Beyond the Paintbrush Divide: February

Again, a month has passed by and we have not updated the blog. The main reason is that I have been working in Chicago for the past 4 weeks. Diana had to take care of the home and pup during the week. Only being home on the weekends left lots to do other than updating the blog.
I was back on the Chicago River, this time collecting sediment samples from depths of 16 ft below the river bottom. The information from the samples will be used to assess the condition of the river and design a remediation if necessary. We did luck out with mild conditions for January and February. Temperatures were mostly in the 30s and 40s, and it only snowed on us once. I took a few pictures to share the experience.

View of Downtown from the River

Directing the Barge to a Sample Location with the GPS

Having Fun Collecting a Sediment Sample

We did make the most of our weekends when I was home. One day we went for a walk in the park and Cassie decided she wanted to relax on the ice. She also went crazy for all of the ducks there. We think she would have been a great hunting dog.

Cassie Hanging Out on the Ice

Another day we ran a 5k. We are getting ready for the upcoming race season with my big race being the Ironman in September and Diana's is the half ironman in July.

Diana Coming Into the Finish!

And we have been busy keeping up with the home brewing. The first batch came out great. We just bottled batch number 2 (a german alt) and brewed batched number 3 today (a dunkleweizen).