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Well after a two day work week for Pam we headed into the weekend. Pam has developed a nice little cough that gets worse in the evenings. She hasn't been feeling sick, just coughing and hacking so Friday night, we decided to play the sims, chill at home and get a decent sleep in. Unfortunately, my brain was going crazy trying to figure out how I'm going to come up with 200 contacts for this third round interview I've got at a financial firm.
Saturday morning we got up early by weekend standards and pounded a few buckwheat pancakes and got ready for paintball. Aaron, a guy Pam works with set up this unofficially Waremalcomb paintball excursion. I hadn't been paint balling since high school and so I didn't quite know what to think but it turned out to be a blast.
There were 17 of us, which was large enough to have all the games with just our group. That made it more fun since we were all on the same basic skill level (Beginner) and we all had the same gear. In other words, there wasn't a high and mighty hick with a cranked nitrogen canister shooting 30 rounds a second at you while you try and scream hit hit!
The fields were had trees and barriers to duck and hide from. There were objectives also like raise a flag, capture the flag, or the last map was just to point this gun thing at the other side. We mixed the teams but and I think everyone got to win at least once. No big injuries except I got a mild sprain to my left wrist which kept me out of the gym today. :( I was storming this camping spot where I knew a guy was and had been trying to shoot me. Well I came around the corner and stumbled sideways which made it look like I was diving. At the same time I popped off a few rounds to get the kill. I had to put my hand down at some point and thats where I tweaked it. So I got the kill but when I had gotten to my feet again I got capped in the side of the head. So my dash for glory didn't turn out as well as I had planned.
Pam had gun problems the first few games but then someone took her gun by mistake and she was fine after that. We got on the same team for the last 4 games and she started having more fun. She managed to go through twice as many paintballs as me though and on the last map she rain out of compressed gas which basically rendered her useless. A bit trigger happy thats for sure...
I think the ref got a few action shots of us and we had some group shots that we will share after they are shared to us. :) It was a lot of fun, and even made us pretty sore today!
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
In Progress
So our apartment is definitely in progress, but we finally have furniture in place, things are slowly getting on the walls, and well my clothes are finally off the floor. Can't wait to have our first visitors :)
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Camping day 2.
So we moved...and for those of you who have been on the edge of their seats waiting for me to write about the second day of my camping adventure with Jason, well I'm not sorry. Its kinda like when you watch a Macgyver episode that gets the "to be continued". You know its going to happen...you're looking at your watch thinking, hmm this isn't going to be wrapped up at all. Then bam!! You have to wait another week to see what happens next! Anyways, prepare yourself for another long post because I can't seem to keep these short, and I'm sorry.
Day two...hmm. Well yeah we woke, a bit cold, but both excited to be alive. We cruised over to our food sling and found that despite everything we had heard that night that it was in fact, still intact, and without any sorts of animal tracks. I actually thought I saw one odd looking footprint but it turned out to just be Jasons shoe smeared a bit. The morning brought an awesome sunrise to us and the pics don't do it justice. We thought we were in the perfect spot for some killer pics but the sun managed to fool our instincts and come up to the right of the mountains.
Breakfast was quick and easy. Bran muffins, yum yum. I love them, and ate two to Jasons one. Next we proceeded to pack up our campsite, without speaking more than 10 words the entire time. Jason and I worked like clockwork. It was as if our ESP powers were screaming loud and clear. I don't know how long it took, because I don't wear a watch when camping (who does, really...) but I swear we were packed up and ready to go before that bear behind the bush was finished taking a dookie! JK, no bear sightings yet.
We cruised up to this place called "Lovers Trail" as I mentioned before. Most popular trail in the area. I found this to be pretty funny because when Jason and I were painting houses together our boss used to call us the "gay duo". So here we were the gay duo heading up to hike lovers trail, hoohhaww.
