It looks like its been about five months since I updated this thing, so I feel like I should throw something together.

Since we moved back from the absolutely wonderful state of Colorado, we've been living in our hometown and trying to figure out our next move in the so-called game of life. It turns out that our version of the game didn't come with instructions. So, its taking us a while to figure out the rules.

In the mean time, I've been keeping busy with work, a little play, and of course, more hobbies.

I've been trying to use this time of limbo to build a few furniture pieces that I've been putting off for a a while. The first of these pieces was a fun project. Two members of our family happen to have Cystic Fibrosis, which requires the use of some fairly bulky medical equipment. Unfortunately, this equipment doesn't fit inside of standard sized furniture. So, I designed a simple end table to house the equipment in between treatments, be functional during usage, and keep the equipment organized and protected at all times.

This is a picture of the end table before I put the door pull on it. The door slides back into the cabinet during its use so its not in the way. The top cabinet contains a noisy piece of equipment, which is why its enclosed, and the bottom area hold the rest of the gear.

It turned out well and it helped out my family. How can I ask for more?

The next piece was a tv stand of my dreams. Literally, I dreamt about this design one night and decided to build it. The idea came from a mixture of things.

A lot of people like traditional oak furniture. A lot of people like modern furniture. Making the transition between styles is difficult unless you get rid of everything at once and buy new things right away. This piece was meant to be a transitional piece. I'm calling it Transitional Modern. A piece built with traditional materials (oak) using a modern design (look at the picture). It's finished with a semi-transparent blue stain and has complimentary hardware.

I like it. So that's good enough for me.

The next piece is an end table built to go with the tv stand. Same style and design elements. Same opinion...I like it.

Other than those few things, I've built a few odds and ends things like a pavilion, a few coin collectors boxes, wood slat display crates, and some other things.

Up next, a classic archtop steel string jazz guitar and a ukulele. The ukulele should be done in a few days.

Once they're finished up, I'll post some pictures.

Until then....

Its Been Amazing

For the past four months, we've called the Colorado Rocky Mountain National Park our home. This beautiful place has given us a lifetime of memories and so much more. We've been given the chance to spend the most beautiful time of year in a place that makes you feel better just by smelling the air and looking at the horizon. A place that gives you more energy the further you hike rather than wear you down. A place that feels completely untouched by the rest of the world. A place that frees in every way. Free to be who you are, do what you always wanted, and feel like everything is possible. A true feeling of escape from the everyday world that you know.

I know. This is pretty cheesy. I'm thinking that as I'm typing it, but the moment you step foot in this place, it doesn't matter if it sounds cheesy or not. The feelings are real and can't compare to many places in the world.

The first picture is one that I took in the park the first day that it snowed this season. Truly amazing. I sat in a field and just stared at the view for nearly a half hour. I just couldn't stop staring at it.

So I took a picture.

It's been like that all summer. Finding one place after another that looks like a picture in a book. Perfect. Amazing colors, great composition, thought inspiring, and romantic in all senses of the word. However, they're not pictures. They're real and all around us.

So what have we done? We've taken pictures.

More than a thousand!

Pictures from hikes, backpacking trips, visits to breweries, nights at the hot springs, time spent with family, and much more. Even pictures taken at work are beautiful.

It'll be hard to leave this place behind. Sonya and I explain it as bittersweet. Its too bad we're leaving, but it will be wonderful to see family for the winter.

What have we learned from our experience here?

Beauty is all around you. Everywhere you look. Sometimes its the snow covered mountains in the distance. Sometimes its as close as the person holding your hand while you're looking at them. Although we can't take this place with us, we can take our memories, our pictures, and our new views on life and how we love to live it.

I've loved our life here and I know I'll love my life where ever life takes me, as long as Sonya is by my side. Every day we've spent together has made me fall in love with her a little more and has made me realize that I couldn't be luckier than to be with her.

