Business and Art

12/4 Spank me thrice and toss me to the coyotes

Guess what I did tonight.No, really, guess!  It has nothing to do with baking, knitting, clogging, spelunking, or coffee.  Give up?  Well, the last time I opened the bag and put the gear on was for some ridiculous bike stunt that I thought would be cool back in college, but before that I had put it away on the preverbial shelf back in ’99.  Recently I brought it all back from storage in Nampa, and this evening, I drove to the Yakima Ice Arena, geared up and played some hockey!!  That’s right my friends, and I have paid the price in sore muscles and blisters, but that’s what you get for picking it up after 9 years, I guess – you get a beating.  It was suprising to me how quickly the skills came back to me too.  I think it was within 10 minutes of being on the ice that I was wizzing around and handling the puck as well as when I left off, but I was, however, unable to shoot; as a few scoreless break-aways illustrated perfectly well.  Oh well, room to improve, right?  Lots of room….Tomorrow, on the other hand, is reserved for dancing.  We have been running seemingly nonstop errands all week preparing for our first of two Christmas swing dances.  I am SO excited!  I will, of course, be taking pictures most of the night, but that means my dance time will be much more fun and energetic.  I’ll have to send you to the photo page when I get it up after the dance so you can see what we’re up to here in the apple capital of the world.The only other thing I feel compelled to share at this point is a picture of the new shirt I just got in the mail.  I happen to think it’s the coolest thing ever, so please try not to roll your eyes…Oh, and that’s a really stupid expression, isn’t it

11/23 Out the door or through the window

    I totally just got laid off from my job!!
I had asked the owner of the photo studio to sit down and have a DTR with me about what I might be doing with them in the future and maybe throw out some ideas of my own, but when he called me back to chat at 4pm on Friday, all he had to say was that the company was doing badly amidst all this recession stuff, and they just don’t have the amount of business it would tak to afford to have me on.  Soooo, without skipping a beat I gathered my things, clocked out, and drove straight to the hospital where I had applied for a secretary position before I got the Photo Haus job.  That position is still open and I’ve an interview this tuesday.  All I want is a job!

11/18 The Dark Ages

   It’s been a month!  And much can happen in that amount of time.My new home is my old home, tucked away in a small farming town within the central Washington agricultural desert.  Irrigation, of course, makes that oxymoron possible, and this quaint little area of the world gets more and more beautiful as I get older.  There’s a distinct memory from growing up of some family friends visiting from out of state and commenting that this valley we live in is just absolutely gorgeous!  I’m not sure whether my body followed suit or not, but my mind spun a 180 on its heels and said, “WHAT??”  I saw it as plain ugly and boring then, but now with more well-attuned eyes I see the unmistakable beauty in the layers of orchards covering the rolling hills, and can appreciate the low hum of an ag-based community.  It still is, though, relentlessly boring.This very fact alone was the catalyst for a group of people from Zillah (of all places) to start a swing dance scene in the Yakima Valley.  I mean, if you can’t find your entertainment, make it yourself!!  It has been a slow process, but they are up to at least 2 dances a month with 40-60 people attending.  And most everyone is good and getting better!  I’m trying to catch up to speed with the group talent by taking every lesson I can get my paws on, and am having an absolute BLAST.  I’ve got the lindy, charleston and east coast down pretty well, with plenty to work on in terms of fluency and my move repertoire.  I can’t tell you how blessed I am by this group and the friends that come with it.Work, on the other hand, is a big fat question mark.  I’ve been hired by the only professional studio/photo lab in the area, yet it’s still unclear to me what a future with them could look like.  The owner who interviewed me two weeks ago said some lofty things like they need a second photographer and are open to see in which direction they could stretch the business with me coming on the team, but he also said that he’d like me in the deli that he’s opening up in his 1 hr lab/coffee house combo store across town.  “Deli?” I thought, hmmmm.  Only time will tell.There’s also been some adventure around here lately because our water pump (in the well) went and broke itself last Sunday.  Now, when you don’t have running water, turning on the faucet is a hard habit to kick, especially when you’re hands are dirty or cheesy or oily or sudsy or whatever.  Right when I was first thirsty after the pump broke I realized I had these wonderful flask-shaped water bottles unopened in the basement.  And I should emphasize that I was really thirsty.  So when I dug the first one out I had to laugh because, and I had forgotten this, the bottles are made by a company called, and labeled as, Liquid Salvation.  At no other time would that audacious claim look more like reality than right then. :)  Living with no water, I’ve showered at friends’ houses and carried drinking water from miles away back home.  There is a significant stack of dishes looming over me, and I even “bathed” last night with water headed via teapot and a couple washcloths over the kitchen sink.  But this evening, as I had in hand a very large cooking pot and was hunkered down with a headlamp in the dark, fetching pond water from a cascade of the waterfall in order to be able to flush a toilet inside, I thought to myself, “This is getting ridiculous.”

10/13 Untitled

It has been a heck of a week.The Good:  My friend Josh’s wedding was over near Seattle.  Josh was a theater major at Washington State back in the day and had asked one of his buddy thespians to officiate the wedding.  This Chicagoan-stand-up-comedian-turned-minister had been to very few weddings, but said he read up on how they should go before he came.  And after his very short and hilarious ceremony in which he compared love to the Puyallup State Fair and quoted fromThe Princess Bride, he concluded tying the knot with;
“And by the power invested in me by that internet church I signed up with, I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Regan!”The Bad:  I spent last week up in Whistler, BC where some friends and I congregated for a few days of chair lift assisted, pure adrenaline, downhill mountain biking with lots of jumps and drops and just general thrill candy.  I was afraid something would happen to me; I asked my friends to pray for me; I had talked myself into taking it slow and easy; but all it took was a short lapse of reason and I went cannonballing off my bike into the dirt.  I lost a day and a half of riding because of the crash and today my shoulder still hurts, but it’s not “injured” by any serious definition.The Ugly:  Back in Zillah, in the middle of the church service on Sunday we got word that a dear friend had died that morning in a head-on collision.  I don’t know how many of you have seen or would remember the opening scene to Evita!, but it went something like that – the sobbing and wailing, without the soaring guitar riffs.  We all cried in fact, and it took a good hour before anyone could say anything.  Tonight as a number of friends gathered in a small living room, it was the first time there was much said.  There were stories passed around like sweet cough drops on a deathly sore throat.  I, being the least affected by the loss because we only met last spring, am having a difficult time watching all my best friends here try to cope with their hearts being torn apart.  I can attest, though, that God’s Holy Spirit is the Comforter in this small town, and none of us could be getting by without Him.

9/29 Last Man Standing

The season is done, the lodge is shut down, the workers have fled, and I will be leaving tomorrow.  It’s a good feeling to have some space and time to myself for the first time in months, although I miss my lodge friends dearly.Well, one main reason to keep a blog is to record the ridiculous things that happen in life, so my last bike ride should be mentioned.Wait!  Don’t just tune me out because it’s about biking – it only happened on the ride, it had nothing to do with pedaling over rocks and dirt.It happened just as I was starting out.  See, you can start on the trail over where the horse trailers park and have a brutally rocky first two minutes on the trail, or you can take a shortcut.  The shortcut is, obviously, the better choice, so that’s the route I normally take.  The path goes not through, but…well, ok - kind of through one of the campsites.  And as they say, if you play with fire so many times eventually you get burned.This day there was nothing short of an unhappy camper tending those grounds and, as I blew by his little stake of land for the weekend, he yelled at me something fierce, but when I turned around to say something that would ease his mind he chucked a rock at me!  And this was a baseball-size rock, mind you, with a second one ready to go at my face if I even looked like I was thinking of inviting myself over for tea and crumpets on his land.  Needless to say, my feet were swift and I was out of there lickity split!And I laughed my way down the trailLater, talking with Devon on the phone, I contemplated bringing the camper guy a peace offering (wine, beer, eg.) because he was obviously in an incurably sour mood.  Despite Devon’s reassuring me that doing so would make an exponentially better blog entry, I was overtaken not only by lethargy but also by our 4 1/2 hour phone conversation.  And now that I think about it, that’s the scary part of the day :)

9/23 Organic Chromaticism

I’m sitting at the computer now, and I’ve been sitting at the computer for too long.  With the season about over here at The Lodge I’ve got plans to orchestrate and ends to tie up, which means spending time on the computer.  I have, however been out doing some photography of the fall colors, which are in full “bloom” over here in the Teton range.  Tomorrow I’ll go up and see if my beloved Palisades Creek Trail is popping out with yellows and oranges, but, in the mean time, I thought you might want to adorn your senses with some chromatic crack.  Enjoy!

9/16 The Pharmacist Who Ate

I showed up for work at 6:30 this morning only to find out that we didn’t have any guests.  (The only 2 that were here left at 4:30 for their flight)  So I was compelled to lure anyone I could into the kitchen so I could cook them breakfast.  This included the Boyd’s Coffee delivery man, every staff member .., and a friend of one of our fishing guides.  While cooking a breakfast sandwich for this friend-guy we chatted a little and I soon found out that he works in the pharmacy at the local hospital where I had to go to get my rabies shots.  Being that I had just paid unholy amounts of money for the pharmacy bill there I asked him semi-jokingly if he could help get my costs down, and I nearly died when he told me he actually could and would do that, but it’s too late because I’ve already paid it.  Oh the fate of it all!!
Argh.
I’m still in shock over the what-ifs.
The funny part of the meeting was when he asked me what I was in the hospital for, I told him for rabies, he asked what bit me, I said a coyote, and he said, “No way!  YOU’RE the guy who was sleeping out and got bit?!?”  Haha, that made me laugh.And today’s extra tidbits are that I made a quiche for the first time – delicious – and I got a hair cut.  If you see a guy driving a blue Subaru who has a bald head, it’s me!  I was just getting sick of having to wear hats while cooking.  Ok, I lied, it’s just shorter, nothing you haven’t seen before.  Ta ta!

9/8 Photo finish

I just finished my annual “bike to the top of Palisades creek” extravaganza and I feel like crap.  I’ve never experienced the whole get-sick-from-exercise thing, and it is horrible.    Just thought you should know.

8/31 Budget Travel

I’ve been wanting to post this for a while, but they told me I had to wait 3 months for their publishing rights expire on my contributions…so…without further ado…I give you the complete unpublished questionnaire I sent in to Budget Travel magazine for their June issue (of which I was a featured contributor).They’re pretty fun questions too, so enjoyWhere do you live now, and what’s your occupation/day job? (I haven’t lived anywhere for more than 4 months since college, so…here’s an answer)
I’m living out in Washington state and currently working as a web designer.

I was at the Nairobi airport, flying home through Cairo, but my tickets out of Cairo were not confirmed.  Because I might have had to stay in Cairo a couple days Egyptian policy said I needed to get a yellow fever shot.  Before I left I was “immunized” for $50 in Nairobi…without ever getting a needle in my arm.  Just a stamp and signature and I was good to go!

Photographs!  I like to take portraits of people I meet, not just to have the shot, but because they make the perfect segue to detailed stories when you’re sharing your trip with others.Favorite airport and why:
The Madeira Funchal, hands down.  The runway spans a short peninsula, and so whichever way you come from you approach it over the ocean.  The sensation is spectacular – it looks as if you’re heading straight for a swim!(not for print, but check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CMAnSnqIXQ and you’ll see what I mean.)

Wherever friends and family are.  There are some beautiful places with adventures to be had, but there’s no substitute for being with the people you love.Your most daring travel adventure… (couldn’t decide, so I’ll give you a selection)
- In hindsight, my most daring trip was in college during spring break.  We packed my Subaru with four girls and myself for a 3,400 mile road trip down to New Orleans and back.  On the way down some of the inexperienced drivers toasted my clutch and we spent an unplanned part of the trip in Abilene, TX.  We ended up with a solid two days in New Orleans and a lot of fond memories, but I lost my sanity somewhere along the way, and I didn’t find it again for a couple weeks.
- I think a trip wouldn’t be a trip without a little adventure.  I’ve slept out under the stars dozens of times and, with the owner’s permission, in an internet cafe once.  I’ve weathered storms in caves, hiked through snow fields in running shoes, and taken the train around the country.  I’ve let a hitchhiker ride on the top of my car because there was no room inside.  Adventure is having fun in the unknown.
- Anytime I go off on my own it feels like a daring adventure.

Life has been a constant road trip for the last 3 years, with my little Subaru logging over 100,000 miles!  The longest, single, round-about stretch was from New Orleans to Boise, and it took three weeks.  I drove overnight up to London, Ontario, and then across to Monterrey through Chicago, Denver and Reno.  From there I went down Highway 1 to Pasadena, up to Sedona, Arizona and then to Moab, Utah.  But those are just the pinpoints on the map.  Like many things (such as faith) the experience of a road trip can’t be told or expressed, you have to live it yourself to really know.Your current travel gripe…
Gas prices and car trouble.

BBC’s Planet Earth

Austrian (German), but maybe that’s because I’ve met so many beautiful Austrian ladies.

A couple weeks ago I had the best espresso of my life at Moon Monkey while taking the train through Bourbonnais, IL.  The drink was called Cafe Meil.  It’s a latte with honey and cinnamon.

A bandanna selection – they have so many uses!  Have you ever needed a rag or dust sheild, a satchel, padding for souveniers or something to shut out the daylight for impromptu sleeping?  Bandannas.

Satisfaction.

8/29 Cavewoman

After posting this, I noticed that it’s my 100th blog!!  I think I’ll celebrate by giving you a real treat for the next one :)I feel like summer has absolutely kicked my butt!  It’s been so busy and crazy for two months that I want to curl up and simply process the whole thing.  As I’m writing this I’m listening to a new CD Devon sent me with a mix of Wizard Rock songs on it.  If you aren’t the biggest dork in the world, you might not know that the Harry Potter book series has inspired it’s own cult musical following with bands like Harry and the Potters, The Moaning Myrtles, The Butterbeer Experience, The Mudbloods, Draco and the Malfoys, The Ministry of Magic, The Whomping Willows, and The Parselmouths.  Sound dumb?  Well, their music is pretty bad because most of them are recorded on a Mac in a dorm room (or some equivilent), but catchy and fun.  Now all we need is a musical genre inspired by Douglas Adams….
…anyway….Miss Annie just came to visit me for a few days, and we had a blast with all the Jackson-area to-do’s, starting with backpacking.  There’s a trail going up the back side of the Tetons that leads to a couple caves and we trekked the four point five miles up to the Wind Cave entrance which is a nice hike, but nothing to write home about.  I’ve actually been up to Wind Cave numerous times with whomever happens to be visiting because it’s a nice destination – and this time, for the first time, we brought lights!  You would think that’d be a normal item on the check-off list for hiking to a cave, but, whatever.The entrance to the cave is huge.  Ginormous!  Four stories tall, which slopes back to barely standing room as you climb the rock slide that litters the floor.  In the back is a hole probably about the size of a Hobbit door that blows wind out at you, hence the name.  Anyway, Annie and I took our lights and climbed in to see how far we could go.So…have you heard of altitude sickness?  It’s kind of a low-oxygen thing that is normally signified by a headache or nausea or dizziness, but it can also lead to loopiness.  Or, as one sign on a mountain in Coloradowarns, “You may underestimate dangers.”Annie had driven up from an elevation of 820 ft. to about 6500 where we started our hike and then 8800 where the cave is – all in 24 hours.  As we ventured further and further into the winding hole I asked her, “Hey Annie, do you feel like there’s less oxygen in here than there should be?”  She said no, and so I just figured I was exerting myself and that’s why I was out of breath.  I DID know that there was enough oxygen to survive, but just had this sense that there was less than outside.  So we keep crawling back and walking back, and ducking back and climbing back until about a quarter mile in to the cave we hit a hole.  The cave might continue on the other side, and it might continue down in the 15 ft pit, but we can’t tell.  There has to be a hole to the outside world somewhere, or where would the wind come from at the entrance?  We’ll never know.  I checked out the pit, and simply said, “Ok, that’s it then, back we go!” but Annie wanted to go down.  We don’t have any ropes there’s no way to get back up.  But we could just climb back up!  Those aren’t what I would consider handholds, and it’s all wet and slippery.  Oh, c’mon!  No way.I’m starting to freak out a little bit because the puzzle is fitting together in my mind – that I’m way deep in a cave with someone who’s lost her grip.  She’s a daring and adventurous girl in the first place, which is why I like her, but this has come down to crazy talk and there’s no way to convince her that what she wants to do is STUPID.  Sorry, Annie, but it was.  The most effective thing I could come up with was to just walk away, and thankfully it worked!  We even got a chuckle out of the whole ordeal the next day as we hiked up and around and saw some of the most beautiful scenery this world has to offer.  Man, I LOVE the Tetons!!

8/15 Dropping like it’s hot

    I want to give HUGE props to my friends Lisa and Streya who for the first time went cliff jumping yesterday.  These girls have guts for sure, being that the drop was somewhere around 25 feet!
^that’s Streya, from Philidelphia^
^and that’s Lisa, from Austria (with me)^And I went for my first of four follow-up rabies shots today.  I got the same sort of attention that I did when visiting the ER on tuesday, which was that everyone wanted to hear the story.  I guess having rabies rates up there in the hospital excitement scale, I mean my own sister (ER nurse) even gave me “at least 9 out of 10 on [her] triage story scale. :)”   But I’d rather not be paying for all this instead!The follow-up shot was NOTHING; I didn’t even feel it the needle was so small, and that was the biggest relief in the world after the three-poke toe party they had at my foot last time.  I spoke to the PA on duty who had just attented a rabies seminar a couple months ago and she said that, although there’s not enough data to draw any conclusions about whether this vaccination will last forever, no one who has been vaccinated has ever got rabies.  So maybe Lion Tamer would be a good occupation, or possibly coordinator of a travelling Bat Circus.  I mean, if rabies isn’t an issue…  :)
No, no, no, that’s just silly.The definite highlight of the trip today, surpassing even the fact that the clinic didn’t charge me* for the visit because they felt sorry for me, was that the nurse patched my new shot wound with a Wiley E. Coyote bandaid.  How much sweeter can you get?!

