More ramblings

I have the screen saver on my laptop set to randomly play from a folder of my favorite pictures of the outdoors and my family. In the past several days three people have noticed the pictures and told me they were very good. Two of the three said that they were worth trying to sell. I can’t take all the credit because some of the pictures were taken by Ariele too. Maybe when I get settled in somewhere I’ll ask Ariele to send me some paper copies that I can hang up in my space. I am eagerly awaiting my return home and a chance to go out and get new pictures.

I have continued to sample as much of the local culture and area as possible in my situation. Last night I was able to visit the port and enjoyed the scenery along the way. Everything here seems to have been well planned. The road system is similar to that of the US, on the population is only a fraction of what would use similar highways at home. The result is very low traffic. There are huge arrays of power lines, that sometimes seem to go nowhere. The land, is flat, and very slightly rolling, but greener than I had expected, especially because it is spring. There are many merchants that I have had the opportunity to interact with. They mostly sell jewelry, clothing, and souvenirs particular to the area. I picked up a few very nice mink blankets for a bargain price that I plan to mail home. One thing I have noticed about all of the merchants is that they are all very polite, but they are all very eager to make a sale, and at times pushy. It must be something with the culture. They are also willing to haggle over the price, but I’m not much of a haggler.

I have not been too successful in sampling much of the local food. All that I have been able to get is what I could buy at the store. I’m not even sure if it’s local or not, I just know it’s not American. I really like Galaxy chocolate. My favorites are the flutes. They are crunchy on the inside, and chocolate covered on the outside. Like those tube things that they sell at Starbucks to dip in the coffee, only thicker and with more chocolate.
A few days ago I was at the store and saw a brand of iced tea that I had never seen before. It was called San Bendetto, and came in Green, Lemon and Peach flavors. I bought the Peach. It turned out to be the best iced tea I have ever bought. Had I a fridge I would have bought a case. It is even very reasonable priced, I think. As I was drinking it, I was intrigued to notice that there was no writing in the local language on it. On closer inspection, I was amused to find out that such a good drink came from….

To be continued….

A good book

When I was on the plane flying over here, I saw a friend reading what appeared to be a book by the Mountaineers press, so I asked to look at it. It was not by the Mountaineers, but was The Heavenly Man, by Brother Yun. Oddly, this conversation didn’t go anywhere and it wasn’t until several days later that we discovered a mutual faith in God. After he finished it, this friend lent me the book and said it was very good. I took it, but just left it in my backpack until yesterday. I picked the book up because I was waiting for a bus and had already paced all my other books. The book is about the Life of Brother Yun, who was called by God at the age of 16 to be missionary and leader of Chinese house churches. He saw and brought countless people to Christ, and witnessed countless miracles, including walking out the front gate of a maximum security prison in China. From the moment I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. The book reads like a 20th century book of Acts. I brought it with me to read on the bus, and then we ended up waiting for an hour before we left. Then about a mile down the road we had to wait about another two hours. All together, I read almost non stop from 2:30pm to sunset at 6:30pm. In those 4 hours I read about 250 pages, which was most of the book.

Both tonight and last night I have been treated to a front row seat at a marvelous electrical storm. I have seen any lightning in almost 4 years, so I was a joy see it and wonder at the world around me. If there is any time to go to the desert, it is in the spring time. The temperatures are not too bad, and the rain makes is fun to watch and makes the desert spring to life for a short time. Everywhere there are small patches of green.

More on the continuing search for good food. Today I went to a cafeteria that had a salad bar. The one I had been going to for the last week didn’t. I tried to make my own Italian salad dressing, but it didn’t work. The Olive oil and vinegar were the wrong kind, and I had no other seasoning but parmesan.

To those that have commented in the past week, thank you. I enjoy reading the comments and I like to know that other people read this besides my wife. If she were the only one, then I would just send everything to her.

Since I am talking about my wife, she is an amazing woman and has blessed my life in more ways than I could even say.

Justine – I didn’t know you had a blog. I recognized some posts from myspace and will read if I have time.

As you all can see by my prolific writing, I am not altogether busy where I am right now. That may change soon. When it does, postings will be less frequent.

Crazy Weather

Today at lunch I was just thinking about the lack of vegetables and lack of taste in the available vegetables. I had just gotten my serving of mixed vegetables when I passed the condiments table and had an idea. I sprinkled olive oil and parmesan on my vegetables and looked around for more seasonings, but I could find only salt. I was surprised they had vinegar, but couldn’t believe that it was white vinegar. Soon my other baggage will get here and I will have my own supply of garlic powder. Then I will live in a peace full bliss of good tasting food and I will never again be harassed by an Asian vampire.