Thank you for going on this adventure with me, sweets. I can't wait to see what's next.

Rock Climbing in Boulder

Rock climbing has always been very exciting for me. I started climbing with a few of my friends when I was in college in Pittsburgh. I loved the challenge, the heights, and the trust and faith that you learned to put in your friend with the other end of your rope.

So of course, it always excited me to think about going out west and attempting some crazy climb somewhere like Eldorado Canyon. Never really thinking that I'd get the opportunity, but always dreaming.

Well, this is me.

Rock climbing in Eldorado Canyon.

My family from Boulder, CO took Sonya and I climbing while we were in town for a visit. It was an incredible experience. They've been climbing for a lot of years, so they had a wealth of knowledge and pointers to share.

To start the climb, my cousin and I climbed up the backside of the face and set the ropes and all of the fall protection at the top. Then we checked to see if everything was going to hold by rappelling down. As you can see from the picture... it held.

Thanks Owen. That made me happy.

Once we both made it down, we all started to climb. Taking turns of course.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't realize that we were going climbing, so I didn't bring along my climbing shoes. As it turns out, hiking shoes are no match for 1/4" wide, at best, foot holds. I tried my best, but the shoes just weren't going to let it happen. I really enjoyed the attempt though.

Next up was my uncle Don.

Here's a picture that's just purely amazing to me. It proves to me that the lifestyle you choose can make you old or keep you young. It's completely your choice.

That little speck of a person at the top of this rock face is my uncle. In a few weeks, he's turning 60.

Unreal.

Sonya and my aunt Emily climbed next and did very well. Sonya was amazing. At first, she didn't seem to have the confidence in herself, but once she started up, she was a natural. I was very proud to say the least.

So, feeling like I just had to give it one more try, I decided to go barefoot. Everyone gave me the "that's going to hurt more than you know" look, but I was determined to at least try.

Well guess what, it hurt more than I knew.

I only made it about 3 feet higher than this picture and stepped on something extremely sharp, lost my grip, fell, swung, smashed, scraped, and bled. All in about 5 seconds.

I loved it!

We wrapped up the day by going to a microbrewery with my cousin. We had great food and lots of great beer. Then we met my uncle back at his house to hang out and share the huge growler that we brought back from the brewery.

Life in Colorado is everything I've ever imagined.

Living in the Rockies

Well, its been a very long time since I’ve blogged. I’ve been super busy with life. In a good way, of course. Sonya and I recently moved out to a small town in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We actually live in the Rocky Mountain National Park. This is Longs Peak, the highest peak in the park. This is what we look at from our front door.
Pretty spectacular isn’t it? It's a little washed out, but hey, you get the idea. It's awesome.

So. What brought us here? Well, one week when I was working late at the shop again, Sonya decided to look for new jobs for me. She happened to stumble onto a posting for a carpenter for the National Park. I figured…what the heck. So I applied and after a very, very long process, I got the job!

Ever since we’ve been here, we’ve been taking advantage of our surroundings. Hiking, taking up photography, slowly-but-surely gathering backpacking gear, and enjoying the natural beauty of the mountains. This place truly is breathtaking.

Here we are at Alberta Falls. One of many waterfalls in the park. We actually had to climb down a little rock face to get to it, which ended up making for some pretty nice pictures. One of the things that we love about these hikes is how rapidly the environment changes. Our hikes, very commonly, start in the hot dry elevations around 7,000ft. then work their way into snow covered trails in the peaks around 11,000ft. Just recently, we ventured into a Tundra region above 12,000ft. At that elevation, you are above the tree growth line. It’s so high, that trees actually can’t survive there. It actually doesn’t even accumulate snow there. The wind is so wicked that it keeps the ground completely bare even through the intense winters.

Impressive.

It definitely does snow here though. One of my current construction projects is building snow doors. They are huge solid wood doors that are about three inches thick that will hold back 14’+ of snow for eight months out of the year. Such a cool job.

