A few weeks ago, Josh, Jeff, and I went camping at Lake Okoboji. We booked a campsite in a completely unreserved loop in the back of a state park and had the entire area to ourselves... which is always a good idea when our group gets together.

The trip was great. Bullshitting. Disc golf. Swimming. Driving the topless Jeep around the lake. Night hikes. Cooking over fires. Beer. Hanging just like old times.

But this story is about Saturday night.

The skies were clear and there was a full moon. So naturally, every time one of us caught a glimpse of the moon we’d belt out a big ol wolf howl… and as you can imagine, the other two would follow suit like normal ~40 year olds. It was good that we were in that loop all by ourselves.

So, we …

So, Kari subscribes to this weird service that sends her random home/beauty/gym stuff every month. A couple weeks ago her package came with a juicer... but we already have a juicer. So she was gonna give it away.

The next day, I found the juicer in Benny’s bed, so I asked Kari if she decided to just give it to the dog instead. She didn't. He apparently just found it laying in Kari's mud room locker and claimed it.

So, now Benny’s just running around the house. Proud as shit. With his new favorite toy.

A juicer.

We went on the sketchiest hike today.

It was at Jefferson lake, which sits in the mountains between the cabin we're staying at and our friends, Clint and Jacqui’s house. It's a very pretty lake, with no one else around, and what seemed to be a nice, easy trail.

A little over 1/3 of the way around the lake, we had a decision to make.. Go all the way around or go back the way we came. This was largely dependent on our old man dog, but also on Kari’s balance and how rough terrain can be exhausting for her brain.

Garth wasn't really showing a sign of slowing down and Kari felt good, so we decided to keep going. This was mistake number 1.

It went from an easy trail to straight up boulder climbing. And since it looked like an easy trail from …

I've been meaning to write about this for quite some time. It's pretty funny to have had a hernia when you were only 16, and my experience was fairly awkward... so here's a story about my very first hernia.

So, like I said, I was 16 years old. One night I was laying in bed feeling my balls, which is nothing out of the ordinary - especially for a teenager. As I began to juggle them around I noticed 1... 2... 3... wait, 3!?! I double checked, then I triple checked, and yelled, "MOMMMM!" She came into my room and asked what was up, to which I replied, "um, I have 3 balls." "Derek! are you serious?! Let me see!" "NO, MOM! I need to go to the doctor."

So the next day I go to the doctor to find out that I had an inguinal hernia, which …

Riverbend Pizza is this awesome place that I worked at from the time I was 15 until sometime during my senior year of High school. Aside from mowing my grandma's lawn, it was my first real job - and it ruled... a lot. So here's a huge collaboration of some of my memories. This is going to be long and I'm not a terrific writer, so I'm sorry if it sucks.

I worked with a lot of people while at Riverbend, so let me preface by introducing them. The most memorable/prominent were Krut, Shirley, Randy, Joey, Boone, Wingert, Morris, Tom, and Bunky. Yeah there are a couple nick names there - we had nicknames for everything really. The giant machine that we used to knead dough and grind cheese was named "Grog." The knives and dough cutters …

One day Krissy and I decided to drive past my old house on Old Ranch Road in Port Byron. I was feeling pretty sick so I had her drive. In fact, I started to really feel like crap so I took my seat belt off so that the pressure wouldn't be on my belly.

Right when we passed my old house we came up on this car driving 40mph in the 55. Like any normal person, we got real annoyed. So she waited for the passing section, then passed. When we got right next to the car I looked over to realize that the people we were passing were my neighbors (really old farmers). And then I noticed that the car was turning into us to get into their driveway. They were totally oblivious that we were even there. So needless to say, the huge Continental …

One time back in 2001 I decided to go snowboarding with Jason Reiter. Prior to that, besides backyard snowboarding, I had only been snowboarding on a resort once.

Some extended family of mine own a small ski resort in Illinois (Snow Star). Every year the resort would be closed on Christmas Day, however, they'd invite a bunch of family and close friends out for a Christmas potluck and day of skiing/snowboarding/sledding. So needless to say, I got pretty decent at skiing as a kid. Then I tried snowboarding one year; the resort was pretty empty so I had plenty of room to learn. Regardless, I fell a lot, my butt hurt, my head hurt, etc - That was the only time I had gone prior to the invitation to go with Jason.

So we headed up to …

When I was in High School, 3 foot blowguns were pretty popular with my friends and I - the ones that you blow into and shoot a 4 inch needle out the tip. We all became incredibly good with them, we could hit pop cans from 30 feet away, etc.

