August Update

So it's been about a week and a half since school let, making me a free man. It hasn't been a dull week by any means either. Ever since I've been home there's always been something to do or something that needs to be done.
Last Friday a cousin of mine got married. Now he's the son of my dad's brother who has lived in Ireland for the past 20+ years but my cousin's lived in the States for about 3 or so. Now with the wedding being over here and all that meant that the whole family from Ireland has come over. The cousins have been staying at my parents house for the past three weeks while the parents have stayed at Grandma's. It's actually been nice seeing the family again, it's been 12 years since the last time they were over here. Because the cousins were all crashing at my dad's that meant that I had to put up with them too, and it's been fun. I took them waterskiing for their first times and taught/got them all up on skis. Now they all did pretty well for their first time but my cousin's fiancee kicked all their butts. She was the fastest in learning to get up, the longest to stay up, the only one to go in and out of the wakes, and (here comes the best part) she even attempted to slalom ski and amazingly got up for a couple of seconds. She did a lot better than I thought she would at slalom skiing. It's a shame that they're leaving tomorrow because with a few more gos I think she would do pretty well.
Last weekend we went on our annual family reunion up at Rockport. It's a reservoir near Coalville Utah. We spent the weekend mingling with family and waterskiing. A sad story though. While on the drive up Morgan Canyon heading to Echo I looked back and noticed that my left trailer (boat trailer) wheel was smoking. I pulled over to the side and found that the bearings had completely burnt up and the wheel looked like it was about ready to fall off the axle. For anyone pulling a trailer this is an unfortunate event, but when it's a boat trailer and you're heading up for a weekend of boating it becomes a nightmare. The rest of our caravan continued up to Rockport while I stayed back to wait for the tow truck and take care of the repair arrangements. It cost $100 to tow the boat 12 miles to Coalville where I had to leave the boat for about 5 days while they fixed the problem. Now ordinarily this wouldn't have taken that long to fix but because it was over the weekend there were no warehouses open to order parts from. 5 long days, 100 miles, and $240 dollars later I got the boat back, with the trailer not in perfect condition. The new problem was that during the unloading from the flatbed the tow driver dropped the coupler (the part of the trailer that hooks onto the hitch) from about a 2 foot elevation on the flatbed and bent it up, making it almost impossible to latch the coupler onto the hitch. So the latch and unlatch the coupler I have to use a hammer. So, now the trailer is in another shop here in Ogden getting the coupler fixed, and again I took it in over the weekend so it will take longer to fix. Hopefully it should be done by Monday evening so I can go skiing on Tues.
The weekend of camping was fun though and got to spend some great time with the fam, learning some new card games from the Northern Irish (we've had a long, lengthy discussion on the difference between the Irish and the Northern Irish).
As much as my cousin will tease me for saying this, I had a great time with the family over for the week and am going to miss them when they're gone. Although we don't know much of each other and have only met twice there is still that strong family bond that ties us together and allows us to act like we've known each other for years.

One of the worst sights I've ever witnessed!

