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!)

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

Had you whispered in my ear two years ago that at end of 2007 I'd be selling my house, quitting my job, going back to school, gearing up to sail the world, and oh-by-the-way ass over tea kettle in love, I would have enjoyed a hearty guffaw at your expense. "HA HA HA" I would bellow, holding my belly and pointing at such foolishness. "What a maroon!" I'd chuckle to myself as I slowly shook my head. But as it turns out, you'd be right and I'd owe you an apology. I'm not great at apologies so consider this a sheepish smile and a manly chock on the shoulder and then we shall never speak of it again.

The restlessness showed up sometime in 2006. I started to get the feeling like my life was on railroad tracks and the scenery looked all the same. I'd been working for the same company for going on 7 years. I settled into a pattern of work, friends, and TV. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. I dreaded being asked the standard "What's new?" question because my answer was always the same. I used my weekends to shake up the pattern and that worked for a time. I'd head off on my motorcycle or con some unsuspecting friends into backpacking trails that far exceeded our physical conditioning. Come Monday morning, I'd find myself sore and covered with bugs but right back on the same railroad tracks motoring past the same scenery.

Around this time, I'd ended up with a very few extra ducats in my savings account from selling my condo and the smidgeon of stock options I'd been hanging onto. The financially conservative Jason would have promptly buttoned up that pile of change into mutual funds and CD's and fiscal what-not. But another side of me felt like this was an opportunity to derail. I decided to go back to school and finish the degree I started 17 years ago. That was the good news. The bad news was that during all my fucking around at the University of Oregon 17 years ago, I never got around to taking any sort of math class. Therefore, a large chunk of 2007 was dedicated to suffering the slings and arrows of a year of calculus in preparation for the computer science program at the University of Washington. I'm keeping my job in tact long enough to polish off all the prerequisite classes before going back to school full time this spring.

Since I'd swapped out my smallish suburban condo for a more expensive townhouse in downtown Ballard, I had a problem deciding what I was going to do about my mortgage payment after the money stopped coming in. I debated whether to hemorrhage cash out of savings to pay for my townhouse, to get a roommate to stifle the flow, or just sell the place and immerse myself back in the college lifestyle of shag carpeted studio apartments. Eventually, and with the help of a good friend, I arrived at what I find to be a ridiculously elegant solution. The long version of the story is written up here. The shorter version goes something like this: sell the house, buy a sailboat, move on board. And up until about a couple weeks ago, I was charging in that direction. But before I finish that thought, there's another matter to be tended to.

Our first date was the Seattle Boat Show. We walked amongst the boats, laughing and flirting. We had a great time talking over food and beer at a local bar. As evening approached, we decided to sneak back into the boat show after hours to walk among the boats without all the crowds. And that's when I figured out that this girl was different. Christy and I have known each other just a few short months but it feels like years. I'm taken aback at how much we parallel each other. The things we want out of life, the way we see events, that which makes us giddy are all eerily similar.

From very early on, plans of our future just naturally evolved. One day a few months back, we both had crappy days at work and school. We were both cranky and needed a diversion. So we decided that evening we'd plan the Work Sucks Tour aboard the s/v No Tan Lines. I stopped at a book store on the way over to Christy's houseboat and bought a map of the world. We spent an evening pouring over different islands of the world deciding how we were going to sail to each one.

"We should go to Easter Island."

"OK, while we're at it, let's go to Christmas Island. They can't be that far apart right?"

"I'd guess about four months."

As so it was that we forged our plan to set sail. Our destinations are still pretty fuzzy and mostly irrelevant. Life together on board a sailboat at the whims of the weather is what appeals. We're targeting 2010 as the point where we cast off, take a left at the Straight of Juan de Fuca and sail towards azure waters and umbrella drinks. That should give me enough time to finish up school and for us to even work a bit to build up a cruising kitty. Oh, and buy a boat. And learn how to sail it.

