My boss got a motorcycle a few months back as a mid life crisis kind of thing. He has been riding it around like bikes are going out of style recently. He finally decided he was comfortable enough to ride it on a point to point ride, and we had a meeting in Burns, OR. Myself, and another coworker drove, and Greg never showed up. Then we got a call that he had been lifeflighted to the Dalles hospital. Some jackass in a truck didn't see him and took a turn tight in the wrong lane. We're not sure yet if it was a hit and run (we've only gotten two broken messages) or if the guy stuck around. My boss has 7 broken ribs, a punctured lung, spleen damage and a helluva concussion. He is very lucky to be alive.
Needless to say, I suddenly have my hands full for a few weeks keeping up with his projects. I have heard the term "trial by fire" several times during the last year (I have worked for UAP for a whole year now) and I am pretty sure that this is the real trial by fire.
On a lighter note, Col and I ran off for a quick weekend backpacking trip in the Three Sisters Wilderness. The goal; a 35 mile hike around North and Middle Sister. Aside from some really sore feet after the trip, we had a perfect trip.
Yesterday we had a day of down time in San Jose, so we walked around the city's largest park (similar to Golden Gate Park). At one point we were talking about how in both visits by Colleen, she hadn't had a single bad interaction with any Costa Ricans (with the exception of being whistled at by every third male in the vicinity) and neither had I. Then, cruising through the park, this guy runs after us saying "hey wait, hey wait" in pretty good english. We stopped and he immediately demanded "monies" from us with a palm out and a wild look in his eyes. We said no and kept walking. Soooo he decided to follow us for a short time yelling "Ju SAN oofa BITCH!" but in a much more hilarious accent than I can portray just by typing (woulda been perfect for a video blog). As we kept walking, we marveled at how educated even the crazy guys in the park are. He spoke fairly good english and knew how to curse us in a very appropriate way under the circumstances. I guess its not nearly as bad as some travel experiences I've heard of, but it was still pretty random. Off to Monte Verde!
I know its been a while, but I have been rather busy with the whole wedding thing and all. Aside from a minor rain shower (in the desert of all places!) teh wedding went perfectly. She said I do, we had a really great bunch of folks there, and we were blessed with an incredible sunset before driving ioff into the night. There are pictures on Facebook if you care to look. Since I am in Costa Rica right now, I'll tell you about that too. We are here for the honeymoon and I took all my yearly vacation and lumped it together for a 3 week long trip. This place is great! Below are the two update emails I sent out, so I'll let them do the telling.
7/6/08 We are nearing the end of the first portion of our honeymoon in CR and it has been exceedingly relaxing. We are in an americanized beachtown, Tamarindo, that is the surfing capital of CR. First off, thank god Colleen speaks spanish, because I would be so lost with out her translating. Col instructed me on the finer points of surfing, and I am now hooked on it. I got one perfect big wave and a few other pretty good ones and that was the end of it. I think I can understand a little of why people like surfing so much. I also went for two scuba dives yesterday at an island chain off the coast and swam with a bunch of sharks. Other than that, we have been doing a LOT of lazing on the beach and drinking coctails at the happy hour at Joe´s Bar (reccomended spot if you ever come to CR). We are heading off to the jungle for a 4 day raft trip on tuesday on a river typically rated in the top 5 rivers worldwide for rafting. Cant wait for that! Then it is off to La Fortuna for a few days of lounging in hotsprings, then hiking in Monte Verda, where monkeys, kinkajus, toucans, zillions of frogs and butterflies, and sloths live. That should be the highlight of the trip (if we dont get too sick before that). We will check in after the raft trip to see if you guys would like any souvenirs. Pura Vida -Ian and Col
7/11/08 We survived rafting quite well, and this morning ran my new favorite stretch to date. We did a 3 day on a short, mellow scenic river first, and then this morning spent one hour on a helluva run. In that hour we ran 12 class 4s and 4+s, traveled approximately 12 miles and didnt have a single swimmer. The river never slowed down, there was maybe 1 100 yd stretch where we werent paddling and got to take a break. The rest of it was constant class 2 and 3. The trip is supposed to take 2.5hrs, but the water level was ´good´ according to the guides, which means it was quite high. here is a kayak video from youtube of the run (we were in a raft)Day after tomorrow, we head off to Monte Verde Cloud forest to check out the rainforest and wildlife! Talk to you soon! Sorry, no pictures to oupload yet. They'll be up eventually.
