text: I didn’t really start to worry until afternoon on Christmas Day, but that’s just my nonchalant nature. The Christmas snow of 2009 had blanketed Nebraska the previous night, and now snow plows were not even running because the snow would just fall right back over and make the street look like it hadn’t been plowed at all. The reason I was concerned this Christmas afternoon was because my father and I had a flight booked to go from Kansas City to San Diego on December 27th to watch Nebraska play in the Holiday Bowl against Arizona.
  But surprisingly, when we started down the interstate to Lincoln the next day, we had no problems whatsoever. The day was clear, and there was absolutely no one on the road. Some light flurries came down after we passed Lincoln, but we made it safely to St. Joseph to stay the night and then on to the airport in Kansas City the next day.
  Those three days in California were like time spent on an island paradise. Time moved so much slower there. We went to the beach, hit museums in Balboa park, saw restored ships, and visited Cabrillo National Monument and saw its lighthouse. I’d go back to San Diego in a heartbeat because there’s more there I want to do. If I could have only picked one place to see, it would have been the Maritime Museum, with all of its restored ships from all kinds of eras. Submarines, cargo ships, freighters, the whole works. (P.s.-if you come to SD for a bowl game, wear your team colors. They will give you a discount.
  But by far, the best part of the trip was simply sitting at a coffee shop on Coronado Island, having a light lunch and reading Prey by Michael Crichton. It was a white-washed, 1840’s style house where they gave you letter as marker for your order. Time passed slowly, the people were so relaxed, it made me want to think about moving. No wonder people get lost out here
  The game itself was a spectacle. Having to get there early because of the limited parking, then napping in the car. (Californians always tell you to get to an event way before it happens.) Qualcomm itself is a decrepit pile of concrete, that, if it were in any other state other than California, would have been replaced by now. (Subsequent to this trip, I have had the opportunity to attend an A’s game at the Coliseum in Oakland. Virtually the same stadium.) From a Nebraska perspective, the game on the field was an extension of the fine vacation we were having.
  I have to confess, as it began to rain at the game, I felt like complaining about it. Seriously, San Diego must get rain ten year, if that, and it has to rain while I’m visiting and outside watching my beloved Huskers? All the while, there is snow on the ground in Nebraska.
  During that game, it felt as if nothing could go wrong, which, when you have the immovable Ndamukong Suh in the middle of your defense, is actually realistic. Bo Pelini’s post game proclamation (“Nebraska’s back and we’re here to stay!”) had months to brew with fans. But at the end of a season where you win six of your last seven, don’t you automatically expect to get better, with a coach only in his second year? But that’s what it’s like when you have a coach having early success, before you’ve seen the players he’s recruited. Oh well. We are winning, and who would have known after that the quarterback who’d be leading the team wasn’t even on the field yet?
  Should Husker fans have learned anything from that game, from the stalled drives that were leading field goals? Maybe; back then, it was to early to say
  I slept little at our hotel in Orange County that night, staying up late to read the news on the game and getting up early to catch our flight back. I didn’t get a view of the sea on our way up and down because we drove in the dark, but I couldn’t care less. As we boarded the plane to fly back to the world of snow, I pondered our mystic journey as some of the best days of my life.
  This was the third year in a row I’ve spent on Lake Michigan with my family. The weekend came up at the perfect time: I finished my biggest month of work for Blue River (silage harvest) and for photography (show at the Civic Center). I went from the one of the longest work days I may ever have straight to an Amtrak train to Chicago and then to our lake house for the weekend. I celebrating by watching Nebraska win big, finishing a book that I said I would finish this summer (The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell), and of course, writing. But the best personal progress I made was in some thoughtful self-evaluation.
  Saturday morning, I went down to the beach. If I had learned anything from the last month, it was that I had a limited amount of time, and that if I was going to accomplish the goals I had, I had to set my priorities. To that end, I sat down on the beach and wrote out a set of goals that I wanted to accomplish that day and that weekend in terms of writing and people to contact. I didn’t accomplish all of them, but at least they were there, a reminder of untouched items needing my hand.
