Obama and river bears

...Aaaand the world breathes a collective sigh of relief as Obama takes the whitehouse. I don't think I even threatened to move to Canada once this year!

In other news, I've got the latest round of photos from the Rogue this year. I rowed Ben's "glass bottom boat" which was akin to taking a leaky bathtub into a hurricane. Aside from having no floor at all, a metal grate tied on for a footrest, very leaky side tubes, too short oars, and the most drag of any boat EVER, oar boating is great! (I really did enjoy rowing the river actually) I got the hang of it really quick and styled Blossom Bar on day two.
I was stoked to have the pirate flag along. It really completed the look.
June's dad running Rainey
Cody's boat on Rainey
Ben's boat on Rainey
Ben's boat again (somewhere....)I have a faint memory of someone (Molly?) tellling me about the "monkies" along the river years ago. Well, this year I finally found them. Keep an eye out, they are in the second half of day one...
Col on the oars. I must say, having two people aboard, one to feed the other wine and one to row, works really well. At one point, right around when the boats started catching up, saying they were out of booze, folks noticed a bear had been following the rafts for a half hour or so. Apparently this pissed off a very drunk Bryan. He decided he was going to kill a bear - with a 4 inch knife. He swam ashore, and with some indian whooping, ran down the trail to kill himself a bear. We saw Bryan round a corner and disappear behind some rocks, then the bear came running out at full tilt from the rocks with Bryan just a few feet from it's heels. Fortunately (for Bryan) the bear was fast and cowardly. We asked Bryan later what the hell he was thinking, and his response was something to the effect of, "I was gonna fuck it up!"
Bryan, knife in hand, climbing up to git hisse'f a bearskin rug!

"HOLY SHIT! THE ROOM IS SPINNING!"

Yep, I am in Kentucky, waiting for my plane to arrive. I just spent the last few days at a Society for Rangeland Management conference pushing our companies services on anyone who would listen. During the day at least. Last night we had a "business" dinner with the sales reps from "Large Chemical Manufacturer X" with much of the "business" being how many drinks and how much heckling can you handle. Over dinner I watched how large corporate reps woo their customers and got stories of how they used to woo their customers. I heard tales of contracts being closed with gifts of hookers and new cars, and other much shadier promotions (this is no more however!). Throughout this meeting I was mostly quiet, retorting to their constant heckling with the occasional jab back, and I just watched and listened. With this job, there are two very different sides I am finding. One is an average, out-of-college job with menial work that is sometimes stimulating and fun. The other is a side of work I didnt expect to see for a very long time; its the large corporate good-ole-boys type of work where you dont really do anything except bullshit for an hour and then with 5 minutes left you say "ok, so we are good on the agreement to sell "product X" exclusively?" and the drunken ass who just drank $150 of the corporate wine says "Suuuure!" ...And another $400,00 deal is born, based on a few drinks and a pair of box seats at a Nascar event. I tell ya, not being a fan of Nascar, I am going to be a hard sell for these corporate reps, whenever I reach that level.
My favorite moment from possibly the whole time I have been at this job happened last night. After a few drinks at the bar, we were seated for dinner at a table in a room that was very slowly rotating on the 27th floor of the hotel(think space needle adjacent to a skyscraper). We all noticed the room was moving after several minutes as the windows and walls slowly changed orientation. Meanwhile Barry, who has the highest yearly sales(in millions) in the company every year (and is one of the good ole boys), is drinking merrily away. About an hour and a half into dinner(the room has done at least 1.5 rotations by now) Barry smacks the table and says, "I KNEW IT! The room IS spinning!" Everyone stared at him for 2 or 3 seconds in silence, and then there was laughter for the next 10 minutes of so. Secretly I had the same thought about 10 minutes into dinner when I realized the room was rotation, but I'll be damned if I was going to be the first to point out the room was spinning. It is good to know that I now have ammo on some of my superiors. I'll keep that on in my back pocket.

Now I am going to fly back to OR and enjoi the 400+ inches at Meadows. Schwing!