Weekend at Rockport

A little Sunday afternoon Rockband to bring the family together

The N. Irish giving it a go

The d'Hulst/Beattie's from Ireland

Frontrunner

So my cousin is getting married today in Salt Lake and I decided to take the new frontrunner train down instead of driving the Jeep. A oneway ticket down is $5. The Jeep gets about 16-17mph freeway and at $4.10/gallon it only makes sense to ride the train. So here I am right now, sitting on the train and writting this blog on my iPhone and listening to Juanes.
Even though the trip takes a little longer it is nice to just sit back and not have to worry about traffic, gas, driving, etc. It's nice to just take in the scenery. I can see why so many people use this as transportation to their jobs. The trip from Ogden to Salt Lake takes about an hour with eight stops on the way. During that time I've checked emails, read some blogs, worked on a talk for Sunday, played on facebook, and now I'm writting my own blog. Its a time where someone can be productive and get those things done that they would like to do but find it hard to find the time to do them, like read a book etc.
Not only does this allow people some additional "me" time but it also helps our community out as a whole. It takes cars off the freeway, which in turn will help clean up our air. It save gas money, which can then be budgeted towards the boat. It's a cheap form of transportation beween Ogden and Salt Lake for those who aren't priveledged of even owning a car. The train also might give you the chance to meet someone new. At one stop along the way this family got on and sat it the seats across the ails from me. Well the little kid decided that I needed a new friend and sat in my booth. We joked around for a little and then he went back to his family.
So all in all it was a good experience. I'm now sitting at the train station in Salt Lake waiting for my dad so we can catch Trax to temple square. If you have the opportunity I suggest hoping on the train and giving it a whirl.

Por Fin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's finally here! It's finally happened! The world can continue on as we know it. Nothing has to end! Why am I so excited? Well, on Friday August 1st, 2008 I got Felicity (my waterski) out of the basement and took her up to Pineview for our first official run of the season. It has been way too long since I waterskied last (Oct of 2007) and I have never gone this long into the summer without it. What was the cause of this great atrocity? That would be PA school going through the summer and living in Pocatello, Id where no one I know has a boat. That was the biggest deciding factor, not having a boat. Fortunately enough school has ended for a few weeks and I have migrated back down to Ogden where there is constant access to a boat and people to go with.
It was seven o'clock on a crisp August morning, the sun hadn't risen over the mountains yet there was plenty of light outside. A cool breeze was blowing as I prepared the boat for our maiden voyage. My buddy Daniel and his wife Hannah arrived and we piled into the Jeep for the short drive up Ogden Canyon. Excitement was in the air as we pulled the boat up the dam and finally caught our first glimpse of the water. The sun had risen over Ogden valley and reflected off the mirror lake. Words cannot express the what was felt as we looked over a smooth, glassy lake calling to be caressed by the body of my fiberglass ski. My buddy and I have launching the boat down to a science and wasted no time getting her onto the water and us out of the port.
The time finally arrived. With my life jacket and gloves on I grabbed the rope handle in one hand and Felicity in the other and we both slid gracefully into the water. The water was perfect! The temperature was that of a cool, lukewarm bath; refreshing but not cold. "Hit it!" I yelled and was immediately pulled out onto heaven. What waited ahead was a glass lake ready to be cut like a hot knife through butter. I couldn't have asked for a better way to start my summer vacation! And so, without further ado, I present for your viewing pleasure some select photos and video of what true pleasure is.


I can just tell this is going to be a good three week summer!

Mormon Canyon

It's been two weeks since my last bike post. The reason for that was on our last ride my buddy got a flat and screwed up his rim pretty bad to where he had to take it into the shop to get fixed. Well it wasn't ready by last Saturday so we took a week off. I thought of maybe getting up and going on a quick bike ride up a trail that I've done a few times now, but then I decided that sleeping in until 11:30 am was a much better use of time and resources. However, today we resumed the biking experience through Caribou National Forest. We started at the Scout Mountain trail head and headed along the east bench of Scout Mountain. We've previously ridden this part of the trail when we did our Scout Mountain excursion (last bike blog). We past the pond and continued along the trail that would eventually take us up to Scout Mountain until we came to a fork in the road. Instead of heading north towards Scout we turned south and headed towards Old Tom Mountain but we didn't climb to the top. After about 3/4 of a mile we turned off the Old Tom trail and headed down Mormon Canyon.
The trail down Mormon Canyon is more single track than not. It's accessible and wide enough for bikes, horses, and dirt bikes but not ATVs or Jeeps. It's a fairly steep, and rocky descent down the mountain dropping about two thousand feet in a little under three miles. The beginning of the track rides down the ridge of the mountain so there were many times where not paying attention would send you tumbling down. A lot of the downhill is fairly rocky as well creating a steering/braking problem. It doesn't matter if you're going up or downhill, a rocky trail feels like biking over ball bearings. Regardless of how much pressure you put on the brakes or how far you lean back so as to not go over the handlebars, those rocks take you on the trail they choose. It gets especially annoying/frightening when one side of the trail is that roll down the mountain I was talking about earlier. That part was coming down the mountain into the canyon. Once you get into the canyon part of the trail you don't have to worry too much about a lot of rocks, the tree roots take care of that problem. Sometimes they can be just as bad, if not worse, then the rocks. However, they do make for some nice little jumps to play around on. The canyon trail crosses the stream quite a few times so it makes for a nice cooling effect when riding through. Unfortunately though this week's ride didn't go flawlessly. I ended up getting a flat in my rear tire and had to stop to repair that. I don't think I rode on the flat too long because my rim doesn't seem to be bent at all. I easily found two holes that needed repairing and patched those up fairly quickly. Thinking that I had fixed my tire I put it back on and kept on down the trail. About a mile down I realized that there must have been more, smaller holes that I couldn't find because the tire ended up going flat again. Not wanting to deal with finding and patching the holes I just switched out tubes with a spare that I had brought.
I think that we spent just as much time driving and placing vehicles as we did biking. Like I said, we started at the Scout Mountain Campground just southeast of Pocatello and came out on the other side of the mountain near McCammon. Up and over the mountain the ride was only around eight miles, but driving back was about thirty-three miles. So lets calculate this out really quick...it's twenty-six miles from my house to where we had to drop the jeep off at the end point, then thirty-three miles to get to the start point, then another thirty-three miles after we had finished biking to go pick up the start vehicle. Grand total...ninety-two miles (at $4.10/gallon) to bike a measly eight. I figure that's just about the same, if not more, that I would spend in gas if I had gone waterskiing for a couple of hours. Just like waterskiing though, it was well worth it.

I still got a fair amount of pictures for this trip but not as much as the other trips. Two reasons why: 1)I've already ridden and taken pictures of the first half of the trail and 2)the second half was all downhill and most of the times it's too exciting of a ride to stop and take pictures.

Scout Mountain Trail Head

Overlooking McCammon

Old Tom Mountain (Mormon Canyon to the left)

Mormon Canyon Descent

Mormon Canyon

Ridgeline Descent

Check out the moon just behind my head

The tree spanning the trail made for a great little obstacle

Remember those tree roots I was talking about?

As always look for the complete collection of pictures of this trail and other trails at
http://picasaweb.google.com/tjdhulst

This blog will be the last blog about Pocatello mountain biking for about a month or so. At the end of this week I will be heading back home for about three weeks. Those weeks will be full of waterskiing, waterskiing, and hiking Havasupai Falls. Maybe I will be able to hit up a couple of trails around Ogden. I will be posting news on waterskiing and the hike trip as well.

July Update

My most recent posts have been on the bike trails that I've been on and not much else about what else has been going on these past couple of months.
There's been a lot going on in school since June. We gone through a lot of interesting training exercises and labs to prepare us for the upcoming clinical year. One of those was proper scrubbing techniques and maintenance of sterile fields. This picture is of us, not maintaining sterile fields. Since this training I've watched many medical TV shows (House and Scrubs mainly) and critiqued their scrubbing in procedures. It's actually quite funny to see media portrayals of such things after one has gone through proper training.
We have recently started our ER module and with this comes training in Basic Life Support (BLS [also know as CPR]), Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support (ACLS), and Pediatric Advanced Life Support (PALS) skills. We have completed the BLS training and will start ACLS and PALS training in the next couple of weeks. I've started going over the ACLS stuff to be prepared for the training and I'm really looking forward to it. Recently we went through a mock trauma scenario where a team of us were in charge of taking care of a gun shot wound (GSW) patient. I was elected team leader in this scenario because of my experience in the ER; which makes no sense to me because I didn't work in the ER under as a medical provider but as an interpreter, so I had exactly the same training/experience as everyone else on my team. However, I enjoyed taking this responsibility and the experience that followed. For those not familiar with team resuscitation techniques the team leader assigns tasks to members of his/her team and uses information provided by the team to make decisions on care for the trauma patient. Before our mock patient "arrived" we were given all the information from the EMS team bringing the pt in and from there I was able to assign tasks to my team. Although knowing this was just a mock pt and we hadn't received all the ER training necessary to fully run a trauma code I felt nervous at first. However, when the pt arrived things started to come and I feel that our team worked smoothly. There were many secondary small simple things that I blanked on but my team was there to help out and remind me of those little things. We nailed the primary concerns and were able to stabilize our pt for Life Flight transport. I really enjoyed that setting. I enjoyed the fast pace of the treatment and the on the spot thinking necessary for patient stabilization. I enjoyed taking charge and directing the care. I liked that setting when I was able to participate in it when working in the ER and really enjoyed being a part of that pt's care. I'm looking forward to actually be able to do it coming up in the clinical rotation year.
Another skill that I enjoyed learning and practicing was the placement of an endotracheal tube (ET tube), known as intubation. This skill was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be, well, practicing on dummies anyway.
Other skills we've gone through or will go through have been catheterizations, IV placement, digital blocks, and much more. I don't plan on being a big fan of catheter placing but the others ones I won't have a problem with.
In two weeks we will be officially over with the didactic year of school. No more sitting in class 8 hrs a day 5 days a week. No more sitting through lectures and trying to stay awake (for now). However, that doesn't mean that this next year will be any easier. I'll still be studying a lot for end of rotation tests, but I'll also be studying during the rotations to learn all that I can and be prepared for whatever might come my way. I feel really inadequate for a lot of these rotations because I've forgotten a lot of information that I've supposedly learned. It's not just going to be cram for the test systematically eliminate answers from a multiple choice test anymore. Now I have to create the answers and then systematically eliminate them from my list. It's not just trying to pass with a satisfactory 70% anymore. I'm more excited than I am nervous for this next year but those doubts and fears are still ever present.
I have many friends starting med school and dental school this year. For those that read this let me give you some advice that I'm gained from this year.
Try to organize a schedule that will allow for study and personal time. The schedule is by no means will remain static but try to stick with something. At the beginning of the year I started out strong studying most nights of the week even when a test wasn't present. I understood the information and was able to participate in class with answers. Throughout the year though that studying steadily decreased and I started to not prioritize it enough. By the end I was only studying for upcoming tests and just doing the bare minimum. It's easy to get distracted and burnt out with classes and school work but try to do more than the minimum. I feel that's the main reason why I feel so inadequate for the next year.
You will get bored in class and become easily distracted, especially if there is a computer with internet access in front of you all day long. It's hard to just sit there and pay attention. If your programs are anything like mine the lectures will be taught off of power points and you will have access to them anytime you want. This makes it even more difficult to pay attention. If you get in the mentality that you can go over the lectures later on your own time you will miss a lot of information that doesn't come in the ppt's. Unfortunately there will be many times the lecturer will read straight from the ppt and that will get annoying. I was the one who got bored and started playing on the internet. One thing though that I saw other classmates doing was taking notes on paper instead of on the ppt. This facilitated their paying attention and participating. If you're like me don't think that you can just pay attention and get everything then go over the lecture later without taking notes. It just won't work.
Another thing where I screwed up was letting someone else compile a study guide. The person who did them compiled them very well and they were very thorough. They helped me study for the test but not for retention. Make your own study guides. It will take a lot more time and you might not be as thorough as someone else, but you will learn and retain more.
One thing that I have done that has been beneficial is my internship in psychology. It has given me so much patient experience that otherwise I would have had to wait for. It hasn't helped me out a lot in a medical setting but I have learned skills for interviewing patients that I know will be beneficial. It's also given me added experience in assessing patient progression and also adjusting therapies where needed. In your studies if you get an opportunity, and have time for, any outside experience like that I suggest you take that opportunity.
One final thing, don't expect to know everything about everything. Going in and coming out you will feel inadequate and unprepared. That's just the nature of the beast. The best providers are the way they are not just because they were the smartest in their class but because they worked hard through school and afterwards. They continue to learn and gain experience in the field. Do all you can while in school, but just know that you still will far short. Accept that fact and you'll find that you'll be more excited than scared going into your clinical years.


P.S. don't blog while in class...that also makes it difficult to pay attention.

Scout Mountain

So this weeks trail came a little earlier in the week than the weekend for two reasons; 1) I had Wed of this week from class and 2) I’ll be at Bear Lake this Sat living it up on my ski. We decided to head up Valve House like we did a couple of weeks ago but instead on turning down the wash to loop back around we kept heading up the trail toward Scout Mountain. The trail is a pretty steady incline until we met up with East Fork trail which follows along the base of Scout Mountain until it wraps around the back and up. The trail becomes a little more difficult with steeper, rockier climbs…and more of them. Along the trail we passed a pond that, with the mountainous backdrop the pond didn’t look too bad but upon closer inspection it looked like breading grounds for West Nile and Malaria. We’d been told about the ponds by some other bikers and I was hoping to do some little swimming but that didn’t play out. After the pond we rode up another ridge and came out in a valley of wildflowers and a great view of the country.

Here’s where the fun begins. The actual accent up the mountains begins. We went from 7400 ft to 8600 ft in 3 ½ miles up the backside of the mountain. The trail consists of switchbacks and rocky terrain. It’s big enough for four wheelers and Jeeps to climb up. At the top of the mountain there were a few different tower transmitters and a spectacular view. We took about a 20 min break at the peak and then headed back down. Instead of following the original trail up we decided to ride down the back side of the mountain and wrap around it. This trail is a fun single track trail called Crestline trail and as the name implies follows the contour of the crest. Like I said it’s a single track trail that, on one side hugs the mountain, and the other side a 1000 ft roll down the mountain. We decided it was best not to do anything stupid and go rolling down since neither one of us had cell phone service and only a weak first aid kit that consisted of bandages, gauze, and a wrap. Funny story though, at the beginning of this trail there were a couple of snow banks that cross over the trail. While trying to cross over my friend’s bike did a little slipping and sliding. While trying to control it he went over the handle bars, started running down, jumped, tried to grab onto a tree to stop him, lost his footing and flipped and rolled twice down cracking his head on some rocks. We had just barely begun this leg of the trail and so the fall/roll down was only 25 or 30 feet. Luckily, he was wearing his helmet and there was no head trauma. His helmet got a nice little crack in it on the right frontotemporal side.

After riding along the ridge we came to a downhill that rode through some beautiful forest. For all those Ogdenites reading this it reminded me of coming down Malan’s Peak and Taylor canyon along the switchbacks.

We met up with the paved road that leads up to the Scout Mountain Campgrounds and from there caught the trail that headed back down Valve House, our starting trail. If being out on the mountain for a whole day wasn't fun enough we topped off the ride by chasing a moose down the trail. It was all downhill and after coming around a bend there was a moose standing in the middle of the trail. When she saw us fly around the corner she took off and we followed her down until she ducked out of the way.Apparently my friend didn’t have enough fun falling down a mountain or chasing the moose do he decided that he needed to also blow out the valve on his front tire and get a flat along the last leg. So we had to stop and wait for him to switch out tubes.

The trail took us 7 ½ hrs to ride and hike and a roundtrip of 25 ½ miles. From the beginning to the summit it took us 3 hrs 40 mins and was 11.15 miles. It took us another 3 ½ hrs to get back to the Jeep because of the other trail we took. It was a long, hot, and dusty day but well worth it for the scenery and the shots.

After riding all day on the trail