Turkey Run and Eagle Creek

The vid is from last Sunday after I led worship at Campus House at Purdue; me and some buddies went to Turkey Run for an afternoon of hiking and adventure. This vid, especially, highlights my fondness for finding infrastructure and jumping and twirling off...

Today I went to the skate park and saw more people I knew there than usual. I've been trying to learn this trick for the last week or so, it's a fakie big spin heelflip. Basically, you roll backwards on your board and do a 180˚ ollie with your body, the board does a 360˚ shuv-it as well as a heelflip. It's one of the more technical tricks in skateboarding. I've landed on the board a few times up until this point, but always fell off after a moment or two. Well, today, third try: Boo Yeah! And my friends who have seen me trying it so often were there, they just erupted when I landed it. It was perfect. Caught the board 270 in the air and slid the front wheels on the ground to finish the rotation. It was at least a few feet out of the ramp as well. SOOOOOO much fun. And so rewarding when you put so much work and sweat into a trick and you finally land it. I also learned how to "launch" out of quarter pipes today. I missiled a large roast beef grab third try. I suppose today was third try day...

After a thorough work out at the skate park, I went to Eagle Creek park and spent some time away from the sterilizing, infertile noises of the city and enjoyed some peace and quiet next to the reservoir. I spent a good half hour sitting on a buoyant walkway watching ducks. I observed some new behaviors today, it was quite exciting. They did the usual stand on one leg and pretend to sleep bit, and the whole primming deal, along with the butt shaking. That's my favorite part to be honest, when they shake their butts, haha. I don't know why, it's mesmerizing... Anyways, I saw a good number of the ducks, all female mallards (btw), they would stand on one leg and stretch out their opposite leg and adjacent wing for a few seconds. And also, with the stretching, they would stick their neck straight out to its fullest extent, and then raise their wings up, like open car doors on a Lamborghini or some other fancy car (you know, like how the Delorian's doors opened up in Back to the Future). I tried to communicate with them: I waddled around hunched over, moved my arms like wings, and quacked. I only managed to get some glares from them, haha. They knew... Ducks are just sweet animals. I think sometime soon I'm going to make a duck costume out of cardboard. Be watching for that in the future... There was a hispanic family on the wharf next to me fishing, and as I was leaving the father caught a fish and exclaimed,"got you sucka!" I laughed all the way to my car.

After all that fun, I went to the bird sanctuary and on my way encountered a clan of female deer. I tried to follow them through the woods, but they were skiddish and wouldn't let me get close enough to pet them. I would've petted them all day if they would have let me. They're like the wild dogs of the woods. So I got to the bird sanctuary and I looked down to my right only to see a bumble bee plucking the petals off of a flower, one by one. I'd never seen this before either, it was quite strange. After it finished trimming, it just flew away. Another cool part of this portion of the park is the butterflies. There were monarchs flying around me as I walked down the trail, darting only a few inches in front of my face. It kinda scared me every time they did it; I'm sure the people around me had a good laugh.

Like I said earlier, it was nice to get away from "city." It's wild to think that God created all those things I saw: the ducks, cranes, butterflies, spiders, plants, every thing!