I thought Cheveron was spendy!

The past ten days have flown by and boy has it been eventful! One of the biggest events of the week came last Thursday with a call from by my mentor and boss of the last 2 years offering me a new job. In my last post I said I had no job leads and at that point I was not expecting to return to my job I've had for 2 years as school allowed and during the summers. The company I've worked for is called Synergy Air. It is a training and building assistance facility for experimental home built aircraft by Vans Aircraft. I've worked through the stages of simple grunt work and quickly gained skills and knowledge and most recently have been hands on through entire builds with an emphasis on finish work, which is primarily fiberglass work.

This has been the best job I've ever had, we only have 3 employees, my boss Wally Anderson who has been a mentor to me for three years now, also a great guy Phil who can do anything you can think of and myslef. It's been really fun to work so close with such skilled and hard working guys and we all work real well together, and are lucky to be brothers in Christ. It has been a very demanding job but so rewarding. One of the best things is to litterally put blood and sweat on a plane and later see that plane win world class awards. Here is a picture of the first RV-7 Amphib plane ever, that we fully custom built with the Owner. It won Grand Champion float plane at the Oshkosh Airshow a few years ago and recently made the cover of a few magazines and the EAA yearly calender.All that to give you a bit of a glimpse into what my job has been and update you on employment. The job I'll have will be different from what I've had but still building planes. I don't know a bunch of details as of yet but I'll fill you in as I can, so far I've started working as I can and will pick up to full time when summer hits. I am so thankful to have this job again and excited to see what new opportunities it will bring!

Throughout the last week I've been super busy working on school, and meeting with people to build a team of Home group leaders for my job with the Church. That job will also bring about some challenging and exciting things as well. I'm in the process of figuring out how these two jobs will work together and how to best distribute my time. I am so thankful that I only have to throw school in there for the first 3 months. It will certainly be a busy summer!

This weekend I took a short road trip with my friend Dan. We jumped into the car with the intention of going to Bend OR, a town in the center of the state just over the cascade range that is full of outdoor things and fun in the sun. As we got on the road we started dreaming bigger and decided to go to Bend only for lunch and then continue on. Over lunch we weighed our realistic options for a 2 day trip and decided on heading south. Our first destination was Crater Lake National Park. I've never been and was far overdue. It is Oregon's only state park and an amazingly beautiful place. The lake is 6 miles wide and formed on the top of a mountain from a series of Volcanic eruptions, the oldest being 6,000 years ago. The result is a huge, very deep, clear, high altitude lake amongst the Cascade Mountain range. We forgot a camera so here is a shot very similar to what we saw. The lake is still surrounded by 10 feet of snow but melitng fast at this point. On the way out we realized we were at least 35 miles from a gas station (turned out to be more like 60) and were below E. We had to ask the rangers for some gas and learned that "The government charges $8 a gallon to deter people from doing this" but we had no choice. The ranger escorted us to a pump and we payed for 2 gallons with $14 which was all we had, he filled us up and then kindly placed our money in his pocket... Quite the tip for him I'm sure.

Next we headed south and camped in a small town that night. The next day we headed south into California and weaved our way over to the coast. A short drive north braught us to Redwood National Park. I had been here before but this time I explored it much more. This forest is truly stunning! The average redwood tree spans 12 feet at the trunk, and the forrest is jam packed full of these monsters. It is a weird feeling to walk inside a tree and realize just how small we are. Since it's a national park the Elk know they can't get shot so as we entered the park were greeted by 9 Elk just hanging out enjoying some rays and salad :) Once again since we forgot a camera I borrowed a shot from the internet to give you a glimpse into the trip.
The rest of the trip was a beautiful drive up the smith river and the 5. It was a great little retreat from life and a great reminder of why I love the outdoors so much! That makes eight national parks this year, I'm on a roll!