The weather had taken a turn. I was pleased that it was cooler because I sweat and warm up pretty easily, however, it was really starting to threaten rain. I didn't have nifty rain gear like jason and his water PROOF titanium columbia jacket, but then again what are we, little fruity wimps that even need rain proof jackets? :) JK Jason. After memorizing the map, which was horrible by the way, we headed out onto the trail which we thought would be either 7 miles round trip or 7 miles one way to this cabin up in the hills. Either way, we were going to go for a few hours and then turn back because the last thing we wanted to do was find and setup camp in the dark.
The trail was cool. At first, I was all eyes and ears making sure we didn't run into a bear and spook it into bear hugging us. As the miles wore down our bodies though, our focus became less and less for bear watching and more of just getting up that trail! Towards the end it got steep enough that stairs were made out of the rocks to help hikers. Also, the higher we got the colder and windier it got! I had three layers on and was fine but with the way things were going, I couldn't help imagine us getting stuck in a storm and ending up on an episode of, "I shouldn't be alive"!
Boy the trail was scenic though, almost taking away the pain of hiking. The forest was full of both deciduous and fir trees which created a beautiful yellow/orange/red and green array of colors. We couldn't hear a thing from the outside world, I mean this was wilderness baby! It was pretty cool.
Near the top we came to a meadow and an area with benches around a fire. It looked like a popular spot to hang out with hippies and smoke the reefer. Only when we found it, there was nobody there, not even an old marshmellow wrapped up in some dirt. This bothered us a bit...I mean, here we were, hiking just fine out into the wilderness on a nice weekend, and nobody else was here? Were we missing something? Was there supposed to be a blizzard coming through at 6000 feet that is going to put us on ice?
At this point we almost turned back. We had been hiking for roughly 2 hours and knew that pretty soon we would have to turn back to have enough time to scout out a new campsite and setup before dark. It also hard started to drizzle a bit. Not being ones to puss out when the going got tough, we decided to press on for at least 20 more minutes.
We were lucky, because after roughly another 200 yards we came to the cabin! The cabin was a bust though, all boarded up, worthless to us. However, the view was great. The marble mountain posed in front of us majestically as we took it in. We could see the trees thin towards the top of them and knew we were high. The wind started to pick up and snow began to fall. We stopped to eat cold meatloaf in tortillas and reveled in our accomplishments. But for Jason, it was not enough.
Jason has this weird thing that he explained to me as an urge to reach the highest point. For the most part, he wanted to do this in his truck, but now that we were at the cabin, he really wanted a few more hours to go explore up to the top of the marble mountains. Unfortunately, we couldn't...the rest and food had made us cold and the conditions were getting worse. I had three layers on but was beginning to shiver! We had to head down now...
The snow turned to rain as our elevation decreased and what used to be a nice little drizzle turned into quite the downpour. Rain began flowing down the path, eroding little streaks of water into the landscape and making it slippery to navigate some portions. The canopy was not thick enough in most places to stop it, and I began to get pretty dang wet. I had a wool button up shirt on the outside, cotton long sleeve as a middle layer, and a wick-away shirt under that. I was warm, just wet!
Soon enough, water was everywhere, running down my face, neck, nose. Spots on my pants got wet as they were continuously exposed to the rain while walking, and I could feel the water soaking into my outer layer pretty bad. No worries, though, I'm an oregonian right? :)
We reached the base of the trail in good time and tried to figure out where we had hiked and how far by looking at the map. Like I mentioned earlier, the map sucked and so we couldn't figure out either. Next on the agenda was finding a new campsite! Not that the old one wasn't good but Jason wanted to explore the other side of the mountain range we were on and I had to oblige. I'm not gonna hold a man back...it took a long time though, lol.
We wandered down the face of the mountain on back roads, then split off up into the hills on the other side. The problem we encountered though was that with the conditions of where the roads were, there weren't a lot of eligible campsites. We wanted cover from the elements, flat ground, and then perhaps another magnificent view. Most of the places on the sides of this road we were on, were steep, with wimpy pine trees. Plus the road went higher and higher, and that made it windier and colder!