  After everything I went through this month, I realized that if I’m going to accomplish the goals I want to, namely writing a novel and publishing my photographs, I’m going to have to have better organizational skills. I’m not a good organizer. If you would have looked at my life five years ago, you would have said I was anti-organizational. Likely, details and planning will never be my strengths, but I know that I can accomplish something through them.
  Labor Day Weekend in southwest Michigan is a busy time. Lazy country roads are overpopulated, not unlike college game day in towns like Lincoln or Ames. There are usually two types: families on one last summer get-away, middle-aged-to-older couples in pleated shorts and polos. You walk the roads at your own peril, but the place goes dead quite late Monday night.
  Hitting the beaches and walking in the waves, I contemplated what I wanted my life to look like in a few year. The Tipping Point said that the human brain can handle only so many relationships at once, and I was pondering who I wanted to choose as friends. Too often, I operated from a low self-esteem position when it came to people and thus welcomed into my life people who were charming but had little beneath that charm. Even though I’ll never be as popular as I would have liked to be in high school, I still needed to seek out smart people to be around and learn from.
  I had a good conversation with my sister that weekend too when she took me to get on the train at New Buffalo. She’s in a new position in her job, and it was great to swap stories over dealing with personnel issues. As my train rolled into Chicago, I openly wondered, If I lived in this city, who would I be? Would it be the right place for me?
  Now that I’m back here in the thick of things, I realize how much lists matter and how much goals matter. Last night, it was 8:30 when I came back to the house from retrieving my mother’s phone. I played video games, but it kept nagging me that I hadn’t sent any e-mails out to potential employers. I realized that an extra half-an-hour in the evening doing little things was more important than another game of Call of Duty Zombies.
  The day after the third harvest, I had to make travel arrangements to come to out to my sister’s for Labor Day lake weekend. Last year, I got made my arrangements too soon, not factoring in my other travel. This year, I waited until I knew work travel for sure. Unfortunately, my plans didn’t firm until a week before, so my cheapest option (by $100+) was to take Amtrak from Osceola.
  After a fifteen-hour work day and five-and-a-half hours of sleep, I made a peaceable drive of an hour and a half from Ames to Osceola, with the light traffic of pre-rush hour. Parking at the station is (shocking) free. The crowd to get on was modest-a lot of Iowa fans heading to the Hawkeye’s game at Soldier Field against Northern Illinois. The train was only fifteen minutes late, and I got on eagerly.
  This was my third trip to Chicago on Amtrak. Trains really only work well in more urban areas. If you want to go to Chicago on Amtrak from Lincoln or Omaha, you have to leave at 3:45 now, which is literally the most inconvenient time of night for a tree to leave as it is to late to stay up, or too early to get a respectable amount of sleep. If you can’t sleep on mass transit (I can’t, no matter how hard I try), you’re in for a very disrupted day. This time around, I thought hey, train leaves from Osceola at 7:40, it’s only seven hours to Chicago and six back. How bad could it be?
  It took me about to three hours in to question whether or not the $100 I saved by not flying was worth it. The only way to withstand the tedium is to have enough reading, writing, or viewing material to get you through it (should have brought a TV show on DVD). The smell of the train is intoxicating, with heavy emphasis on the toxic. To top it off, you’re sitting by all these people who thinks trains are nostalgic and “so cool”. Please; how on earth did I not remember all this stuff?
  I don’t even get the argument that taking the train allow a person “to see so much”. My life is sent driving around rural America, and I don’t know how people get a better view from the train. Try driving from Chicago to Lincoln on country roads, you’ll get a good view that way.
  Never the mind. The trains I take out to my sister’s, the South Shoreline and the Amtrak train from New Buffalo, Michigan are much better in terms of cleanliness, although they cover much less ground. If I lived in the northeast, I’d probably like taking trains much more, and they are more convenient than driving in most situations.