While I was outside yesterday, a dust storm came in and has not left up since. It got really bad for about an hour last night, when it was pouring rain and the wind shook the whole tent. It is hard t walk outside without goggles because of the blowing sand and the visibility is low. Sometimes the dust in the air makes it seem to be overcast and makes the sky almost the same color as the ground. Sand and dust get in anything left outside. I like it this way because it is not nearly as hot. I am glad that I got here in April and not the middle of the summer. I couldn’t imagine having to acclimate in the summer.

I shaved the moustache yesterday because after looking at the pictures even I didn’t like it.

Yesterday morning I went to the gym and discovered that the treadwall had been fixed. I spent 10 minutes on it both today and yesterday. The holds are not challenging, but it is an excellent full body workout, and it is hard because I have to pace myself. There is a knob t adjust the speed, and if I put it too low I get bored, but if I put it at even a moderate pace, I get tired quickly. It is hard to used good rock climbing form when you are slowly sinking, but I am trying. The angle of the wall is also adjustably between an overhang, vertical and a slab.

I’ve got my laptop with me, so when there is nothing to do, I can usually entertain myself somehow. I’m doing a bible study called Believing God, by Beth Moore and it is pretty interesting. It’s designed to test and strengthen one’s faith in really believing God and not just believing in him. I’ve been at it off and on for the past two months, but now that I’m here I’m going to try to stick with it more. I want to make better use of my time than I did last time I was out here. This could be an opportunity to grow my faith away from all of the distractions of being at home.

Finally some pictures

The climbing treadmill is still out of order. I hope they fix it soon.

Last night I went looking for someone to go to church with, and I soon as I stopped looking someone found me. There are not many choices for services here, and the one I went to is not my style, but It’ll do.

Met an Englishman today, and listened to him for a while. I should have been British or Australian. They always seem to have a more relaxed attitude and better sense of humor than Americans.

I got a free cd from and artist named David Templeton. It’s all instrument and mostly acoustic guitar. I like it, I think if was quite a bargain.

I’m starting to really miss my wife’s cooking. There is a cafeteria here with just about anything I could want, but my appetite is not what it is at home. It seems to be only half of what it used to be. My wife was a wonderful cook, and she brainwashed me into eating healthy food at every meal and enjoying it. Imagine that! Today I noticed how much her female mind tricks had taken hold on me. I was sitting at the lunch table with a plate of onion rings, egg rolls and beans. I ate all the beans and started on the fried foods with ranch. I ate half and then I just couldn’t eat any more. I left me food, and had to find something better. I came back with half a bowl of raw broccoli, covered it in Bob’s everything sauce and ate. Not the best taste, but I just couldn’t eat the grease. If I’d been home with Ariele I’d have eaten twice as much broccoli and not even known what it was by taste. She can make anything taste good, and she’s never made a bad meal that she didn’t light on fire.

Dust doesn’t taste good. Jelly Beans do.

The plane picture is when I got snowed in at Bangor, ME. See previous post.

More news

The accommodations are not bad at all. The only thing we lack for is power outlets. I bought a power strip, but we are running 220V and I can only run the laptop because it has a converter. I have to charge the ipod from it. The ipod seems to take lnger to charge from the laptop. Food is plentiful, and there is a great variety of local juices, milks and ice creams. The local ice cream is very good. There is a souvenir shop of local goods, and large store that sells just about anything one could want from the local area or back home. I don’t plan on buying too much here though. Once I settle down a bit more I may buy things like a blanket and sheets and rugs.

The weather here is not as bad as I had thought it would be. The air conditioning makes it very nice, and downright cold at night. I am glad I didn’t come in the summer time.

I went to the gym this morning and it is enormous. There was one piece of equipment that intrigued me. It was a rock climbing treadmill. I might have to take a picture of it. I’d never heard of such a thing before. Unfortunately, it was out of order. There is a contest tomorrow that I may enter if I have time.

Since internet time is limited, I will be copying any emails that I get onto my flash disk and then typing replies on my laptop and sending them the next time that I get internet access. So it may take me some time to send more than a few sentences in response to any email.