Another pretty cool part of the job is being able to drive around some cool toys. This is the military all-terrain forklift that I drive every few days.

Only bad part about the job is having to look like Ranger Rick.

Say what you want about the hat. Without it, my ears would melt off of my head out here.

So yes. We're absolutely loving it out here. The job is pretty cool most days. Just like any job anywhere else, except this one is in the freaking Rockies. Plus, Sonya and I get to hike, backpack, rock climb, and get some pretty amazing pictures on a nearly daily basis. We're happy, we're healthy, and we're having the times of our lives.

How can you go wrong with that?

We've certainly become mountain people and I mean that in the best ways possible.

Wine, Dine, and Change the Time

Last October, we hosted a beer tasting party in honor of turning back the clocks. We called it The Fall-Back Beer Fest. It was pretty sweet. We had a bunch of people and a ton of awesome beers.

Now it's "spring ahead season", so we decided to host another party. This time it was our Wine, Dine, and Change the Time party. We had pile of friends over and celebrated with a big Italian dinner and a bunch of great wine.

Of course we had to stay true to ourselves and go a little overboard on some things, so the morning of, Sonya and I tried our hands at making homemade noodles for our pasta. We made light-wheat fettuccine and basic egg noodle spaghetti. Then we realized that the size of our table wasn't big enough for the number of people, so I decided to tear our table apart, then build a new one from the scraps of past ridiculous projects and parts of the original table.

Frankenstein-style.

It's pretty sweet. We went from seating for four to seating for ten comfortably. We managed to cram about thirteen or more around it though.

It was an awesome night. A ton of great wine, a good time catching up with friends, lots of food (the pasta was a success!), and another great excuse to build unnecessary things.

It's Official

As of today, I am officially the owner of a truck. It took me 10 years to get one, but it's finally in the driveway. Well, the neighbors driveway. Turns out that a 2 wheel drive truck in a snow storm isn't the best. It sure turned out to be a great sled though. I owned the truck for 3 hours, got it stuck in two driveways due to a lack of weight in the bed and best of all, parked it in my parents driveway, (well, half way up since it couldn't make it all the way up) only to later find it out in the road. Hence the sled comment.

I know, it sounds like a bad situation, but I bought it as a work truck to get materials and deliver my furniture and cabinets, so it's going to be awesome! I'm really happy with it and very proud. It even came with a cat slipper glued to the roof of it. It was some kind of joke by the guy who sold it to me. He's really weird. Hard to explain, but he's weird enough to glue a cat slipper to the roof of a truck.

So anyway, I now have a truck and I am super happy. Now I just need to put a thousand pounds of sand in the back so I can drive it around PA til the roads melt off.

Snow. Who needs it.

By the way, the cat is in the garbage.

Ski Dummy Race 2010

Well, I have mixed feelings about this one.

Last year, two of my friends and I competed in Seven Springs' ski dummy competition. It's a pretty ridiculous competition, but usually that is the only type of competition that I get myself involved in.

This year was much simpler than last. This time we didn't use a water jet, a MIG welder, or even an angle grinder. This year we built it somewhat Macgyver style. A couple feet of PVC, a few nuts and bolts, a little cardboard, and of course...duct tape. Tons of duct tape.

Last year, three of us built the dummy in about 1 1/2 days and managed to win a trophy. This year, we had a little trouble getting together because of everyone's busy schedules, so I ended up building it alone in about 12 hours. I nearly scrapped the plans of competing about five times, but my ever-supportive wife pushed me to finish it up.

Results...

1 person, 12 hours, 2 trophies. Not too shabby.

To be completely honest, it was pretty lame this year. I only had one guy competing against me. I'm still proud of the fact that my dummies have been the only ones to finish the race two years in a row.

Even though I left the competition feeling a little let down by the turnout and a little overcompensated with trophies, I'm glad that I did it again this year. Plus, we all went out for breakfast afterward again and the food was awesome. You can't beat a good breakfast day.