7/12 I got shot

    A few days ago I had the time to write an absolutely beautiful blog post about a recent happening in life, but it got deleted!  By accident, of course.  At the time I felt a late-night surge of frustration swell up, I might have thrown a few things, but in the end it turned out to be a good thing because there have been some turns of events.  Let’s then set the mood for the story.  Take the clock back a week or two to last Saturday.  Not the last one, the one before last: August 2nd.  My friends from Canada had driven down en masse for a large Bartsch Family Gathering of 27.  Twenty eight with me.  This is a family that one of my best friends from high school married into and we got to know each other so well at the wedding that I’ve been back to visit them in Ontario, and one of them (John Bartsch) has joined me for a couple mountain biking adventures too.Be warned, you might get grossed out by a couple things.I drove up on Saturday to Yellowstone and met the whole clan.  We had dinner at one of the lodges while sharing greetings and hugs and stories, and afterward about half of us went to the campsites while the other have went to their cabins.  I, being only one, decided to crash with them in their campsites rather than be lonely off in my own.  They naturally gave me a little grief for wanting to sleep out under the stars instead of in a tent, bringing up possible issues like bears and rain, but they knew that I was set on it so they let me be.  I always sleep out under the stars when I go places.  I’ve done this a million times.  I know what I’m doing!  There is absolutely nothing to worry about!   I mean, c’mon, this is just how I sleep, layers of blankets and nothing more:Well, you might be sensing that there was an event during the night, but let me tell you the specifics.  I wish it had been rain, but there was something a little more curious out there, something on four legs.  Suddenly in the night I woke to a sharp pain in my foot.  I guess the first thought I had was my foot was asleep, but when I looked up to make sure that it wasn’t a bear or anything I saw something smaller.  Small with sharp teeth.  It was a (freaking) coyote nibbling on my toe!!If you’re not familiar with coyotes, they are bigger than foxes but smaller than wolves.   I can’t tell you how many nights I’ve heard a pack of coyotes howling nearby where I was sleeping.  Utah, Idaho, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Montana – they’re everywhere!  They are also infamous for avoiding contact with humans, so my reasoning was that my feet, sticking out into the cool night air and covered in crazy-thick woolen socks, might have looked and smelled like a small furry animal.So I sat up and turned on my lantern and waved my arms until the little furrball brat scurried away into the night.  I was, as you might imagine, reasonably shook up, so I went to check on my foot in the bathroom and then set up my “emergency” tent for the rest of the night.  The next morning I had some explaining to do of why I was now sleeping in a tent, but we all got some good laughs out of the thing.Ok, fast forward.  This last Sunday night I got a call from my parents.  We hadn’t talked for three weeks so there was lots to say, including, of course, the Yellowstone experience.  Many people had expressed concern for my health up to that point, and they were no different, but I reassured them that there was no inflamation and the park rangers said the Yellowstone coyotes didn’t have rabies.  Well, while I was off playing all day two days ago Monday (visiting Yellowstone again, actually) my dad made some phone calls to some of his old contacts in the Montana Department of Health and found out that there was enough of a chance that the coyote might have rabies that I really should get the vaccine.  Apparently there are bats in Yellowstone with the disease and there are coyotes just north in Montana who are known to be afflicted also, so the chances are good enough to warrant action.And you would never guess what rabies shots are like.  They’re not big needles, per se, but I ended up getting a tetnis shot, the vaccine shot, and seven, count them, seven (!) separate injections of something called immuglobin (sp?) that is essentially a ready-for-action serum of antibodies.  They got me twice in each arm and once on each hip and thigh, and the worst of all, one shot of immuglobin in the toe.  Well, one “shot” but they had to stick it in three times in order to get all the fluid to fit.  OW.  I have ne’er felt a pain like that before.  Nine shots.  It was insanely aweful.Well, I hobbled out of the ER and treated my treated-self to a splendid plate of delisciousness at Texas Road House.  I figured if I had just spent two grand on a vaccination then another 20 bucks was well in order!

7/31 The last day of Jewly

    Sorry about the title, it was joke from a few minutes ago over at the Lodge.  We have a group from the LA synagogue to fish here.  They’re really giving our staff more trouble than any other guests, and so the jokes are flowing.  One man (not boy) even asked for gummy bears!  And yes, he got them.Anyway, I’ve been wanting to post for a while now because life has been such a blast, but haven’t settled on anything specific to write about.  It’s been a bunch of hiking and swimming and frisbee and work.  But to start it would be best to say that I’m now a babysitter.Yes, a babysitter.  Or at least that’s what Steph likes to call me.  Stephanie and her father Russ live just up the creek from us and I like to go over and spend a lot of time there because they are always just sitting out on their porch drinking Diet Pepsi and talking about nonsense.  A few weeks ago Steph said that her daughter Sonje was coming and that I needed to take her down the river, which I of course agreed to.  Well, a trip down the river led to a croquet game which led to swimming which led to more adventures, and after the week of her visit was over we were good buddies!  Well, Sonje (pronounced Sonya) left on a tuesday and Stephanie’s other daughter, Striya, came.  Now she’s been here for two weeks and will stay for even a couple more.  We’ve been a bit more limited in our activities, but there’s still been plenty of time for all the standards and even a couple bonus events of star gazing, motorcycle riding, and a big group Texas Hold’em game.  Today Striya made my day and came swimming with me for almost a mile!  She pretty much rocks.The punch line to all this is that Sonje is 31 and Striya is 35 – and I’m they’re babysitter :)  Or, like I said, that’s just what Steph likes to call me, and she and Russ let me use all their toys (canoe, motorcycle, drift boat), so she can call me whatever she darn pleases!(ps if you look in my July 08 picture folder you’ll see Sonje in the b/w canoe picture and Striya in the last lake photo (among others).  Rinde is her daughter)

7/20 Handy Aroma

I keep wanting to mention my hands in a blog, but the only time I remember is right before I go to bed and so it never happens.  I wanted to let you know that my hands stink.
It’s a different smell every day, but some of the aromas are repeated depending on what food I handled that day.  My least favorite is the garlic smell followed closely by the fish smell.  It’s not like I go around sniffing my hands, but the whiff comes during the nightly shower when I go to rinse the soap off my face, and I catch the unwelcome stench of whatever pungent ingredients I handled that day.  Sometimes the garlic smell lasts for a few days, which I hate.  That, right there, in all it’s ickiness, is the downside of my job.  But I’m in the middle of my “weekend” and so there is barely an odor tonight.  And speaking of tonight, I was able to finish my second USA Today crossword just after dinner!!

7/15 Crossword

I just finished an entire crossword!!It would be good to admit that I looked up the last word on the internet, and one of our guests gave me another word, but I’ll take what I can get and still be proud of the accomplishment.  That’s a record of 2 and 20 for the summer so far.  Woot!Well, gotta get to bed and cook breakfast for rich people tomorrow…
…by the way, the dirty, greasy fingers in the picture are from me playing bicycle doctor; and after posting this I realized I spelled terse wrong, but have now changed it.  G’night.

7/10 Weird Dream

    You might guess by the title that you’ll be subject to a completely nonsensical and esoteric storyline that my subconscious dreamt up, but I assure you that it’s nothing of the sort.  I remember VERY few dreams – maybe one every four months or so, and the dream the other night was that I was at my college graduation.  And that’s it!  Three hours of dreaming wasted on boring processions, speeches, and pretending I was going to miss a lot of people.   There was nothing spectacular or abnormal or sensical about it, just a long, dull ceremony.  Bah!  What a waste.

7/7 Slippery Friends

    WOW.  Yesterday I went on a short little hike with Lisa, and we stopped by this little pool with a waterfall just to check it out.  I’ve hiked and biked by it a million times, but only remember going down there once.  So I was off taking fun little photos of soft and fuzzy waterfalls and when I get back Lisa asks me if I’d seen the fish.  The fish?  No, what fish?  She points to the fall right in front of us, and low and behold a big, beautiful rainbow trout jumps from the base of the waterfall trying to get up it!  We sat there and watched it for a good 45 minutes, absolutely engaged in this show these fish were putting on for us.  There were at least ten trout of all sizes swimming around in the calm water behind the falls, and every now and then one would leap four feet in the air up the water fall, splashing right through it and landing on the other side.  The fall they were trying to jump up was at least twice that height, so they had/have no chance, but that sure didn’t stop them.  I even went back today with some other buddies and they were still going at it.  Now if anyone knows why this was going on, let me know.  I didn’t think trout went upstream to lay their eggs like salmon do.  Anyway, it made for some cool pictures, of course.  To see a couple more, go to my flickr page.Also my profile picture of the lightening was taken last night – very cool.And tonight we’re going to see Wall-E at The Spud Drive-In :)

7/3 Baldy

    This morning at work we had a phenomenon.  It was weird, and my friend Shayde had to point it out.  You see, there’s this new girl working for us who just started here the other day.  Her name is Lisa, she’s from Austria, and she’s really cool to hang out with.  Anyway, we ended up having one guy come in WAY early “just to hang out” even though he was on his day off, and another guy come in an hour early for work just to hang out.  Both of them just sort of hovered around Lisa!  Even though the two guys had their “excuses”, I’d like to point out that Austrian hotness has magnetic powers beyond the realm of scientific knowlege.
Also today, we climbed the mountain.  The mountain, that is, that sits right out our windows and had been begging for me to climb it all the years I’ve been here.  Mount Baldy: 9830 feet.  We left at about 1:45 and got back 8 hours later, taking a ridgeline “trail” to the top, and then a gulley back.  The gulley was unplanned and we had to guess our way home from there, but it turned out okay.  It all started because we decided it would be fun to slide this snow chute down from the peak for 500 feet.  At the bottom we had to bushwack our way out for 3 or 4 miles, which was actually the funnest thing ever.  I guess I have this thing with pretending I’m an explorer or something – it’s fun :)
I am, of course, sore, and I usually have trouble sleeping when my muscles are trying to recouperate, but I guess I’ll have a go at it so I can be up to cook at 5:30.  Tomorrow we go to Jackson for the festivities!!

6/30 The Snow’s Gone

    Let’s talk about the weather, shall we?  It ramped up to a full 87 degrees yesterday, and today the mercury will burst the thermometer at a blistering 91.  Sarcasm intended.  The snow has in the last couple days fully melted off the gigantic hill that I can see out my window here.
The Jackson Hole area actually has a much shorter summer than anywhere else in the lower 48, which gives us only a couple months to do our (sorta’) hot-weather activities.  I’ve got two favorite spots for swimming around here that will be coming into use very soon!  The first one is up the road at the Palisades Reservoir and the second one is in Palisades Creek. (side note: I looked up ‘palisade’ in the dictionary and it means ‘a line of high cliffs.’  Quite fitting for the landscape around here)  The reservoir is larger, warmer, and, while you’re swimming, has a great view of the lush and towering hills that embank the water.  But some days it’s just too boaty out there, so I’ve found/made a little hole in the creek to swim in right about where it dumps into the Snake River.  I like opening my eyes under the clear creekwater and getting a fish’s eye view of the world.  I had a camera with waterproof housing to get pictures of things like that, but a couple months ago in a surprising turn of events…I lost it.Now I just finally got rid of a couple people who came to visit this week, and I don’t think they read this so it’s probably safe to say that I’m glad they’re gone – because I just love them to death and it sure is hard to get things done when they’re around. :)  Mark and Julie have been talking about coming for eons and can now check Swan Valley off their list – until next summer.  We really had so much fun doing all the hiking and biking and exploring that there is to do in the area, but in humility I am going to recount one little semi-chuckleish event that I was reluctant to explain to my coworkers about how I got the scar.  (three days old in this picture)
It’d be safe to say I have a fetish with handstands.  They come in handy when you need to wake yourself up on a long drive, when you want some good exercise, or when you just want to enhance where you are and what you’re doing with something different:
Mark, Julie and I had hiked down Fall Creek Falls, which is always an adventure for those who’ve never done it before, and the mood was winding down.  These falls are just magnificently layed out, with staircases of pour-downs scattered across a span of 70 feet or so, with a base just as wide that rises up out of the Snake River.  Here’s a side view of the falls:
This is, as you would guess, a perfect place for handstands.  On a wide base with water flowing over it at the base of a stunning waterfall.  Who knows why I told Mark and Julie not to take a photo, but as I took position and threw myself forward on to my hands I knew something was wrong.  Something was heavy.  Something was weak.  My clothes were heavy and I was weak.  I collapsed onto my forhead immediately, but because my body was already in handstand position I balanced there for a good 10 seconds – right on my forhead.  I couldn’t move!  I wanted so badly to fall over because my neck hurt, but there was nothing I could do, I was balanced!  Anyway, my weight eventually took me backwards down a small step in the waterfall and into a surprisingly comfortable sitting position.  Pain lurking around the corner, all I could do was laugh; and Mark too.  Julie was kind enough to make sure I was okay before losing it to laughter.
I felt so stupid!I’ll also include a few photos from one of our bike rides up Palisades Creek Trail

6/10 I can hear the music

    I’ve come into a bout of amnesia.  It started yesterday when I came from the staff house (known as Wayne’s World) over to the Lodge via our creek bridge and up the grassy slopes.  There was nothing along the walk to suggest that the place had undergone any changes or shifts since last fall, nothing to hint that three feet of snow had covered the grounds for an annoyingly long time this winter, or that people’s pets and relatives had passed away in the interum.  It seemed to my mind that I had never left, and never ventured off to New York, D.C., Seattle or Portland.  First thing I was talking with my friend Bonnie, and there seemed to be no separation between when we last parted at the Lodge and now – even her February visit down to New Orleans almost seemed to have never happened.  I was experiencing a weird fog over my recollection, truly a bout of amnesia!  Yet now toward the end of my second day here, and especially with writing about it, the effect seems to be lifting to reveal the memories of what happened not only three three days, but three months ago.  Three days ago I was out at Shari’s until 2am with Astin, and three months ago I was buzzing around our nation’s capital, probably in a museum of some sort.  My mind must be reminded in order to preserve the memories, it seems.Heck, I don’t even know what I’m going to say when someone asks what I’ve done all winter.  The guests are often more curious than my coworkers about things of that sort, possibly because they are some of the hardest-working, successful people in the country and it amuses them to find that a young man can only have a seasonal job: “What, then, do you DO the rest of the year??”  Yes, my coworkers have asked also, but after I say a couple sentences they’re eyes start to glaze over and they shift their gaze as if they really just expected me to say, “Oh, nothing” and then ask them about the weather.  I haven’t even told anyone about getting my photos published.  They really don’t care, and likewise I don’t care what they did because I know the answer already – they plowed snow and drank wiskey.  The guests, though, they tend to be genuinely curious.We get our first guests on Saturday, so let the band play!

6/2 The Beach

    The Beach.  There were times of confusion yesterday as Devon and I lollygagged about the sand and surf of Oregon.  We drove over to the coast for a day of hiking and playing (next paragraph), but at the same time I was reading a book she had lent me titled The Beach.  So every now and then, I would say something like, “You know inThe Beach, with Mr. Duck, there’s just something weird about him, I can’t place it, it’s like….” and she would be giving me this blank stare, wondering why I was referring to the crow or gulls there on the beach as Mr. Duck.  And I wasn’t catching on the the confusion of terms either because, of course(!) I would be referring to the book and not our immediate location.  Well, it gave us some laughs and I’m glad to say now that the confusion will be no more because I’ve finished the book, and am rather disappointed that I spent so many days/hours with it.  If you like juvenile sensationalism, The Beach is a book for you, but not for me.Well, like I said we made merry our time on the coast with some fantastic hiking on Hobbit Trail and cartwheels in the sand.  The Hobbit Trail – or maybe called The Valley Trail, but it was near the Hobbit Trail – took us away from the ocean into the old, mossy, deep forest where salamanders thrive and the rhodadendrons are in full and perfect bloom.  The area was so moist that moss covered every inch of the forsest floor!  Then down on the beach we explored a little, but mainly did cartwheels.  Or I did cartwheels and Devon played this spin game that took some type of coordination that I lacked.  So with my carwheels I tried to span the beach, cliff to surf, a number of times – but was always so dizzy half-way through that some dire and flippant movements replaced the cartwheel in an attempt to make it the remaining distance ot the surf without stopping or walking.  I think all in all, my carwheel has improved since yesterday morning, but I’m too sore today to verify that claim.Looks like I’m heading to Boise tomorrow and then Sunday on to Swan Valley!