Heading out to a 1500 acre job in Fields, OR (at the SE end of the Steens Mtns.) I stopped off at Smiff for a long, easy climbing day with Keely (Keelia as she now has begun using her full name). We hiked out to the marsupials and managed to climb about 1300 vertical feet in 11 hrs of climbing (including the 2 hrs spent in a cave waiting out a lightning storm). My goal was 15 pitches in a day and we managed 16. We ran up the marsupials traverse, mini-halfdome, round river, and “birds of a feather,” 5.7, on the wombat (summit above Koala Rock). It was so much fun climbing at no harder than 5.8 for the whole day. No pictures though.
I got to spend a day and a half alone in the desert and had a blast. I had to hike into the work site to look at some things, so I made an evening of it and brought sushi, a camera and some beer up to a peak. This is what I wrote as I was sitting up there, and it is a little embarrasing to have such an emotional time, but it was kinda cool. So I will share it with you, unedited:
"Every now and again one has such an intense moment alone with nature that you can only laugh outloud in joy, and shed a tear simultaneously. Feeling the pureness of nature is a joy that is completely inexplicable; it can only be experienced.
To try and tell of the quality of the experience is pointless. A sunset, a flower, a mountain, the wind; it can only be understood in the context of what someone already knows. To seek new, deeper experiences from nature is the only way to truly understand what she is capable of (a boundless perfection and utterly incomprehensible beauty). As I cry joy right now, I can’t fully even get ten percent of what I am feeling inside. The tears are the only evidence of the beauty of the desert. I do nothing more than write feeling as this sunset passes, but I understand more of nature with every experience. I am a rich man! To describe the feeling as spiritual does not do justice to the deepest enveloping joy I get from sitting on a windblown ridge, or on a dirt game trail while writing this. This place of reverence provides all that the soul could ever desire!"
Yea, so that is my little time in the desert. Oh, and Malheur Wildlife Preserve is fucking amazing! There is more biodiversity there than anywhere else on the west coast. The large majority of birds I saw there I have never seen before. I wish I could have spent more time there and had a big ass camera lense. I also got to check off Alvord Hotsprings from the "to sit in" list. It is a funky little concrete tub in the desert, but boy are the springs hot.
From work, we got snowed out, rained out, blown out, but luckily no mechanical problems. Heres the snow day in June and the helicopter doin its thing. In a week and a half, I will be married. Whoa! We all new it was coming, but it does kinda sneak up on ya like that. I am really stoked to be marrying such a fine woman. We have a beautiful life together and I am glad it is now going to be permanent.
"The entire population of the world - 5.4 billion people- could fit into Harney and Malheur counties alone with 103 square feet per person, a population density little greater than Hong Kong's. (Oregonian , July 25, 1993)"
And yet, those two Oregon counties are two of the largest and least populated in the lower 48. And that is where I am headed next week for work! The Steens Mountains are gorgeous high desert, but aside from that, there really isnt anything in southeast OR. I will be staying in Fields, OR. Heard of it? Probably not. The population is around 10 and it has 5 buildings, 3 of which are motel rooms. Yee Haw! I cant figure out if this is going to be more or less fun than working in New Mexico for a month. Nah, nothing can be worse than that.
Colleen and I also have gotten a lot done on the house recently. Since the weather was pretty much shit everywhere for Memorial Day, we stayed home and got hella shiz done on the climbing gym and back yard. We have spent near a grand on plants at Garlands (veggies, dogwoods, gardenia, seeds, dirt, blueberries!, roses, and rhodies) , I have spent near a grand I think on the climbing gym, and it is really great to see it all coming together. If you havent seen the house yet, I've added some photos of the inside too now that we have gotten moved in.