Fall-Back Beer Fest

One of my greatest passions is, of course, for craft/micro beers. I feel very fortunate that I've had the opportunity to experience as many different beers as I have and I look forward to trying many, many more. Some people aren't as lucky though. Some people haven't had the chance to try very many. I've found that it's for many reasons, too. Not enough money to buy more expensive beer, unfamiliarity with the many styles of beer, fear of buying a whole case of something new and not liking it, or just a lack of desire to try something new.

Since I realized that some of my friends fall into this unfortunate category, my wife and I decided to take it upon ourselves to change that.

Last night, we hosted a Halloween slash Beer Tasting Party. The idea was to have everyone attending bring a 6 or 12 pack of their favorite craft beer to share. Everyone got a custom made, "Fall-Back Beer Fest", 4 oz. tasting glass (thanks to my inability to do things simply). Then we started to drink.

Each beer was opened, explained a little, then shared by everyone. We ended up having almost twenty different beers. We had lagers, English and German ales, pugilist ales, pale ales, ESAs, IPAs, porters, stouts, wheat ales, lambics, and a few more. It was fantastic.

By the end of the night, many of our friends told us that they never realized how great craft beers are. They all found new favorites and an appreciation for new styles. It was definitely a success and its something we're planning to do many more times.

Very Brief Update

Well, it's been a long time since I've posted anything, so I'll have to give a quick update. I don't want to make it long and drawn out, so any details that I leave out, just fill them in with your imagination...

The biggest update that I have is that I got married! I'm now Mr. Graham Kopp! Well, I guess I always was, but now I'm Mr. Graham Kopp + Wife! The Kopp family just grew a little bigger. Here are a couple pictures of my beautiful bride, Sonya, and I at our awesome wedding.

So many people ask me if it feels different now that we're married. I have to say that it does and it doesn't. All in very good ways. In the ways that it feels the same, I'm very happy about. I didn't want it to feel different. That's why I asked her to marry me. I loved it just the way it was. As for the things that feel different, I guess its really just a sense of pride. I'm very proud to be her husband. I'm proud to call her my wife. I catch myself using my left hand more often in social situations so people notice my wedding ring. Simple things like that. I just feel good. I feel lucky to have such an amazing person in my life that loves me as much as I love her.

Alright, now to pick up the pace on this update...

I've been building a bunch of cabinets for the Pittsburgh Children's Hospital with my buddy Ryan. It's going really well. Getting our names out there.

I took a job with as a professional custom furniture and cabinet maker. It's pretty sweet. I get to design, build, and spray things all day long and at the end of the week, I get paid!

I've been building a bunch of things at home. I recently was given a pile of cedar planks, which will soon be built into a kayak. I have always wanted to build a boat, so I'm very excited.

Other than that, there have been a few exciting things, but nothing out of the ordinary so far. I'm looking forward to some new adventures in the near future. Especially now that I will have my wife by my side through it all.

I'll try to keep up with this more often, but until then, I'm off to have some beers with my friends.

Tongue Splitter Pale Ale

It's been a long time since we've brewed. Unfortunately, brewing costs money and life seems to have been leaving my wallet a little on the empty side.

Well, we finally got some more ingredients the other day and we got back to work. We figured we'd try yet another new style, so we went with a Pale Ale. I would place it closer to an IPA though. Appropriately named Tongue Splitter Pale Ale, this five gallon batch has five ounces of hops. We used Sterling hops, Nugget hops, Glacier Hops, and two ounces of Cascade hops. Our house smelled incredible for hours. This brew should have some fantastic bite to it.

I think I fell in love with Sonya even more when she came running downstairs to tell me something and stopped in her tracks to say, "Oh my God! Our house smells delicious!"

You have to love a girl that appreciates a good brew.