  My train back to Osceola was about half-an-hour late, and we had to do that ridiculously thing where they make us wait on the wrong side of the tracks until after the train passes. But I didn’t mind the half-an-hour drive back to Ames: it was free cookie day at Subway, and, when I stopped at Starbucks in Des Moines, I observed the return of pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. So all wasn’t lost.
  The road to Omro from Waupun (and US HWY 151) is fifty solid minutes on Wisconsin County Roads. I suppose I shouldn’t complain and should be grateful to the people who are willing to work with us, but last Tuesday as I made my way up County Road M, past the swivel in the road at County Road TC, I thought to myself, “Maybe it’s worth the extra twenty miles to take the major roads through Fon Du Lac and Oshkosh.”
  This past trip marked my fourth trip to Omro overall. The first was last year, when I passed the town without much notice on a Thursday morning, exhausted after crossing Lake Michigan the previous night. Each of the other three trips, I ended up hanging around the town for an extended period of time that was longer than I intended. I didn’t have to go anywhere.
  Omro is a pleasant city of just over 3,000, enough to seem substantial, but still really small. There’s a Piggly Wiggly and a BP/McDonald’s travel sitting on the east end of town, a small token of independence. The old fashioned, Ben Franklin-style pharmacy was in a state of remodel when I came in looking for twine. They didn’t have any, but I did find some at combo gas station/Subway/hardware store down the street.. There is a modest courthouse and town museum. It’s the smallest town I’d ever seen to have two thrift stores (until someone corrected me of this on Facebook), and there’s a bar next to the baseball fields which you could easily mistake for a machine shed. The largest restaurant location in Omro, a green roofed bar standing alone with dark tinted windows, currently sits empty. It is pledging to reopen in September “under new management.”
  I tried to off the restaurants in town and liked both. First, it was the Colonial Cheese House, and the last time, I sampled Jake’s Pizza, whose ad was on a tray in my room at the roadside motel. I was skeptical, but after obtaining the twine I needed, Jake’s was the first restaurant I walked by on the street. (Other than an authentic Mexican place, the likes of which I can find in Nebraska. There were two employees behind the counter, both on the phone most of the time I was there. I ordered a fish dinner and sat down to wait, expecting to write a full post by the time my food came. When the girl brought me my food, I’d written a measly two paragraphs. The way she handed the container to me, I knew it would be great, and it was. A small business ten miles from a major city has to work that much harder to keep its business.
  The most distinctive part of Omro is the Fox River, which runs roughly through the middle of town. The city has several parks next to it, and there are a few homes with docks. In many ways, the river is to Omro is like Yellowstone is to Wyoming: a very unique feature, but it doesn’t seem to upgrade the town that much.
  It is in my work as a field monitor over the summer that I have to rely on the Omros, the Tomahs, the Reinbeck, Iowas, and the Doniphan, Nebraskas to get the things I need, like that ball of twine or the ice to keep the samples cold. I don’t romanticize these small towns, but I’m grateful for their presence. I admire the Jake’s Pizza and the gas station that takes in two other businesses, because they have to do more with less too stay in business. And every little memento I take from those towns, like that ball of twine and the legion baseball T-shirt of the Omro Dairy (“Thundering Herd) I bought at one of the two thrift stores, is logged into my brain and will be remembered every time I see that ball of twine or wear that T-shirt.
  Travel	Fox River, Jake's Pizza, Omro, Oshkosh, Rural, Small Towns, travel, US 151, vacation, Winneabago County, Wisconsin	
  I was haging out with my friend Tom in the apartment of his friends Heidi, Naomi, and Laura, along with Heidi’s sister Emily. Tom’s roommate Dale and friend Bryce were along for what would be a very intriguing ride.
  The night began innocently enough, with Heidi giving us one of her subtle psychology quizzes. Then she and Emily made things interesting and brought a jar of mayonnaise and graham crackers in the room. The girls began dipping the crackers into the mayo, and eating them, much to our collective dismay.