Finally, our "view" dreams had to be compromised. The sun was setting behind the dark clouds and light from it began to dwindle. We had seen a spot down low on the mountain next to a creek that we though might provide us with at least 2 of our three reqs and so we headed down to check it out further and make our camp.
Well it turned out to be a perfect spot. Pat ourselves on the back for just being perfect campsite pick-er-outers! The tree cover was great, but the rain had permeated so thoroughly through that it was now throwing big droplets down onto us. Our first engineering task was to setup a tarp to keep our new found home dry. Under any other circumstances, I believe this would have proved difficult. However, with Jasons civil engineering background and my mechanical engineering skills, well this was just another day at the office.
As you can see from the pics, it turned out pretty good. The tarp spread over a sizable portion of ground space, in which we were able to place our tent and gear. The fire pit, which was bigger and better this time around, was on the fringe as to not choke us with smoke all night....or so we thought. Seemingly the only thing we hadn't thought of was wind direction. The wind ended up blowing away from our fringe fire, right into the rest of our covered area which meant our faces and tent! Eventually, after a few more adjustments to the rain tarp, we were able to sit comfortably apart from each other and watch the smoke go between us.
Actually jason was able to sit comfortably. My chair had gotten all wet and I was having a heck of a time getting it dry! I ended up mostly just using the cooler to rest my buns on. Jason made stroganoff for dinner, one of my old favorites from college, and I ate about twice as much as him once again.
The weird thing about the campsite was that with all the large droplets of water falling, it always seemed to sound like a bear or deer was coming up on us from behind, which would be the steep rocky grade going up to another road. I swear, it was like rocks were cascading down a hill all the time. We looked and looked and there was never anything there! Talk about screwing with your mind!
The evening wore on and we quickly became bored with the smoke, rain, and being damp. We decided to turn in for the night and retire to the warmth and comfort of a 15F sleeping bag and an air mattress. I pulled myself away from the wall of the tent so that I wouldn't get wet through the night and focused on not trying to let the sounds of the rain and night trick me into being frightened. I chose to suck it up that night, rather than freak out the night before and it worked well. Jason and I slept roughly 12 hours!
Jason really wanted to call in sick for Tuesday and stay another night out there with me. There was lots more exploring to be done, hiking, and fighting the elements. These are all the sorts of things that make you feel like a man and we liked that feeling. Plus, you couldn't beat the camaraderie and respect we had for each other. Oh...and not to mention the fluid way this "gay duo" just works.
Jason if you're readin this I love you man, and next up - the Rockies!
-Travis
Day two...hmm. Well yeah we woke, a bit cold, but both excited to be alive. We cruised over to our food sling and found that despite everything we had heard that night that it was in fact, still intact, and without any sorts of animal tracks. I actually thought I saw one odd looking footprint but it turned out to just be Jasons shoe smeared a bit. The morning brought an awesome sunrise to us and the pics don't do it justice. We thought we were in the perfect spot for some killer pics but the sun managed to fool our instincts and come up to the right of the mountains.
Breakfast was quick and easy. Bran muffins, yum yum. I love them, and ate two to Jasons one. Next we proceeded to pack up our campsite, without speaking more than 10 words the entire time. Jason and I worked like clockwork. It was as if our ESP powers were screaming loud and clear. I don't know how long it took, because I don't wear a watch when camping (who does, really...) but I swear we were packed up and ready to go before that bear behind the bush was finished taking a dookie! JK, no bear sightings yet.
We cruised up to this place called "Lovers Trail" as I mentioned before. Most popular trail in the area. I found this to be pretty funny because when Jason and I were painting houses together our boss used to call us the "gay duo". So here we were the gay duo heading up to hike lovers trail, hoohhaww.
The weather had taken a turn. I was pleased that it was cooler because I sweat and warm up pretty easily, however, it was really starting to threaten rain. I didn't have nifty rain gear like jason and his water PROOF titanium columbia jacket, but then again what are we, little fruity wimps that even need rain proof jackets? :) JK Jason. After memorizing the map, which was horrible by the way, we headed out onto the trail which we thought would be either 7 miles round trip or 7 miles one way to this cabin up in the hills. Either way, we were going to go for a few hours and then turn back because the last thing we wanted to do was find and setup camp in the dark.