Primary fermentation went very well. It just finished up last night. I'm getting ready to run downstairs right now to rack it into secondary. So in about five and a half weeks from now, I think we're going to have a pretty amazing beer.

I'll make sure to post something once we try it out.

Next week we plan to brew a Cream Ale. This will be another new experience. I've never brewed a Cream Ale before. I'm pretty excited.

But how couldn't I be? It's HOMEBREW!

Disc Golf

A while ago, Sonya and I found out that one of the parks nearby has a disc golf course. Well, yesterday we tried it out. It was a perfect day outside and we couldn't pass up the chance to take advantage of it.

The game is played just like real golf, except minus the plaid pants. You also mainly play in the woods rather than nice manicured fairways. There are also hard, heavy versions of frisbees instead of clubs and balls. Plus the holes aren't so much holes as they are big metal baskets wrapped in chains.

Other than that, its exactly like golf.

We had a great time and 18 holes only takes a little over an hour. We're definitely going to make this a normal outing.

Bottled Beaujolais

Well, here it is folks.

Sonya and I bottled our next batch of wine last week. The bottles are still naked because I haven't come up with a good idea for the label yet. Don't worry though, I'm sure we'll come up with something delightfully cheesy very soon.

This batch, I must say, smells incredible. I'm really excited to try it out in a few months. Hard to believe that our wedding is in less than four months!

I'm looking forward to sharing all of this wine with my family and friends!

Hooray for Beaujolais

As you can seen in the background of this picture, our wine cabinet is looking pretty pitiful. We're down to three bottles. That's sad considering it was completely full about three months ago. I'm not really sure how to explain that, but the fact is, we're almost out.

Sonya and I are making wine once again and we're very excited about it.

This batch, we've decided to go with a Beaujolais. It's a light to medium bodied red wine that is typically consumed young, which is perfect because we plan to share it with everyone at our wedding in August. We're making six gallons, so we should have about thirty bottles, however considering our families and friends, we may need more.

Imperial Stout

Well, we've brewed again. This time Ryan and I decided to tackle the challenge of an Imperial Stout.

I am very pleased and impressed with this brew, too. It turned out amazingly. It's dark, it's smooth, it's bold, and it's very strong. We brewed five gallons and we only have a little less than a case left. We're definitely going to brew this one again.

I've been thinking lately that I should start posting the recipes for each brew as well, just in case someone wants to try them out for themselves. You really don't need a ton of equipment, just a lot of patience, a great sense of cleanliness, and a passion for beer.

Maybe I'll start with the next brew...

Kale Chips

One of the things that I love about Sonya is that we share a love for food. All kinds of food, too. We're probably the least picky people in that department, especially me. A few weeks ago, we decided to try out a new recipe that we had stumbled onto. It was a recipe that involved Kale.

Basically, all you do is tear the Kale into potato chip sized pieces, coat them in olive oil and salt, then bake them until they are crispy. Supposedly they were supposed to taste like a healthy version of a potato chip.

For those who don't know, Kale is a very dark, leafy, green vegetable.

And it tastes like crap.

Maybe we just didn't put enough salt on them, but in any case, they bypassed our mouths and headed full steam into the garbage can. At least we tried though. It's so hard to be healthy.

Wine Stopper Attempt

I finished my first wine stopper this afternoon. I'm fairly pleased with it considering it's my first attempt. I used Yucatan Rosewood for the top and I'm very impressed with its natural beauty. I still have to put a few coats of clear finish on it, but I thought I would post it as-is for now.

Southwestern Dinner

I wouldn't consider myself to be the greatest cook ever, but there are times when I happen to throw things in a pan and they end up tasting pretty good. Last night, I decided to try my hand at making Sonya and I a southwestern styled dinner. It turned out really well, so I thought I would share the recipe with anyone who is ever in the mood for a fairly unhealthy, unbalanced, absolutely delicious meal.

