Arkansas

Flat water in Brown's Canyon.


Big Horn Sheep.

Melanie's Aunt and Uncle are in town for a few days, so we went rafting on the Arkansas. The river has a reputation for being the busiest and most commercialized in the world, but we were pleasantly surprised to find Brown's Canyon relatively unoccupied on a June Sunday. Despite the sparse humanoid population, we still managed to have a user conflict. A ghetto-fabulous raft pulled into our lunch beach and asked if they could share. I was about to point out the vacant beach just downstream when Karen (Mel's aunt) busted out the Southern hospitality and told them it would be no problem at all. This didn't bother me in the slightest until the rest of their party landed on our beach. They had four rafts and numerous kayaks, about 30 people including some yelling children. I took a cue from my mom, and told the leader that we were misinformed as to the size of their party and no longer wished to share our lunch beach. After some smart remarks, rude comments, and lots of stink eye they moved on downstream. Even so, I was totally impressed by the Ark's great scenery and top-notch rapids. Monday, we moved a bit further upstream and made a couple of laps on the Numbers section. Again, I was pleased by some great read-and-run class IV.

The highlight of the trip for me was seeing 12 yr. old Dane Jackson and 13 yr. old Jason Craig tear it up in the Salida play park. These kids are some of the best playboaters I have ever seen. They were throwing down loops three at a time and doing some crazy stuff I had never seen before. What a good life, sponsored kayaker at age 12.

Recent Events

I realize that I have not been doing a particularly good job of updating my blog lately. I have neither been too busy, nor lacked in exciting adventures. I have two roommates that blog and hang out with me. Three posts about climbing a mountain in a dress is a little excessive in my book.

Anyway, life is good. I take Cota on a kick-ass hike every day and ride my bike a lot. Baking cookies has slowed down since the students have left town and I have redoubled my efforts to find a good engineering job. I have quite a few great prospects right now so hopefully something will pan out.

On Monday the whole city came out for the Bolder Boulder. This is the biggest 10k race in the world with over 50,000 runners. I thought it was a really impressive event. There are bands playing all along the course and I rode my bike around to see Mel at various points along the course. My favorite stop was next to a band of middle school boys. It was an interesting study in what happens if you give a 14 year old boy an electric guitar and thousands of screaming fans. The middle schoolers had great taste in music, covering Metallica, AC/DC, Def Leppard, Kiss, GnR, and Ozzy Osbourne.
The middle schoolers play some GnR.

Jake was in town for a day last week on his way to New York. It was great to see him and we did some awesome backcountry skiing in Rocky Mountain NP. I have been continuing my exploration of Colorado's rivers and creeks.
Jake and Mel ready to make some turns.

Piedra

Dana takes a look at Eye of the Needle on the Piedra.

Dough Boy

I got a job. I'm a baker at Boulder Baked. It's a small family owned bakery on University Hill that specializes in cookies, brownies, cakes and other yummy stuff for stoned, drunk college students. They are open from 6pm 'til 2am, which is good for me because I don't have to get up at 4am to make cookies. I get to do it during the normal daytime.

Cross Mountain Gorge

The entrance to Cross Mountain Gorge

Over the weekend Mel and I drove out to North-West Colorado to check out the Yampa River. The Yampa is a tributary of the Green, which eventually joins the Colorado. It's a tranquil river flowing placidly through high-desert valleys until it reaches the Cross Mountains. It then changes abruptly in character and slices a two-thousand foot gorge straight through the range. This makes for a nice five mile section of boating.

We ran this section on Saturday and all was uneventful, except for a little swim Mel took in the very last rapid. We then hiked over the top of the crest back to the truck. On the hike we surprised some elk that were bedded down in the juniper and spruce trees. We also got to peer over the canyon rim and see the gorge in it's entirety. We also saw tons of fox, antelope, deer, and rabbits. Cota was a big fan of chasing the rabbits.

It's boatin' season!

Ski Binding Story

Melanie's friend Kelly is visiting from North Carolina this weekend and since I am such an awesome boyfriend I agreed to drive Kelly up to the mountain on Thursday and ski for a bit. We had a great time in the sun and spring conditions. Then, this really interesting thing happened. Something I have never seen or heard of. If Kelly were not there to witness this event nobody would believe me.