I have a slight sleepwalking problem. It manifests itself frequently when I am sleeping in unfamiliar places. With this job I travel a lot. Therefore sleeping in a lot of unfamiliar hotels. This morning, just past midnight I woke up, ...shaving. I haven't done that before. I finished shaving, looked at the clock, and went back to bed for a very difficult night of attempted sleep. When I got up, I figured I had already shaved, so I just got ready and went. It took me a little while, but I eventually realized that I hadn't finished shaving. There was a significant neck beard on one side of my face all today. Score! I am a retard. (at least I didnt end up in my roommate's bed or anything!)
A bunch of us climbed Mt Hood last weekend. It was really wet. And cold. A front moved in a little quicker than we had hoped. This was the most unpleasant summit to date, but it was still done safely, just a little less than ideal. What doesn't kill us makes us stronger, eh!
May 06, 2008
granted, its a little old, but here is a gem from Jon Stewart.
And another
STEWART: Yes. I feel like, you know, I feel like the best thing to do is to convince the country that our God is the one true God and that others are less. KING: American God, you mean? STEWART: Yes. The one that blesses us for our manifestness. KING: He doesn't bless England.
STEWART: No. No. He doesn't care for them. He feels that they're pasty. KING: Pasty? STEWART: Pasty and he doesn't care for the food. KING: But Canada. STEWART: Happy to have them in the attic, but not so crazy about them in general. KING: He's a judgemental God. STEWART: Very angry. Loves the Americans. Very big. Wants us to have bigger cars. Wants us to have bigger cars and as a little goof on us has only made a finite supply of oil. It's very -- he's very funny. He's a trickster. Here's another little joke he did. He promised three different religions they were the chosen ones, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and then, funny, follow me, he put their holiest sites all in the same place. And then he backed away and he just wants to see who wants it more. That's what this is about. This is God going, hey, show me something, people. ...
Just to follow up on the last post, this is from this weekend. Tombstone pass still has 4-6 ft of snow and the snow level reaches all the way to the Mt. Jefferson turn off on hwy 20. Mt hood Timberline is reporting a 238 inch base currently, with 10 inches in the past 24 hrs and a total snowfall of over 800 inches this season. Wow.
Dang, I am getting so bad at this bloggy thing. Work and house being the usual excuse. Well, climbing as usual is in there as an excuse. The warmth crept up for a weekend recently and a really great crew of old OMC and some new was at smith for a 80 degree weekend. But now it is supposed to snow in Corvallis Sat, so winter clearly isnt gone yet. 2 weekends ago, Bryan, me and some other folks wend rafting and skiing for th weekend. I played hookey on Friday and enjoyed an incredible powder day at skibowl, with much hucking of cliffs and carving up an EMPTY ski hill. I have never actually ridden an empty ski resort all day and it is really fun when you ca look at the steepest face and know that around half the lines are yours. Then carrington and crew showed up, we rafted the white salmon in the morning, in the snow, and then went back to skibowl to finish off the night with some margaritas and another 7 hours of snowboarding. That, again was one of the best ski days I have had, just for the sheer amount of alcohol that was consumed. Bryans tab was $235 for the evening (4 guys drinking, I was DD. :P )and that included 5 rounds of double margaritas with everclear. I dont want to say that anyone was being unsafe, but gawd damn, watching everyone crater at the bottom of the cliff band after drinks was HILARIOUS. Especially Bryan, because he went off, hit a lower cliffband, and then bellyflopped from about 15 feet.
Yep, life is still rockin! (Darrel on Round River at 9pm below, Rob on Buffalo Warrior above)
I am taking on a lot of "real" work for my job now. In Hood River yesterday we completed 4 herbicide application that I have been planning for the last 2 months. That was kinda nice to see things go off without a hitch. I think after a brief lull in the next 2 weeks, I may be off to Idaho to go bombing around the desert on ATVs for a survey job. sounds kinda fun huh. This summer has another 400,000+ ac fire survey/application that I might be running a crew of 10 or so college studeents on. That sounds entertaining as fuck. I hope we get that bid.