Here's the menu. It's simple and I'm pretty sure I didn't cover all of the food groups, but it was darn good. So I don't really care.

Pico de Gallo Chicken Quesadillas and Baked Southwestern Egg Rolls

I realize it sounds like I'm missing something like a side dish, but it honestly seemed perfect to us. I listed the links to the recipes that I found online. I altered my recipes just a little. I wanted to go a healthier route with the egg rolls, so I baked instead of fried. I recommend it.

Pico de Gallo Chicken Quesadillas

Southwestern Egg Rolls

This is the "stuffing" for the egg rolls. It smelled incredible while it was cooking. I almost decided to scrap the rest of the recipe and just eat it with a spoon.

I decided against it though.




The pico de gallo was amazing. Sonya and I both really enjoyed the lime and cilantro in this. It went amazingly with the quesadillas and we found out later that it's even great alone as a dry salsa with tortilla chips.




Here is the final product. I cut the quesadilla into 8 slices and served those with the pico de gallo. I cut the egg rolls in half (at an angle so they looked nicer) and served them with a dollop of daisy.

Seriously. A spoon full of sour cream.

Instead of frying the egg rolls, I prepared them according to the recipe, then baked them at 450 degrees for about 12 minutes.

I'll definitely do this one again.

Ski Dummy

Last week, I heard about a Beer Festival in Seven Springs. So obviously, I wanted to know more about it. I went to their website, but immediately got distracted. I stumbled upon an advertisement for an annual event called the Ski Dummy Competition. Apparently it's an event that happens every January and it just so happened that it was going to be held this weekend!

As you can imagine, I called Ryan and our friend Steve and we got plans rolling. We only had one day to construct our Ski Dummy, but that was no problem. We figured our competition probably only had a few weeks head start on us.

You have to love spur of the moment things like this.

We decided that we wanted to build something ridiculous, so we ended up building an old man with a walker on skis. We didn't have a ton of time, so we build him in cross section style. You can see what I mean in the pictures.

Sonya video taped our run and it is pretty cool.


One night of planning
One day of construction
ONE TROPHY

That's right. We won longest run and best time. Not too bad for last minute.

American Homebrewers Association

I am very proud to announce that I have become an official member of the American Homebrewers Association!

This excites me for a lot of reasons; I'm now open to many more opportunities to learn about my brewing, I can connect with thousands of brewers from around the country to talk about what's going on in the brewing world, I can learn how to build better brewing equipment, and now I have a cool AHA hat to wear.

Now all I have to do is quit my job and brew full-time. That would be a dream come true.

Pumpkin Chlorophenol Spice Ale

The Pumpkin Spice Ale seemed to be doomed from the very beginning. You can read all about it in an earlier post.

I'm pretty sure that this recipe may be thrown out, but it depends on who you ask. Sonya, Ryan, and I decided to give it a taste test last Friday to see if, by some miracle, the beer turned out. After the first taste, Ryan and I just looked disappointingly into our mason jars of "Pumpkin Ale" and decided, nearly simultaneously, that it had the odd taste of Band-Aids. For anyone who has ever brewed, you'll understand exactly what I mean by that.

It's not like we had an unfortunate "lunch lady band-aid in the goulash" kind of problem. It's just something known as off-flavoring. Surprisingly, I blame it on what seems like the smallest mistake that we made.

The tap water.
Although we only used a little bit, Pittsburgh's water sucks. You get Chlorophenols in unfiltered tap water if your city adds any chlorine to the water. Chlorophenols smell and taste like vinyl.

In case you were wondering.

Sonya, however, said that she didn't mind the slight medicinal taste and thought it wasn't too bad. I'm glad to hear that because we have two cases of it that I would hate to see go to waste. Anyone interested in helping us drink these two cases of beer is more than welcome. Or if you happen to have a cut on your tongue or in your throat and can't figure out how to put a band-aid on it, come on over.

It's honestly not that bad.

Darn tap water.