future brings.

On the 17th I attended the 100th birthday party for one of the friends here in Fargo, Carl.  It was really interesting to hear all of the stories and close calls that a centurion has lived through in his many days.

I was the “official” photographer for the event.  This was one of the first times I was tasked to shoot an event I really didn’t have any personal ties to.  I think I got some good shots but it was difficult knowing who the important “players” were.  After a while I got a handle on who all was in his immediate family but I realized that getting that squared away before hand would have been smart.

If you have time, be sure to read the story of the bank robbery Carl helped stop.

On Black Friday Jessica and I went down to the cities to do some car shopping.  I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted and we found the right car after stopping at the 6th dealership.  We were both pretty tired from looking at so many similar cars but we got a good deal and are happy so far.

We ended up with a 2008 Infiniti G35x.  I managed to get out today to take some pictures.

Well, well.

Another year of football is behind us, at least for the Sioux.  Brandon kicked a field goal in overtime to give the Sioux a win in their final game this season down at USD.  It was quite an exciting event.  This season I’ve probably shot more images than I have yet – I was averaging about 1600 – 1800 per game.

Jess and I spent Thanksgiving up in Duluth/Proctor/Barnum with her side of the family.  We had a grand ol’ time and many a game was played.  It’s been a while since we’ve been up there so it was nice to see everyone again.

On Black Friday we snuck down to the Cities and bought ourselves a new car.  It is a 2008 Infiniti G35x sedan.  Sadly, I have no pictures yet (this winter thing is making it difficult for me to keep it clean) but you’re going to have to trust me that it is a thing of beauty.

We returned to Fargo on Saturday for Brian and Hannah’s wedding.  It was beautiful yet quirky and a whole lot of fun.  They have an eye for detail and it really paid off.  I shot the entire night without flash.  I like doing that but it makes it really difficult sometimes, even wide-open on a 50/1.4 at 1600 ISO.

In other news, I also picked up a new cell phone this month after 2 years with my Treo 700wx.  I now have Verizon’s HTC Touch Pro.  It’s taking a while but it’s growing on me.  My biggest gripe at this point is the way that Verizon cripples the device.  It has built in GPS (which Sprint allows you to use unhindered) but Verizon thinks it’s genius to force you to pay $10/month for access to their proprietary Navigation software if you want to use it at all.  As soon as someone hacks the software I’m all over that…

This is always a fun game.  You make up some ridiculous sign and pass it on to someone else while the person in the middle tries to find out who is ‘it’.  Hilarity ensues.

I’m trying a new thing – a photo blog.  A blog, but with more pictures.  We’ll see how that goes.

We just got back from a fun weekend at Maplewood State Park near Pelican Rapids, MN.  This was the same park that Jes and I went backpacking at this spring.  This time we decided to take it a bit easier on ourselves and just do car camping, which, while not as adventurous, is certainly a lot less stressful.

Becca joined us a bit late having taken a scenic detour to visit the rest of the park, arriving after dark on Friday.  We had a late night (ok, it was only about 7:30 but the lights were out) Hobo dinner by headlamp-light.

Saturday we took it easy in the morning, taking our sweet time getting going which was fine by me.  After breakfast we took a leisurely stroll around a lake to get ourselves warmed up.  The high temperature for the weekend couldn’t have been more than 65 in the sun; we spent most of our time in the shade so you can just about imagine.  We’re pretty bundled up in all of the pictures as a consequence.

We wimped out and went home late Saturday night rather than trying to get up at 6 in the morning but it worked out just fine.  A good night’s sleep last night and we were all refreshed for a good Sunday.

Check out the gallery for more pictures.

I re-scored my desktop tonight and was awarded:

I believe this number to be a little misleading as it’s my hard drive speed that is my lowest component.

Ah, well, not much I’m going to do about that.  10,000 RPM drives?

I think this is brilliant. 

Oh, how long I’ve waited for Microsoft to respond to the smear tactics.

It seems like every time I see Jett I end up with some really good pictures.

Tonight, Mom dropped him by for a few hours while she ran some errands.  We had some good fun playing chess/horseys, catch with a baseball, soccer, racing, playing tigers, playing dead, playing rabbits, playing Tiger vs. Crocodile, speaking Chinese and Spanish, eating Cheez-Its, trying on my helmet, talking on the phone, being crazy, reading books, trying to catch a frog, sleeping, having fork fights, and watching an elephant jump on a trampoline.

I seriously can’t remember the last time I did so many things in such a short amount of time.