5/29 Seattle, an apology, and some news

Apology: Sorry for all the pictures at once.I just uploaded two months worth of JPG memories – because I’ve been neglectful of the whole post-as-you-go process that’s the whole point of this MySpace thing.  In my defence I cite that the computer has been the source of employment (if you just read that as enjoyment, look at it again) for the last couple months, and so spending any uneccessary time on it has had no appeal.Now, this last weekend Devon and I took a trip up, from Oregon, to Seattle for a Folklife Festival that entertains the city every Memorial weekend!  We heard all sorts of music from rock and reggae to acoustic old-foggie stuff.  There was Jewgrass music and Celtic/Arabic too.  Native American songs and African spirituals.  It was a blast!  Then we also did some singing and, of course, some dancing.  There were workshops galore, and we did some beginning Lindy Hop and a few Provencial (French) dances.  We broke off for an afternoon to poke around downtown and Pikes Place, which proved to be very much worthwhile because of all the really unique shops and restaurants nestled within its labrynth of hallways.We’re probably going to bop on over to the coast this weekend as a last hoorah before I kick off my summer work season.  Yes, my dear friends, I am going back to that wonderful Lodge over near Jackson Hole, nestled along Palisades Creek, between Mt Baldy and the gorgeous Snake River.  We live just down the road and can bike up the Creek Trail, swim in the reservoir, play frisbee golf .. or just hang out with the resident Austrians.  And for the first time in five years I’ll be getting a raise – because I have a new job.  I, am, the, new Breakfast Chef!  Wahooo!!It’s the only job I wanted, and up until this week it’s not been open, but now, I’m convinced, by the elaborate goodness of God, it’s been offered to me.  So here’s to a new chapter!  And a new adventure!  And good thing flipping eggs is easy :)

5/13 On Budget

There it was.  All of a sudden, in my hands, straight from the mailman, after a long journey across North America, postmarked in New York City, delivered to my door, ready to be gazed upon.  The first national magazine to publish my photos in print!  It won’t hit the newsstands for a couple weeks though.  I’m too excited to know what to say here, so a picture will take the place of words:Mr. Herndon was brought to NYC by the magazine as a thank-you because he is their longest-running subscriber.  He’s a huge opera fan, so they sent him on a backstage tour of the Met Opera House a few hours before the show, and I was there (along with a BT photo editor) to capture it all.  The guy was really nice, and kept us all entertained with his rambling stories, but they were good ones so we didn’t mind.  I still remember walking into the costume room, and being completely deluged by joy!  We had wandered through corridor and elevator, up and down and all around for a half hour, and there behind door number 56 was something like Santa’s workshop – but it wasn’t a movie set, it was real!  It was a very large room with dozens of large tables and dozens of workers measuring and cutting and sewing these magnificent costumes that the world’s best singers wear to perform.  The lighting was soft and the colors in the room were a perfect sepia-toned reality that just took your senses for a roller coaster ride of intense happiness.  Then we were brought to the wig room, and that was just awesome, although not as overwhelming as the previous costume workshop.  We got to talking with one of the men implanting hair into a wig, and the photo editor made a quick joke about coming to him in old age to get a wig.  Then, Wig Master looked Photo Editor straight in the eyes, and with all the sincerity in the world said, “Son, you can’t afford me.”  Wow.  Santa pays well!
Those were the most interesting rooms, but it’s noteworthily impressive that, when we were in a warehouse with 40-ft. high ceilings, our guide mentioned that we’re 5 floors below ground.  Dang!  Makes you wonder what else is beneath New York City (other than turtle lairs, of course).  I wonder what the…earthline?…of NYC would look like.  You know, the opposite of skyline.
Well, that’s all I’ve got for now.  I’m heading to bed so morning will be more bearable.  Ta ta for now!

5/3 Getting from point A to point B

To lay a foundation for what I did today you need to know that I lost my wallet.  Again.  In fact, I’ve been keeping track of how many credit cards have passed through my hands since opening an REI Visa account five years ago, and the card I just lost along with the rest of my wallet was 11.  Number twelve will be arriving in the mail shortly.  I know it’s sad, but the worst part is that I’m not bothered by it anymore.No wallet = shouldn’t drive.  Needing to meet a friend for dinner today, the only way that seemed to be possible without driving was to hitchhike.  Well, it would be a nice 30 mile bike ride, but the weather was questionable and the big knobby tires on my bike would make for certain misery after 10 miles.  So I made up a nice cardboard sign with the name of the town, then set off afoot and, well, athumb.  Right when I got to the freeway entrance (3 mi down the road) some guy picked me up and drove most of the way, and then another one took me remaining 5 miles.  Both were extremely cool guys with relatively nice cars just hopping between friends’ houses for the day; a good experience all in all.I took my first hitchhike back in my first summer living out in the woods.  That may sound fairly Mowgli-like, but I was working for Cascade Raft Co. in Idaho and all the employees were given land on a river- island on which to camp.  Anyway, when you go kayaking or rafting it’s only part of the way things work that you hitchhike back to your car once you’ve run the river.  I learned back then that appearance is crucial to being picked up!  If you only stood by the road people would pass you by for hours, BUT if you were wearing a life vest or something kayaky you’d have a ride instantly.  Today was the furthest I’ve ever hitched.
I’ve been picking up hithhikers since high school.  My first one ever was this lady out walking the back roads of farm country late at night(/early morning).  I forget the details, but she was kinda drunk and really nice, wanting to talk about lots of things.  And she only needed a ride home.  Ever since each rider has been his/her own little adventure.  I’ll say that mild weirdness is par for the course, some more so than others.  You’d be surprised how many stories involve just leaving his town because some girl was too much for him, and he doesn’t know where he’ll end up.  The wanderer archetype in flesh.  I really hate passing people by because I’ve got too much clutter and can’t fit them, but that doesn’t always stop me.  Most people say they feel bad passing hitchhikers by, but as the Bible told my friend Chiss today, ”If I speak [of feeling bad]…but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.”  So there you have it, my little treatise on hitchhiking.  For more on the subject, consult our good friend Douglas Adams, and read some of Dan’s blog.  Start with the “Homeless dude” post!

4/28 Plotting away

Reading, typing, surfing…clicking.  Man, I just want to be outside!  But websites must be worked on.  Anyway, I ran into a cool new video on CNN that gives a little hope in the midst of a confusing war:http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/04/28/btsc.iraqprison/index.html?eref=rss_topstoriescnnSTCVideoClick the Video tab.  Once the first clip ends, just let it sit, and the second half will start on its own.

4/21 New website!

You know, one of my pet peaves in life is reading a blog that’s apologizing for not blogging.  So I’m not gonna do it.  I’m only going to say that I’ve been writing letters instead – and loving that very much.  For me the act of blogging is less letting everyone know what I’m up to and more of getting stuff from my life written down somewhere.  It is SO fun to go back and read over my entries from years ago! (do I hear an amen from the other bloggers?)  The other alternative, diaries, never worked for me, except for a short few weeks two summers ago, but I ended up losing it anyway.  So blogging has fulfulled that purpose, but there’s definitely equal satisfaction in writing a letter on quality parchment paper, sealing it off in a classy envelope and licking, yes licking it shut.  I’d go off and get one of those wax letter-sealing kits just to top it off, but I don’t want to be too weird about it.  You should try it.  Just pick one person, and write him/her every week.  If you don’t have a lot to say then stick in a fun photo or sketch, or something else quirky that you can’t send via email.  I mean, how many of us know what our friends’ handwriting even looks like?  Plus, you don’t even have to take it to the post office to mail it – just stick it in the mailbox at the end of the driveway on your way to church.  But don’t forget to put the flag up.CafferyPhoto.com
(and, as always, I’ve got my Flickr page)That’s it!  The new and not-so-shnazzy website.  A much more elaborate and dynamic site is in the works, with categories and tags and purchasing options and built-in full-body massage capabilities, but I just needed something up for when the May issue of Budget Travel comes out this week.(end note on the subject of blogs: I’ll be switching over to a bonafide blogging service one of these days and forsaking this Myspace joke)

4/25 Ow.

It’s 1:20 in the morning, I just got up to put lotion on a cut that was keeping me awake, and in the dark I clocked my eyebrow on a shelf.  The eyebrow, of all places.  I’ll be up for a while until the throbbing stops.
While I’m on this, it should be mentioned that I got word today from a local publication from New Orleans that they’re putting three of my photos in their next issue.  It’s going to be a summer dinning guide, and the restaurant I took photos for down there is being featured.  It almost worked out that one of my shots would be used for the cover, but that didn’t work out in the end.
Ok, throbbing over, sleep kicking in…

3/23 The goodness in humanity

When I was in New York City a year and a half ago I got my wallet pick-pocketed while walking through Times Square, so I was completely disheartened when I lost something this last time too.  I had a paycheck in my pocket, and at one point it just wasn’t there anymore!  I had signed it and stuck it in an envelope ready to mail off to my bank, and I lost it.  Figured it was stolen just like my wallet, or maybe dropped and trampled.  There’s no way of feeling like an idiot quite like having to call someone and asking them to cancel a check.  Anyway, I checked my bank account this morning, and the deposite was there!  Couldn’t believe mine eyes, but someone in New York City took the trouble to seal it and mail it.  How about that.Of course I keep telling myself to not be so stupid as to lose things all the time, but…yeah…..

3/22a The Doctor is in

(Written Thursday, March 20) It’s supposed to snow here tomorrow and the next couple days, and even though most people are ready for winter to be over I would welcome some freshness to the scenery.  And besides, I don’t have to leave the house tomorrow at all!So where am I?  Glad you inquired.  I’m in a town just a tad southerly of Chicago.  It’s been a beast of a time the last few weeks, making way around the country by train and needing to see and do so much that I wear myself into the ground.  My last few weeks in New Orleans was hectic because of needing to finish a web site for a restaurant down there, and then Amtrak took me over to DC for a week of non-stop walking, to NYC for a couple days of the same, and now to Chicago, home of the deep dish pizza, of which we ate the spinach-and-sausage variety tonight.  (and the restaurant was packed at 4 in the afternoon; how weird!)  My favorite spots in New York were this French bakery run by Mexicans where you can get tomato focaccia for a buck, and a vegan restaurant that serves soy versions of beef, chicken, scallop, shrimp and salmon.  But you don’t want to hear all about food.  In fact, let me bring you forward in time because I’m now on the train from Chicago.It’s been a splendid time thus far, and beautiful scenery.  Kids sledding, families waving, lots of people out taking pictures of the train passing, and Milwaukee.  Milwaukee is just beautiful.  It’s this old, industrial bricken city laying in a narrow valley, so the downtown surrounds the river and the rest of the cityscape jets up at angles in all directions.  On the train I’ve met plenty of pleasant people and have even been able to wash up with hot water; what else could one ask for?  A nice cocktail?  A swimming pool?  Having celebrity steal your seat?  I’ll give you two hints: there’s no pool and even if they did serve cocktails on Amtrak I’d be too cheap to buy one.So there I was, coming back to the train from a short walkabout in Minneapolis, and, lo!, there was a man in my seat!  Well, it was a couple seats which I had claimed for my sleeping dominion, but there were plenty more sets of seats available, so I was a little flustered.  The guy spoke pleasantly, but presented the argument that he wouldn’t want to move because all his stuff was in the overhead.  So, I gathered my belongings from the seat and from the overhead, and turned to walk back to the next car, and there was a man across the aisle holding up a make-shift sign that read: Dr. Phil.  Took me a minute, because I’m slow like that, to realize the situation.  So it was he, the dirty-rotten TV cellebronaire Dr. Phil, who stole my seat.  What I couldn’t figure out is why was this guy riding the train in coach?  Doesn’t he have a personal jet or something?  Oh well, I liked my new seat better anyhow.  Happy Easter, Dr. Phil.

3/22b Bunny tracks

(Writ on Easter Sunday) I woke slowly this morning after a good night’s sleep, stretched out in my (relocated) Amtrak seat-bed, stared blearily at nothing before I pulled back the curtains to expose the monotonous great plains whirring by, and thought to myself, “Well, I’ve got 15 hours to kill.”  How’s that to start a day!  Hum diddy dum dum….
The good thing about this train trip is I had a lunch at 12 noon, and then an hour later another lunch at 12 noon!  You gotta love changing time zones.  Show me a world better than one that allows for two lunches, and I’ll show you a pink pinguin painting in portugese.
Hey, I realized late in the day today that I did in fact have a copy of the Bible with me on the train in the form of an over-acted audio iPod version, so I was able to get some resurection scripture in my day, despite my being thick and not packing a copy.  The acted out version is funny, because Jesus and the disciples have these smooth, reflective qualities in their voices while everyone else has more rough and gruff to them.  You’d probably have to hear it, though, to realize the parts that are ludicrous.

2/25 ha-HA!
Current mood:Disorriented

I hope you read the intonation of the Subject right, because that’s how I feel right now.  You could possibly read it as “Boo-ya!” too, minus the boo-ya arrogance.  More Wahoo! or Yee-eah!  actually.  Excitement is what I’m trying to convey here.But more on that in a moment, first I’d like to mention that I bought some earrings the other day at Wal*Mart and have successfully reinstated one lobe as Pierced.  The other one seems to be closed, but who would guess anything else after not using the holes for 7 years?  I’m surprised the one hole was still there!  I’m still undecided about actually wanting my ears bejeweled, but I had to find out if the holes were still there, you know.  Of course, the last time my ears were pierced my hair was also dyed blonde and spiked.  Ha.Also before the fun news, I’m listening now to a mix of Wyclef Jean (hip-hop) and Jingle Spells (christmas wizard rock), and that’s why we love iTunes.Ok, ok, so…the train is taking me to DC this weekend to visit for a couple weeks.  Fun, fun, fun – I can’t wait to spend time in all the Smithsonians and go egg the White House with my friend Peter, but that’s not only what I’m excited about.  I’ll also be swinging through Chicago to go see some shows with Kandice, but again, that’s not specifically what makes me say Wahoo!  There’s nothing to indicate a state of longevity to this new found success, but the last two weeks have produced 3 new clients to employ my services.  The first is a restaurant here in New Orleans that is having me do major photography and their website, the second is a firm in Richmond, VA that wants the same, and the third is a magazine that is paying for my ticket to NYC so I can go take photos for a story in their May issue!  Budget Travel Magazine, that is.Wow, it’s just a bit overwhelming right now.  Going to New York on a business trip, how weird does that sound?  I’m going to Richmond on a business trip.  Weird.  Yes, sir, I’ll be to your office in Richmond in a week to take some photos and go over details so we can get this website up and running soon.  Weird.  Is this adulthood?  Weird.

2/22 Interesting

There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.

During this decade, 20-somethings go to school and take breaks from school. They live with friends and they live at home. They fall in and out of love. They try one career and then try another.Their parents grow increasingly anxious. These parents understand that there’s bound to be a transition phase between student life and adult life. But when they look at their own grown children, they see the transition stretching five years, seven and beyond. The parents don’t even detect a clear sense of direction in their children’s lives. They look at them and see the things that are being delayed.They see that people in this age bracket are delaying marriage. They’re delaying having children. They’re delaying permanent employment. People who were born before 1964 tend to define adulthood by certain accomplishments — moving away from home, becoming financially independent, getting married and starting a family.In 1960, roughly 70 percent of 30-year-olds had achieved these things. By 2000, fewer than 40 percent of 30-year-olds had done the same.Two of the country’s best social scientists (William Galston of the Brookings Institution and Robert Wuthnow of Princeton) have been trying to understand this new life phase. Through their work, you can see the spirit of fluidity that now characterizes this stage. Young people grow up in tightly structured childhoods, Wuthnow observes, but then graduate into a world characterized by uncertainty, diversity, searching and tinkering. Old success recipes don’t apply, new norms have not been established and everything seems to give way to a less permanent version of itself.Dating gives way to Facebook and hooking up. Marriage gives way to cohabitation. Church attendance gives way to spiritual longing. Newspaper reading gives way to blogging. (In 1970, 49 percent of adults in their 20s read a daily paper; now it’s at 21 percent.)The job market is fluid. Graduating seniors don’t find corporations offering them jobs that will guide them all the way to retirement. Instead they find a vast menu of information economy options, few of which they have heard of or prepared for.Social life is fluid. There’s been a shift in the balance of power between the genders. Thirty-six percent of female workers in their 20s now have a college degree, compared with 23 percent of male workers. Male wages have stagnated over the past decades, while female wages have risen.This has fundamentally scrambled the courtship rituals and decreased the pressure to get married. Educated women can get many of the things they want (income, status, identity) without marriage.What we’re seeing is the creation of a new life phase, just as adolescence came into being a century ago, and there is every reason to think this phase will grow more pronounced in the coming years. European nations are traveling this route ahead of us, Galston notes. Europeans delay marriage even longer than we do and spend even more years shifting between the job market and higher education.  Someday people will look back and wonder at the vast social changes wrought by the emerging social group that saw their situations first captured by “Friends.”

2/20 Intruder!

My aunt called me today, “Keith I need you to head over to Lacombe, QUICK!  The alarm company’s just called, we need to figure out what happened.”
See, we’ve got this property with two houses an hour outside New Orleans in a town called Lacombe.  It’s a wonderfully remote setting for a nice get-away, built by my grandparents in the 80′s, and no one lives there permanently.  I was the last person to stay there, which was last fall for a month.
When my aunt called I was already in the car heading that direction-ish, so I booked it out to the house, and at first glance everything looked normal.  No kicked-in doors, no broken windows, no sign of breaking and entering.  The entrance gate was even nicely shut.  I turn off the alarm and go inside to see if anything’s missing, but to my surprise the source of setting the alarm off flies right in front of my face and tweets!  It’s the cutest little bird with dark blue feathers fluttering around looking for the most convenient exit.  I open one of the side doors, and shoo it out, then search around a little and deduce that I must have flown down the chimney.

