Things that might be decidedly odd…

Rafting the White Salmon

A group of us went with OutVentures this weekend to raft the middle White Salmon River. It’s near the Oregon-Washington border, a ways east of Portland.

Don, David and I drove down on Friday night after work. We camped at Memaloose State Park in Oregon. We arrived pretty late, but set up camp and sat around the fire for a while before heading to bed. On Saturday, the group got up, ate breakfast and stopped in Hood River for supplies before starting the official outfitting at 1:30.

I’ve been rafting before, but it’s been a while. This river and trip were different than the last one, but it was still a lot of fun. I fell out of the raft in a rapid, but this time I managed to grab onto the rope right after falling in which made it a lot easier to get back in. Our guide also fell out of the raft while going over Husum Falls (a 14 foot waterfall and highlight of the trip), whict was a little unnerving. We all survived though and it was fun. We finished sometime around 5pm. Afterwards, the staff cooked us a tasty steak dinner before we headed back to the campsite to relax.

We drove back to Seattle this morning. It started out about 80F+ and sunny, but ended 60F and rainy. There was also a lot of traffic, first from an accident on I-84 in Oregon then later from Olympia through Tacoma. Still, it was a fun weekend.

Olympic National Park

Jason, Sarah, Sarah’s brother Sean (visiting from out of town) and I went out to the Olympic Peninsula this weekend to see Olympic National Park. We took the ferry over on Friday afternoon and spent two nights camping at the Heart O’ the Hills campground in the park. I was worried about being able to find a campsite on a summer weekend so late, but there were actually quite a few sites available when we arrived around 10pm. I think the rain forecast for the weekend might have kept more people away. It did rain most of the weekend, but I didn’t mind too much. It was still scenic and great to get away from the city for a few days. It’s also awesome hanging out with Sarah and Jason. I’ll miss them when they’re back in North Carolina again.

On Saturday, we did the Sol Doc waterfall hike then drove down to Rialto Beach for lunch followed by a walk on the beach. Both places were quite beautiful!

On Sunday, we drove up to Hurricane Ridge where we looked at the partial views of the mountains and then did a ranger walk where we learned about the effects of wind on snow on plant life. We saw quite a few deer there as well as a marmot off in the distance.

On the way down the mountain, a black bear crossed right in front of the car. The black bit just to the left of the tree is the bear,

but I didn’t take the picture quick enough to really capture him. Oh well.

We got back to Seattle a little after 5pm. On the Bainbridge Island Ferry, I was able to take a bunch of pictures of the Seattle skyline line this one:

Pictures are here.

Grand Coulee

This weekend, a bunch of us went camping at Steamboat Rock State Park which is located on a peninsula in Banks Lake, an artificial lake on the bottom of the Grand Coulee in eastern Washington. The geology of the area is fascinating. The coulee was not formed by a standard river, but rather a series of the largest geologically evidenced floods in the world. See the Wikipedia article on the Missoula Floods for more info. There’s a big geological feature in the middle of the peninsula where the park gets the name Steamboat Rock from,

I put in a half day of work on Friday, which I worked at home to minimize the time spent commuting and to maximize the time to get work and trip preparations done. Including stopping in Cle Elum for food (at a restauarant with the slowest service I’ve experienced in a long time) and supplies, it took us about 5 hours to travel the about 240 miles out there.

On Saturday Robert, Ben, Jeff and I went for a bike ride from the campground to Coulee City for a total of about 40 miles. There was one fairly serious hill and some other minor ones, but the major difficulty with the ride was that it was extremely hot. Heading to Coulee City wasn’t too bad, but coming back the temperature on Ben’s thermometer was 100F under blazing sun. Apparently, the weather was unseasonably warm even there (normal is around 75F for this time of year). Fortunately, I had plenty of water. After getting back to camp, we went swimming in the lake which was actually still a bit cold (even with the scorching temperatures).

This morning, we stopped in Coulee Dam (it’s the city next to the Grand Coulee Dam) for breakfast at what Jeff Roberts described as “the ugliest restaurant entrance in Washington”.

On the road home, we briefly stopped near Vantage at the viewpoint overlooking the Columbia River.

It was nice to get out of the city for a bit and get in some camping.

Photos are here.

Work, Swimming, Camping

This week was sort of weird at work. Right now is a time of transition, which often seems to make me feel unproductive and uncertain. It’s all just part of the development cycle though.

Yesterday I went to a meeting about the recruiting trip to Chapel Hill I’m leaving for on Tuesday. I got the skinny on the ins and outs of everything I’ll need to do while I’m there. I’m supposed to be giving a talk and I’ll need to spend some time on Monday getting the slides for that ready too. It should be a good time though getting to talk to young, eager prospective future employees as well as seeing my friends. Apparently, we’ll be giving stuff away and raffling off an xbox or something too. So UNC readers should make sure to drop by!

