Outdoor Fun

Yesterday was my 10,000'th day of life (approximately 27 1/3 years). I'd known about this milestone for a few years, and had been looking forward to it for some time. For nearly as long, I've had the idea in my head to climb Mt. Thielsen. So, I managed to talk my roommate and mountaineer extroadinaire, Logan, into coming along with me.

We left the hacienda around 7am, and made the 3+ hour drive to the trailhead near Crater Lake. The sky was a bit hazy, and as we started down the trail, the mosquitos were rather annoying considering our brisk pace. In spite of a stretch of downed pines that had probably fallen last winter, the trail was well maintained. We reached the summit in less than three hours.

Here's a sweet shot of us on the summit:


After an early morning, and a long walk, a nap was necessary:


Because the hike took less time than we'd thought, we had plenty of time in the afternoon to hang out on the side of the mountain, so explored a bit:


And made a bivy site:


After that we just hung out and appreciated the view for a while. We had pesto pasta for dinner and one of Logan's mead's for dessert. And I got to watch my ten-thousandth sunset:


The next morning I awoke to a magnificent a mountain shadow:


And given the clearer skies, I couldn't resist going back up to summit again. Here's me touching the top during summit v2.0:


It was a fantastic day and a half. : )

More images can be found here.

Well, the MLK weekend gave us with a three day weekend so Logan and I drove to Bend on Friday evening for some fun in the snow. We woke early and trekked (I snowshoed, others skied) into Paulina Falls where we were going to be doing some ice climbing. Having left in between groups, I arrived at the falls to watch the leaders of the group get set up to do some climbing. I started taking photos and got these pictures (roll your mouse over the photo without clicking... then roll it away again!):


That massive chunk of ice fell away as I was watching one of the climbers (Rob, he's in the post-collapse picture) get lowered. He stuck his axe out to the left to steady himself, and BOOM! The whole thing just went straight down into the pool of water below. Fortunately, he had both feet in the column of ice that stayed put, but man, what a rush! Afterward, he was blown away by these photos and how much ice had fallen. "I was too close to the ice to tell how much had gone; it was just like one moment I had ice next to me, and the next there was nothing." He'd said. At any rate, it was a pretty crazy thing to watch.

After that, we decided it probably wasn't a good idea to climb on that ice, so we moved to this piece:

This ice was much more stable (route indicated in dark red) and we each got a couple climbs in.

On my second ascent, I was climbing up as the sun was blasting through the ice, and one of the my fellow climbers got this photo:


After the initial scare of the collapsing water fall, it was a chill fun day in the snow and ice.

The next day, Logan, Forest and I headed to town to get some back-country gear. After a crappy morning of trying to figure out what gear to get, we finally picked out our stuff. I rented a back-country snowboard (a.k.a. splittey), and we trekked up Tumalo (across from Mt. Batchelor). We got a couple good runs in before we had to head in. Here's a descent picture of Logan and Forrest:


And here's one I took of myself as it was getting dark and stormy:


The next day, we headed back up Tumalo with a few more folks. There were some really good shots of the Sisters and Broken Top:


Oh, and of course I can't leave this photo of Logan out:


What a super weekend!

So I've been meaning to write this post for a while. Many exciting adventures have happened in my life lately. Most recently, I have just walked in the door from the 2nd night of my Cuban Salsa I (specifically Casino) class. What a blast!

Perhaps the most significant happenings in my life over the last month have had to do with my near miss with dropping out of graduate school. The short story is that: a) I got discouraged/depressed about school. b) took a while off to think about it why exactly I want to do this at all (including traveling home to Alaska... more on that in a moment). c) Eventually decided to actually do this thing. For those who have talked to me in the past, this may not sound much different than other thoughts that I've had to this effect. However, for those who have talked with me through this one, I think the differences are clear, and I feel pretty good about the decision that I've made. I'm now shooting for being finished with my PhD in a year. There, I said it. ;)

Alaska was fantastic. My Nana and Grandpa Mark were there as well, and it was wonderful to spend some time with them. August is growing up, and while it is fantastic to see him, it makes me miss all the moments that I don't even know I am missing. My favorite August story from this trip was when we were sitting down to breakfast at "The Cosmic Kitchen", and two police officers came in. When they sat at there table to wait, August sat up straight and said:
"Thank you for serving and protecting our city of Homer." You can imagine how much the officers appreciated this, and August proceeded to get up and sit at there table to discuss local current events.

I've had a few fun weekends since coming home from Alaska. The day after I arrived back in Corvallis, I headed straight back to Portland and joined Peter, Kara, James, Andy, Axel, Tim and Melissa for a "ring-in-the-new-year" at Mt. Hood Meadows. It was fun, except for the 20 minutes that I had to wait at the bottom of the lift while the fireworks went off (at 10:00, not midnight). The next weekend (Jan. 5), Emily came into town. It's been nice to have another friend around town to hang with.