2/17 All-Star

I had a once in a lifetime experience today going to the NBA All-Star game here in New Orleans.  Only by happenstance was I able to go, but I couldn’t help but being excited.  Despite my general apathy towards professional sports, this game was at least promising for excitement and crowd enthusiasm.  The city was buzzing with tourists here for the game!We got to the stadium a couple hours early, making sure to get a parking spot, and so I had ample opportunity to poke around and check things out.  I have been to the arena many times before for Hornets games, and so the most impressive thing right off the bat was the extent the building got a facelift just for the event.  All the signs were changed, posters were everywhere (wall-size, of course), large stickers were decorating the floor, the booths were changed, and most of all, the outside of the arena and two adjacent buildings were billboards for the event.  Advertisers were walking around with TVs in their shirts!Then came the opening show, and they built this enormous, beautiful French Quarter facade for the teams to come out of, with a balcony full of dancing patrons and Mardi Gras Indians, and Rebirth Brass Band was jamming with Kermit Ruffins down below.  Celebrities were everywhere; each player was given a good 20 seconds of attention too.  Lots of production, lots of action!  Before the game was tipped-off we were treated to a couple dance teams, a multi-mascot free for all, and a slam dunk stunt squad – entertainment galore!  And then the game started!Man was it boring.  The players were showing little to no enthusiasm or, dare I say, effort.  They were stylish and flashy, but it looked more like they were, well, just getting paid to be there.  Having fun goofing off.  I almost fell asleep in the third quarter.  The game was very similar to the Superbowl in two ways: the best part was the commercials (entertainment during time-outs) and the half-time show was over-produced and diluted by having too many stars on stage getting their 16-measure solo.  I found myself thinking, “I’m wasting hours of my life here.”   Certainly not worth the three hundred dollar ticket price.  Yes, that’s right, three, hun, dred.  If I’d paid for it myself I’d be upset, but since I didn’t there’s the good memories of Rebirth and the dance teams, and that’s all I need.On another note, the event had a really cool logo, which I could appreciate more than a lousy game.  I just love theAll*Star font, and if you notice the little curly-q things up top, a good portion of the ironwork fencing in the city looks like that.  Also, I think it bears a rough resemblance to the weirdly popular water-meter manhole covers in the city.

2/14 To abide or to abscond

To abide or abscond?My aunt has cracked the whip.  She looked me in the face last week and said, “Keith, it’s time for you to grow up.  You need to stop slouching around and just settle down and get a job.  I feel like I’ve been enabling you by letting you stay here [house in New Orleans] and, well, it’s just time for you to grow up.”Well spoken, ma’am, excellent point.  I’ve certainly been feeling that way for the last year at least, but nothing’s really grabbed at me.  I need motivation to do anything!  When writing papers in college, the ‘just BS it’ attitude didn’t work for me, because I needed to be artless with a project, with true motivation.  Same goes for Christmas presents, I can’t just buy whatever, it has to be intentional, and same goes for work.  There needs to be a reason for what I do, hence the tens of thousands of miles travelled since graduation, because good reasons keep popping up to be somwhere else.I’ve been studying vocab and algebra, in preparation for taking the GRE.  Although I’ve progressed at photography enough to start a business, I don’t know any photographers who aren’t relentlessly worrying about bills and work, so that’s scarying me off a bit.  And the bike shop thing is too daunting.  Way too big for me at the moment.
So there’s the GRE and grad school; get a good job that’s flexible, and you can do what you love as a hobby or side business, not having to rely on it for $.Now, I’m going to “grow up” and move on again, by train, to somewhere temporary.  That is, if I can find my wallet!  Nevertheless,  I’ll see you when I get there….

1/24 Down again, in the Big Easy

The non-stop madness of Mardi Gras starts tomorrow!  12 days of music, happiness and color like you’ve never seen before, in a city like you’ve never seen before.  My boss just called me on the phone, thanking me for coming down, and I said it just felt wrong to think of not coming, not if I didn’t have a good excuse.  So here I am, a product of habit, a slave to routine, getting ready to yell and walk for the next two weeks.  I still need ideas for my Mardi Gras costume – anyone?I kept a journal on the train ride down here, over three days through the Rockies, the Great Plains, Chicago and down the Mississippi, and if you want me to type it up on here, just let me know.  I’ll take the time to post it if I get enough requests :)

1/10 Time with family

It’s been really nice to be home for the last month.   I had a lot of emotional tossing and turning with the decision to leave New Orleans for Christmas, and it’s hard now for me to look back on November and think of how lonely I was.  I remember how much I enjoyed working at the bike shop and I remember the nice weather and all the fun I had whenever the chance arose to spend time in the city, but the majority of my time was spent longing to be elsewhere – and that’s a new feeling to me.  So now I’m winding down my time here in Washington and the mood of my stay is so drastically different than the previous stint.  There’s an awesome joy to being with your family long enough so you get back into a casual, confident relationship again, rather than the “Hey, good to see you, it’s been a long time…well, bye” type that you experience when you move away.
I’ve been busy here.  I don’t even remember before Christmas, but since then I’ve been kayaking and snowboarding and X-C skiing and flying; I even had a date for New Years!  This last weekend I took a trip to Portland to see Devon, and aside from mucho hang-out time we got to see Casablanca on the big screen!  I went to Seattle afterward to bug a couple more friends, one of whom, Rob, shares the 8th with me as our birthday, so we celebrated together.
Needless to say, I feel like I’m on top of the world, with friends and family, accomplishments and plans, stories and memories.  I’ve got less than a week left here, and I plan on enjoying it more than anything.  There’s snow on the ground, what more could you ask for in January?  Viva la vida!side note: if anyone has time to listen to podcasts, there’s one put out by American Public Media called Speaking of Faith.  The lady does a notable job of accessing religion from all directions, and you can really learn a lot about what and how the other people on this earth think about life.  I’ve got some other favorites too, if you want to know

12/12 On Chicago

That drive from New Orleans to Chicago is brutal – the situation wasn’t helped by tackleing it all in one day either.  The final tripometer rollover showed 878 miles, and that was in about 14 hours.  10am to 12am.  Brutal.  I really don’t remember very much from it all save for the walk I took at a Mississippi rest stop and a couple passers-by pointing out excitedly my lit-up Christmas tree resting in my cupholder and the Christmas lights lining the dash of my car.
The drive in general was very beautiful because you’re following the Mississippi River most of the way, and although you aren’t within sight of it there are many trees seeping the watery goodness of the valley and showing off their late fall colors to interstatees like me.
I’m visiting Kandice, an ol’ chumette from NNU.  We mulled around downtown tonight, seeing this and that with the intention of getting around to the big art museum for a free opening.  We ate dinner at a Russian joint and were fully satisfied with their weirdness, and then walked over to the art museum only to find that Kandice was wrong about which day it was open late, so we found ourselves a cozy chocolatier joint and enjoyed each other’s company as the night passed by.  The most remarkable thing about Chigago today was the indifference to the inclimate weather the people have.  Yes it was cold, yes it was windy, yes it was rainy, and by George, the streets were nevertheless flooded with the local Crazies going about their normal lives as if the weather was missing any one of those torturous elements.  Chicago’s solace seems to lie in umbrellas…and, just maybe, the iPods sold out of vending machines.p.s. Does using the word ‘joint’ make me sound like a true Chicago mobster?  I think so.

12/11 On Bike Mechanics

So I just finished up another short story in the literary library of my life this one titled, Feeling Out the Future.  It was a nice little story about a young man from Idaho who moved into a little cottage in the woods of Louisiana.  No longer surrounded by friends or things to do, he spent many an evening logging away hours in front of that luminescent screen and keyboard that connected him to the outside world.  On the weekends he would drive into New Orleans to enjoy some company and activity as he was accustomed to, but, at the end, would be found returning to the cottage to engage in another week of work.
The job he had was not a particularly bad job in any sense; he would build bicycles by the numbers, enjoying comradarie with his coworkers in the back room where they wrenched and trued and just generally got greasy.  He enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing a finished product out in the showroom at the end of the day, which stood in sharp contrast to the cyclical and seemingly non-productive nature of the waiting business he worked during the summers.  (The restaurant would look the same when he left at night as when he would come in at 3.  Some food would, of course, have left the kitchen, but he wasn’t the creator, just the middle-man carrying a tray and a smile.)  No, this mechanic job was good for someone who needed to feel needed.  In the weeks he wrenched for Bike Zone, 160 bikes were built, lined up and ready for the credit card carrying Christmas crowd.  They, the bikes, glistened in the evening sun that would pour through the front windows, shining on his handiwork as a reminder to go home pleased with the day, and that he would.
There was much to like about Bike Zone, and much to learn, but there was also a little clock ticking somwhere deep inside that gave him the feeling it was time to move on.  This was dispite wanting to spend Christmas with his cousin, aunts, uncles and grandma and dispite growing to truly enjoy the other mechanics he worked with.  The urge to uproot his shallow and thirsty roots came because he needed (in a way) to see his friends, and needed to see them soon.  There is nothing more necessary in the material world than that, and that is what he will do.

11/10 going the distance

I biked to work today, just to see how far and how long it is, and it’s a hair over 19 miles one way.  Taking 1:15 means that I’ll ride in, oh, probably one or two days a week, but certainly not every day, yikes.  It is a route tres beau down one of those ‘rails to trails’ type paths, taking me over a bunch of bayous and some marshes.  There was even a neat black snake curled up a few feet off the path in one spot that had the most attractive sheen to it’s scales, but it would have probably hurt me, so I kept my distance (sorta).I was let on to an web site that gives you a good little  political issues survey, and then matches you up with all the presidential canidates.  I like that shows with whom who your ideals match without letting any of your presupposed takes on the canidates’ personalities getting in the way.
Here it is! 

11/6 Work

It’s good to work with your hands, don’t you think?  That’s the conclusion I’ve come to since starting my new job last week at Bike Zone.  By the time I leave there are tangible products of my labor there in the store, and my hands are greasy.  I think that would make anyone happy, building something and getting dirty doing it.  I work mainly with two other mechanics who have been employed at this place for over ten years and so it is a little weird being the in-house ‘new guy’, but they are wonderful to get along with.  One of them, Graham (“like the cracker”), sings to the music and has a good voice, makes funny jokes, and is a pretty intelligent bloke.  All he eats is junk food and he knows everything regarding any product you inquire about.  Graham is my age.  The other’s name is Brad -the manager.  He’s not a fountain of wit, but he’s relaxed.  I like him.Apart from work -    I realized the other day that even spending the three weeks down here that I already have, I haven’t spend more than 4 nights in the same spot!  I feel as nomadic as ever!  This blog is being typed from my friend Edwin’s FEMA trailer, which I moved into yesterday from Michael’s FEMA trailer, which came after a couple days at Cheil-Na, which came after a few days at the Prytania house which was preceded by a stay in Baton Rouge…     Yeah.  And when I FINALLY settle down on thursday it’ll be in a completely different house as well: Chac-Na.  I like the quasi-adventurousness of it all, but it gets really annoying having to re-buy groceries each time around.

10/31 Something that’ll REALLY scare you!

I, um, eh, uh, have a, um uh, oh whatdyacallem, eh, uh, job.  Don’t let anyone know, because I, uh, don’t want to tarnish my, um, image, yeah.  It was weird though, because it’s a bike shop where the newest employee before me has been there 11 years, and I walk in, telling them plainly that it’s a short-term deal and nevertheless I’ve got a job the next day!  So I, uh, I guess, have to get to bed.  Is that what you do?  I think so.  Yeah, it makes sense.  Well, goodnight!
And happy Hallowmas

10-27 (loud) Music

The past couple days have found me amongst hoards of people dancing to good music…it’s called Voodoo Festival.  Good thing that despite it’s Catholic-esque-yet-decidedly-unChristian religious namesake, the festival has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with awesome music.  The most fun concerts have been in the jazz tent with the Soul Rebels Brass Band [they'll rock your pants off!] and my personal favorite Kermit Ruffins.  On the larger scale, Ben Harper and Smashing Pumkins rocked my world this evening, and M.I.A. made me dance last night.  The funniest time was when I was starting to have urges to just hug people that were passing by, and then I realized there were a lot of people around smoking pot and it was probably making its way into my lungs too.  Yeah, that was weird.
Speaking of weird, I also met another volunteer named Aimee Effler!  She’s cool, but I can’t claim her, we figured there’s no relation.
Well, I’ve got another 14hr day of festival tomorrow, so gotta get some sleep…

10/25 New Orleans

Well we finished up the week with Habitat, and went back to our house in the woods for a rainy weekend.  It rained 10 INCHES on monday!  Talk about impressive!  Sunday I had gone out on the bayou with my Clifbar friends from Habitat, and I went back on tuesday to my utmost amazement that not only was the bayou a good foot higher than Sunday, but there was a fairly swift current to boot!  That may not sound impressive, but one of the Habitat ladies asked me two days before what a bayou was, and she couldn’t believe that it was a river, because the water was (and has been every other time I’ve seen it) at a standstill.  It was surprising to see the flow on tuesday, apparently increased because the tide was out at the time (we’re only 15 ft. above sea level).  Anyway, it was gorgeous out there with lots of flowers blooming and the trees submerged and fish jumping two feet out of the water.
Now I’m back in New Orleans for a music festival called Voodoo Fest.  A bunch of rock bands and a few local jazzish groups.  I’m staying in a FEMA trailer and riding the bike everywhere, which is how simple life should be all the time, don’t you think?  It’s surprisingly cozy with a shower, stove, oven, fridge and queen-size bed.  It’s missing a bike rack, but the government can’t be expected to think of everything.There is something to note about New Orleans too.  It’s plain to see from having returned every 6 months or so since the storm, that just in the last spring and summer there has been a phenomenal improvement in all the neighborhoods.  We’re talking about a difference between one household being occupied on any given street to what seems like more than half the houses being lived in now!  People are getting things done, and I bet it’s because a little of the depression is wearing off.  Folks are saying that they feel safer back in their old neighborhoods, and they’re even meeting those down the street they never knew.  All the old, dingy houses now have new landscaping and new siding, painted, of course, in the exclusively New Orleanian style of vibrant colors that most of you would bawk at anywhere else.  One of my friends down here was even saying that around where his high school is the streets are cleaner NOW than back 5 years ago.  So amid the devistation there is hope.  Well, I guess there always was hope for most people around here, it’s hard to take that away from them.  But now it’s a visible sort of optimism that’s hard to miss.

10/16 Danger lurks

Back in New Orleans!  Ahh, my city of chill.  Ok, the parents and I are working hard-ish for Habitat and helping the uncle out with his house, but there’s something just chill about this city – and it’s certainly not the warm humidity!  Everywhere you go there’s people sitting out on their porches and people walking around town.  New Orleans is a city that, like New York, hasn’t forgotten that it’s nice to get out of your house…even if you don’t have anything to do.  That’s my kind of city.
And I miss biking around here.  I miss risking my life in the traffic just to go get groceries.  There’s one street in particular that’s fun to ride down because it’s got all the quirky local shops and coffee houses (in one of which I am sitting now) but it’s a narrow 2-way street with parked cars on both sides, and you just know that either a car’s gonna hit you or a non-attentive driver will open the door of their parked car – and that’ll be the last of it.  Well, I guess we all have our fears, whether it’s getting mugged or getting a car door in the shoulder, right?  Well, I just saw a group of five or so guys riding by on this street, all on bicycles that were 6 feet high!  Yeah, they were sitting up 6 feet from the ground on these things, and I realised that THAT’S how to escape the cardoor collision…
Or I can drive and be the one to snuff the cyclist, either way, right?  I’ll get the biggest SUV on the market so I can snuff the other drivers on the road too; you can never be too safe.There’s a big group doing Habitat this week too, and they’re all employees of Cliff Bar, which means that we get some real yummy snacks anytime we want :)   My favorite that is not sold most places is called Nectar (the others are Cliff Bar, Luna, and Mojo) and is made of fruit and nuts – that’s it.  They taste like some of those good fruit leathers, but in a bar form.  Mmmmmmm mmm good.  Haha, and they all do yoga after work. [think: California]

10/11 my disease

My friend Carla put it best when she admitted that she knows not to be all that expecting when I announce a new plan or a new intention for the future.  It’s a great way to live, if you ask me, always thinking of something new that would be fun to do – or worthwhile; there are too many options in the world to limit yourself to one idea or onedream, especially when most of them lead to roadblocks that you can’t seem to get past.  So the newest idea came to me today while I was taking laps in the pool at our family house just north of New Orleans.  What a perfect day is was, with the sun warming the cool air, out in the woods, swimming laps.  Mmmmm.  The grass was certainly greener on my side of the hill at that moment.
I’ve always said that, about liking my side of the hill, and it may be my disease to think that where I am at the moment is the only place I want to be, a disease that leads to ideas, for better or for worse.  So what’s in the works right now is a plan to live here for a few months, working a bit, and using the time to come up with a meager-income-generating website (photography related, of course).  It’s so lovely out here, and away from essentially all distractions that it might be an only chance to really focus.  A sabatical, if you will, even though you usually have to be working to take one of those.
No really, you should come see this place.  It’s in a town called Lacombe, I’m 100 yards from a bayou and a couple miles from the lake.  There’s a cozy cottage that was the original home on the property and a magnificent, octagon-shaped, 3-story house that my grandparents built in the early 80′s.  The property used to be a dense forest, but Katrina saught to change that, and now it’s a big lawn, but still beautiful.  Can I resist?  Only time will tell, but, take a lesson from Carla in the meantime :)

10/7 from Carlsbad, NM

It’s never a surprise when I lose something, especially on a road trip.  A year and a half ago I lost my wallet mid-way through the country and had to sell my newly purchased guitar in Kansas City for gas money to get to New Orleans, but that was ballanced out by the fact that I had lost my wallet last time I was there, and my aunt found it in her car, and so I had $300 waiting for me at her house.  There are good stories about forgetting birth certificates and passports too, but losing things is the most common.  This trip, what was I bound to lose you ask??  I’ll tell you: ten pounds.  What??  Yeah, I stepped on a scale yesterday and I now weigh the least I have since 10th grade.
Hiking a lot and eating well can account for that, but it’s still weird.
What I’ve been doing…  I went to a Night Sky program the last two nights out at Chaco (New Mexico) and saw some stellar sights (pun intended).  During the day I went and saw this pictograph that archeologists believe is a representation of a supernova (explosion of a star) back in 1054, which created the Crab Nebula.  It was visible during the DAY for 23 days, and you can only imagine how bright it was at night.  How cool is that?  Coincidently or not, that was about the same time the the Chacoans started constructing their crazy-huge buildings.  Was the supernova a sign??….  coooool.
So now I’m in Carlsbad, NM, mooching internet from a Best Western.  Tomorrow I’ll either go take a cave tour and/or drive down to Big Bend State Park in Texas, which is supposed to be worth the trip.Viva las calles!!see:
http://web.hao.ucar.edu/public/education/archeoslides/slide_20.html
http://www.traditionsofthesun.org/viewerChaco/ (start clicking on the blue boxes)

10/4 Cleanlyness

Stopped at a truck stop last night and took a shower, which was the best $5 I’ve ever spent.  The worst $5 ever spent was on a fruit smoothie at TCBY, but that’s not the point of this blog.It all started, oh, a week ago.  Packed and finished with work at The Lodge, I drove the day long down to Moab and met a bunch of Boiseans for some mountain biking.  We ended up riding this spectacular 30-mile stretch of downhill trail that required a 1.5 hour shuttle ride to the top and descended 5500 feet.  We also got out to see the Arches and rode 4 other trails, all packed into 3 days.  When I kicked them out of the cabin sunday afternoon, I had a decision to make.  Where to go?  New Orleans is my final destination, of course, but there’s no sense in rushing into these things when there’s so much to see on the way.  And so many canyons to explore.  Canyons?  Hmmm, that’s an idea – Canyonlands NP!  So I meander my way out to the Needles District area of the park, find a free camping spot just outside the boundary, and spend the days loving it.  Really, I only hiked the first day and then sat around and read all day the next (because my body was in revolt from being used so much).  The hike was AWESOME!  If you imagine scrambling up and down everything, losing the trail every now and then, and pausing in your cadence every 10 minutes or so to ask yourself, “And how do you get down this?”  Now, and your imagination is key on this part, picture yourself actually revelling in and enjoying it!  Then throw in some rain to make it slippery, some quicksand to keep you on your toes, and the comradery among those out there to make it memorable and, KAPOW, you’ve got a good hike.  The most fun one, I think, I’ve ever been on.  I’m not saying the views were as spectacular as the Grand Canyon or the wildlife as abundant as in the Tetons, but the HIKE itself, barring all other variables, was the most enjoyable.
The last few days I’ve been visiting as many Indian ruins and reading as much as I can and am heading down to Chaco to visit a friend from my travels last winter.
Bonvoyage!