Hi! I'm back! From where, you ask? From the depths of new-housing! we've got 3 new big planter beds sunken into the back yard hillside, a halfway built climbing gym in the garage (hopefully finished by sunday), another ferret and a whole lot of house plants. ...Col and I have been busy. I tell ya though, I would really love to just run off and go to smith, or leavenworth, or redrocks. Thats where everyone else is right now and I wanna goooooooo! Damn spring breakers. At least I can consol myself with the knowledge that the weather is crap now so I might as well hide out in my man cave and build a home gym. (It is snowing in C-town now and it is 90 in palm springs, where Col is) I am really stoked on this climbing wall. I havent been this excited in months! Oh, and now there are two ferrets running amok in the house. Colleen's sister found one for us at a humane society last month and she nursed the little guy back to health for us. So we have Sid and Huey now.
If you havent heard of the real iditerod, it is a grueling dogsled race in AK. Portland does it's own version in true portland fashion. It is very similar to a hash. The humans are the sled dogs and one person is mushing a shopping cart decorated to some theme (my favorites were the Mormons, the cavemen[had a propane campfire in their cart] and the pope mobile cart) Col, her sister, myself, and 3 others created a team for this years Iditerod, and we got 3rd place out of 700+ people and were the front runners for most of the race (totally irrelevant because no one was keeping track of winner or loser). Being in front just ensured no waiting in long bathroom lines at each pitstop bar, getting served first at the bar, and getting a table between legs. One of the best times I have had in a long time. And definitely the most drunken exercise I have evre gotten. Those carts were heavy! Our theme was white trash, and we were hauling a singlewide trailer as our "sled". I had cutoff jean shorts that were a little too short after the second trimming. I think some folks got a helluva show when I was climbing a tree ;) We made the video 3 times, the first is right behind the ninja at the start and the second is near the people in the tree.
Our new addreess is 3304 Nw Foxtail St. Corvallis, OR 97330 My phone # is 509-539-8780 Col's phone # is 503-810-1931
Hopefully with this new address all the moving, new phones and other uncertainty in my life is over now. What a relief. To this point in my life I have had over 10 different phone numbers, just under 30 different addresses, 12 different jobs, and lived in (I think) six different states on both coasts. When I look back on it, wow, what a ride! Oh, and just a guess, but with all the camping I have done, I would guestimate I have lived in a tent for at least a year after adding up camping trips and working for the USFS/BLM. I should really keep a running tally on the blog of how many days to date I have slept outside. That would be an interesting lifetime figure to see.
Aside from a few small hiccups, the moving in process has been rather quick, and relatively painless. Colleen and I had a minor disagreement on what should be moved and what was “packrat junk” but after bashing her over the head with a good dose of logic talk and some large chunks of foam, I got the things over that were necessary. It seemed rather wasteful to throw away perfectly good things, but she insisted on getting rid of some! And then right when I am about to concede that I might have some things that can go to the trash, I find a bag of used bags that colleen had been packratting for the last several years. Yes, a trashbag full of neatly organized, yet tattered, Ziploc bags that god only knows what she was saving for. Sorry for the rant. As with any new house, it takes a while to get used to the new surroundings; especially at night. I personally feel it was karma after all the heckling I got about keeping sentimental junk, but in the middle of the night I woke up just in time to hear Colleen walk headfirst into a wall while trying to find the bathroom. Hah! Another nighttime run in with an inanimate object! She blames it on poor vision but I think she has a drinking problem…
While moving into this house, "Big Pimpin'" has been stuck in my head all day. :)
Who the hell throws eggs anymore as a form of retribution?!? That seems a little highschool, dont ya think? This morning I went out to my car and there was egg shell next to my car (and fairly far away from it which leads me to think the tool is a horrible shot). And not only did my car get egged, Colleen's did too. Who the hell hates both of us enough to waste 30 cents on eggs? There are starving kids in Africa people! This only kinda pisses me off, but not really even at all, because it is really just inconsequential to my life. The rain mostly rinsed it off before I even saw it. Same with Colleen's car. Just lame.
