Damn your old!

My 25 year class reunion was last weekend, man it seems like just 24 years ago I was walking down that isle, getting a piece of paper that hasn't really helped me in my life. Maybe it was a factor in getting my current job, but I'm not sure. Since I don't have that piece of paper from a higher institution, I'm always afraid that I won't be hired for something, even though my work ethic and pure briliantness far exceed many that I know with that piece of paper that I am missing. I've never understood the requirement from some businesses that you HAVE to have a degree to even be considered. I mean, I want my doctor, dentist and proctologist to have a degree, but my customer service agent at Verizon doesn't need that 4 year degree to help me, they just need a brain. When my last job was winding down and I was in search of a new job, I was eliminated from even being considered to work for Wells Fargo here in Des Moines because I didn't have a degree. I was applying for an entry level customer service position, even though I had been the customer service manager at my previous job. I talked to the HR lady and was told the reason I wasn't going to get an interview. My thought? Your loss, I'm one hell of a catch. I was fortunate that when I was brought into CE Software as a production guy, that they saw my sweet muscles and brain and promoted me several times to do a crap load of jobs. Those were good days. My current company brought me on because of my experience and, I can only guess, my charm, and hasn't regretted the lack of paper. I mean, so what if I had a degree in say, criminal justice, if I'm not in the criminal justice field. How does the degree help? It only shows you that I can show up to enough classes to get that piece of paper, not that I have the brain to use that information. But I digress. Back to my high school reunion, which I did not attend, by the way. You might ask, "Why didn't you go?" Well I'll tell you captain inquisitive, because contrary to some peoples belief, high school wasn't a bucket of fun. I hated it, with all my being, and did everything to not be there. Looking back on it, I wish I would have seen the need to do better, so I could move on to the big school, go thousands of dollars into debt, just so I could get a degree in something I would never do as an actual job. Do they offer degrees in shootin hoop and hanging with friends? I was fricking awesome at that, but beyond that, struggled. My main goal as a father is to instill in my kids the importance of a degree, so my kids have that, so they will have the chances that I didn't have. Because so many places eliminate you without the degree, at least they can get a foot in the door. I was in a Facebook group for the reunion and all of the people listed were the same people that wouldn't give me the time of day 25 years ago. One of my current friends was one of those people back then and his recollection of high school is much happier than mine. He was at the reunion, I've seen the pictures, and appeared to have a good time. I'm pretty sure if I attended, I would have been known by 2 people, and that makes for a dull evening. My class was over 400 people, but of the 50 or so that attended, none were friends of mine during those 4 years. Reminiscing would have taken .2 seconds. In 2 weeks, there is another reunion, but this time for alumni of my first real job. I can't wait. At this job, I not only had the chance to show my work abilities, but I got to be a person, something I never achieved in high school. When I think back, I remember the days I spent at that job, having the time of my life. I was extremely fortunate to get hired there, at the base of the mountain we climbed. This company was one of the leaders in e-mail, before you even knew what email was. Cutting edge software design, with a leader that would make you think of Steve Jobs, only a bit quirkier. If you didn't know him, you would have thought he was "out there," but he led a team of VERY young people through some of the craziest times in my life. If you ever wanted the definition of a fun place to work, it was CE Software. We put in a shitload of hours, and loved ever minute of it. We made a butt load of money and the company treated us like kings. Now, I love the company I work for, but CE will always be a special time in my life. As I come together with these nuts on Aug. 13th, I guarantee you that my face will hurt, my sides will ache and tears will roll down my cheeks. Just like old times.

It just got warm.

What can you do in Iowa on a 96 degree day? Well, you can tube down the Des Moines river out of Seven Oaks Recreation in Boone, Iowa. This was the second time we have done this, the first being two years ago, and I was a bit nervous going into our first trip with three young kids. I had no idea how deep the water was, how fast the water would run and what kind of obstacles we would encounter. My fear was that the water would be high, the flow would be fast and there would be a bunch of stuff in the water to try and avoid. All of that was true. When we pulled up to the launch site, I about shit myself. That wide, brown torrent of death was looking back at me, and I'm pretty sure I heard it laugh. The kids were 3, 7 and 8 and I had no idea how we were going to keep track of them and keep them all alive. Well they all seemed to survive and in fact, Mason was jumping off his tube and swimming around all by himself, something I wasn't willing to do. This year, I went into the trip with a little less fear, a little less apprehension and a little less ability to hold my pee. Mistake one of the day, I downed a bunch of water so I wouldn't dehydrate, seeing as how all the weather people were predicting 110 degree heat index. That means I will be peeing on myself for the next few hours, not something I'm happy with or proud of, but what the hell are you supposed to do? This year, we got to the start point and the river looked the same as last year, but I wasn't worried. OK, maybe a little, but I heard no laughing from the river, so I was ready to take the plunge. Last year, they had lots of rope to tie all the tubes together, but when we asked today, they said it was a "liability" issue and didn't want us to tie up. Well that doesn't fly with parents with small kids. I found a few strands of rope and another guy with us found some more. The Seven Oaks people do tie your cooler to one raft, so you don't loose that, but I guess the kids aren't as important. They said that we couldn't tie up because if one person got stuck, everyone got stuck. My thought was, yeah, so you have people to help you get unstuck. If you get wedged on a tree, and everyone else makes it by, you spend the next hour trying to catch up to the group. We got about 200 yards down river and we all paddled to the side and tied as much of our group together as we could. We used our stolen rope, shoe strings and a t-shirt.

The float was smooth with few obstacles on the first half. Our main goal this year, was to make it to a sand bar so we could stop, get off the rafts, and do a little playing, eating and just hanging out. Last time, we had this same goal and failed miserably. We only saw a few sand bars and they were always on the opposite side of the river we were on. We tried to paddle over, but never made it. I'm happy to say that, even though we never made it to a sand bar, we did in fact make it to a rocky beach that we were able to pull ourselves out of the water on to and spent some time playing. There were tadpoles and frogs, so Max and Makiah were in heaven. There was a lot of mud, so Makiah looked like he had black socks on when we left. As we were trying to re-tube everyone, the tubes with people on them were trying to pull the tubes people were still tyring to get on, down the river. I hopped off my tube, holding on to the long string of tubes and tried to hold everything up so a few in our group could tube up. The ground was about 2 feet under the water and it was rather large, sharp, rocks. I was pulled off my feet and landed with my right arm down on the rocks and cut the palm of my hand, my wrist and my elbow. Nothing major, but seeing as I have my hand in less than desirable water, (somebody pee'd in it)I'm guessing I will need to have something amputated soon. There are 2 things that stand out to me as highlights of the trip. The first is the Kate Shelley High Bridge, which is the tallest double track railroad bridge in America. It really is quite spectacular, and you get to see it pass over your head. Max LOVES trains, so to be able to see 5 trains cross these bridges in the small amount of time it is in your view is pretty cool. The second thing is, on one of the road bridges you go under, there are hundreds of those mud bird nests, stuck to the underside of the bridge. It's really cool to see them flying around and diving into the mud homes. I might be the only one in our group that really enjoyed it, but I did.

We managed to hit the landing dock, loaded up the bus and headed home. The thermometer on the van said it was 88 degrees when we headed home at 1:30 pm. By the time we hit home at 2:30 pm, it was 96 degrees with 107 heat index. Why it couldn't have been that warm when my ass was being drug down the river, I have no idea.