The trail was cool. At first, I was all eyes and ears making sure we didn't run into a bear and spook it into bear hugging us. As the miles wore down our bodies though, our focus became less and less for bear watching and more of just getting up that trail! Towards the end it got steep enough that stairs were made out of the rocks to help hikers. Also, the higher we got the colder and windier it got! I had three layers on and was fine but with the way things were going, I couldn't help imagine us getting stuck in a storm and ending up on an episode of, "I shouldn't be alive"!
Boy the trail was scenic though, almost taking away the pain of hiking. The forest was full of both deciduous and fir trees which created a beautiful yellow/orange/red and green array of colors. We couldn't hear a thing from the outside world, I mean this was wilderness baby! It was pretty cool.
Near the top we came to a meadow and an area with benches around a fire. It looked like a popular spot to hang out with hippies and smoke the reefer. Only when we found it, there was nobody there, not even an old marshmellow wrapped up in some dirt. This bothered us a bit...I mean, here we were, hiking just fine out into the wilderness on a nice weekend, and nobody else was here? Were we missing something? Was there supposed to be a blizzard coming through at 6000 feet that is going to put us on ice?
At this point we almost turned back. We had been hiking for roughly 2 hours and knew that pretty soon we would have to turn back to have enough time to scout out a new campsite and setup before dark. It also hard started to drizzle a bit. Not being ones to puss out when the going got tough, we decided to press on for at least 20 more minutes.
We were lucky, because after roughly another 200 yards we came to the cabin! The cabin was a bust though, all boarded up, worthless to us. However, the view was great. The marble mountain posed in front of us majestically as we took it in. We could see the trees thin towards the top of them and knew we were high. The wind started to pick up and snow began to fall. We stopped to eat cold meatloaf in tortillas and reveled in our accomplishments. But for Jason, it was not enough.
Jason has this weird thing that he explained to me as an urge to reach the highest point. For the most part, he wanted to do this in his truck, but now that we were at the cabin, he really wanted a few more hours to go explore up to the top of the marble mountains. Unfortunately, we couldn't...the rest and food had made us cold and the conditions were getting worse. I had three layers on but was beginning to shiver! We had to head down now...
The snow turned to rain as our elevation decreased and what used to be a nice little drizzle turned into quite the downpour. Rain began flowing down the path, eroding little streaks of water into the landscape and making it slippery to navigate some portions. The canopy was not thick enough in most places to stop it, and I began to get pretty dang wet. I had a wool button up shirt on the outside, cotton long sleeve as a middle layer, and a wick-away shirt under that. I was warm, just wet!
Soon enough, water was everywhere, running down my face, neck, nose. Spots on my pants got wet as they were continuously exposed to the rain while walking, and I could feel the water soaking into my outer layer pretty bad. No worries, though, I'm an oregonian right? :)
We reached the base of the trail in good time and tried to figure out where we had hiked and how far by looking at the map. Like I mentioned earlier, the map sucked and so we couldn't figure out either. Next on the agenda was finding a new campsite! Not that the old one wasn't good but Jason wanted to explore the other side of the mountain range we were on and I had to oblige. I'm not gonna hold a man back...it took a long time though, lol.
We wandered down the face of the mountain on back roads, then split off up into the hills on the other side. The problem we encountered though was that with the conditions of where the roads were, there weren't a lot of eligible campsites. We wanted cover from the elements, flat ground, and then perhaps another magnificent view. Most of the places on the sides of this road we were on, were steep, with wimpy pine trees. Plus the road went higher and higher, and that made it windier and colder!
Finally, our "view" dreams had to be compromised. The sun was setting behind the dark clouds and light from it began to dwindle. We had seen a spot down low on the mountain next to a creek that we though might provide us with at least 2 of our three reqs and so we headed down to check it out further and make our camp.