I went to Orcas tonight, which makes it the third time this week. I’m psyching myself up to get going more frequently. I just find I get a much better workout when I do Master’s swimming than when I go by myself. Plus, the environment is much better–friendly people focused on the routine as opposed to passive-aggressive people with no swim ettiquette. If I can keep it up for the rest of the year, I’m going to cancel the gym membership I get through work. My employers pays something close to $100 a month for my memberhsip. I have to pay the income taxes on that money though, so if I’m not using it, it’s just not worth it. The only thing I ever use the gym for is the pool, so there’s not much point keeping the membership if I’m not swimming there any more. After Orcas tonight, I went with a sizeable crowd for dinner. I’ve gone in the past to dinner afterwards, but now that summer’s coming to an end more people seem to be returning to the pool. I had a nice time and got to socialize with some interesting people.

Tomorrow I’m going on a brief hike and camping trip near Mt. St. Helens. It’ll probably be the last hurrah of camping for me this year unless I get bold and take up snow camping or something. The hike should be cool though too. I guess the trail goes around the volcano and there are some views into the crater. We’re planning to leave at 7am, so I decided not to go out tonight in an attempt to get a decent amount of sleep.

Mt. Rainier

On Friday night, I went to party at some guys’ place that Larry knew. It was a fun party where I tried a tasty drink I’d never had before (pomegranite juice + vodka + soda water). I left fairly early since I had to get up at 5:30am the next day to prepare for my camping trip to Mt. Rainier National Park. Fortunately, I got up at the scheduled time and got picked up by Robert just before 6:30. After several stops to pick up other passengers, get coffee, get an air matress, get groceries, etc. we arrived at the campground to meet up with Don, John and some others who had spent Friday night there.

We ended up taking the free shuttle up to Paradise where the trailhead for the Skyline Loop trail started. It was a decent hike with some elevation gain, distance and great views of the mountain.

After the hike, we returned to the campground to set up camp and start dinner. We a great potluck dinner with way too much food, which soon stretched into an evening of drinking beer around the campfire. This morning, I got up a bit later than the rest of the gang but still joined in on the breakfast. Some people went to hike Pinnacle Peak, but a few of us stayed at the campground just kicking back for a while. Eventually, we drove up past Paradise to see the “Grove of the Patriarchs”, which is a section of the park with some large, old trees. It was an easy walk around and was a nice ending to a busy weekend.

From there, all of us headed our separate ways back to Seattle. All in all, a nice little weekend camping trip.

More pictures here.

San Juans

This weekend, I went to Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands with Outventures for a joint event with Cascade Flyers. We camped at the airport with the flyers. On Saturday, we ate several meals, went swimming at a nearby lake (refreshing alpine lake on the island with lots of eye candy around) and had a dinner. Afterwards, I got to go up in a small 4-seater plane at sunset, which was great. On Sunday, we went hiking up Mt. Constitution and swimming again before catching the ferry back to the mainland. All in all, it was a fun weekend with some old friends and some new ones. I took something like 250 pictures, which I’ll hopefully be getting off camera soon.

It’s Wednesday

Well now that Wednesday is over, I guess we’re over the workweek hump.

I got up this morning ready to face the day, but after cleaning the bathroom and finishing my breakfast of one banana while running out the door, my stomach started to feel kind of funny. I also felt a little woozy and was having difficult concentrating at work. I thought I might be dehydrated so I continued drinking water most of the day. That I wasn’t peeing much at all considering how much I was drinking concerned me a bit, but I probably was just really dehydrated (which is weird because it’s not like I went out drinking the night before or anything). Around lunch time I felt a lot better, but after lunch I was feeling cruddy again.

In time I started feeling better again and I even managed to get some work done and go for a jog. During the jog, I felt pretty much normal and afterwards only a little bit under the weather. After work, I headed over to Paddy Coyne’s (an Irish pub in South Lake Union) for an OV board meeting and dinner. By that point, I was feeling much better. I ate a lot though and again wasn’t feeling so hot, although I think it was more that I was REALLY full than whatever had been bothering me before. After dinner and the meeting, I met up with Jeff and we went over to Dilettante Chocolate for some dessert and conversation. The two of us always seem to have something to talk about, which I find really cool. He’s almost like a gay, single version of Jason in that way (;

This weekend it looks like I’m going to the San Juans with OV and affiliated friends for a camping trip. I’ve never been to the San Juans and I hear they’re beautiful, so it should be a cool trip. After that, I’ll only have a couple days until my 4 day trip to the bay area the following weekend. Wow, things are getting busy again, but it should all settle down again after Vancouver Pride (the weekend after the bay area trip).