One day Nate Sels, Ray Terhune, and I were on the way to play a round of golf at Byron Hills when Ray decided that he needed a new blow gun. So we swung out to Discount Tool in Silvis to pick one up. Discount Tool was a weird place; it's about 1/2 car stereo equipment, 1/4 weapons, and 1/4 tools. So he got a 3 footer, some darts and we went golfing. Upon arrival, Ray was dying to play with his new gun so he took it out and put it in his golf bag - no big deal, there are plenty of trees, benches, …

Throughout High School lunch, my buddies and I always goofed around in an immature fashion (imagine that). It was usually Me, Jeremy Ludin, Jeff Ballard, Boone Ebel, Kyle Wells, Luke Gochanour, Andy Mead, etc. First of all, we always mixed everything that was left at the end of a meal into some concoction. Every day there was a new name for it too like, super stinky dumpy, ultra gross jomblination, mega nasty sloppy, barfy dumpy pukey, etc... but overall we called it "Ultra Sloppy Barfy" It ruled so much. Then we'd put the tray with everything on it on top of all the other trays. Everyone would always look at us like, "omg those guys are so immature." Whatever.

Lots of things happened in our lunch room. Grub stole milk a lot and …

When I was in High School I was on the golf team. I spent many of my meets golfing with my buddies Jeremy Ludin and Josh Gooch. We've got tons of stories, but there is one in particular that I will never forget.

Josh and I were golfing with 2 kids from another school in this tournament at Golfmohr. We got to #2 which is a par 4, dog leg left with a pond starting in front of the tee box and running along the entire left side. If you really hit your ball and cut the pond with a minor slice the green was possible to drive.

So Josh got up to hit, tried to cut the pond, but hit his ball right into the water. He took his penalty, teed up another and hit it directly into the pond again. He took his second penalty, teed up his 3rd and final …

I guess I should start with the first time I started Soaping. I was at my buddy, Hugh Hermes' New Years Eve party my Jr year of High School. He had some Soaps and a practice rail so I decided to give it a shot. I fell really hard but loved the feeling of grinding.

Anyway, about 2 years later in October of 1999 I wanted more soap stuff, mainly new grindplates. I didn't have a credit card at the time so I sent an email to Soap asking for a catalog. This way I could order some products by writing a check. They didn't get back to me for a few weeks so I sent them another email, and then another, and another. Then I gave up.

In February, I got a call on my cell phone from the CEO of the company, Chris Morris. I was super geeked when he …

When I was a kid we lived on 15 acres of land; 9 of which were wooded. We didn't have any neighbors so a typical day for me was to go explore, hunt, build forts, bike, etc.

Our woods were split into 2 sections, 10% was in the front yard and 90% was in the back. Most of my time was spent in the larger, back woods. But one day when I was in fourth grade I decided to do some playing around in the front woods. So I got my "hunting knife," which was this old 6" skinning knife, mounted it onto my belt, and went out exploring. About 10 yards after entering the woods I started to hear a bunch of buzzing from behind me. It was a swarm of yellowjackets flying out of a hole in the ground that I'd obviously stepped on without noticing. They …

When I was 16 years old, my parents decided that it was time to build a new house. The only problem was, our house sold quicker than the new one got built. So we had to find a rental house for a month or so. Anyway, this rental house was on a farm so it had barns and everything.

One day I decided I'd go out to the barn with my pellet gun and do some target practice with all the pigeons. I sat in the dark barn (it had no electricity) trying to shoot the birds on the ceiling. I must've been in there for an hour trying to pick off birds and didn't hit one. I was basically shooting blind - relying more on sound than sight. It sucked.

Getting pretty mad and frustrated, I decided to go back to the house, probably to play nintendo or …

One day, during my senior year in high school or so, Jeff Wingert and I decided we'd take a drive into town in my Celica. I needed some gas so I stopped at the Amoco on Route 84 in Rapids City to fill up. After getting gas I pulled out to make my way to the interstate which is probably a mile away or so. I was just driving along and when I started to get into the left hand turning lane for the on-ramp, I see a cop with it's lights on behind me. There was also a random fat guy sitting in his passenger seat that I couldn't make out. So I sorta freaked out and stopped in the turning lane, he comes running up to my car and yells, "Do you realize that you pulled out right in front of me back there at that Amoco!?" Me, having no idea, …