Hertzler’s Outpost

Catalytic converter repair, “cat” repair, as most mechanics call it, has a great range of prices for the work! Back in Orlando when the “check engine” light came on in our Chrysler van, the service station we took it to quoted $750 to fix it. We decided to pass. Then today at lunch, here in Fort Collins, the Chrysler dealership quoted $1020 to fix it. I just laughed. The work got done at Hawker’s Auto for $250 later this afternoon. A much nicer price. I have a little better insight now into why Chrysler is going out of business.

Audrey in the Coffee House

Helping students stay awake as they study, keeping fresh coffee available, and cleaning up are some of the things Audrey is doing as part of her job in the Coffee House this summer. The brilliant neon yellow uniform t-shirts didn’t make her terribly excited, but she likes the job otherwise. Earlier she was doing a lot of babysitting during the day for staff member parents on the conference team, and I think she likes this job better.

At Chasm Lake Under Longs Peak Summit

Later in the summer Andrew and I hope to climb Longs Peak (14,395 feet), behind us in the picture. This morning we hiked half the distance (4 miles) up to Chasm Lake which sits under its very imposing summit. The last four miles will, of course, be where the majority of the difficulty comes, and they say it takes about 13 hours round trip. And you have to start at 3:00 am so you can make it up and off the summit area before 11:00 am or so to avoid thunderstorms.

It was pretty fun today and not too hard, but I’m sure that last section will be a challenge.

Andrew, Computer Lab Monitor

Helping students log in to the computer lab computers, setting up printers on other laptops, and refilling paper in the printers are a few of the things Andrew is doing as part of his summer job as Computer Lab Monitor. Another high schooler had the morning shift (during classes) when the lab was virtually empty. Andrew got the busy shift today, but I think he’s enjoying it.

Empty Sobe’s

Since we’ve been here Audrey has consumed about one Sobe a day, and the bottles have accumulated on the already very small kitchen counter. So Cathy got some thrift store flowers and made a mantle arrangement of them which makes our temporary home seem more homey.

Cathy is a Registration Helper

Today about 800 600 staff members of Campus Crusade for Christ will go through registration for the Institute of Biblical Studies, CCC’s biennial summer Bible school. Cathy is a registration helper, and I have already done most of my work for the day on the Tech Team. We set up the ad hoc computer networks in two rooms and scrambled at the last minute to resolve a problem that kept the Finance team from working. Stuff like that. But things are running smoothly now, so I have a few minutes to post this.

Compared to the relative calm of the last three weeks, I think it will be a lot busier here for the rest of the summer.

The line of people waiting to register
goes around the building

Update: Why not 800? It turns out that about 200 people incorrectly indicated their arrival on this date! They must have clicked on “21″ thinking it was July 21, the time when most people will arrive for the main conference. Instead they were actually clicking on June 21.

CCC’s Conference Team getting
instructions – photo by David Nagy

This is the first time Cathy and I have joined CCC’s U.S. Staff Conference Team, but it’s about 30th year Campus Crusade has held our biennial U.S. Staff Conference here in Fort Collins, CO. But on Thursday we all did something for the first time, even the other long-time veterans of this staff conference team. We did a community service project.

The work was weeding and mulching in the Fort Collins City Park. You can see in the picture that our group is fairly large, so we managed to make a significant difference in the park’s landscape.

And compared to working with people and computers, working outside on landscaping is a downright pleasure!

Hail Storm, Ft. Collins

It’s been hailing for the last 30 minutes here. Never seen a hail storm last this long with as much accumulation, about 0.25″. Cathy and Audrey are driving into town today, but they won’t arrive until this afternoon. So they missed the excitement.

Update: The piles of hail didn’t melt until later in the evening, and the next morning there were still piles of hail/snow in the shady corners! That’s more winter in June than we have ever had in Orlando!

Setting Up

It’s been ten years since I setup computer network cabling, but I ran enough in the last few days to make up for it. Andrew and I arrived in Fort Collins, Colorado on the Campus Crusade U.S. Staff Conference Advanced Team earlier this week to help unload trailers and build an operations office. The work is a nice diversion from my normal job.

I’ve always said, “When you work with computers, nothing is ever easy. When you work with people, computers are easy.” So I’m back to working with computers, and they’re easy.

This conversation, from a visitor on EveryStudent.com, ended well. It seems this visitor, like most atheists who are willing to respond on the website, was raised in a Christian home but rejected his family’s faith. Rather than argue with him, I told him about my experience knowing God. And I told him I didn’t want to change his mind unless he was looking for a different way to see things.

This was his response:
“Well thanks for the conversation Jerry. Sorry for having a rude tone with you, its just i’ve been yelled at and called mean mean mean names so many times for being atheist. Thank you for not trying to change my mind.”

Cottonmouth by our front door

Andrew walked out the front door today and nearly stepped on this guy. At first we thought it was a water snake, but then he opened his mouth and showed us his two fangs. Then we thought it was a copperhead, but he escaped into the bushes and rattled. And we could see his tail rattling in there, too. But then he escaped entirely, and we couldn’t figure out where he went. So we’ll be checking out the window first whenever we go out our front door for the next few days!

[We originally concluded it was a rattlesnake, but someone left a comment on this photo on Flickr.com saying it was a cottonmouth. He was right. It's a cottonmouth. This picture on National Geographic looks exactly like what this snake did when he saw us.]

Greg and I waiting for the start

This morning my friend, Greg, and I did the “Enter the Food Chain 1k Swim” with about 75 others at Lake Cane (and one turtle that I almost bumped into half way across). Lots of fun. Everyone who completes their first lake crossing gets to sign Lucky’s wall and gets a patch and bumper sticker. And they complete the first leg toward the 100k Club. There’s even a Wikipedia article about the swim. Here’s a short video of the start.