  Naturally, I found this disgusting, given that I’ve never had a taste for odd food combination, such as peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwiches. But I felt a bit game, so I took a bit of graham cracker and swept up a bit of mayo on it. It tasted innocuous so I tried another one with a bit more on it. The flavors didn’t mesh very well. I tried one more with just a little, and it seemed fine, although I asserted the blend wasn’t perfect. I did it a couple more times, just so people couldn’t say I was coward.
  By now, the attitude in the room was getting rowdy. Heidi had attempted to feed Tom a cracker chucked full of mayo, but both he and Dale refused. Bryce and I had gamely tried it. Upping the ante, the girls tried eating full spoonfuls off a big wooden spoon, wincing as they did so. I told them it would be easier to just chuck the spoon done without thinking. (Speaking from personal experience gained off a blender drinking dare in high school.)
  But after Naomi choked down a glob and Heidi asserted she was going to be sick, they asked of we would believe that it was all just white chocolate pudding. They brought in the empty boxes to prove their ruse, and I tried the “mayo” again, trying to figure out why I hadn’t realized it when I tried it.
  This was one of the odder experiences I’ve had in the last couple of years, mainly because, in high school and college, I was often the guy who didn’t get the joke and was on the fringes. To do this day, I still look around when people laugh, expecting to have done something embarrassing by accident. But this experience reminded of what I love about people, that they are capable of such great “creativity”, and life is about unexpected joys. This certainly counted.
  Friday morning, I get up early and leave Dubuque by seven, determined not to waste time today. I get coffee at one of those drive-through huts by the mall and receive the third punch on a card that needs ten. I cross the Mississippi on the Wisconsin bridge and head for Fennimore, a semi-straight shot north. Fennimore has a Casey’s gas station plopped down right across from the town square; only other small town that I know has that is David City, Nebraska. I use the bathroom and buy vitamin water.There is a cornfield at the GPS coordinates I’ve been given, but there are no stakes to indicate the division of hybrids. I take some photos, check with my dad, and head out.
  The next plot is in Spring Green, Wisconsin, to the east and a bit north. On the way there, I stop at the Frank Lloyd Wright Center to use the bathroom, darting past the retired tourist. It is overcast, but not raining. After checking my GPS and getting back on the road, my truck fails to get up past 45 MPH. I panic at first, but after I turn off to go the field, I see that I put the truck in second gear instead of overdrive. The plot is three miles from the Wisconsin River and is properly marked. I dally around Spring Green and almost go into a book store before I realize I have too many book already.
  On the way up to my next plot in Tomah, I stop in downtown Mauston to get lunch at a local cafe, but when I see they don’t accept credit card, I walk out. (Michaelangelo’s didn’t take my card yesterday either.) I head up to the interstate and eat lunch at Subway in a travel plaza that has Brewer, Packer, and Badgers logos painted on the walls. Wisconsin love its sports and shows it. The plaza crowd: parents with kids, twenty-something guys heading to the wilds, a group of people dressed up for something (maybe a funeral), kids in some group, and a fifty-something guy alone wearing an Aaron Rodgers shirt.
  I-94/I-90 to Tomah is laden with rock formation that I’d love to photograph. I get off on the north side of town and head to the field that I passed six miles from yesterday. I have to drive past a No Trespassing sign on a crude access road to get to the field, but no one comes by.
  Back in Tomah, I check my online communications in the Culver’s parking lot and find an Amish guy selling baking goods and jam on the side of the road. I buy some monster cookies and a rhubarb crumb pie from him, and we chat for a minute about farming. I get back on I-94 and fly toward Madison.
  Wisconsin Dells looks like its packed up for the summer with kids and families. I get off at the exit right before I-90/I-94 merge with I-39 as the traffic begins to back up. I get gas at BP, where they are advertising free Brewers tickets, although you have to have seven purchases of eight gallons to get the tickets. I get two of the seven from my truck. I debate taking an alternate route, but don’t. Turns out to be the right decision as the traffic on I-90/I-94 has cleared.
