Yesterday was my monthly sabbatical day and I spent it taking stock of some of my life experiences thus far and putting down of paper some things I’d like to experience before I die. Let’s call it a bucket list. You’ll find the current list below. I’m certain I’ll be adding more to it as time goes on. As a point of reference, the many hiking items with (BP) after them refer to the BackPacker magazine edition in which I first discovered the particular hike. If you have any suggestions I should add, please pass them on. I’d also love to see your own list, if you have one. What a great tragedy to wake up at the end of life only to discover some of the finer moments have slipped through your grasp. The final bullet is empty so the list is never really complete. Enjoy:

Joe’s Bucket List

• Hike the Pacific Crest Trail
• Hike River to River Trail
• Hike Knobstone Trail
• Hike America Discovery Trail
• Bike across United States
• Run a mini-marathon
• Run a full marathon
• Hike Grand Canyon
• Raft Grand Canyon
• Visit Redwood forest
• Stand on highest point of every state in US
• Hike Florida Trail
• Compete in a triathlon
• Attend Winter Olympics
• Hike Wonderland Trail around Mt. Rainier
• Mountain bike in Utah
• Hike a slot canyon in Utah
• Hike Cathedral Canyon Gorge – Fredrickstown, MO (BP 5/09)
• Hike Katahdin and see view from the top, Knife’s Edge on the way down
• Visit Glacier National Park
• Visit Banff National Park
• Hike Bowen Lake Loop – Never Summer Wilderness, CO (BP 5/09)
• Ford Jacks River Trail – Cohutta Wilderness, GA (BP 5/09)
• Rock Scramble up Castle Peak, ID – (BP 5/09)
• Hike Rocky Mountain Grand Loop (BP 8/09)
• Hike to Spider Glacier, Glacier Peak Wilderness, WA (BP 8/09)
• Hike Paintbrush-Cascade Canyons Loop, Grand Tetons N.P. (BP 8/09)
• Hike Copper Canyon, Divisadero, Mexico
• Summit Snowmass Mountain, CO
• Hike John Muir Trail
• Visit every national park
• Climb Mt. Kilimanjaro
• Go on African safari
• Sky Dive
• Bungee Jump
• Hike Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, Peru, South America
• Hike across Corsica in the Mediterranean via GR 20 (BP 3/09)
• Hike New Zealand’s Milford Track (BP 3/09)
• Hike across England on Pennine Way (BP 3/09)
• Hike Pyrenees, France
• Hike Cape Wrath Trail, Scotland (BP 3/09)
• Hike Zillertal Alps, Austria (BP 3/09)
• Visit Sweden/Norway
• Hike Vermont’s Long Trail
• Go to Hawaii
• Go on a cruise
• Visit Alaska
• Visit Australia
• Visit Paris
• Go dog-sledding
• Raft the Gauley River, WV
• Apply for “Amazing Race”
• Visit every National Park
• Hike Mummy Range, Rocky Mountains, CO
• Ride entire Blue Ridge Parkway on a motorcycle
• Spend a week in the woods with only a knife, flint, and the clothes on my back
• Get Pilot’s license
• Canoe from Converse to New Orleans

Maximus, our nearly 12 month old black labrador, is perhaps the best dog in the history of dogdom. He likes everyone he meets, protects our son, Jake, like he is his own, and has the disposition of a kid in a candy store. Every day for him is a new adventure and he finds pleasure in the simplest things. Sticks are his favorite toy, and chasing butterflies could keep him occupied for hours. For so many reasons, he might be the best “man’s best friend” I’ve ever seen. The only complaint is his farts could clean out a room full of sanitation workers. I’ve smelled my fair share of animal flatulence in my day, and his certainly tops the list for most pungent! As I write this, he is sitting in the living room, surrounded by his own stench, worrying about Jake in the back room and why we’re letting him cry himself to sleep. Max thinks one of his primary jobs of late is to let us know anytime Jake is crying, because he apparently doesn’t realize we can hear his cries just as well as he can! I can’t wait till Jake is big enough to play with his 4-legged pal!
    Speaking of Jake crying, I know there are as many opinions to the topic as there are people in the world, so if you violently disagree with what I’m about to tell you, that’s fine, as this section of the blog is an opinion, and since I’m writing, mine is the one that matters! We’re in the process of trying to train Jake to go down by himself when it is time to sleep. I know in the long run this will be such a stress reliever for us, as well as for him, but in the present tense, our hearts are breaking as we hear him scream his cute little head off for a few minutes when he’s between happily awake and contentedly asleep. We check in every few minutes to make sure everything is okay, and we know babies need a good cry now and again to get rid of some energy, but words can’t express how hard it is to know the little guy is upset. This past week has set us back a bit too, as we visited family in Chicago and he never went more than a few minutes without the arms of some extended family member cradling the little guy. Now that we’re back home, we’re intent on getting him back into his routine and making that schedule work for all of us (he’s just fallen asleep and is happy in his little crib…woohoo…Mel just came out and said she rocked him a bit to put him down…guess we don’t quite have it down to a science yet).
     Aside from sleeping troubles and a gassy dog, we couldn’t be happier with life. We feel blessed to have a great companion and a great son to spend time with and are excited for this new stage in our life together. Mel and I have missed spending time alone together and are making plans to get back into the swing of that very soon. We’re also planning to sit down sometime soon and put together a “bucket list” of sorts for ourselves. I figure since we did the AT in ‘08 and I did Rainier this year, we should just get a list of things to do before we die and try to live at least one adventure a year before the trumpet sounds! I don’t want to wake up 20 years from now when our kids are almost grown and wish we’d done more as a couple and a family. So, thus, the bucket list. Once we get a good list going, I’ll pass it along for your perusal. If you think of anything we need to add, pass it on, as we’re always up for a good adventure. Hope all is well in your world and feel free to drop us a line. I’ll close with a pick of the handsome boy and the trusty canine.