A Long Plane ride

The day before I left was a long day of packing and goodbyes. I spent a lot of time on the phone this week. I didn’t get to bed until after midnight, but slept better than I have in the last week for the few hours that I was able to. I had to get up at 5. I said goodbye to my wife and kids at almost 11am. It turned out that I didn’t need to until half an hour later, but I didn’t know. It was had to say goodbye.
Half an hour before boarding, the plane broke, and we all got bumped to the next plane, which wasn’t taking off until 6 hours later. I was disappointed that we couldn’t go anywhere or have anyone come see us, but the terminal was a comfortable place to stay for the time. There was free food and sandwiches and a very nice lounge. After an hour at the lounge I ran into a friend of Ariele’s that I knew and talked to her for a few minutes. She offered to put me on the list to make a recording of me reading a book for my kids and send them the book and a DVD. So I waited there patiently for three hours, reading a hoping it wouldn’t be time to board before I got the chance. All that waiting, only to make a horrible video because I was trying in vain to hold back tears as I read the book. I then walked out of the lounge and straight to the plane and we soon took off at 9pm for Bangor, Maine to refuel.
Between the lounge and the plane a few people noticed that I was still holding back tears. No one gave me a hard time, as they all understood and I’m sure almost all of them felt the same way. A people asked if I was ok. I know they meant well, but I wanted to ask if not being ok would mean I didn’t have to go. As we took off and left my home, I told myself that I was on my way home and to a new and better life. It will be a long journey, but each step I take and each passing day will bring me closer to going back home.
I slept most of the flight to Bangor. The past two days had been long and hard and it was late at night. We arrived sometime around 2am pacific time (PST) When we parked we found out that there was a blizzard in Bangor and they were trying to refuel and change the crew as fast as possible so we wouldn’t get stuck. I went back to sleep. Sometime around 3-4am (PST) we were told that we would have to wait out the blizzard in the terminal. So I went inside, laid down behind some seats and went back to sleep. Later they announced that they were serving a breakfast buffet somewhere, but I didn’t go and went back to sleep.
We finally got back on the plane around 10am (PST) and took of for Leipzig, Germany after the plane had been deiced. The flight to Germany seemed to take forever. I had slept so much previously, that I couldn’t sleep anymore no matter how hard I tried. I read about half of Hazardous Duty, by David Hackworth.
By this time I lost most track of time, and had to really think to figure out what day it was and what time it was where I was. It seems to happen every time I travel halfway across the world. We landed in Leipzig at 3amL on a Friday. ( 6pm Thursday PST) I have since figured out the times, but have not yet adjusted. I would have liked to have spent more time in Leipzig. Our layover was very short. There was a chance to buy some German food, but I had to room in my bags. This is the 4th time that I have been to Germany but not left the airport.
It is now my anniversary where I am. Today is my 4th wedding anniversary and the first one that we have spent apart. I hope that my journey home will be over by then and we will be together again for our 5th.

Spring has Come

Not much time left here in WA before I go. Spring is here already and everyone loves the clear weather and sun. The kids are really anxious to get out and ride the bikes and spend time outside. I know I’m going to enjoy these kids a lot when they are older, because they love spending so much time outside. I’m going to start them on glacier and rock climbing as soon as they are big enough. Last night I spent some time planting flowers with the kids. They were a little young to understand it, but everyone still had fun. My wife a her black thumb (foot) managed to become so engrossed in her picture taking that she stepped on the only flower that was already growing in the garden. After the planting, I made one last mass produced batch of 4 dozen cookies for my wife.

I also decided to help my wife do the dishes before I left. But after my help she said something about needing to use the 140 degree dishwasher anyways!

Goodbye Evergreen State

Next week I will be leaving the wonders of Washington State behind for another kind of land. This new land is not altogether unfamiliar, but I will become much better acquainted with it over the next few years. I may be far away from internet and phones, and many of America’s conveniences, but I will still have regular mail delivery. I look forward to hearing from anyone that may read this. In time, I will post a list of things that I might want or need, in case anyone would want to send them to me. I will also post occasional updates of how I am doing, and perhaps some thoughts as well. Unfortunately, I will not be able to post many details about where I am or what I am doing.

Lena Lake

Saturday March 3, 2007

Daniel showed up at my front door to visit. We invited him in and put more food on the table, and he proposed to leave that night to stage for a hiking trip in the morning. We got out the maps and after some discussion we decided on the east side of the Olympic National Park and Forest, in the Hood Canal area. So we both packed up our stuff and headed out to the area at 8:30pm. By 9:30 we made it to the area we wanted to camp, but found out the hard way that the road was closed and we couldn’t get there. So we stopped and got out the maps, and decided on plan B. (Every time I go on a trip with Daniel a road somewhere is closed) Half an hour later we here at another campsite, and set up our tent and went promptly to sleep at 11, with sounds of the swiftly flowing stream just outside our tent.

Sunday March 4, 2007

Daniel had set his alarm for 7:30am, but I don’t remember it ever going off. In any case, we probably needed the sleep. We slept well and woke up around 9:30am. Immediately after getting up I lit up the stove and started breakfast. We had lots of tea, along with Oatmeal and Ramen. There’s nothing like a hot breakfast in the forest. As I sipped my tea in the morning light I took a look around our campsite and decided I rather liked and would gladly come back again. After breakfast we packed up and headed to the Lena lake trailhead about a mile away.

Even in the off season one cannot completely avoid seeing other people on this trail. We didn’t have much trouble finding some solitude but I imagine it would not be so easy in the summer time. I had not expected the lake to freeze over because of the low elevation, but it was quite beautiful. I have hiked Lena lake in both winter and summer and think that it is a better hike in the snow. It was not a particularly difficult, and the snow did not begin until shortly before the lake. I think the best part of the hike was after the lake where Lena creek met the north end of the lake. It wasn’t frozen here, but there was snow everywhere else and quite pretty.

We wanted to go on to upper Lena lake, but couldn’t because we didn’t have enough time. The trail was also hard to follow, and we were not equipped for serious snow travel.

Once we got back to the car, we finished off our tea, ramen and oatmeal and then went home. I have been very impressed with my Jetboil stove and this was my first time using it on a camping trip. Overall, it was a leisurely hike, and very relaxing and enjoyable.

Mt St Helens

Today is one step closer to one of my recent goals. I’ve wanted to climb Mt. St. Helens for the past several months, since I realized it was the least difficult of the Cascade volcanoes in the winter time.

Nick and met in Lakewood at 0530 and drove in my car down to the town of Cougar, WA. We made very good time, but it was early in the morning of a Federal holiday. The last 10 miles of the road to the sno-park were pretty well iced over, but my car didn’t slip once. At the Marble Mountain sno-park there were only a few other people, but it was very cold. We ducked inside the large warming hut to gear up for the hike.

The south side of Mt. St. Helens has a very extensive snowmobile and cross country ski trail system. The trail that we took was well packed down and was easy travel on the snow. We wore snowshoes for about an hour, but never really needed them. The weather was perfectly clear and calm. The most wind we saw all day was a 5mph breeze.

When we were almost at the tree line we stumbled upon a snow cave that someone else had built and occupied for a few days. After leaving the tree line there was a well marked boot path that ran up a ridge and along a line of rocks that made route finding easy.

At about noon we stopped to eat lunch at some rocks overlooking the south side of the mountain. We dug in the snow to get out of the breeze and enjoyed a warm meal in a serene location. I had a MRE and hot cocoa. I shared my MRE with Nick and he was surprised at how good it tasted.

After lunch we pressed on further up the mountain. It got steep in a few places and there was more ice the higher we went. At about 3pm we decided that we had gone far enough and took some pictures before turning around. There was an inspiring view of Mt Adams and Mt. Hood from that spot. Near the rocks there was a seismic monitoring station that had been knocked over. Not realizing this, I started pounding a picket into the snow only a few feet away from the station. Hopefully it wasn’t strong enough to be recorded. Snow pickets are used as anchors in climbing. I recently bought one and wanted to see how well it would hold in snow. I was pleasantly surprised. After pounding it into the snow, no amount of leaning or pulling would break it loose.

The return down the mountain was strait forward and uneventful. We made very good time on the decent alternating between glissading on the packed snow and plunge stepping into the softer snow. We made it back to the car and the warming hut at 5pm just as it was getting dark.

Despite not summiting, it was an immensely enjoyable day. For me, it’s more important to have fun and be safe than bag a summit. I enjoyed spending time with a new friend and being in the outdoors and training for bigger climbs. Above all, I enjoyed the pervasive stillness and peace that seemed to characterize the day. The only sound was our feet on the snow, and whenever we stopped everything was still and it seemed as if there was no on else in the world and everything was silent. Being from the city, it is not often that one experiences true silence. I would have liked to spend a night there just to sit and stare at the beauty around me and ponder life. I think it is ironic to have experienced so much peace and silence on Mt St Helens, the most active and climbed Volcano in the US. I plan to return to try again at the summit at the earliest possible opportunity. This time I will try to camp in the vicinity of the mountain. Ideally, I would get an alpine start and summit shortly after sunrise and watch the sunrise from high up on the mountain.

Aerial photo by USFS.