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!
This weekend was the first OMC Sunriver weekend in 2 years and it was a smashing success. It was great to see a hottub full of nekkid people in the snow once again. Sat morning we XC'd in to Paulina falls to look at the ice accumulation and hopefully be able to TR some of it. Greg and Rob started in an hour before the rest of the group and I heard him over the radio saying something about an ice fall and climbing on a thin, broken ice flow. When we got there, the magnitude of the ice fall was apparent. Greg had lowered off and climbed one ice curtain, and then let Rob have a go. Rob lowered and then half way kicked in on the same area that greg had been on, and the WHOLE thing went. The pictures below say it all.
This morning someone put a post-it on Rob's back that read "be nice to me, I almost died yesterday"
The rest of the climbing (on a much more stable climb) proved to be incredible.
The house was bunk. There were $35,000 hidden repairs the inspection report showed. Oh well, Colleen and Ben and I picked out 10 more to look at this weekend to look at. We'll find one.
Reading Keith's blog last week got me all amped up for boarding this season. Before I left for CA the snow just wasn't happening though. On the drive back however, I was in snow from the Oregon border north. At Siskiyou Pass, I talked myself out of sleeping in the truck and riding at Mt Ashland in the morning beacuse I had to study for an upcoming test for work. Talk about inner turmoil!. Then driving north the weather just got colder and snowier. I spent 2 hours between the Rogue River and Eugene flip-flopping between "Dude the powder is going to be EPIC!" and "No, you have a job and a house now Ian, you have to embrace responsibility and study for this test at some point before taking it." (at this point you get one guess as to what my choice was.) I finally broke down in Eugene, checked the snow phone and called around to see who would go to the mountain with me. Jesse finally gave in and we drove back to Eugene in the morning to catch the Willamette Pass ski bus. WOW, WHAT A GOOD DECISION! Everything about the day was perfect. We rode top to bottom all day, hit a ton of different runs, and managed to get knee deep freshies on just about every run. Just in the time we were there we got another 5 inches or so. We figgered ok, last run, lets go destroy ourselves on this little double black over here. I mashed the hill and look up and dont see Jesse anywhere. Looking... Looking... Then he comes shooting out of the trees with a delerious laugh of satisfaction and we ended up taking 3 more runs in the steepest, best, untracked secret run on the whole hill. We rounded out the day with a pitcher of Jubelale in the bar and promptly passed out on the bus ride home. The 2008 season is upon us!
As much as I hate the facebook apps and invites, one intreagued me recently. It was for Oregon Trail on facebook. I was really hoping it would rekindle those awesome memories of the old game, but it didnt. This version is lacking in its interactiveness. Mostly, it involved me pressing the "continue walking" button a bunch. It was a little more adult than the old version though. You can steal from other parties, Colleen got explosive diarrhea, Alyssa was desperately in need of water, Chubb wanted a cigar, and if you got sick of someone in your party, you could eat them! I like that part. The disturbing thing is that the leader on all of facebook currently has logged something like 50,000 miles on this game. Averaging 20 mph/day that is 2500 clicks on the "continue walking" button. Say it takes 5 seconds to load each time, that is 209 minutes playing the game. Then you factor in hunting and shopping at trailmart outposts and you have lost a lot of your life to another pointless facebook app. ...Just like me ranting about this on my blog. After christmas my fam went to SoCal to meet Col's parents. For the first time. This is a moment we have both been dreading for a looooooong time. Fortunately it worked out very well. My dad and liddle bro Fritz became fast friends with Bob Pallari over a game of golf, while I showed them all how horrible I was at the game. I hit a glass door(miraculously didnt break) on a house near the course along with a number of other inanimate objects. Seriously, I need to stick to climbing. The only climbing highlight was getting to scramble the small rockpile below on top of San Jacinto Peak near Palm Springs.
Lets see here; I try as hard as possible to incorporate fun into everything (hence being a "funhole"), I am horribly optimistic, I don't own a TV, I like being outside more than inside, and just generally enjoy life!