The Story:
I was just skiing along, making beautiful tele turns, when this guy comes flying past me. He was totally out of control, in that half tuck position, sort of making turns. Anyway, you get the picture. I didn't see him crash, although I wish I had. It would have been entertaining and it would make this story even better. I stop and he is slightly up-hill from me lying face down in the snow. He slowly gets up, slightly dazed and I realize that one of his skis is nowhere to be seen. I turn to Kelly and ask her if she sees this guy's other ski. We don't see it and we can see for quite a ways. I notice that the guy is ski/hop/flailing toward us on his one remaining ski, when he asks, "Hey man, can I get some help?" I tentatively give a positive reply expecting to be engaged in a search for the missing ski until all the snow melts. He then busts out with, "You gotta get this binding out of my ass!" Whoa, that was out of left field. Sure enough, when he turns around, he has a ski binding dangling from the seat of his ski pants. I extracted it. When this guy fell he completely ripped his binding off his ski and the brake punctured his ski pants and two layers of underwear then re-traced it's path in complete fish-hook fashion. I really wish I had a picture. It was amazing!

Back to Oregon

Graham on Thursday night


Jake, Garrett and Lisa shortly before I joined them and we sank the canoe.

Mel and I returned to Oregon over the weekend. The excuse, Graham and Greta's wedding. I flew in Thursday evening just in time for some bachelor party schenanigans in downtown Portland. We got Graham pretty drunk (see photo). The wedding itself was successful as well, although Greta looked pretty shocked when the pastor started talking about Jesus. Some good dancing followed with cameo appearances by Jaz & Lou up from California plus Garrett and Lisa down form Montana. Phil will be pleased to know that Molly caught the bouquet. Later in the evening; Brian Melvin (Graham's little brother) cut his face badly on a broken wine bottle, Jake stole the golf cart for a little drunken joyriding, and 4 of us sank the canoe in the pond with all our dress clothes on.

The highlight of the trip home was spending time with family and friends. I visited professors at OSU and spent some quality time with my grandparents and brother. It was a great trip and made me miss Oregon, although my allergies were happy to get on the plane.

No Job Yet

Looking North toward Dinosaur Mountain and the Third Flatiron.


Corey placing some gear in the sweet finger crack.

The approach to this climb is easy, just roll out of bed, pull on your shoes and walk half an hour to the crag. No driving. I can't say enough about how nice it is to hike directly to the crag. Best of all, it is far from being the only climb within easy hiking distance from our front door. Hundreds of cool routes and boulder problems await.

View of Bear Mountain from our back porch.

We finally got around to replacing our stolen camera, and it turns out that our timing was perfect because Sony just came out with a new version of our old camera. It appears that they just put our old one in the shrinker and made the new DSC-W55. There is also less shutter lag and better low-light performance (The plague of all point and shoot digitals). I'm once again impressed by the rapid advancement of technology and can't wait to start taking pictures again.

I was importing all of my photos into Aperture today and came across this old image of Garrett, Eileen, Bryan and myself running Husum Falls on the White Salmon. I used some of my new photo editing capabilities to clean it up a bit.

I don't like looking for jobs. I have found a couple that I want and applied, but I have to wait for interviews. In the meantime, nothing else sounds quite right. Oh well, I will find something soon.

Netflix

I know this is super dorky, but if you have Netflix and want to see what movies I am currently watching/enjoying click here.

Movin'

After just a week in Boulder it is time to move. Josh and Ashley's landlord is selling so we needed to find a new place. The new place is a giant two story that is pretty nice and in a great location so we are pretty excited. The new address is to the right.

Boulder, CO

Quite a bit has changed in the past ten days. Mel and I returned from Central America, concluding an awesome trip. We recommend Guatemala above all others for prospective Central America travelers. Our three days back in Corvallis were spent unpacking, repacking, visiting, and celebrating the holidays with a belated gift exchange. Jake, Molly and my family we expected to see, but Renae was also in town for a couple of days. She even took a couple hours out of her busy schedule to go for a road ride with me.

After three days in Corvallis it was time for two days of driving, the direction, East. We spent the night in Salt Lake with Brad and his wife Molly, whom it was great to finally meet. Desiree is currently swinging chairs at Alta and made the trip down canyon to meet us for an excellent Mexican dinner. In the morning we continued on to Josh and Ashley's in Boulder. Near a gas station, a grumpy old dude yelled at Mel for having Cota off leash in an abandoned construction site. He even called her a "Jackass." Cota was never more than 4 feet from Mel.

Josh and Ashley have a great room for us on the lower level of their house. It's a big room with a pair of South facing windows. Since we have been here there has been a lot of visiting, unpacking, and skiing, but not a lot of job hunting. Today that is all going to change. I am going to cut my hair and polish up the resume. It's time to find a job.

Buena Vista in Antigua

Ignacio Perez Borrell

Last night Mel and I had the pleasure of seeing Buena Vista de Corazon in Antigua. The link to Buena Vista Social Club is the 64 year old Cubano, Ignacio Perez Borrell, who was a drummer in the original ¨Club.¨ He was accompanied by a keyboard, guitar, bongos, and a backup vocalist. Really nice to see the drum kit moved up front and an old dude rocking out with amazing style.