  It takes a while to get to the fourth field, by Arlington, because I have to take a bunch of county roads. It’s next to a farmhouse, so I don’t stay for long. It’s four o’clock, but I decide to head to one more field, this one by Watertown, before calling it a day.
  I try to find a quicker way to Watertown that will involve using county roads. This leads to driving in the wrong direction for four miles, and I’m spent by the end of it. So I give in and drive through Watertown, and find the field, which is behind a dairy barn. I introduce myself to the owners and make my observations.
  I decide to head up to Beaver Dam, which has hotels and is within ten miles of my next field. It’s just a half hour drive back through Watertown, who hasn’t yet finished a by-pass highway that will allow travelers like me to skip their quaint downtown. I spend the night and the Super 8 in Beaver Dam and eat dinner at the classy upscale sports bar in front of it (which serves breakfast for some reason). They don’t seat me when I come in the door, so I don’t tip as well I normally do, even though the Friday night walleye is really good.
  Saturday morning, there’s an anxious woman behind the desk who asks if she can check me out while I’m eating breakfast. (There were at most four other parties staying at the hotel besides me.) After breakfast, I go to Wallgreens to get some meds and work on some blog articles, delaying my leave until nine. I stop by a river front market in downtown Beaver Dam and buy some honey, but it’s mostly a disappointment. I head back out of town and up Fox Lake where my plot is. The plot is on the side of County Road A. I have to walk a little bit from the turnoff where I park my truck.
  Head into Fox Lake and put the GPS coordinates of the next field into my map, which turn out to be the wrong coordinates. The right coordinates are in an e-mail attachment that I can’t open on my iPod, and I need to have a WiFi connection to access. I find the little town library (which looks like a run down gas station, which chipped white paint and cement blocks) but it doesn’t open for another hour.
  The public library in Waupun (15 miles up the road) has this zanny blue carpet with stars on it. The place is dead, and I have a seat on a couch in the teen section. After ten minutes of fiddling, I decide its not worth any more trouble to try and get on and leave. On the way out of town, I pull into a McDonald’s parking lot and find out that I can use my iPod to access the e-mail attachment I need.
  Pass a number of dairy farms, noting how close the farms in Wisconsin are to each other, and how much more traffic there is. I stop at a park by the Fox River in Omro to use the restroom. The plot is five miles north of Omro, and I take my time there since it’s the last one. Upon finishing up there, I head back to Omro and get my lunch at the Colonial Cheese House, which is more like a specialty cheese store that happens to have a grill. I get a meal along with a huge pack of cheese curds, half of which I will certainly through away. I go back to the park and listen to Issues, Etc. while I enjoy lunch.
  If Omaha can figure it out, Dubuque has no excuse. Omaha is shaped by hills and the Missouri river , but the roads are mostly straight . Even Fort Wayne keeps its roads going in round-about circles that generally don’t seem to bad, at least not in comparison to Dubuque’s streets. The longest a Dubuque street can go straight is nine or ten blocks
  I think the reason I’m complaining is that I’ve been here to visit Tom 10 or 11 times since he’s moved here, and every time I drive around here, I always feel I get were I’m going by accidentally. I know Asbury Road, and that it ends by the Presbyterian Church and the University of Dubuque. I know how to get down to the Riverfront, but after that I’m reduced to driving around in circles. Too many streets start and stop and start in the wrong places; further, my GPS doesn’t work because of the bluffs. Granted, after a few days, I started to get the hang of it. I can find where I’m going, even if it takes me a while. But times I do wish I could look at roads that went straight for at least half a mile, and that there was one road that went straight from the waterfront to the end of town.
  Sunday going to church, I had the prime example of how the roads in Dubuque are so screwed up. I came to a place where three roads came together, and I veered to stay on the natural way for the street that I was on to continue. It was the wrong way.
  And even on straight roads, there are hazards. Take Loras Boulevard: there’s a turnoff on Loras I have to take that is right on top of a hill. You literally can’t see the oncoming traffic because the road falls off just beyond the intersection. I’m surprised I haven’t come close to an accident there.