10/3 Happyness

On the road again…  All’s good until somebody steps in quicksand.  Haha, it wasn’t deep quicksand, so don’t worry.  I’m infinitely tired at the moment, but I wanted to say that some good blogs are on their way, probalby starting either tomorrow or next week.
Mocochacalata yaya

9/5 Keith’s French Toast

A misnomer to the max, but that’s what the sign said, and it was utterly fantastic.  I got the recipe from my friend Bridgett who got it from her Ex, Peter – you cook up french toast, but encrust the top and bottom with granola, garnish the slices with blueberries and drizzle some marscapone cream on top.  WOW, how good that is.  Anyway, I’ve been cooking breakfast and lunch while our morning chef took a vacation to Vegas, and it’s been so fun.  I’m a little tired of all the formality and pleasantries that go along with waiting tables at night, and this was practically the opposite, and I loved it.  Making lunch was my favorite part because it involved a little more creativity and learning.  I made my first soup – a cream of vegetable – and my first pizza sauce and crust.  All from scratch.  What better chance is there to learn to cook if you’ve got someone paying you; I’ve got 3 hours after breakfast to figure out a good lunch.  Sandwiches are always a possibility, but who wants the mundane when there’s a chance to learn something new??

8/26 Wicked

I’ve got a new bike
I’ve got a new bike
I’ve got a new bike hey hey hey hey
It’s heavy and hard to pedal uphill
It’s heavy and hard to pedal uphill
But it screams downhill hey hey hey hey
Yes my friends, swimming season has come to a close here in Swan Valley, and biking season is back in all it’s glory.  On my first ride I saw a bear!  Yes yes yes, and little black bear (with brown fur) was chilling next to the trail munching on berries.  It, of course, took off and forded the creek because I came along, but you should have seen it’s little head sticking up at first.  So cute.
The only other news in the world (around here) is that I’m jumping in as the breakfast chef next week while our regular guy takes off for Vegas.  Anyone want an omlette??  Con o sin papel?
I’ve got a day off tomorrow (a rarity) and so I’m taking our Austrian girls [who work here] to the beloved Falls Creek Falls and then to a drive-in movie.  Be looking for some fun pictures from the falls :)
Keith

8/20 The Blues!!

It just came out of nowhere!  I got up this morning and the sky was blue!
Yep, that’s what I’m writing about here, the fact that the sky is blue, and you would be too if it had been a hazy shade of smoke over your head since June.  Shoot, it probably has been that way for you, maybe, but today it’s blue blue blue over here at the confluence of Palisades Creek and the mighty Snake River.  Blue!
I’ve spent an insane amount of time today on the internet, but my list of to-dos has been purged.  I’ve got a new phone coming, some business cards, a different laptop and . . . . . (sound the trumpets!) a bike.  A bike!  Wahoo!  Send me down anything and bring on the fun!  Bangerrang.
And now it’s time for sleep, with more blueness awaiting mine eyes tomorrow – ahhhh

7/14 Swimming Jews

Summer is great for more reasons than any list could touch, but I’m going to focus on one of them, and that’s swimming.  Our lodge is a couple miles from the Palisades Reservoir which, as of a month ago, is up to an enjoyable temperature and therefore hosts my afternoon enjoyment everyday.  Now, most times when you hear someone say “everyday” or “all the time” you can rework that into meaning “went for a week straight, and still intend to everyday, but really can’t” or something even more vague (my favorite is when you hear “Growing up, I would ____ ALL the time.” [Read: did it 5 times]).  Swimming at Palisades, on the other hand, IS everyday.  Well, except for today.  haha
Last week I didn’t have time to make it up to the lake and back before work, so I hopped in the creek.  Today – ditto – but I derocked a spot right before it meets the Snake River where you can now do a decent breast stroke!  The coolest part is keeping your eyes open and pretending you’re a  fish.
We’re hosting a retreat this weekend at The Lodge, a Jewish retreat.  The leader is the rabbi for the LA Synagogue, the largest in the US.  They’re having a blast fishing, and it’s fun and interesting being around them, but there is something worth noting, and that’s everyone else’s reaction to them.  It’s quite amazing how unreligious our western world is.  This group of Jews are seen as some form of occult or something!  I hear comments like ‘What are they doing out there, praying or something?’, ‘Once they’re done chanting…’, and other complete ignoramus remarks!  This group participates in one of the oldest religions and nobody around me knows the slightest detail about it.  They probably know more about Buddhism because it’s fashionable.  It all just drives me crazy!  The worst part though is that noone is curious about religion either, the just flat out don’t care.  Apathy reigns around here, I guess.

7/2 Nurtured for nature

Oh nature!
Oh wilderness!
To get away and be free
To walk and jump, play hard
And relax.
The colors, the changes of light
That mark time elswhere mark more here,
Where everyone has an artist’s eye.
You paint every day
New backdrops and shifting foregrounds
Accompanied by unpredictable subject matter.
It is here that I can be free.
I have been civil,
Lived in a box with a driveway,
A square bed and a round plate -
Simple shapes that you bawk at
And are willing to out-do.
You constantly remodel!
Using grass and flowers and leaves and snow
For carpet.
White and blue and pink and red and orange and gray and
lavender and yellow and silver for ceiling.
Never the same!
Show me more tomorrow, impress me again!
Even if all I see is from out my rectangle window.Ok, there’s a unedited first draft of (roughly) what was going through my head while backpacking yesterday and today.  My friend Rebecca Long and I trekked up Teton Canyon to a place called Alaska Basin.  We threw the frisbee around and really enjoyed hanging out and talking.  Didn’t see any wildlife other than marmots, but we did have knife-throwing contests and used small pine trees as catapolts for backpacks!  It was nice.  And I carved my own spoon to eat cereal with

6/19 My wheels are spinnin!

I’m going nuts!  Is it ok to be going nuts?  Lots of people go nuts.  Does that make it normal to be nuts?  I think it’s alright to be nuts.  Are you nuts?  I’M going NUTS!
Ok, deep breath, slow heart rate, manage to focus, breathe, breathe, surpress panic, sigh…
I got online for the first time in almost a week, and I had a few emails waiting for me, all from different countries, each of them mentioning even more countries, and one of them inviting me to travel Europe for the month of September.  This brings me anxiety!  Anxiety?  Why that?  It’s a matter of deeply wanting to be other places and meeting other people, seeing what has made my world what it is.  History and culture intermixed with fun, adventure, and yes, photography.  It’s a bug that has no resemblance to HIV because you can get it from anywhere or anything.  It’s a bug that is no comparison to chicken pox because once you get it it will always come back.  It is more like a dependence on speed or crack I imagine, because the only way to ease the tension is to fold, buckle and give in.
Doing just that would lead me to Expedia.com where I can book my flight, car and hotel with only a few clicks of the mouse AND save money!  But there’s a Captain Jack Sparrow on my other shoulder reminding me of my commitment to The Lodge for that month.  Is this what you guys feel like when I ask you to come travel with me?  Does it cook up this much agony for you?  Do you really empathize with the romance of travel enough to have the thought of it tear at you?  I bet you do.
So that’s my thoughts, my blog, my agony.  Thanks for sharing, and if I saw you in Nampa/Boise this last weekend I want you to know that I had the most wonderful visits imaginable.Bon Voyage!!

6/2 Boats and Bandanas

Last year my buddy Mathias and I went swimming multiple times per week up at the Palisades Reservoir.  We started calling ourselves the Palisades Swim Club, and that spot on my page where it says “Keith is in your extended network” used to have a dim picture from one of our midnight swims, if you ever noticed.  Well, today, in response to the warm weather and my bike not being operable, I set out alone to inaugurate the season(!) for the Swim Club.  This was my second attempt, but I chickened out yesterday because it wasn’t warm enough and I should have done the same today, but that woudn’t make and good start to the summer, now would it.  Needless to say, I swam and it was fuh-reezing.  Cold beyond your wildest dreams (maybe).  By the time I swam out to the middle, realized there were boats buzzing around that weren’t seeing me, and got back, it took me two or three hours to get my body temperature back!  Don’t freak out, I wasn’t going to die.  So I’ve decided to REPOST one of my first blog entries with an addendum from today’s experience.4/18/06 (less than) 101 uses for bandanas – updated 6/2/07Everytime I find a new use for them, I tell myself I will compile a list someday (this is more for my amusement than anything).  So here it is, in the works.  Every use that follows I have actually done myself
Cup holderSatchel for trinketsHead scarfHeadbandDust maskBlindfoldPadding for foot when lacking a shoeBandageRag/towelTow ropeStrap to hold flipflop securely to footSun shadeLeft sleeve (forearm and upper arm) to prevent sunburn while drivingForearm sleeves (left and right) to block cold windsDecorationSieveCapture the Flag flagBright colors to be seen during hunting seasonLens coverLens cloth/cleanerSplintNapkinKnife sheathDrum head deadenerEarmuffFlag for waving off speed boats while swimming in the middle of a lakeFrantically waving, for that matter.

5/30 Thinking under the sun

Yardwork.  Masonry.  Although good scrabble words, these things can be tiresome.  However, I have had my fair share the last few workdays and I am beginning to truly enjoy them!  The highlight of it all so far was when my supervisor, a scrutenizing nit-picker, looked at my inlaid rock pathway and smiled, “It’s good.”  The words might have meant nothing but the smile tells it all.
While working away today I was thinking about Jesus, and about all the other early-thirty-year-olds that I know, and how weird it must have been to accept this man (who wouldn’t even be old enough for American presidency!) as God incarnate, your Lord and Savior.  This young man without a wrinkle on his forhead has been prophesied about for hundreds of years and has now come to redeem the sins of the world.  This is it, this is him!  He’s not even old enough to be your dad!  I guess I always picture important people as at least fifty, so this musing has caught me off guard.  Weird, huh.

5/27 Canyon poetry

Poems from the Snake River Canyon.  Yeah, Devon’s just slightly more talented.

5/23 Long time

It’s been a while, hasn’t it.  This may sound like a copout, and it may be what it sounds like, but the last blog here has summed up everything until now!  If it sums up what I’m doing, why add superfilous detail and blabbering monologue to your internet experience??  So there, I did you a FAVOR.  um, yeah
And now I’m working.  Ha, well, you might be stretching to call it that with 6 hour days that include lunch.  We’re getting the lodge ready for guests after sitting untouched for 8 months, and I’m getting my apartment livable.  It’s a wonderful little place to live, with a porch looking right over the beautiful Snake River and awesome mountains in all directions.  Today after my quaint dinner on the porch (at which time I saw something new to me: a hummingbird at rest.  It fluttered around in front of me, then perched on a tree no more than ten feet away.  “Hummingbirds don’t perch” I hear you saying, but my experience is quite to the contrary!  Fascinating moment it was to see this miniscule little thing sitting as though it was a real bird and not a glorified insect.) I went for my seasonally innagural bike ride up the perfectly wonderful Palisades Creek trail.  There’s nothing like these mountains out here, let me tell you.  Rushing waters and meandering creeks along with mountain ponds and waterfalls.  Not to mention the razor sharp jagged cliffs dominating the vistas along with the rolling mountain scenery.  Mmm mm, nothing like it.
I keep coming back in my head to figuring out how I can live life and still frequent this place every summer, which as you might imagine would be impossible if I started a shop in Nampa.  Humnnnn, dunnoAs a last word, I encourage you to look at the video I put up a couple days ago here on myspace.  It gives you a glimpse of my apartment, and also of how dumb I can be.

4/25 Hello good weather

Why does winter exist??
There are fun snow-related things.
But they involve driving
and freezing
and lift tickets.
I hereby declare the
Citizens for Year-Long Temperate Weather
Club into order.
Please take your seats.
No! Don’t do THAT!
Get out and stay out,
wiling away the hours
doing whatever you want
only because the weather allows it.
Do it. Go!
Then tell me about it
when the snow falls again, in
December,
and there’s nothing to do.

4/22 a day indoors

I went kayaking thursday, biking friday and saturday, and, well, TV watching today.  I know it’s ok to do now and again, but you just can’t shake the feeling of complete wastedness when it rolls around to 9pm, the sun’s down, and you haven’t seen it all day.  On the excuse side of things, I’m seated next to a 72in HD television and have been watching Planet Earth (Discovery) all day, which is, kinda, like, getting out.  Honestly, if you haven’t caught on to this series, it’s not too late because they’re running it all the time for now, but only for a short-lived hype and you have to catch it while it’s still on!
There’s no experience in Boise quite like biking in the foothills on a Saturday.  I got my cousin Adam to come, and also the ol’ roommate Mo.  Adam hadn’t ridden a bike at all save a couple times until a month ago, and Mo had regretfully been abstaining from the dirt for two years.  So us three stooges met at Camel’s Back Park in the heart of Boise Bohemia at began our ascent into my favorite gulch, the gulch in which an entire library of memories are catalogued in my head.  We pedalled in and pushed up, with groups and individuals, bikers and hikers, joggers with doggies all passing us, but we made it the four-plus miles through the (to me) enchanting monochrome sage playground, and then turned around and came back down for the thrill ride, at which time Mo got a flat and Adam ate some dirt after riding a dirt wall!  Go guys, you rock, and thanks for the ride.http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/planet-earth/planet-earth.html

4/18 a quip

A funny story that I heard about after dinner.I called up my buddy Melinda and decided to head over to her house so we could go to dinner.  I said goodbye to Alysson and Kristi (I’m staying on their couch) and drove to Melinda’s house at which point I dawned on me that my wallet was back where I had just left.  So Melinda and I drive back, I slide through the front door with a Kramer style “ta-da!”, and after a few seconds of silence Alysson and Kristi just start cracking up.  I figure I just walked in on a good conversation, so I ignore it and then we all have a look-for-the-shiny-wallet party.  After, I leave again.
Rewind.  Same story, different angle:
A&K are having their bi-weekly chat about boys and what to do with this one and what to say to that one.  Keith, the guy who’s bumming a couch off them, leaves to go to something, who knows what, and so they sit down at the table and continue their conversation.  They progress through the thick and thin until they finally remark, as most girls do, “Only if there was a perfect guy, you know, a knight in shining armor who would just burst through the door and sweep us off our feet!”  Without a moment’s hesitation, Keith whips the door open, and with the sunlight from behind creating a silver lining around his silluette he slides through the entrance with purpose and strikes a pose!  The girls can’t believe their eyes, and they loose itHa.I’ve come to Idaho in order to see some friends and go kayaking, but my friends seem to all have lives and stuff do to, and it’s too cold to kayak, go figure.  Thus I am left with the burden of entertaining myself with the simple and the mundane.  I went and saw a movie yesterday, and spent the good portion of today working out and reading, which the plan for tomorrow is the same.  I wouldn’t mind fusing the two, but it doesn’t work on the machines I like to use.  Does anyone have a photographic challenge for me?  That would be fun.  Luckily people are gearing up for the weekend and will come play for a couple days.  I’m thinking of just hitchhiking somewhere for the fun of it.

4/10 Goodbye rain

My chapter in Ashland is now over, and I’m reluctant to leave because my host family and friends here are so cool.  I must, though, so I’ll leave this afternoon and head over to the coast.  Probably won’t spend too long there and will soon be on my way to Yakima and then to Nampa.
I had an awesome time this weekend when my friend Devon came to visit.  We went hiking up in the hills, perused the parks, tried on wigs, layed in the sun, ate chocolate, drank wine, watched the sunset and went spelunking.  There aren’t many better ways to end your weekend than spelunking.  Reminissant of Easter, sorta, but that might be a stretch.Check you later,
Keithinanonino

4/1 Sabbath thoughts

Sometimes it’s good to see things from another perspective.  This morning before church I happened upon a how-to article for athiests to defend their point of view.”Religious people are themselves atheists with respect to all deities except their own; atheists have just taken it one god further.”What are your thoughts?