The more our lives intertwine, the more they get fragmented between two households, neither one of which ever has enough clean clothes. After lots of discussions about selling houses and buying sailboats and living aboard at the dock, we decided that our life needs one household not two. Since Christy already lives on a bad-to-the-ass houseboat on Lake Union, it became quickly obvious that we could scrunch our two worlds down into the 450 square feet on board her houseboat. At some point in the spring, I'll sell or rent out my house and settle into the houseboat. And then we'll start off on this life together.

I want to take a second to say thanks for stopping by. This blog is mostly a mental exercise for me and secondarily a place for my family and friends to stop by and shake their heads at my goings on. But it means a lot to me that you all stop by every now and again. I hope you have all had a wonderful past year and that you're all healthy and happy and that your life is on an upwards trajectory.

2008 is gonna kick a metric ton of ass.

seemed a good idea at the time

Good ideas are a function of context. What seems like a good idea at one moment can be pure folly the next. And so it was in a cloud of vodka and various other forms of liquid courage, we all agreed wholeheartedly that the only logical course our houseboat party could take at that juncture was for all of us to get naked and huck ourselves into the December-chilled Lake Union water. It was only as my naked white ass rotated through 180 degrees during my unsightly front flip down towards the black water that I gave pause to reflect.

Maybe we shouldn't have left the blaring deck lights on.

delivery

JohnL and Jess scored themselves a slip in Shilshole to nest their big shiny Hunter 375, s/v Endless Winter. I partook in the delivery from her original slip on Lake Union through the canal, out the locks and into their fancy new home on Shilshole's M dock. After exiting the locks, we hoisted sail and took off south on a close haul. Right up until the point we saw the teeth of an interesting weather system coming out of the south to meet us. We tucked tail, put in two reefs and ran downwind back to Shilshole just as the rain hit. A tense but well executed docking maneuver called for a round of whiskey for all.

JohnL and Jess - congratulations! Endless Winter's a beautiful ride!


left to right: JohnL, Jess, Jess' dad Bill, Jess' brother Matt

s/v endless winter

So you remember that entry where I told you JohnL bought a boat and it was a great big Tartan named s/v Adios?

I lied.

Or rather, circumstances changed a bit. The survey came back a bit rough on good ol' Adios so JohnL and Jess bid her adieu. No sooner did they sadly walk away from Adios then they stumbled across this little crumpet of floating luxury:



Say a hearty hello to shortly-to-be-christened s/v Endless Winter and her proud new owners. The inevitable post describing a night of drunken back-slapping aboard this posh vessel, however delayed, will be forthcoming. I promise.

Would I lie to you?

on the one hand

On the one hand sits a nice, shiny production boat. A Jeanneau or maybe a Catalina with all the amenities that come with such boats. A house-sized interior. Great big aft cabin. Shiny wood. Big airy portholes. A swim deck with hot and cold showers. Definitely the choice for the majority of time you spend at anchor or the dock. Lots of room to pass around a pitcher of gin and tonics. This is not however, a boat that likes to be out of sight of land. This is not a boat that welcomes six foot following seas. This boat subscribes to the Tuck Tail And Run school of foul weather management. That's great in the San Juan Islands. Not so much in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

And on the other hand sits a burly bluewater brick shithouse of a boat. Pacific Seacraft. Island Packet. Lots of other names that I can't even afford to type their names in a blog entry, let alone purchase. Beautiful lines. Overhung sterns. Full keels. Skeg-hung rudders. Small sheltered cockpits with high coamings. A tight interior riddled with handholds and lee cloths. This boat subscribes to the Is That All Ya Got? school of foul weather management. Six foot seas feel like home aboard this boat. This is not the boat that holds cocktail parties. You're in the middle of the Atlantic. Who's around to have a cocktail party with anyhow?

I've identified the ends of spectrum and love them both for what they are. What I don't know how to identify is the middle range. We're not sailing Cape Horn here. But sailing to Mexico is well within reality. Or Hawaii. Bermuda. Europe. And when we get there, I think we'll mix up some gin and tonics and spread out in the cockpit.

Still no closer to knowing what I want to buy.

crickets

I'm having altogether no fun right now so no updates to the blog. I figured the interwebs don't really want to read about how much fun I'm not having.

This quarter is drawing to close and calculus is on its way out of my life. Which means more time for sailing and general shenanigans which usually end up on here.

up the mast

Nooo... not me. Me = deathly scared of heights. Fisher went up his mast this weekend to clear the goldfish out of the deck light mounted on the spreader before we sailed on Sunday. In the process, he snapped a couple cool shots of way-the-hell-up-there.


Fisher in rare air.


s/v Patriot II (soon, I'm told, she'll be renamed Whitecloud)


Jess pretending not to notice what Fisher's doing with his "tiller".


Hi large fast steel freighter!


The recently married couple.


I'm just sure I'm being useful here.


Some filled Yankee canvas in a rare moment. After boat speed through the water peaking at 6 knots, we set a new record of sustained 0.0 knots through the water.

docking pics

One of the fine folks at Puget Sound Sailing Group (Sherri, I'm guessing?) took some pics of me docking a couple weeks back. Since I've been doing fuckall on the blogging front while school tenderizes the life out of me, I thought I'd throw these up here.


On approach.


Pulling in.


"What do you mean the engine QUIT?"


"Hey, what didya kill the engine for?"
"Shaddup."


awwww....

rock you like a... really strong breeze

Saturday was another outing with the Puget Sound Sailing Group, this time out of Shilshole in Ballard. Our flotilla consisted of a posh Elite 32 and 2 J24's. Ken W. skippered the schmancy Elite 32 with her furnace, galley, couches and berths while Ken V. and I each skippered an extremely bare - and in Ken's sake, partially functioning - J24.

The winds were, lessee... big. Really big. The 32 registered a high of 27 knots apparent wind. That's almost twice the previous max speed I'd ever sailed in. We left the main up and piled the jib on the bow for most of the day.

Ken V. had the same idea, but apparently the J24 they were on - Slicker Than Snot - wasn't particularly slick raising the main in gonzo wind. After a frustrating hour of doing "crazy ivans" trying to stay into the wind to get the main raised, they pulled the boat around and headed in to shore for a spot of bar sailing.

Christy and Cathy, her friend from her racing days in Cleveland, got our main hoisted and we flew out into the wind on a close haul heading south around Magnolia. We got bounced around a bit and soaked but it was wicked fun. Christy and Cathy were both super comfortable and really helpful teaching me things like how to surf the boat down a wave to keep the bow from slapping. We made it down to the Elliot Bay Marina before turning around for a broad reach downwind.

On coming back into Shilshole Bay, we circled by the sea lions to say hey. They were unimpressed and a few of them were right pissed off. Eesh, cranky. Since we were the last to arrive and everyone was hanging out on the 32 when we pulled in, I got to dock the boat with EVERYONE watching. I can't begin to tell you how much fun I wasn't having when the engine quit on me about thirty feet from the end of the slip.


Ken W., Mat, Tammy, Katherine and Nancy hanging out in the first class accomodations aboard "Quintessence".


Cathy, Christy and Sherri hanging in the steerage accomodations aboard "Slicker than Snot". You saw Titanic, us po' folk have better parties.


Skipper Ken keeps a weather eye.


Christy at the helm.


Cathy at the ready.


I asked Christy to get some shots with my camera as water came up over the bow. This is the last picture I have that doesn't have a big blob of water on the lens. Huh, didn't see that coming.


Fun.


More water onto the lens. At this point, the camera is now turning itself on and off and operating the zoom sans operator input. I think something in the water re-animated my camera. Just like in Pet Cemetary only with digital cameras, not creepy children. Stupid zombie camera.


This is the part where I'd really like to not gybe.


The reason I'd like to not gybe is that Cathy prefers the contents of her skull to stay in her skull. She can be such a princess.


Contemplating the Nalgene bottles on board full of handmade margaritas.


Cathy steering us this way and that.


"27 knots? Meh."