how can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat?

I've been remiss with blog updates. Not because of overwhelming school requirements as in the past (I totally quit school AGAIN - but more on that later) but mostly due to future plans that change on the hour. However, Christy relayed a request from her mom that I update my blog with current Christy/Jason happenings and plans. As I haven't yet met Christy's family, it seemed wise to stay on her mom's good side. (Hi Anne!)

"Quit school, you say??" Yep, that's me: two-time college dropout. This is a huge source of embarrassment for me, trust me. But you'll see in just a few sentences why this is not necessarily a bad thing. Unless of course, you're one of those people that highly value education and knowledge and such. Then maybe yeah, bad thing.

Here's the plan as it stands this afternoon. We reserve the right to change it soon and often.

1. Move into Christy's houseboat in the next few weeks.
2. Rent the townhouse.
3. Buy a sailboat and learn how to sail it.
4. In October, move out of houseboat and onto sailboat.
5. Sometime in spring 2009 quit our jobs.
6. June 2009, take off sailing for Alaska. We'll cruise around the PNW for a spell before:
7. August 2009, sail to Mexico to meet up with our good friends, Kim and Fisher, who are sailing down there a few months prior.
8. September 2009, anchor somewhere in the Sea of Cortez.
9. Drink hand made margarita's on deck.
10. Fix stuff on the boat that broke.
11. Go to step 9.

We don't know what we'll do after Mexico, nor do we particularly care at the moment. We'll figure it out when we need to. At this point, we are just focused on getting a hold of the skills we need to pull something like this off without being handed a Darwin award.

As you can see, there is no step in the plan called "graduate". School didn't really make sense if all we were going to do was just get my ass graduated and then hop on a boat and promptly sunburn that knowledge right back out of my head. One of these days, I would sorely love to graduate but school really made so much more sense when I was planning on working after graduating. As it stands, I'll need all the room in my brain for the inordinate amount of knowledge and skill required to keep our boat from settling on the bottom of the Puget Sound.

So to sum up: quit school, moving in with Christy, saving money, quitting work, sailing, margaritas in Mexico.

Any questions?

a pacific northwest weekend

saturday
We met Christy's friend Sarah on the Bainbridge ferry on our way to this cool farmhouse restaurant in middle of nowhere but a touch east of Poulsbo. They apparently only serve breakfast on the first Saturday of the month so if you're hankering for some breakfast vittles, put it on the calendar in advance.

Since we dropped a ridiculous amount of money on our ferry toll, we decided to cruise around the west side of the sound for a bit after breakfast, just to get our money's worth. We stopped by Port Gamble and then hopped over the Hood Canal Bridge and watched the storm blow through from Shine Tidelands State Park.



After that, we ran up to Point No Point (anyone know why they call it that, post a comment please and thanks!) to check out the lighthouse and play on the beach.


If you look to the right of the lighthouse directly above the big rock, you can just see three coasties flying in formation heading towards Seattle. We had never seen three of 'em flying at once and hoped that they weren't responding to some disaster that required three helicopters.




The last we saw of this kite is was augering into the ocean at the speed of sound. Flying a kite in 30 knot wind takes a special kind of skill apparently.


How cool is this house?

sunday
Sunday we finally got around to christening Christy's shiny new snowshoes. Given the amount of avalanche deaths this year (9 so far in western Washington!!), we decided we take it easy and play around the flatlands of Gold Creek, far away from big heavy slabs of mountainside snow.


Whoosh.




Here's a shot of Christy not falling down. Good job!


Oops. Spoke too soon.




We're laughing because I almost fell over taking this picture.

be the ball

From time to time, JohnL and I join my rafting friends from Eugene on a three-day paddle down the beautiful and remote Rogue River in southern Oregon. Ask any kayaker and he/she will tell you that rafting friends are the best kinds of friends to have. These folks are epic hedonists and traveling down a river in their company is caramel covered happiness on a stick. Camp dinners consist of BBQ'd steak in a red wine reduction with sautee'd I don't even know what. Just one moment while we unearth the dutch oven'd chocolate cake. You prefer your margaritas blended you say? Let me just fire up the gas powered blender.

In order to ensure that suffering is kept to acceptable levels, we usually stay the second evening at a place called Half Moon Bar Lodge. This little slice of heaven sits in a field on top of a bluff looking out over the Rogue River. But if you want to come here, bring your PFD or a Piper Super Cub because the only way you're getting here is by boat or landing a plane on their cow pasture. Of particular note on their "runway" is a meandering golf course, each hole consisting of a truck tire rim buried in the ground.

After quickly hauling and stowing the gear, the more obnoxious elements of the party brew up some Nalgene bottles full of gin and tonic. Armed with toxic amounts of gin, we race over to the old whiskey barrel full of garage sale golf clubs. This golf course is not a course for keen club selection. There will be no evaluating the wind or slope of the green. You will not be consulting a caddy. You will take one club and like it. I, for one, prefer a good 9 iron. I find that the higher in the air the ball travels, the more time my head can swivel around like a bobblehead looking for it. And double-bonus: I never have to walk far to my next shot. 3 irons are great and all but if you drive the ball past a certain point into the trees, the bears might just be keen on keeping that ball for their own selves. Your call, Tiger.

We do have some other rules to our friendly competition. You will not keep your head down when you swing. Nor will you follow through. You will not keep silent during one's backswing nor drive through the ball with your hips. The first person that offers helpful advice on my swing will find an errant 9 iron wizzing past the bridge of their nose. Anyone caught keeping score after the third hole is clearly sober and is ejected from the competition. Or sometimes we just tackle them and rub buffalo grass in their hair.

What follows is only a distant, unruly cousin of golf. As the afternoon wears on and the Nalgene bottles lighten, it descends into a baser form of entertainment. Mostly, our tournament becomes howls of laughter and rolling on the ground as someone lets go on the upswing or whacks themselves on the toe. Massive divots are carved out of the ground in front of an unmoved golf ball. Occasionally we must break from the tournament to replenish our drinks. The more properly behaved members of the rafting party will setup a table somewhere on the grounds full of delicate cheeses and delightful cocktails. While they decant wine and discuss 401k's, our miscreant contingent wades through this offering like Sherman through Atlanta. After gorging ourselves on finger-scooped gouda and pinot gris right from the bottle, we wipe the crumbs off our faces with our shirts and express our gratitude with a large belch. "BUUURRRRAPPPP!" we pronounce as we take our leave and amble back to the course.

The bacchanalia spirals down throughout the evening in and out of my memory. I have snapshots of acting the right fool but the snapshot never comes with context or order to the events. The following morning finds me cotton-mouthed and feeling like a bag of hammered shit as I try to re-construct the jackassery of the evening. Did I really drop a full glass of gin on top of Nick's head in the sauna? Who threw up in the grass last night?

And where the hell are my pants anyhow?













(pics by JohnL and Tim O'Dell, thanks fellas!)