3/31 Skin-tight neoprene

Ahh, I am officially gradiated from the Professional Bicycle Mechanics course.  Does that mean I know more?  Yes.  Does that mean I’m more skilled?  Yes.  Does that mean I’ll be getting a job anytime soon?  Ehh
There’s an advanced seminar that I’m staying another week for, so this was my first weekend of nothingtodoness.  Last weekend I went to visit my good ol’ buddy Devon, and we had an absolutely splendid experience wasting time and doing nothing of note.
Today then, in lieu of nothing to do, I went for a bike ride.  Not a mountian bike ride, nor any other kind that I would consider normal, but a road bike ride.  For those not versed in the differences between the types of bikes available, I’ll try to keep it simple.  Mountain bikes are burly.  Comfort bikes are, well, you know.  BMX bikes are agile.  Road bikes hurt your butt.
Boy do they hurt your butt.  Remember when you were little and your teacher or someone else told you for the first time that you had a tail?  And you were thinking No, but he/she said that it was just so short that you can’t see it, but it’s there.  Every now and then life reminds us of that simple fact, that we are true mammals, tail and all.  Quite often ice skating is the medium that gets that across, or falling off a horse while riding bareback and galloping.  Or road biking.  35 miles of tenderizing torcher.
The only consolation is that I had fun, and that Baskin & Robins was en route.
Oh, and I bought a swim suit and a wetsuit today at Goodwill, which can only mean two things.  Lazy days on the Palisades Reservoir, and…..kayaking!!

3/12 Last bits and the forseeable future

    I guess the big mistake when you travel is to assume that the only things to do are on the road map that doesn’t even have all the roads on it, much less the attractions.  I met a dude from Nampa at the Grand Canyon; he was picking my brain for hike ideas there, and he tipped me on some rad hikes north of the canyon.  It’s called Wire Pass; it’s a slot canyon about .4 miles long and it T’s into Buckskin Gulch that’s probably over 10 miles long and the longest slot canyon in the world.  Antelope Canyon, just east of Page, is by far the most famous of these canyons but is usually swarming with photographers and costs $15 to go in.  Anyway, I’ve never seen anything like it before!  You start out in just a normal river bed, and then there are sandstone walls about 3 ft. high and then you drop into the canyon where the walls are 15 ft. high and like 4 ft. wide.  Then by the time you get to the T you’re squeezing through a 2 ft. wide, 60 ft. high canyon!!  It is truly indescribable and if you’re ever heading down to that area of the country you need to look it up…it would make an AWESOME spring break trip!  If you want to know more, just let me know :)
From there I batted my eyes and got some free coffee in Kanab (Utah’s Little Hollywood) and spent the night nearby.  The next day was split between romping around the Coral Pink Sand Dunes SP and Bryce Canyon NP.  It had been years since I had been to Bryce, and I had remembered the fascinatingly collosal rock pillar formations, but had forgotten the colors!  Photography does no justice to them, so I only posted a picture from down in the canyon.  At the dunes, I learned some interesting things about sand :)
Sand is so much of the same consistency because it’s all the particles that are too big to be completely swept away in the wind as dust but small enough to be blown about and morphed into piles and formations.  The waves come from the grains bouncing along – each wave in the sand is the average distance each grain bounces while being blown around during a wind storm!  Bet you didn’t know that :)
Then the next day I made it up to Fairfield in Idaho and went to a party at the Scheirmeier’s new pizza place, and afterward Becky’s roommates and  I went and played frisbee in the mud!  Our feet were dang cold and exfoliated to death, but it was too fun to care.So now I’m making the rounds in the Boise area and leave for bike mechanic school on Sunday…and I just got an email today saying I’ve got a place to stay via the Naz church!!  That is such a relief and now there are no more worries in the world, mon.  I’ll be back in April for jury duty – HA – and then leave sometime in may for my summer job over in Swan Valley, near Jackson Hole.
And that’s the world as I see it.Slot Canyons
Wire Pass
Buckskin Gulch

3/7 More from the road

I am stupified and amazed at God’s creation!  I was hiking today, and was thinking about this little machine called my body.  All I do is let it hibernate for 7 hours a day, give it some bread, cheese, fruit and water, and off it goes buzzing around the Grand Canyon like that’s what it was made to do.  Does anyone else see the amazement in that, I mean, that’s dang efficient!  I’d like to see anything motorized be that cool.  No way, God wins and that’s final.
So it started to drizzle/snow as I finished my hike, and driving out of the park I saw this guy chilling under a tree.  I flipped around and asked if he needed a ride anywhere, and he said sure.  This dude was a trip.  He seemed oh so normal as we started off, talking about hiking and work and stuff like that, but as time passed (we went a few hours together) I ran out of things to talk about, so in a moment of silence I turned the music on.  But he started up talking again, and without a ‘conversation’ he went off the deep end.  He was apparently trained by the Navy, Marines, Army and Air Force to spot terrorist activity along the roads, and we got to be careful with all these terrorists running around because they got all them nukes and are gonna get the security codes to our missle assylums and decimate our country to pieces.  That Hurrican Katrina was done by them too, by those of them that have sound pulsars and other tricky stuff that can create monster storms and totally destroy the coast.  He’s also learning to sense what all those people are putting into the air, the pollutants of industry and whatnot, so that he can find the equilibreum within his own body and counteract all that stuff from outside.
I can’t remember it all, but he was a strange cat.  On the other hand he had walked to the Canyon from Flagstaff (60 miles) without much money and therefore hadn’t eaten much recently, and when we stopped at a gas station and he bought some $.49 cookies, he fed a couple stray dogs and offered me some too.  That’s heart.
Oh, and I met a couple from Nampa at the park!
Photos coming soon :)  I’ll be back to Boise saturdayOh!  And have you ever eaten an apple while lying on your back looking straight up?  Try it and tell me your observations :)

3/5 As it has been, thus far

The night I left Albuquerque I found myself in a snow storm.  I usually try to sleep outside to save money, but couldn’t fathom weathering the storm because of all the wind, so I called the hostel in Cuba, NM.  Closed until summer.  I stopped at the Frontier Motel and asked if they could knock down the $35 by having me do some work.  Negative, but I could try the other one in town.  This chinese lady answers the door to Del Prado Motel when I knock, and informs me that they don’t need help either.  Getting desperate.  Ok, (I open up my wallet) this is all I have: a $20 bill.  Initiate puppydog eyes, look down, shift feet, bingo!  A warm bed and my first shower in 6 days, booya.I roll to Chaco canyon the next day, and there’s a young lady behind the counter.  I briefly drop my story of travelling and sleeping outside and the hotel saga.  She tells me here favorite trails and I go on my way.  That night I sleep just outside the park off a farm road and freeze my tail off.  Actually, it was my feet, but seriously, it was dropping down to 5 degrees plus high winds, and no amount of socks can help that.  The next day I do my hiking thing and right around when the visitor center is closing I stop by to look at the museum.  The lady, Brianna, asks me if I’m sticking around for the astronomy night on Saturday, and I’m not because it was just too cold so I’m moving on tonight.  Well, she says, I brought you this: lasagna.  Wow, that’s cool, thank you so much, you’re awesome.  Hasta luego.  I get in my car and eat the Italian food, and as I drive away, I see her in her car at the next pull-out, wow she’s quick.  I drive past as she drives into the staff housing area.  I stop.  She’ll want this container back, and I could give her some fruit in return, which is hard to come by in Chaco.  U-turn, find her car, knock, no answer, go around back, there!  I bring her the gifts, she invites me in for tea and I say no, I’ve got to get going.  Blah blah blah, you know what, that tea sounds good.  Sure!  So after a couple hours of talking, I ask if I can crash the couch, and voila, I’ve got a roof over my head for a few nights.  I stuck around for more sight seeing, theorizing with the rangers…and the astronomy show.  It was a weird chain of events, but I now have a new friend in New MexicoThe weather has become warmer and is going to stay warm (50′s) for the remainder of my outandaboutness.  Today I went to Canyon de Chelley (pronounced ‘de Shell’), and it is GEORGEOUS!  It’s got the same redrock cliffs that adorn the Lake Powell reservoir and Glen Canyon, and the same cottonwood trees that decorate Zion and Moab, but there are farms and hopis carpeting the canyon floor and dozens of cliff-dwellings in the most unlikely places.  To make things better, there is no entrance fee, and no camping fee!  Anyway, I met a couple of the Navajos today when I gave them a ride home, and they’re cool.  They still live in hopis as well as houses, and every driveway we passes was some relative of theirs.  One man used to heard sheep down in the canyon with his grandma, and some Navajos have a horse and not a car.  They still primarily speak Navajo; the man didn’t even know how to spell “hello” when he was writing down some Navajo words for me, he wrote “helow” :)dot dot dot

3/4 Chaco

Chaco.  Chaco is amazing.  It’s a remote canyon north of Albuquerque with a half dozen or more sites of large ruins, and dozens upon dozens of other smaller dwellings that have yet to be excavated.  It was however, anything but remote for the Chacoans 800 years ago.  I learned so much by spending my time there, and it’s all fascinating.
Back before the 900′s or so all of the North American tribes were nomadic to some degree.  Even if they built permanent dwellings, they would have to relocate every 20 or 30 years because of drought.  Then the tribes that started Chaco saw a sign.  In 1054 the birth of the Crab Nebula (supernova) was highly visible on Earth; it lit up the sky even during the day for three weeks, and was documented by civilizations all over the earth.  The Chacoans took that as a sign to build, and boy did they.  Over the next 300 years they built HUGE ‘cities’ with religious ceremony chambers (kivas) and rooms galore.  They plastered everything with white and brought in timber from a hundred miles away.  They essentially made themselves the center of the North American world for trade and religious gatherings, in fact, most of the rooms built in these cities were never lived in, which would leave them open for visitors from afar.  These Chacoans had shells from California and even bird feathers from the Yucatan!  It’s crazy, and after peoples began to make the pilgrimage to Chaco, you start to see similar super communities spring up directly north (Mesa Verde) and directly south, with the largest being Casa Grandes down in Mexico.
What’s interesting is that these people had to master agriculture and water diversion in order to survive staying in the desert canyon, but when the Chaco canyon culture eventually dissolved, the people went back to being hunters and gatherers, which tells you how bad the nutrition of that lifestyle had been.  They say that most of the skeletons they’ve found have grinded down teeth from eating the cornmeal that had to be processed with sandstone, which left its granules in the food.Well, I think I sifted out all the boring stuff and put in all the good stuff, but maybe not.  I’ve never been good at writing conclusions, so I’m gonna leave with this: I love my Chaco sandals too.

2/27 Where art thou?

    Ok, I’ve travelled a bit the last few years.  That’s not a secret to anyone.  Most times I head out, though, I’ve got an agenda.  There was almost a time when I had no plans last fall, after a week of driving around with my high school friend Chissy, but then my buddy from Canada called me up and said, “Let’s go biking in Moab!”  And who can turn that down?  So as it is, this is the first time I have been traveling around alone with nothing to do.
And it’s everything I ever dreamed of :)
I’m sleeping in an internet cafe tonight, compliments of the owners who were also dining at The Chuckwagon where I got THE best $1 taco and $1 fish sandwich in the world.  There’s a historic hotel in town, and I tried talking the managers into a lower rate for the night, but they could only drop it 20% which was too much.  I even tried bartering some labor for a cheaper rate, but they had nothing to do.  So I listened to Darlene talk my ear off for a half hour at the Chuckwagon and another half hour back at the internet cafe in exchange for a roof over my head and a couch.  Oh, and there are cookies here too.
I left New Orleans friday night and haven’t taken a shower since.  No landowner has kicked me off their property yet, either!  I did have a cop come and check my ID because I was parked outside someone’s house stealing internet, but that went over well.  Albuquerque was my destination for today, but on the last leg of backroad I ran across some amazing Anasazi indian ruins with a 16th century Spanish mission, and the guy at the office there told me about a couple other ones just like it around here, so progress has been delayed a couple days.  My ‘final’ destination, meaning the one place I actually am planning to go, is the ruins at Chaco Canyon just north of Albuquerque; they’re supposed to be large, elaborate, and just breathtaking.
I’m going to post a bunch of photos on flickr now, Have a good day!Well, I posted wrote that last night, but couldn’t post it.  I went to see two more cities of ruins today, they are spectacular!  I never knew we had ruins like these in the states.  And now I’m back at the Chuckwagon for some more tacos!  That Darlene lady and her husband supply high speed internet for the area, and one of their clients is a new communal group that (mmmm, good taco) bought an old Heaven’s Gate compound.Check out my photos on flickr

2/13 I think I’m going swimming

    That’s all, just thought I’d let you know.

2/1 Profound lack of interest

The subject line for this blog describes my attitude for myspace lately. This comes from my social needs being filled elsewhere now that I’m back in Nampa.The exciting thing for the day was standing out in a parking lot talking with some friends, and all of a sudden a parked car starts rolling in our direction without a driver!  The best part of the episode is that after we pushed it back into its spot and left a note to take the rock out from behind the tire before driving off, NNU security thought it was an important enough event to interupt every class in the building to find out whose it was, haha.  I don’t get those guysHeading back to New Orleans on monday for a few weeks, so that’s gonna be fun and I’ll blog about that!  I’m excited for the trip because my friend Bernadette is joining me from Austria.  We’re going to catch all the Mardi Gras parades and do some relief work, which should make for a good, solid, fun-filled visit.  There is plenty to do and see in New Orleans if you’re interested in history.  I’ve been asked to return to work with my friend Vicki to shoot photos during all the parades too, so I’ll be earning money at the same time :)  The part that makes me apprehensive is the coldness looming over the country right now, and we may have to stay a night or two under the stars on the way down…yikes!I’m computerless and cameraless at the moment.  And kind of bikeless.  I find that when my normal tools of enjoyment aren’t at hand, the days wither away and all of a sudden you’ve gone a week without doing anything.  What do you guys do when you’re out of your element?

1/14 A cowboy without his horse

I’m at a hotel in Texas.  I’m stranded.
My sister Erin, brother-in-law Paul, nephey Bryce and I flew Ted down from Yakima to New Orleans a few weeks ago.  The couple weeks of being in New Orleans with them was a much needed kind of bring-the-family-together thing that I wouldn’t have traded for anything.  And after they left to go back to Yakima, I layed claim to a back bedroom at my cousin’s house.  He and his wife Niki have been truly awesome to kick it with,  BUT.  I’m going crazy.
I’m going nuts, and it has nothing to do with anyone down here.  It’s impossible to estimate how much having your own transportation means to you until it’s gone (like the Counting Crows cover of Yellow Taxi).  How far off the deep end do you have to go to be certifiably insane?
While my sister’s family was there in New Orleans we took trip to the zoo on day, and I’m starting to feel like those caged animals.  Like the lion that charged me at full speed and let out an immensly loud roar, I could snap at any moment too:  I wanted to spend lots of time with my Granny, but I couldn’t drive out to her place.  I wanted to visit lots of old friends and spend some time at the old stomping grounds from when I lived there in the Garden District this last spring, but couldn’t get a ride.  I wanted to cook, but couln’t get to the grocery store, wanted to ride my bike, but didn’t have it with me, wanted to canoe on the bayou but it was too cold.  There was narry a thing that would please me to do, that got done.  I was trapped, I was under house arrest, I was loosing my sanity! ACK!.
After being on the road for a couple days with Adam and Niki, tonight finally gave way an oppurtunity for getting out on my own, and what a joy that was!  Granted, the roads were freshly covered with a quarter inch of freezing rain, and the trip was only to Wal*Mart, but it was refreshment to the soul.
And that’s the point of this blog, to vent about feeling like a bird with clipped wings, and to say that I actually got a taste of my freedom back this evening.On a side note, we are actually stranded in Texas, which is not the first time it’s happened in my life :), because of freezing rain   The last time was in 2003 on a road trip with four of my good college friends in the little Subaru, driving down to New Orleans.
We left the first evening and drove all the way through the night, arriving at Bryce Canyon at 4am.  Two hours later I drug them up for sunrise there, and we continued to the Grand Canyon.  Next stop was Carlsbad Caverns, and as we headed out after the spelunking we hadn’t a clue what was about to happen.  Before our trip I had taken time to teach three of the four passengers how to drive a 5-speed manual transmission, so after those learning lessons and a few hundred miles of beginners’ driving, my car coasted gracefully to a stop somewhere in the middle of Texas (my friends had toasted my clutch).  Thank goodness for AAA!  We were 140 miles or so from the nearest city, and AAA will only tow 100 miles in a day, so our tow driver brought us 90 miles, we spent the night in a motel, and we called AAA the next morning for tow service and the guy brought us the rest of the way to Abilene.  The mechanic’s garage was off in the sticks, and he let us roam around his property while he looked at the car.
It was at that point that I really appreciated the beauty of Texas because his property was a network of red dirt farms, ponds and old run-down houses admidst this breathtakingly delicate forest of bush-trees.  And boy is the red dirt beautiful to someone who’s never seen it before!  The mechanic gave us a ride into town and we got a room for the 5 of us.  This older gentleman from the next room came over while we were all sitting around chatting and wanted to know if it was alright if he played his guitar, you know, just to make sure it wouldn’t bother us.  We said something like, “There’s no way you can play it in there, ’cause we want to hear it in here!”  Anyway, so this man sat in our motel room and played us some old cowboy songs.  Turns out he’s a small-time recording artist and travels around doing shows.  His whole family, including the grandchildren, have recorded on his albums, and he gave us all copies of them.  We hitched rides to the grocery from local teens cruising around in their jeep, and generally had a wonderful time.  The stranded-in-Texas story ends with us deciding to fly to New Orleans instead and being late for the flight.  The Dallas airport is devilishly tricky to find the right entrance to, and we were circling and circling, going through some real sketchy neighborhoods, when we decided that the particular bus that was in front of us looked like it would be going to the airport, so we followed it, and it worked!  We all made it with the assistance of luck and providence, and had a grand ol’ time down in New Orleans.Ok, that’s my trip down memory lane, and all I have to say to Sophie is WAFFLE HOUSE!!