  Travel	asbury road, cars, city planning, Dubuque, dubuque street, Iowa, Mississippi River, Rivers, travel, vacation	
  One year ago today, I flew to San Francisco to stay with my aunt and uncle for a month. Eleven months ago, I flew back here to Nebraska. In between, I soaked in a myriad of experiences as I tried new foods, observed new cultures, and read people on the subway. On that anniversary, I wanted to reflect on the last couple of months, and how that trip lead me to start writing this blog.
  I began writing this blog back in November, after discovered the blog of a facebook friend (thanks Eirinn). At the time, I was in a very pent-up situation where I had a lot of thoughts but no way to express them. I kept thinking that everything I wrote had to be some huge book, but I found it was much easier to write a post for 500 words. My first posts were just my betting research, but then I expanded my territory and went with my heart. By mid-December I could produce a post a day.
  Now it’s spring. I’ve finished the creative binge I had been on at the time (Stephen King claims that a creative cycle lasts a three months, a season). When my views went down at the beginning of March (spring weather), I decided that I needed to scale back and save some of my posts for this summer, when I’m traveling. I also have learned the value of connecting with other bloggers, and shaping my posts to better address their views.
  But I really think the seeds for this blog began on those days in San Francisco, when I wandered the streets, messenger bag over my shoulder, eyes eager for the new. But I didn’t really find what I was looking for, and that was key.
  I choose to spend a month in San Francisco because I wanted some perspective on life. My aunt and uncle had moved to the area in January of 2010, and Karen had asked me at a reunion in March of that year when I was going to come and visit them. It was something I had talked with them about years ago, so, in the coming months, I thought about it, and we arranged for me to visit in April of that year.
  Scott and Karen had rented a suburban house with an ideal location close to the Interstate and the train to go into the city. Granted, Walnut Crack (as named to me by someone who grew up in San Francisco) is nothing more than Omaha with better shopping, but it’s got great weather and great view.
  I will never forget the first time I got off the escalator from the subway and looked up at the skyscraper dominating. You can explain to someone how big a city looks, and it may look big on TV, but when you are looking there and standing in that dominated space, you realize how big the city really feels. Everything and everyone is so packed together in San Francisco, a city that is seven miles from one shore to the other. You can’t helped but feel small.
  But what I learned most from walking those urban streets was that there’s a lot of opportunity in the world. I have never seen more people, and so many young people in one place. Everyone is bustling around from one place to the next, attending to their own business. It was when I started to realize, I should just be content with the world I saw.
  Personal Journey	blogging, California, creative cycle, ferry building, introspection, San Francisco, spring weather, travel, vacation	
  Dermaflow technology (DF) has been validated in the measurement of peripheral blood flow in a variety of clinical applications, including peripheral artery disease (PAD).
  Recent pilot clinical work has confirmed earlier trials in demonstrating the ability of the technology to differentiate between PAD-affected and healthy lower limbs.
  In this trial, lower limb peripheral blood flow was stimulated using Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS), which is a known effect of this technology.
  The advantages of a TENS-DF combination are evident in a variety of point-of-care lower limb peripheral blood flow applications, including:
  (1) Mobility compromised individuals: research in PAD patients over 65 years of age has shown that lower limb pain in the largest barrier to increasing mobility.
  A TENS with Dermaflow Inside™ (TENS-DF) would offer patients the ability to increase mobility accompanied by a technology which:
  The TENS-DF combination will allow simple non-invasive screening of asymptomatic individuals, as is shown in the above chart. There is clear difference between peripheral blood flow in PAD-affected and healthy lower limbs..
  (3) Self-monitoring of lower limb peripheral blood flow, for both asymptomatic and PAD affected patients.
  “In a large population-based study, higher levels of physical activity were independently associated with lower odds of vascular disease in the lower extremities and carotid arteries”
  PAD-diagnosed patients would be able to track the their conditions in their homes towards disease maintenance and improvement.