Lucky is just a nice guy who opens his boat dock every morning for a group of swimmers. If that wasn’t enough, he provides a patch and bumper sticker to every new successful lake crosser. He’s a generous guy.

I grew up doing lake swims at the family lake in Wisconsin (which is about as far across, at its widest, as Lake Cane), but this had to be the funnest one. And since Greg and I are getting ready for a triathlon we threw in a bike ride and run when we got home. That’s what I call a good Saturday morning!

This article was the start of the following email to me from a visitor on the EveryStudent.com site: “If god is perfect and creates imperfect beings deliberately, then why does he punish them for their imperfections.” And thus another conversation with an atheist begins…

Ted, Ben, me

I did the IOA 5k again this year and beat my time from last year. That’s always a good thing. Campus Crusade for Christ fielded a team of about 400! We had the biggest team in Orlando, won the best t-shirt design award, and our race director, Lorraine Hardaway, won best race director award. 11,000 people participated in the event in downtown Orlando, so our large group didn’t even seem so large. Friends who walked said they crossed the starting line after I had already finished the race!

Running with coworkers beats a Christmas party.

Cold Air Intake Installed

We now have an oxymoron: a tricked out Escort. Andrew installed a cold air intake, something he’s been wanting to do for a while and finally finished last night. How it works, I don’t understand, but it’s supposed to increase power and fuel efficiency by bringing cold air to the fuel injectors instead of the usual warm air that plastic intake pipes provide. Either way, it’s a cool mod to the Escort.

Last September I discovered that my blog would not accept foreign characters, and I actually needed to use some cyrillic letters. I just now fixed the problem, so I’m free to compose in 汉语/漢語 if I want.

The problem was that this website uses a database to store all its information, and that database stored everything in latin characters. I had to export and re-import all my data into a new database that stores characters in the UTF8 character set.

Andrew Bounces

On getting back home I found we had another trampoline in the back yard. Second one acquired by Andrew from his job. Trampolines are way more fun in two’s!

Always Something Going On

My time in India went well. I gained a better understanding of how university students there think and how they use the Internet, and I had a good planning time in Bangalore.

Finally on my last day in country I began feeling comfortable, but I left with more questions about the culture than I came with. For example, Mumbai is home to 4 of the 6 richest people in the world, but it also is home to Asia’s largest slum. Why do the ultra rich live there? How can huge slums exist in the middle of a city where real estate prices are high?

My first reaction on seeing some of the slums was pity. But from two different sources I heard this story: As land owners develop a piece of land, they are required by law to build free housing for any slum dwellers their development displaces. In the past when this has been done, the displaced slum dwellers take their new apartment and rent it out to someone else while they move their slum to another location and continue living in it! Whether this is true or not, I don’t know, but either way it highlighted how far from my own culture I had traveled and how long it would take me before I had a good understanding of the mysteries of India.

Brain Masala

Fried brain masala with naan bread was today’s lunch. Hmm good. It had the consistency of tofu (the brains, that is), but the masala spices overpowered any flavor the brain itself had. It was a challenge getting my mind to eat brain. I can now check this off the list of things to do before I die. It wasn’t really on the list actually….

Today we got blocked from entering two campuses, so we didn’t get to talk to any students there. And on a third campus where we were welcomed by the administration, we were not able to talk to any students. So we didn’t connect with any students today, but we learned a lot about the difficulties of connecting with them in general. I think it illustrates the need to find other ways, like the Internet, to connect with students other than visiting a campus.

Top Ten Signs We’re Not In Kansas Anymore

• transvestite eunuch beggars, hijra
• enormous slums beneath expensive real estate
• people everywhere
• muslim calls to prayer
• everyone has an angle on you; beggars, swindlers, salesmen, etc.
• everyone is sweeping and cleaning, but the streets are still dirty
• eating rice and curry (and everything) with your fingers
• free range cattle – ranging everywhere in the city
• city goats – shepherded by children
• black and yellow taxis everywhere, horns always honking

This is a video taken from the back of my friend’s motorcycle on the way home from church. The most fascinating thing to me has been driving around town and taking in everything going on here.

As much as I like my work, by comparison it just seems a little mundane. That’s good, because it means things have gone fairly smoothly and we’ve been able to make plans and talk to students here in this city.

On the back of a motorcycle

Getting to church this morning involved a half hour ride across town on Robin’s motorcycle. Before we left I asked him if I could drive, but he just laughed.

After a while it got easier. By the trip home I was taking pictures and video and could have sent a text message from my phone just like everyone else riding on the back of all the other motorcycles.

Watching a video driving down the street isn’t very interesting unless it’s from another country. This was part of our drive across town today.

This beats all.

I generally try to avoid McDonalds in other countries. Why eat the worst of American culture somewhere else? But this one was too hard to resist, and my Indian friends wanted to eat there. A Chicken Maharaja Mac. Just sounds funny.

Over lunch I learned why cows are sacred but not chickens, how students pay for university, how the caste system works and where foreigners fit into it.

Before and after lunch I learned how students use the Internet in India, but there were no surprises there. Google, Facebook, and lots of time online were consistent among the thirty or so students I talked with.

Bangalore Street

After arriving in Bangalore at 12:30 am today I was surprised at how functional I was the rest of the day – until 4:30 when my brain decided it really wanted to sleep. After a 15 minute nap I headed out for a walk on the street near where I’m staying. It was quite a contrast to the quiet office I worked in all day!

Everyone that I stopped to photograph was really friendly. They all smiled back at me, and two guys even asked me to take their picture. I feel much more comfortable here now than I did 12 years ago.

Breakfast and lunch today were curry, as I’m sure dinner will be as well. It is being served now, so it’s time for me to eat.