1/8 excerpt from Devon’s blog

The following was written by Devon Van Essen about this cool place we went to when I visited her down in Lebanon, Oregon.  I blogged about this earlier, but girl got skill, so I gotta post this.  I also have a couple pictures of the place in my photos.  You can also check out her full blog at talkofsummertime.blogspot.com…Anyway, when we had gotten our fill of the falls, Keith and I headed for Eugene, planning to see the town, do some shopping, and so on, but we were waylaid by destiny. We pulled over at a place called Living Rock Studios in Brownsville–the place where our lives would change forever. Self-described as the place where “art, science, and religion meet,” the Living Rock is the brain-child of an Oregon man who believed that art can be found anywhere–and I do mean anywhere. Want to build a concrete “tree” out of your collection of petrified wood? Do it! Want to inlay your walls with giant agates, crystals, obsidian, thundereggs, and fossils? Why not? Create huge flower-like sculptures out of rusty metal, driftwood, and plastic? Sure! Display your mediocre paintings of every last bird in the Northwest for the world to see? Sew an preprosterously huge and intricate canopy of “leaves” for your petrified wood tree and hang it from the ceiling? Assemble a completely random selection of dubiously historical artifacts from the last hundred years and display them behind glass? Insert odd pieces of rock and incidental items such as spectacles in canning jars and partially submerge them in cement? Start a project of carving something out of every kind of wood in the Northwest and end up with 50 wooden pliers and one mermaid? Assemble all the above in one building, print off your favorite Bible verses on Microsoft Word to fill any blank spots on the wall, hang a sign, and open your doors for business? Yes! You can do it all! There are no limits!If there’s anything I learned from The Living Rock Studios, it’s that the world is one heck of a big place, and there is room for anybody to with enough moxie to open their doors and not care who comes walking in. We spent almost two hours there, being escorted around and given the tour by the youngest child of the wizard who founded the place (the flower sculptures were her contribution). She gave us the history of every item–where “daddy” had found it, why he inserted it just there, where it placed on her list of favorites… We were equipped with flashlights at the outset, so that we could shine them on the agate stones and make them glow. The entryway was cluttered with the Coca-Cola lawn furniture of the next door neighbor, which had apparently gotten wet in the storm and had been brought in to dry by her fireplace. Her sister, we were told, had contributed all the textile art: yarn patterns interlaced with shells and driftwood, painted fabrics, as well as the aforementioned leaf canopy. The most arresting thing about the place was not its art, nor its natural artifacts, nor its historical significance. It wasn’t its appalling bad taste nor its moments of surprising beauty–it was the accumulation, the ensemble, the entirety. The complete and utter randomness and insanity that would bring together under one roof such miscellany. I truly and sincerely recommend a visit….

1/2 I guess I’m shy

It seems that the more I live life outside of a normal routine schedule or set of friends, the more I learn about myself.  I guess this is why people are encouraged to travel or do something other than go into their careers after school, because you learn who you are when taken out of your context.  So last night, New Years, there was a concert I was dying to see from a local (New Orleans) band I ran across last spring.  Even with inviting everyone that might be interested it ended up being a solo event; and this is nothing unusual.  The crowds at most concerts I end up at seem to be of an older persuasion, so the young adult crowd at this concert was what essentially threw me out of my context, weird as that might sound.  I can’t ever remember being alone at a kickin, dancin, good-time concert before, and so I definitely found out that I’m shy.  There were attractive girls there everywhere, mostly unaccompanied by dates, dancing and swaying to the groovin’ blues and funk; they’d smile at me, I’d smile back, and after a couple minutes to realize that I wasn’t going to make a move, they went to smile at someone else, I suppose.  This happened over and over and over again, and now you might be starting to give excuses for me already and make counter examples, but I insist on the philosophy that you know a person by what they do and not by what they or anyone else says.  Now, if I were to keep going to things like this alone, then there’s more of a chance of working up my comfort level, but then that falls out of the “out of context” framework which is the base neccessity for finding out things about yourself.  So I’m shy and sheepish, and there’s nothing anyone could do to prove otherwise :)Also while at this concert this middle aged guy came over to sit by me during a break between sets.  I said my feet were tired, how about him?  He said, no but his heart is.
Huh?
“You know when women have those hips that when they shake them they weave a tapestry of love?  She was that woman.”  He proceeded to tell me about this woman from the Virgin Islands that had captivated his heart.  “She left!  She took my heart and held it out like this,” he had his hand held out, palm cupped, “‘Let’s dance!’ she said.  Then she leaves.  We dance all night, then I told her I had a wife and two kids, she danced one more song and left…  [My wife] always knows when I’ve even looked at a woman!”That poor guy was moping the rest of the concert

12/17 Dang, that’s weird.

I’ve been really enjoying my stay in washinton with the parents lately, but there hasn’t been much to blog about, unless you think you might be entertained by stories of playing cards and chatting at coffee shops.  Oh, there was the ice climbing excursion, but there’s nothing to say about that other than it was cool.  Just yesterday, however, was awesome.I’m down visiting Devon Van Essen in Lebenon, OR (by Eugene) and we hiked to a truly beautiful waterfall, visited a jaw-dropping little rock shop, and spent 4 hours dancing at a tango parlor.  The rock shop needs the most explanation though.It’s called the Living Rock Studio Museum and it’s something Devon has driven by hundreds of times without stopping.  You walk in to this two-story building and it’s made like a castle, with rocks and mortar making up the walls and floors.  There’s a suveneir rock shop to the left and what seems like a labrynth to the right.  It’s just beautiful and very cool… then this lady, Nancy, welcomes us and says we’ll need these flashlights for the guided tour.Tour?  Ok.  Sure.She showed us to shine the light against the stones in the wall and see how they light up, like huge agates or crystals.  Then she shined the light up in a dark corner and pointed out these rocks in the wall that had cool animal and plant fossils, and the old Indian relics and pioneer tools that have been preserved into the wall as well.  Around the corner there were 10 or so slit windows that showed beautifully done stained glass work, and she pointed out fabric art on the walls, floral work in the corners, antiques, relics, gizmos, creations and anything else they darn well wanted to put on display.  Nancy’s father had built the (house? castle? shop?) weird-cool building forty years ago, and the whole family puts all of their hobbies and artwork on display for shop/museum-goers.  Sooooo weird.  Every rock that built the place was interesting.  There were oil paintings everywhere depicting birds of prey.  There were jars embeded into the walls with other finds such as crystals, old knives, eyeglasses and  such that were too small or fragile to actually put into the structure of the place.  The ceiling of the second level was held up by “posts” of rocks that were fashioned to look like the trunk and branches of a tree, and there was a branch/leaf/sky pattern painted on a fabric above – the branches were sewn with stuffing to make them 3D and 500 triple-layer 3D leaves were hanging down.  And it needs to be said again that EVERY rock put into this place was interesting.  They have a petrified wood section; jade, shale, agate and all other one’s I can’t remember.  The whole family has their hearts poured out into this thing, and it’s nothing short of being truly, utterly, amazingly fascinating.  They describe it as “a place where the human interests of art, science and religion meet!”  WOW.

What does Mozart do now that he’s dead?

DEcomposeHa ha ha Ha ha ha Ha ha haHa ha ha Ha ha ha Ha ha haHa ha ha Ha ha ha Ha ha ha

11/16 Wanna go? Sure!

I had such a cool day yesterday that it needs to be noted somewhere.  It wasn’t any particular event or anything that made it special because I really just loafed around all day.  Well, I got a couple things done, but what was so great was that I didn’t have to make any decisions all day!  From the moment I woke up until evening I had friends coming up to me and saying, “Let’s go _____”, and we did it.  It was like a personal retreat or camp or something where they have everything planned out and you just gotta ride along without any cares.  A truly magnificent, once-in-a-lifetime experience!Along the lines of the last entry, the bike school is booked through March, so I’ll continue as planned otherwise and see what happens.

11/11 Nampa sweet Nampa

    So I’m home, and I love it here!  I missed my friends mucho!  The last 5 weeks have been awesome, and there’s no regrets for doing nothing with my life for a short period of time, but it’s time to switch that around.  Plans may come and plans may go, but the strategy for now is to go to Oregon after thanksgiving for three weeks to get a bike mechanic certification!  And THEN, after Christmas in Yakima and New Years in New Orleans, it’s back to the Nampa to try a hand at starting a bike-shop-type-thing in January.
Well, it’s 10pm and we’re heading up to go play in the snow at Bogus
I love Idaho!!

11/9 Moab

    Biking in Moab has been way too stupindicularly fantasmal to put to words.  Therefore, you should check out the new pictures on my page; they’re not all of me, but you can get the jist of what I’ve been up to :)  I don’t know yet when I’ll be leaving the area or even if I’ll head straight back to Nampa, but I’ll get there eventually, eh.  Have a great day!Awe geez, I guess I could say a couple things non-bike related.  We met a couple guys at the hostel we’re bunking at at we all went riding together for a couple days.  These dudes, Zac and John, were from North Carolina and have been on the road for more than two months, biking and rock climing everywhere possible.  They live in a truck and just travel around.  A few nights earlier they had shot a rabbit with a compound bow and made stew for dinner.  Zac looks like a mountain man even though he’s 21 and talks like Drew Barymore’s brother in 50 First Dates.  It was fun taking these guys under our wings for a bit because they were so low on money, we even had them stay a night with us in our cabin, which was crazy-crowded!  This other guy we met and have been riding with is from Mass. and is working at a bike shop in town for three months.  When Dave first got here he lived out of his truck for two weeks until he found someone looking for a roommate, and he’s been showing us all the awesome biking spots only the locals know about.  Today we spent all day in Arches NP getting some sweet photoage and tomorrow is my Canadian buddy’s last day here so we’ll be taking the world famous Porcupine Rim trail for a second go-around as a nice closure.

11/6 Utah

    Sooooooooooo beautiful!  We’re staying at this hostel in Moab that’s just cute as a button.  Well, I guess that’s a matter of opinion seeing as though their logo is “A sunny place for shady people”, but it’s set back off the main road and has cozy log cabins and a nice central area.  Moab is in full fall colors, so the trees here at the Lazy Lizard Hostel are beautiful, and there are some interesting locals who actually live here.  One guy has a trailer set up on property with a rackety old fence giving him some privacy.  Seriously rackety.  He’s got so little room in his little tear-drop trailer, so he stores his multi-thousand dollar mountain bikes in school lockers in his ‘yard’!  We’ve chummed with a couple guys from North Carolina who have been biking, hiking and climbing around the states for four months now.  They’re good riders (mountain biking) and are a joy to have around, and tomorrow we’re all headed to Arches to check on its coolness.  So other than biking stories that would bore most of you, here’s my fun story from Moab.
There are a couple weird marks on the back of my dirty car (see photo).  The filth has been wiped away in two long drags coming down from the top of the window; our new friend Zac said it looks like I had draped some wet pants over the back.  He was closer to the truth than not because the marks were made by pants.  I was driving down this back highway to moab Saturday night, and I passed a truck on the side of the road about a half mile before the owners of it flagged me down.  They had nailed a huge rock in the road resulting in a flat and needed to get home, but I certainly didn’t have any room in my car.  Every last square foot of the Subaru has a dedicated use when I travel, and there just isn’t any room.  Although, I was thinking, the girl could sit in the passenger seat and hold the basket I keep there on her lap and put her feet up on the dash.  Uncomfortable, but feasible.  That, however leaves the guy stranded in the cold.  “Well, you can ride on the roof.”  Under the circumstances he thought that was a reasonable solution, and he hopped up ontop of the Subaru, and we drove a good 20 miles with this dude clinging on, nestled between my two bike racks and freezing his face off!  His wife and I had a wonderful time there in the heat of the car talking about everything, and my buddy John and I are going frisbee golfing with them in a couple days, and they’re even going to put me up for a night at this resort they manage :)   Anyway, I’m having a hard time washing my car ’cause those pants marks crack me up every time!

11/4 The 1 Act Play

Enter Keith and Weird Smiley Dude Who Likes to Rub His Belly.  Keith is coming down off the mountain after a short hike, having enjoyed himself immensely, and Smiley is heading the mountain.(Keith) Hey, nice day isn’t it.
(Smiley) Stops, smiles, sways a little.  Sure is!  Are there many people up the trail?
(Keith) Oh, not many, I passed a couple with a dog and one guy taking photos.  No, there really aren’t too many out today, which is nice.
(Smiley) Lifting up his shirt and rubbing his belly, Oh, ok, that’s wonderful.  Sometimes there’s just too many folks around.  There’s a couple spots up on those rocks where you can sit and get some sun.  I’m just gonna go up and take all my clothes off…  Pauses, looks down, still pausing…  Wanna come?Exuent.

11/4 Elsewhere

The Scubaru brought me to Fort Collins yesterday and I’m gonna hit a skate park with my buddy Isaac before meeting up with my Canadian pal John over in Moab later today.  Visiting Canada was nice because of the good friends a people there, but the weather was lousy and didn’t permit any activities until the last day when John and I hit some trail and dirt jumps.  We planned this trip out to Moab for a couple weeks from now and I was planning on hiking some of the Appalacian trail along with visiting some more folks in NC and Virginia, but that was all thrown out the window when John called and said “can you make it to Utah in three days?”  So it took some convincing, but the Subie finally agreed to drive me out there rather than taking it easy on the east coast, and I think he’s happy to be back in the wide open spaces of the west where it’s dry and cold rather than beautifully warm and full of fall colors…Oh, and there were the cops in . . . heck, I can’t remember which state.  Vermont or New Hampshire.  Or Massachusets, anyway, they wouldn’t let us sleep anywhere and made us freeze our tushes off standing outside our sleeping bags while they ran ID checks, and then expressed concern for why we were out in the cold!  Oh the nerve!  And there were also the coyotes and the demon generator out in the woods, but we ran into far more great people and beautiful places than not.

10/24 Boston

The last noteworthy thing I did in NYC was to hang out with my Granny in a bar until 1:30am!  Haha, beat that!  And today I was in Boston.  Didn’t plan on it, but decided to to it anyway.  My friend Christina and I started north from NY last night after 3 hours on public transit just to go 10 miles, and we had only gone about 30 or so miles before we decided to swing a right and head to over there.  We slept between a highway and a pond, and got to Boston around lunch time.  It is an amazingly beautiful town!  Boston was the site of the beginnings of the American Revolution, and it was very cool to be able to see where it all took place!  We got a tour book, and we walked and read aloud all day long about the history of the city.  I’m a sucker for history, and I’ve got an ancestor who was deeply involved in that movement, so it was a big deal to me.  We ate dinner at Cheers, and now I’m at some college in Andover, MA using their internet.To clear up on the knife guy.
I was walking down 7th Ave. and this guy was a derranged man who seemed like he needed to scare people, and I expect that he wouldn’t have done a thing, and he didn’t.  He growled, pulled his little 1″ knife, and I walked right past without looking back.  This might sound sketchy, but in the moment I wasn’t concerned at all, it was more like, “now that’s weird.”Anywho, if anyone can get to Boston, you must!, and I hear Phillidephia is equally amazing.

10/20 NYC

I’ll hopefully get another chance to elaborate, but I’ve been in the city for three days now and here are my favorite things that have happened:My waiter at Sardi’s was a raft guide from McCall; a small girl was having a hay-day jumping all over bubble wrap in the subway; there was a dude at the UN that looked like Einstein and his wife was wearing a gold jumpsuit; saw a dance studio rehearsal from my hotel room, and they were good!; Borders has a HUGE photography section; the notes written on the walls fencing in the WTC site; my fruit smoothie; 7-year old kids greeting each other with fist-thumps; a kid stealing a ball from a guy juggling, and running; a guy pulling a knife on me tonight; and, as no surprise to anyone, losing my wallet (unrelated to the knife dude).  Grrr.

10/16 DC

I’m off to the big apple today, and hopefully everything turns out ok. Google says it will take 4 hours, but we’ll see, I need to find somewhere to park my car outside of the city and then need to find a way in, else it costs 45 bucks a day to park, yikes! Mo and I went biking and hiking while in DC, just because I knew I would get my fill of the city this week, and we had a wonderful time. The woods here are just gorgeous and full of squirrels (yea.) and white tail deer (yea!), and there are a surprisingly few amount of people who go there. Oh, and my car got towed, that was fun

10/13 no…..more……..driving
Current mood:  drained

I got to DC today after many more hours in the drivers seat that any one human should be put through, but it was fun and worth it of course! There was a rainstorm across Colorado and Kansas that washed my car, and we went to a nice botanical garden in Kansas City. There was a nice lady named Geraldine in Rosebud, Missouri who wanted to know everything about Idaho, and she, after talking with her for 20 minutes or so, wanted a hug before I left. I gave her three guesses as to where Idaho was, and the closest she got was “by Michigan?”. I talked a lot on the phone at night and then slept in a nice grassy clearing. When I parked my car I realized I had picked a spot (back on a dirt road in the hills) next to a cemetery, and when I got to laying my bedding down a flock(?) of bats flew out of the tree. Then around 1 or 2, I was jolted awake by some heavy animal footsteps a few yards away in the trees, and I told myself it was just a cow, but it wasn’t rangeland…
I never realized how vast the appalachian mountains are either! I took longer to cross them than it does the rockies, that’s for sure, and there are the prettiest, quaintest, most awesomest little towns nestled in the hills just like a Kinkade, and the fall colors were just spectacular. Then there’s DC. Traffic. Hmph. It took me from 7 to 8:30 to go 15 miles. Hmph. When you grew up in towns less than 4k you just don’t know how to handle that.
Peace.