On the 12th, we threw our "Saturday Night Fever", disco party that was inspired by the Disco music I won in a White Elephant gift exchange at my Mom's friend Shannon's place in Alaska. I don't know if this was the best party the Hacienda has ever hosted, but it was the best party I've ever hosted and the best party I've been to since... I dunno probably Junior year. For some reason, I can't imagine parties ever being as much fun as my sophomore year of college. It was all so new and exciting at the time. Anyway, highlights included Kenny - root beer in hand - heckling pool players for at least three hours. The dance floor was raging for at least 4 solid hours, and the kegs (ya, that's right there were two... though admittedly one was only 5 gallons) were tapped by midnight. Fortunately, I had encouraged people to bring back-up supplies, and the party was still going strong at 2. Logan lost his shirt, twice, and pretended like he couldn't find it again. Many impressive costumes surfaced, out of the >70 people. I even caught a bunch of crap for not telling everyone that it was a theme party. I can't really keep track of all of the debauchery, but I believe it was a success.

I played in the Cram-Up tournament this weekend with a group of people from Portland and Eugene. It was a ton of fun. After a crazy night of partying (I've decided to not drink for a while and thus was only a spectator) until 4am saturday morning, we went 4-0 on saturday. I played well early, but feel like my play declined steadily over most of the weekend (got tired).

The party saturday night was fun. I danced almost the entire time. We finally headed home around midnight. We played $hack first thing and came out kinda flat going down 6-3. We then pulled ourselves together and went on a 4-0 run to take half 7-6. We ended up winning 13-9 ish. On the field next to us, the barely-legal kids (OSU men/women + a few) managed a very impressive upset of the Reno (Elle and Matt) team, so we played them in semi's. I think my favorite play of this game was when I juked Chris Stevens out of his shoes so that he made 4 steps out before he realized I had cut in. I played like kinda a jack-ass; heckling especially rudely on and off the field... hopefully they all knew I was doing it just for fun; and to teach them never to pay any attention to jack-ass hecklers... no matter who they are.

We ended up losing in finals (very dissapointing). We were down 8-3 at half, put on a strong comeback early in the second half to make it 8-6.. 9-7, but couldn't really finish the deal and ended up losing 15-9ish. I felt like I played better in this game than most of the rest of sunday, but still didn't feel too strong. Playing in tournaments like that just makes me want to get better.

This weekend corvallis hosted the 2007 NW College Regional tournament. Having qualified for the tournament two weeks earlier (in the sectional tournament), the Divas played awesome all weekend long. As the coach, I felt that the weekend was an overwhelming success. The girls have been working so hard all season long and everyone has improved so much. This weekend I feel as though each player played as well or better than they ever have, and many took their games to a whole new level. They won every game that their experience, size and ability reasonably allowed them to. In addition, they played VERY hard and well against teams with far more experience and numbers. They never gave up.

There are too many individual plays and performances to mention all of them. The play of Emily and Lora, the leaders and stars was simply inspiring... all weekend. Kate, the third graduating senior, was totally unmatched in the air. Beckie's game elevated about three notches with gazelle-speed deep cuts followed by equally fast in cuts. Emma was, as always totally solid and dependable. Morgan and Mari - the workhorses - never stopped running and were always open when they needed to be. July was super dependable as the multi-role player who got at least a few D's each game. Caitlin with her super-quick cuts scored repeatedly and was totally clutch late both days. Breanna used her speed to stretch the field, caught many goals and got open a number of times when we needed her to. Tiff and Liz played hard, got D's, and showed Angela-esque determination when cutting all weekend long. Then, of course, there's Celeste, whom had her break-out weekend; using her speed to beat her girl repeatedly and being one of the most vocal players on the field. She finally showed the confidence, fight and determination that I've always known she was capable of, and that was emblematic of the entire team all weekend long.

Due to seeding, the Divas had their two hardest games right off the bat on saturday morning with UW (Washington) followed by UBC (British Columbia). After dropping those two games, the ladies came out strong against Humboldt who has been a strong rival all season long. Due to a somewhat wacky format (13 teams), this put us into a "play-in" game against Davis. We matched up well with Davis early, but could not maintain enough consistency throughout the game to come out victorious. Having lost this game, sunday was a round-robin consolation bracket.

Our first game sunday was against another rival team that beat us in semi-finals at the PLU-BBQ: Western Washington. The Divas came out strong, battled for a couple, went down 3-5, then took half 8-5. The second half we traded points mostly and ended up winning 13-9 in a 'false' soft-cap that western tricked us into in very funny prank related to an incident in the PLU-BBQ game.

We played Stanford B next. The divas played hard all game and got the win, 15-4.

Our final game was against Whitman. In many ways, this game was the most impressive of the weekend. Everyone (on both sides) was so tired and women's finals (Berkeley defeated Stanford) was happening one field away. In spite of this, both teams played incredibly hard and the Divas managed to push through just enough more, just enough of the time to come out victorious. This included many amazing plays including: lay-out grabs, go-to D's, hucks, skies etc. The determination was inspiring. Going 3-0 on sunday at regionals was a wonderful way to finish the season.

I doubt I would have been prouder had they won every game.

Hot! Hot! Hot!