Wow. It’s been two weeks since my last update, so weekly probably isn’t going to work too well.

My son and I had a blast on the men’s retreat, I hope we can go next year. It was in Scappoose, OR on a ranch next to the river. We played lawn darts, got chased by cows and did something called geocaching. It’s kind of like a scavenger hunt. You use a gps to go to an area that has the hidden cache. When you find the cache there was a clue to tell you where the next cache was.

So there were 10 caches in all, but only 5 “valid” ones. The other 5 had a message that said something like “nice try”. The gps coordinates for all 10 caches were already programmed in to the gps units, but you didn’t know which 5 were “valid” nor what order to go in. That’s what the clues were for.

How we got chased by cows is another matter. A group of us, led by a man named Luke who worked out there and was the grandson of the man who’s ranch we were on, went on a hike to see where some barges had landed inland when there was a massive flood in 1996 and was about an hour’s walk or so away. It was on a 600 acre section of land that was heavily wooded and also kept cows. We stayed on the path, which was littered with cow pies, and the cows were off to the side quite some distance away.

That however was too close for the cows’ comfort. They kept moving in the direction we were going and eventually they’d reach a point where they couldn’t go any farther. We stopped at one point where the herd was in the road ahead of us, while a couple of men went up and caused the cows to disperse. That worked all well and good until we started heading back.

Those crafty cows set up an ambush for us.

Well not really, most of the walk back was uneventful until we were close to the exit. By this time our group was quite fragmented with me and a gentleman named Bill trailing the group. Part of the cows were off to the right, unseen but the herd was definitely heard. There were quite a few trees between the path and the unseen herd. The rest of the herd was on our left and wanted to cross in front of us to get to the herd on the right.

Since there was a huge gap we paused and waited for them to go, but only a couple did. The rest of them waited until we passed. Then they crossed behind us but came up on our right. They couldn’t go and join the herd because of the trees, they had to travel up a bit, in the direction we were going (naturally) to get to a clearing that would allow them through.

So we stayed off to the side and stopped so they could pass us by. However we underestimated the intelligence of the cows.

We had left the path, were off to the side several yards from the path, the cows were on the other side of the path but right next to it. So did the cows take advantage of this and speed on ahead?

Nope.

When we stopped, they stopped. When we went forward, they went forward.

So we went forward. When we were near the clearing the cows ran past us and into the opening in the woods, but not all of them.

As we approached the gate there were a few cows still behind us, following us. Closely. Rather than stampeding and trampling us to death, it was more of the same. We stopped, they stopped. But they kept it up until we reached the gate. Once we started through the gate they ran towards us a little bit then stopped and stared at us.

And that is my cow story.

My financial aid went through so I’ll be a full time student… I have mixed feelings on that.

The website work is coming along but frustrating as there seems to always be another problem that crops up.

My garden was overgrown with weeds so I spent 3 hours hacking them all down. I still have a lot of work to do on it, but I can only do so much.

It’s hard to write here when I write elsewhere too. It’s more difficult because this is more of a personal blog rather than my other blogs which center around a topic.

Anyway, I suppose that’s enough. I lead a fairly boring life, and I’m okay with it.

– Jeffery