9/18 Too many movies

What do you do when all your friends are gone and the life you know is winding down to a closure so you don’t have the gumption to do anything new?  Watch too many movies, eat crappy food and stay up too late.  Ok, does anyone ever wonder who makes these “participation required” banners at the top of the page?  Everything from racing sharks and dolphins (current) to drilling oil, boxing the president and polishing cars.  I swear they think of it all!  If you were to make a contest banner, what would it be?
Mine would be racing down the appalation trail, and there would be bear and chipmunk attacks.

8/21 don’t know what to do *UPDATED*

This was written few weeks ago:
Alright.  So the editor in chief of National Geographic Traveler is staying at our Lodge right now, and tomorrow will be a huge barbeque at which I will have my one and only chance of my life to shmooze up to the man who could give a photographer his dream job.  MOMMY!!!!
See comments below for updates

7/7 two movieng experiences

Yesterday was my first day off in two weeks, so I celebrated.  Well, I did a bunch of shopping type stuff and other errands that needed to be done, but it just felt good to get out of my little valley.  The one thing I did treat myself to was a movie.  I drove to the theater to see what was playing and it was a tough choice because there are so many good flicks out right now, and I chose Click.  It was a little weird going alone, but it got even weirder when I walked into the theater right at showtime…and there wasn’t a soul.  Not only did I go alone, but I sat alone in a theater of 800 capacity.  Alone.  It was really weird at first, but then it just got fun because I could talk back at the movie without anyone being bothered by it!Then when I got home I sat and watched a giant thunderstorm with my buddy Shayna, it was spectacular.  I wish they would last longer, but the lightening is usually only on the front edge of the storm, I think.  But if you want to experience the most amazing thunder acoustics in your life, you’ve got to be in the Grand Canyon when a good storm passes through!

6/24 usps

On the back of a USPS Insured Mail receipt:  “Merchandise is insured against loss, damage, or rifling.”
Now I know there’s jokes out there about mailmen going on shooting binges, but seriousy, does it need to be covered under the insurance??

6/21 A passage I never saw coming

I’m chilling at the computer before I head off to work (in an hour).  I’ve been here in Swan Valley for three days now and last night got a chance to ride the Palisades Creek trail for the first time this season.  Having just spent four months dodging New Orleans traffic on my beefed up full-suspension cross-country mountain bike, it was an odd sensation using the machine for what it was built.  My lungs went into shock, the dinner that I stuffed my face with just before was making itself known and the rocks in the path seemed to have a strange pull toward them, and not away as it should be.  But something else struck me with more force than any physical object could.  After the ride, and for those who don’t give a rip about biking I won’t go into the details, there is a two-mile cool-down of a dirt road on the way back to mi hacienda.  Maybe it was the lack of similar riding recently, maybe it was the altitude (remember New Orleans is actually below sea level), maybe it was the food, but I was exhausted.  But I felt good.  I felt powerful.  There was this bare-bones energy behind the weak outer shell, and I was excited, and here’s the point I’ve been leading up to: I felt like a man.
Ok, even I know that’s a weird thing to write about in a blog and who really wants to read about that – kinda like who wants to read or talk about puberty.  Ha.  But we all  must come to a point when for the first time we feel adultish; you know, in all the physical, mental and emotional categories.  Is it something everyone experiences?  From what I gather a good majority of people have the feeling sometime in their late teens when they ditch the parents, and I know others (guys only, for some reason) who are in their 50′s and have never felt it.  I myself have always considered myself a kid, and never had a clue that the day would come when I didn’t.  Well, it hit last night, and ironically today I recieved in the mail a coloring kit from my friend Carla.  Ha.

5/17 I need everyone’s help on this one

    I’ve owned my car, the Scubaru, for exactly 5 years now, and you’d have to ask Sam Flieshman how it got it’s name.  It’s about to hit 200k miles and I love it dearly!  Let’s see, I’ve only driven 100k of those miles and I’ve probably gone an average of 55, maybe 60 miles an hour.  We’ll call it 60.  That’s 1,667 hours spend in my car!  And that’s not including just sitting there with the engine off or sleeping in the back or working on it.  I would feel comfortable calling it 2,000 hours, which is 83 straight days.  And the point of all this is that I JUST REALIZED THERE’S SOMETHING WRITTEN ON MY DASHBOARD!  It’s pencilled in or something, but it most clearly says “UNCO”.  That’s it, unco in all caps.  The lighting has to be just right to see it, but it’s there alright.  UNCO?  I don’t get it.Somebody please explain

5/8 Why New Orleans rocks

There is music everywhere;  there are festivals every weekend;  black people sit on their porches and wave to you; it has a great mixture of sun and torrential rain; people ride bikes; people actually walk because everything they need is within a few blocks; amazing food; the roads are so warped from the city being built on a marsh that it’s like your own personal rollercoaster everytime you’re in your car; same for the sidewalks and biking; most of the roads have a canopy of oaks shading them; there are lizards everywhere; you can bike anywhere in the city in less than 30 minutes; lamps are still lit by gas down in the French Quarter; there are a bajillion different styles of houses, and they’re all beautiful; the honeysuckle blossoms; the coffee shop I’ve adopted is always full of law students and they make me feel deliriously happy to be NOT studying and just reading a good book; the locals have such colorful personalities I can’t even describe; cafe au lait and beignets; the setting sun casts beautiful warm-lit shadows; temperate weather in february!; and more!

5/3 a non-cohesive ponderance about relationary stuff

The privilege of hanging out with my granny the last few months has been wonderful.  Grandpa (we called him PeePaw, but no one knows why) passed away in ’95 and she’s been living alone ever since.  During their golden years Granny and PeePaw were traveling fools and have visited just about every place on Earth you can think of, and even after ’95 she continued to visit Europe, Australia and even Antartica twice.  With her physical abilities dwindling it has been interesting, and a pity in a way, to watch her spend most of the day in the green recliner of her living room.  She reads the newspaper obsessivly, as her only outlet to the world she knows so intimately.  Wine has become a favorite vice, and outings are short and to the point.
Here is a woman, a great, amazingly splendid sharp-as-a-tack socialite of a bygone era that we could never understand; here she is confined to herself and embarrassed of what she has become.
And I have the privilege of spending time with her.  Just today she told me how she has met every president up through Clinton.  When we watch shows by National Geographic she studies the credits and tells me about this man who does this and that company that does that.  This woman has an incredible history!  And she enjoys it so much to just have me over, sitting with her and reading or watching TV.  I’ve wondered why such a person would be content with the simplest of company when her life has been rich and full to the brim with adventure!  Then…Watching Shall We Dance the other day for the first time, Richard Geer’s wife busted out this cool quote about marriage,
“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”It all makes sense, and not just in the marriage context.  We all need to be noticed, and having her family stand by her lovingly is all she could ever want right now.
Just a thought-of-the-day

5/1 Dave Matthews and auto repair estiments

    One of the joys of Louisiana is its plethora of opportunities to experience music.  There are festivals every weekend all across the state until the weather gets cold, which isn’t much of the year.  A couple weekends ago was the French Quarter Festival that featured local acts playing on random stages throughout the Quarter, and the last weekend and this weekend are the JazzFest.
Jazz Fest is HUGE.  I mean, I went to try to see Bob Dylan play, and couldn’t get within a hundred yards of the stage because of all the people!  Dave Matthews was equally packed, but was a much better concert.  Aside from being the amazing band they are, they finished the concert with Louisiana Bayou, off their Stand Up album released a year ago.  Within 30 seconds of the end it began to rain, but the crowd stayed and cheered an encore, which the Jazz Fest never allows, but they came out and played JTR, and that chorus goes, “Rain, rain, rain down on me, Again and again, Rain down on me.”  Way to improv, guys!
I also saw Ani DiFranco, Cowboy Mouth and jazz artists who blew me away but I didn’t know their names.  Next week, more!
Today I spend all day at an auto repair shop and on the side of the building was stenciled, “ESTIMENTS $15″.  Seriously, ALL day – 8-5!

4/18 (less than) 101 uses for bandanas – updated 5/9

Everytime I find a new use for them, I tell myself I will compile a list someday (this is more for my amusement than anything).  So here it is, in the works.  Every use that follows I have actually done myselfCup holder
Satchel for trinkets
Head scarf
Headband
Dust mask
Blindfold
Padding for foot when lacking a shoe
Bandage
Rag/towel
Tow rope
Strap to hold flipflop securely to foot
Sun shade
Left sleeve (forearm and upper arm) to prevent sunburn while driving
Forearm sleeves (left and right) to block cold winds
Decoration
Syve
Capture the Flag flag
Bright colors to be seen during hunting season
Lens cover
Lens cloth/cleaner
Splint
Napkin
Knife sheath
Drum head deadener
Earmuff

4/18 Life Goals (online edition) updated 5/10

Get better handwriting
Have a second identity
Live in the Andes & have a horse
Hike the Long Trail
Base jump
Spend time in jail
Bike around in Africa
Patent something
Ride Kamloops like I own it
Float the Colorado in a dori
Start a bike shop
Support a bunch of missionaries
Discover my family’s history
Learn the violin
Photograph those one waterfalls outside Moab
Sell photos in a gallery
Survive a huge natural disaster
Learn to weld
Live in a yurt
Know myself
Learn German
Learn to sprint on all 4′s like a cheetah******************I guess another way of looking at something like this is to answer the question, “If I were a billionare, what would I do?”  Seeing as though money doesn’t have much to do with most of the above, the following list has everything to do with access to disposable income.  [I just finished reading a Forbes magazine, so there's where this came from]******************Ride a horse across the country or even down to the southern tip of Chile
Spend my days out in the national parks waiting for the perfect light/weather conditions for photos
Ok, that’s all I can think of right now, but I know there’s more

4/17 Ahhh…

    The parents were here for 2 1/2 weeks and left today.  I enjoyed it, but.  Ahhh.  Taxes are done; not hard, but.  Ahhh.  I’m sitting doing nothing like I should.  The most stressful part about having the parents around is that there’s no time to relax, you know?  Every minute has to be productive or it’s wasted, so dad thinks.  It’d be so nice to do this and kinda fun to do that, so mom says.  My idea of a good visit is to go read in a cafe or bookstore, or just sitting and talking.  What’s wrong with that? says I, but people have to be more entertained these days.  I love scrabble.  I love walking aimlessly, stopping to talk with whoever’s path I cross.  I like just sitting and listening to music.  Just sitting, nothing more, and that’s what I’m accomplishing for the night, dad!  Activity eclipses perception and thought, so I sit and enjoy.  Ahhh

TIME!!

“Time is on my side” -Beatles
“Time keeps on slipping into the future”  -Steve Miller Band
“An unhurried sense of time is in itself a form of wealth”  -Bonnie Friedman
blah blah blahanyway, it is roughly 01:02:03 04/05/06yeah!

4/2 Old photos

I’m scanning a bunch of old slides. They’re pictures my grandpa took back in the 60′s, 70′s and 80′s, and it’s really fun to see little me, the young parents, old houses, and the tyranical sister I once knew. *My sister playing with a doll in a wicker baby carriage with wooden wheels, the likes of which you could never find anymore *My mom moving things into her first house. She’s in her mid-20′s, has the same haircut as me and is wearing a bandana…creepy. *Bonfires at the beach, the wood built up 10ft. high! *The flooded streets of New Orleans from Camille in ’67 *Another of the bonfires that reveals them to be well over 30 feet high . . . And this whole time I’ve been typing this my granny’s been yelling at the tv, telling Tom Hanks not to leave Wilson behind; “Go get it!”

4/1 Don’t know what to title this

    Finally got to get my hands dirty yesterday!! It has been far too long, but it sure was nice. After a longish day of working on an anchored barge willynilly moving boxes, lamps and plants from here to there and back again, I went out to my friend Edwin’s house to help him weed his gardens and plant a hundred or so bulbs. Don’t know what was the best part, but I got to pull a bunch of ‘weeds’, replant the soon-to-be-flowers I pulled thinking they were weeds, till up garden soil with a big heavy tool of some sort, hoe some rows for the bulbs, then plant them and then water them. Not much, but I’m writing this blog because I enjoyed it that much. Heck, I don’t even expect anyone to read this. Except maybe Niki (HI NIKI) and she might even be bored of it by now.
Afterward we went out to pizza and then Edwin dragged me to a bar. “Dragged” meaning that I had had a glass and a half of wine and didn’t want any more to drink. Well, he insisted and it was, afterall, a very nice bar with a well rounded crowd and all, and we even met someone Edwin used to work with, was a tad older than I and held a pleasant conversation. After almost an hour though I realized in the meta sort of way :) that I was staring off, not caring a lick about anything in the bar and just wanting to be home reading Angle of Repose. This confirmed what I have argued for a long time that I just don’t enjoy bars. I mean, it was a friday night and was in good company for the love of pete.
Yesterday, admist all that I did find out some interesting things about my family history. Edwin, you see, is a long-time family friend (my parents’ age), and he knows far more about my family than I do! Apparently we used to own and deal in slaves. One of the old Caffery men would provide slaves for the governor, bringing him only the ‘freshest’ from Africa. Then when the Confederate succession failed, the two men spent some time in jail together for supporting it. I’ve got a lot of art in the family on my grandmother’s side, and many quirky-fun folks on all sides, not to mention a rich history of political activism.  Part of the family has come from the cultured uptown New Orleans crowd and part came from the hicks in the sticks. Great great aunt, Eva Witherspoon helped lead the reclamation of the French Quarter in the 1920′s from the slums it was at that point.
And that’s all I could weasil out of Edwin. I plan to get some more out of my Granny at some point while I’m down here

4/1 The best compliment I’ve ever recieved…

and I quote:
“…here in stinky Nampa….  To tell you the truth, it has stunk worse because you have left.”awww

3/26 TDR

    “Better faithful than famous.”
President 1901-1909, Theo was the man and a hero, if not for the only reason that he never saw what he did as great or out of the ordinary, but just what needed to be done.  The following excerpts are taken from The Courage and Character of Theodore Roosevelt by George Grant.”I am of course in a perfect whirl of work and have every kind of worry and trouble–but that’s what I am here for…I enjoy it.”"I love all the seasons: the snows and bare woods of winter, the rush of growing things and the blossom spray of spring, the leafy shades that are heralded by the green dance of summer, and the sharp fall winds that year the brilliant banners with which the trees greet the dying year.”"Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much because they live in the tray twilight that know neither victory nor defeat.”He was a great encourager.  He liked nothing better than to see others succeed…  And he was abundantly profusive in his praise of their achievements.  As Irvin Cobb put it, “You had to hate Roosevelt a whole lot to keep from loving him.”To his mind the Christian wold view was a comprehensive frame of reference touching the totality of life, not simply the hazy zone of personal piety… It was truth.  It was truth about all things for all men at all times.”A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.”Roosevelt believed that there were absolutes,…unchanging principles – ones not affected by the movement of the clock or the advance of the calendar. And he believed that those absolute principles could only reliably be found in the Bible.”Remember: the most perfect machinery of government will not keep us as a nation from destruction if there is not within us a soul.  No abounding of material prosperity shall avail us if our spiritual senses atrophy.”"I wish to preach not the doctrine of ignoble ease but the doctrine of the strenuous life; the life of toil and effort; of labor and strife; to preach that the highest form of success which comes not to the man who desires mere easy peace but to the man who deos not shrink from danger, hardship, or from the bitter toil.”

3/25 Switchfoot and music in general

    Went to a Switchfoot concert tonight!  they sure are a fun bunch of guys…and I just realized I’ve been watching C-SPAN for well over 2 hours…HA!  Ahh well.  I have been volunteering at the New Orleans Jazz Fest offices lately, and the lineup this year is astounding
On a normal year, the Jazz Fest reels in a national headline act for the saturday of the second weekend of the festival, but this year they are featuring more than 6 such artists, at least one for each day!  Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Bruce Springstein, Dave Matthews, Fats Domino, Jimmy Buffet, Lionel Ritchie, and Keith Urban.  Wow, I’m excited.
And I’ll be heading out to some music festival tomorrow that’s put on by this ethnic group that settled centuries ago in St. Bernard Parish (the N.O. area hardest hit both by the hurricane and the floods).  They, just like the Creoles, were/are suffering from the threat of assimilation to loose their native culture forever.  Soooo, every year they put on a little music festival to, in a way, preserve their heritage.  The directions I got were, “Head out Bayou Road until you see a big hurricane-gutted building with tons of people.”

Quotes (updated 5/28)

Kids are so cute, and they grow up to be such jerks.  -Stan KlassenThose are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others. -Groucho MarxKeith, I promise I do not think of you as a plump juicy strawberry!!! -Carla Schreffler”The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, and you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating… you finish off as an orgasm.” -George Carlin”When I look at a bag of beads, I feel comfortable and attractive”  -some Chinese dude on tv who doesn’t know english very good, he owns a factory that produces Mardi Gras beads”I miss my DAMN Disney Channel”  -my cousin”Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can’t remember where they leave things.”"At the age of eleven or thereabouts women acquire a poise and anability to handle difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky,manages to achieve somewhere in the later seventies.” – PG Wodehouse”Everything has a tendency to fall apart; whether it’s a nation or a marriage you have to fight to keep it together.”  – Jon Foreman, lead singer, SwitchfootAs the poet said, ‘Only God can make a tree’ — probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.  – Woody AllenYou can observe a lot just by watching.  – Yogi BerraTowns are like people. Old ones often have character, the new ones are interchangeable.   – Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose”Illusion is the first of all pleasures.”  – Oscar WildeSome mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps. – Emo Phillips