Jake and Max, best buds!

Jake turned 5 today…5 weeks that is. Here are some pics from the first 35 days. Enjoy.

[Show as slideshow]

By now most of you have probably heard our president, B. Hussein Obama, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today for his efforts to promote global peace. The world seems to be split over opinions of whether or not this was deserved or a good bit premature, if not even a good bit ludicrous. He did give a good speech in Cairo, and has scaled back US involvement in Iraq (although reviews are mixed as to whether that is leading to more peace), but he has also ordered around 20000 more troops into Afghanistan, (I’m sure the Taliban wouldn’t have voted for him) and has been slow on his promise to close down Gitmo. Perhaps he’s been so busy trying to get the Olympics to Chicago he just hasn’t had time.

What most people don’t know is that the nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are closed on February 1st. This means he had been in office for all of 12 days before he was nominated. Now, I certainly don’t want to spoon feed people conclusions they can draw for themselves, but what exactly did he do in those 12 days that made his such a shoe-in for the Prize? I came across an interesting article the outlines those 12 days that I felt obliged to pass on. It was written by Tommy De Seno and came from Fox News (I know, some of you have stopped reading already):

HOW TO WIN THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE IN 12 DAYS

“Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. Over the last decade the only requirement to win the prize was that the nominee had to be critical of George W. Bush (see Al Gore, Mohamed El Baradei and Jimmy Carter).

President Obama has broken new ground here. Nominations for potential winners of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ended on February 1. The president took office only 12 days earlier on January 20.

Let’s take a look at the president’s first 12 days in the White House according to his public schedule to see what he did to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize:

January 20: Sworn in as president. Went to a parade. Partied.

January 21: Asked bureaucrats to re-write guidelines for information requests. Held an “open house” party at the White House.

January 22: Signed Executive Orders: Executive Branch workers to take ethics pledge; re-affirmed Army Field Manual techniques for interrogations; expressed desire to close Gitmo (how’s that working out?)

January 23: Ordered the release of federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries. Lunch with Joe Biden; met with Tim Geithner.

January 24: Budget meeting with economic team.

January 25: Skipped church.

January 26: Gave speech about jobs and energy. Met with Hillary Clinton. Attended Geithner’s  swearing in ceremony.

January 27: Met with Republicans. Spoke at a clock tower in Ohio.

January 28: Economic meetings in the morning, met with Defense secretary in the afternoon.

January 29: Signed Ledbetter Bill overturning Supreme Court decision on lawsuits over wages. Party in the State Room. Met with Biden.

January 30: Met economic advisers. Gave speech on Middle Class Working Families Task Force. Met with senior enlisted military officials.

January 31: Took the day off.

February 1: Skipped church. Threw a Super Bowl party.

So there you have it. The short path to the Nobel Peace Prize: Party, go to meetings, skip church, release federal funding to pay for abortions in foreign countries, party some more.

Good grief.”

Thoughts? Comments? Observations? I’ve striven to stay away from politics on this blog page, and have avoided many an issue I wanted to discuss, but this one seemed a bit too perplexing to leave alone.

Either my Facebook account or our server here at camp is having issues, but I haven’t been able to log on to Facebook for the past several days…if you’d like to interact with Melissa or me, as her page is down too, please either do so at www.joewisley.com or email us @ joe.wisley@rainbowcamp.org or melijoywisley@juno.com. Hopefully the situation will be resolved and all will be right with the Facebook world again soon…oh by the, here is another pic of our little boy, Jake: