Studio711.com – Ben Martens

Fort Peck Vacation

Fort Peck, Montana. It’s not the first thing that comes to mind when you think about a summer vacation, but nonetheless, that’s where we were last weekend. Tyla’s family on her Dad’s side had planned a big family reunion. It was probably the biggest family gathering since her grandpa died in 1999.

Getting to Fort Peck is not small feat of traveling. Your options are:

  1. Fly to Great Falls, MT and then drive ~5 hours to Fort Peck or fly into Glasgow, MT and drive 30 minutes to Fort Peck. Both are not cheap options and then you have to rent a car.
  2. The Empire Builder line from Amtrak happens to go from our area to Glasgow. That takes 16-24 hours but it’s not cheap either and oh yeah, you have to rent a car when you get there.
  3. Drive 915 miles.

After much debate, we decided to drive.

Don (Tyla’s Dad) made the trip a few times when his kids were younger. He would leave super early in the morning, drive until the car got wild, and then stop at a hotel with the pool to let the kids burn off energy. Then day 2 would just be whatever was left of the ~15 hour drive.

We planned to follow his advice so at 4:15 am on Thursday, the car was totally packed and I had just put my sleepy 4 year old son in the back seat. I hit the button to start the car and… nothing. Huh?! Thinking it was a dead battery, I put the car in neutral and pushed it out to the driveway so it would be easy to jump start it with the truck. After some finagling, I realized it wasn’t just a dead battery. It was some crazy electrical gremlin. Stuff was flickering on and off, the car wasn’t always recognizing our keyless key fob thingy, and if I did succeed in getting the car ignition turned on (just the fan, AC, lights, etc), I couldn’t get it turned off. At 4:15 in the morning, it was totally confusing.

After about 5 or 10 minutes I decided to give up and take the truck. But wait, the car is sitting in the driveway with the windows rolled down. I can’t leave it there. But at this point, I couldn’t even get it turned on enough to put it back into neutral! I searched around on the internet trying to find the override switch to put it into neutral, but failed. After much prayer and random guesses, I finally got it back into neutral. But… I wasn’t strong enough to push it up the hill into the garage! With Tyla’s help we were just barely able to get it back into the garage.

We transferred everything over to the truck (pulling stuff out through the back seat because we couldn’t get the electronic rear hatch open) and left the house 1.5 hours later than planned. What a start to a very long trip! I tried to stay calm though and just realize that there was some reason that God didn’t want us to take that car or wanted us to leave later or something. I didn’t know why He wanted it this way, but I knew that somehow it was for the best.

Elijah was obviously fully awake at this point, but he ended up getting some sleep around lunchtime. He was an incredible traveler! It exceeded our wildest expectations. Our only stops were for gas and super quick bathroom breaks. We made it out there and back in pretty much the same amount of travel time as Don, Logan and Megan who were in the other vehicle. I never would have guessed that going into this.

The truck ended up being nice to have on the trip. We had a lot more room inside and it was very easy to pack stuff in the back. I also appreciated the extra horsepower. Interstate speed limits in Montana top out at 80 and the two lane highways are 70. It was awesome being able to punch the accelerator at 70mph and easily jump up to 90 or so to pass someone on those two lane roads. I’m not sure the 1.4L EcoBoost Escape would have handled that as well. We got 19.3 mpg on the trip out and 18.7 on the way back. I’m assuming that we had a tail wind on the way out and a head wind on the way back. It’s a little lower than the published highway ratings due largely to the high speed limits and speed up/slow down style of 2 lane roads. We averaged over 65 mph including stops! I normally plan for a 50mph average when I’m traveling long distances with other people.

We made it to Great Falls, MT on the first night and stayed in a hotel with a nice pool and waterslide. It took about 10 hours to get to that point and then we only had 5 hours of driving left the next day.

Don’s twin brother (Dean) and his wife were very kind to let us stay in their beautiful home overlooking the Fort Peck Dam. We thoroughly enjoyed our time with them. Elijah’s favorite part was Dean’s ATV. There were a few miles of dirt roads behind his house and we took the ATV out every day for a ride. Tyla took some rides with me too.

The family reunion was on Saturday and we had over 80 people at the park. The total population of Fort Peck is 233 (as of 2010) so we made a noticeable bump on the population chart that day! Nearly all of the relatives were there. I was lost in a sea of names but found some great people to chart with. Tyla was positively giddy with all the people she got to reconnect with. And Elijah was in heaven with all the kids that were running around. He especially latched onto Dean’s granddaughters who were 8 and 10.

Aside from the family stuff, we also got to do a little exploring. On Saturday, Don took us out to show us the two farms that his family had owned and worked. We spent over an hour driving around dirt roads to check them out. Don’t tell Don you grew up in the middle of nowhere because he’ll just laugh at you. You’ve got nothing on him!

On Sunday he and Dean showed us the spillway for the dam and led us on a 4WD adventure up to the top of “TV Tower Hill”. It’s the highest hill in the area so it has a great view (and lots of communications antennas.)

The drive back started at sunrise on Monday morning. We made it back to Post Falls, ID the first night and then drove the 5 hours home on Tuesday. Our stop there was at the Red Lion hotel. They win the award for best free hotel breakfast ever! The buffet was delicious and we had an incredible view overlooking the Spokane River. At both hotel stops on the way out and the way back, we were able to have dinner with Logan, Megan and Don who stopped in the same town.

So we drove 1830 miles (plus the miles driving around while we were there) in 6 days with 2 days of visiting in the middle. It was a LOT but man that drive is so beautiful. I like the Seattle area but I would LOVE to live further away from the hustle and bustle. Those endless miles with no other cars around were very addicting.

A huge thank you goes out to Dean and Aileen for opening up their house to us and another one goes to Tyla for all the prep work she did to entertain Elijah on the trip. He was definitely done by the last day of travel, but all in all, he gets an A+. Our success now has me thinking about a family road trip to visit some of the national parks down in Utah…

P.S. This post is already crazy long so I’ll save the pictures for another day. It will take me a while to sort through them and edit them.

benmartens August 2, 2017 Family, Travel

F150 Paint Fix

Very early in the life of my F150, I noticed a pretty bad scratch on the hood. I don’t know if I put it there or if it came that way, but I just did my best to ignore it.

After 10,000 miles, I finally realized I should just ask the Internet so I posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook asking for help.

Sixteen minutes later, MattM replied and suggested that I use Meguiar’s M2 Mirror Glaze Fine-Cut Cleaner. I had a couple other things in my cart and got free same-day shipping.

I’ve never used anything like this, but I grabbed a clean towel and went for it. I started with a small drop at first, saw quick results and did a few more small applications. Voila! It was GONE! Not just gone like I couldn’t really notice anymore if I didn’t look closely, but totally gone. It worked so easily and so well that I tackled another scratch towards the back of the truck. Thanks for the tip Matt!

benmartens July 26, 2017 Commentary

Mt. Pilchuck

Logan, Tim and I met up early Saturday morning for a hike up Mt. Pilchuck. This hike has been on my list for a long time. There is an old fire tower lookout at the top of the hike and it has a fantastic view. (Duh, that’s what fire towers are for.)

The top of Mt. Pilchuck is over 5000 feet but thankfully the drive up to the trailhead takes you a good portion of the way up the mountain leaving only about 2200 feet for the actual hike. Be prepared though because that road includes about 6 miles of dirt road and some of it has very big potholes. I was happy to have the truck.

We got to the trailhead at 8am and had no trouble finding a parking spot. I’d say the actual lot was about half full. There were plenty of bugs in the parkling lot and on the whole hike, but they weren’t much of a problem unless you stopped walking. And even then they were just gnats, not anything that would bite.

We made good time heading up and the trail was nice, but the view at the top was a bummer. It was totally encased in a cloud. Coupled with wind and chilly temps, it wasn’t an inviting place to stay so we quickly came down from the tower and found a calmer spot to eat our food. The hike down actually took longer than the hike up because we had to stop for the hordes of people heading up the trail.

The elevation and distance aren’t too much to handle, but the trail gets it’s difficulty rating from the constant rocks. You have to watch where you put every step or you’ll add to the large number of people who sprain or break ankles. The climb up to the tower (pictured below) is the most intense part. Be prepared to scramble on all fours, or as one guide book put it, “minor acrobatics are required.”

All in all, it was a good workout and prep for Camp Muir, but I want to go back again to witness the view. You can view the stats from our hike on the Garmin Connect site.

benmartens July 25, 2017 Outdoors

Revenue Per Employee

Microsoft recently announced quarterly results and they were very good. I started thinking about how much the revenue has increased over the years and how many more employees there are. How has the revenue per employee changed?

Some quick searching revealed that this is a pretty common metric to track when investing, but I couldn’t find good, free data going back far enough to satisfy me. So I pulled the data together myself. This is NOT very reliable or accurate! Specifically, many of the employee count numbers were estimated from a chart image. Don’t make any investment decisions from this chart. That being said… it’s interesting to see that when you factor in inflation, Microsoft gets roughly the same amount of revenue per employee every year. Toss in a bunch of new employees and print more money. It’s a pretty good setup!


How does this stack up against other companies? Credit to zerohedge.com for the chart below:

This Visual Capitalist infographic shows revenue per employee for various sectors and companies you probably recognize.

I wonder what would happen if you walked into HR with these numbers in hand to talk about your salary? Good luck with that.

benmartens July 24, 2017 Geek

25 Free Throws A Day

This summer I challenged myself to shoot 25 free throws a day. It’s a good excuse to get outside, enjoy the longer days, chat with neighbors, and I also wanted to see how good I could get if I did it every day. Well of course I haven’t actually done it every day, but I’ve come pretty close. And of course I tracked all the data in a spreadsheet…

I’ve tracked 700 shots this summer and the biggest change I’ve noticed is that I’m more consistent than I was in the beginning. For example, my first four scores were 16, 9, 17 and 8. Now I hover much closer to 17 with a couple really good rounds mixed in. My record is 22 and I feel like it will be a long time before I beat that, but I’ll keep going and see what happens. The trend is going up, but if you take out those first four rounds, the slope of the line is still positive but much shallower.I don’t have data for this, but it feels like I usually get better as the round of 25 goes on. So would my average go up if I did more in each round? I might mess with the experiment a little bit too and change to either “how many shots does it take to make 25” or just “how many did I make out of 50”.

Mentally I’ve been comparing this to trap shooting. Both use rounds of 25 and both have a big mental factor once you learn the basic physical skills. At this point, I’d say that free throw shooting is harder than trap shooting which seems crazy to me thinking about the physics of it. But the number of free throws shot over my life is dramatically higher than the number of clay birds I’ve broken and yet, my trap shooting scores are generally better than my free throw scores. I also believe that if you look at professional trap shooters, they have higher success percentages than professional basketball players shooting free throws.

Maybe I think too much about going outside to enjoy the sunshine…

benmartens July 20, 2017 Geek, Sports

Little Gym

Elijah has gone to Little Gym for most of his life. Toward the end of each session, they have “Show Week.” I couldn’t make it to this one, but Tyla took a bunch of video and I edited it together. The older man who is a teacher is the founder of the whole corporation. It’s pretty neat to have him as one of Elijah’s teachers!

benmartens July 19, 2017 Family, Video

Talking About Death With A Four Year Old

“How is Elijah doing?” is a common question that I’ve received after the death of Tyla’s mom. People wonder how we explain that she’s not here anymore or how we tiptoe around the topic of death. Hospice gave us a 20-30 sheets of paper about talking about death with a child. I tossed that in the trash and reached for the Bible instead.

Elijah understands that Nancy is dead and that we will never see her again on earth. But he also understands that Nancy believed that Jesus died for her sins, so when she died, God welcomed her into heaven. He knows that we’ll see her again when we die too.

Elijah has been a big comfort through all of this. When Pastor came over a day or two before Nancy died, we all had a devotion together. Elijah saw one of us crying pretty hard and he quietly got up, walked over, put his hand on their knee and said, “Don’t be sad. She’s going to heaven to be with Jesus!”

I think the hardest part of this for Elijah has been seeing people cry. He knows that heaven is a wonderful place and he knows that believers will go there so he doesn’t understand why we are crying. How true! He has been a model for us all to look up to.

Matthew 18:2-4 (NIV)
2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

benmartens July 18, 2017 Family

Cutting Board

Cutting boards are a staple of many woodworkers, but I’ve only made a few and they were all gifts. I decided it was time to have one in our house, and instead of waiting to make “the perfect cutting board”, I just grabbed some scraps and threw one together. I’m really happy with the end result! It’s made of walnut, cherry and maple and then a bunch of mineral oil. I had originally intended it to be longer but there was a void in the walnut when I cut it to size. So instead of filling with epoxy or something like that, I just kept cutting shorter until I got past the void.

benmartens July 17, 2017 Woodworking

Bike Ride With Elijah

A year or two ago, we got Elijah the smallest helmet we could find. I put a GoPro mount on it because I thought it would be fun to see what he was looking at, but that didn’t work too well because his neck wasn’t strong enough to support the extra weight of the GoPro. A few days ago, we gave it another shot. As you can tell from the video, he was pretty excited about it. This video is 18 minutes long and we just ride around the block, but I figured I’d still post it because it makes me chuckle as I flip through parts of the video.

benmartens July 14, 2017 Family

Cape Disappointment Drive Timelapse

I enjoy making timelapses when we go on road trips. I rarely watch the whole thing straight through, but sometimes there are interesting spots that are fun to revisit. Plus, it’s a fun little project to have going along the trip.

I made a timelapse of our trip from Woodinville to Cape Disappointment State Park in the southwest corner of the state for our most recent camping trip. The video has the trip down immediately followed by the trip back (6:36 is when we are at the campground.) On the trip down there, notice the incredibly bad traffic. It added 2 hours to the 3.5 hour drive. On the way back we only hit one bad spot but it was really bad and even the backroads were jammed. It added 30 minutes.

We are planning a drive out to Montana soon to visit some of Tyla’s family. I’m working on some modifications to my setup to make it easier to do those super long timelapses.

benmartens July 13, 2017 Timelapse, Video