Well it turned out to be a perfect spot. Pat ourselves on the back for just being perfect campsite pick-er-outers! The tree cover was great, but the rain had permeated so thoroughly through that it was now throwing big droplets down onto us. Our first engineering task was to setup a tarp to keep our new found home dry. Under any other circumstances, I believe this would have proved difficult. However, with Jasons civil engineering background and my mechanical engineering skills, well this was just another day at the office.
As you can see from the pics, it turned out pretty good. The tarp spread over a sizable portion of ground space, in which we were able to place our tent and gear. The fire pit, which was bigger and better this time around, was on the fringe as to not choke us with smoke all night....or so we thought. Seemingly the only thing we hadn't thought of was wind direction. The wind ended up blowing away from our fringe fire, right into the rest of our covered area which meant our faces and tent! Eventually, after a few more adjustments to the rain tarp, we were able to sit comfortably apart from each other and watch the smoke go between us.
Actually jason was able to sit comfortably. My chair had gotten all wet and I was having a heck of a time getting it dry! I ended up mostly just using the cooler to rest my buns on. Jason made stroganoff for dinner, one of my old favorites from college, and I ate about twice as much as him once again.
The weird thing about the campsite was that with all the large droplets of water falling, it always seemed to sound like a bear or deer was coming up on us from behind, which would be the steep rocky grade going up to another road. I swear, it was like rocks were cascading down a hill all the time. We looked and looked and there was never anything there! Talk about screwing with your mind!
The evening wore on and we quickly became bored with the smoke, rain, and being damp. We decided to turn in for the night and retire to the warmth and comfort of a 15F sleeping bag and an air mattress. I pulled myself away from the wall of the tent so that I wouldn't get wet through the night and focused on not trying to let the sounds of the rain and night trick me into being frightened. I chose to suck it up that night, rather than freak out the night before and it worked well. Jason and I slept roughly 12 hours!
Jason really wanted to call in sick for Tuesday and stay another night out there with me. There was lots more exploring to be done, hiking, and fighting the elements. These are all the sorts of things that make you feel like a man and we liked that feeling. Plus, you couldn't beat the camaraderie and respect we had for each other. Oh...and not to mention the fluid way this "gay duo" just works.
Jason if you're readin this I love you man, and next up - the Rockies!
-Travis
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
Camping with Jason
I'll write more later about this adventure!
So this was the last weekend before we will have moved and I wanted to get some good hang out time with my main man Jason. For those of you who don't know, I have two really long time friends. On, Chris, whom I've known since like 1st grade or something, and the other is Jason, whom I've known since 7th grade. Really good guys, really good friends.
Jason and I met up in Yreka which I'm not sure how to pronounce because the founders of that city seemed to spell it wrong. Its interesting because a little more east is the other yreka (Eureka). Anyways, we met up there, got all my gear packed into Jasons truck and headed up into the wilderness.
The first idea was to go to some mountain and hike it. This was Jasons idea and I'm glad it did not come to fruitition because that peak was over 9,000 ft and I'm not entirely sure we would have made it! The problem we had was we had no map and couldn't find anybody or anyplace in town that was selling maps with the fireroads and service roads in the area. So we had no clue how to get anywhere. Even the dang ranger station was closed!
After driving around for about an hour and half we decided we didn't like the area so we changed up the plan and headed for the scott creek, salmon river area. We drove and drove and drove up high into the hills on dirt roads looking for a cool spot to camp. We wanted a view site, and weren't having very much luck until we cruised down an overgrown road off of another service road, off of another road. We had no clue where we were but we managed to find a sweet spot with a view of what we thought would be a sunrise in the morning. Despite the numerous cow pies, the site was perfect.
The one thing that the ranger station had lots of was bear brochures and warnings. We read them, and decided to put our engineering know how to good use! According to the wildlife professionals, our bear basket should be suspended 10 ft in the air, and at least 4 feet from either of the trees. The picture presented to us was a simple system. Throw a rope over a branch and pull the basket up. Well, the trees in the area didn't have any branches like shown! So the brochure was pretty much good for nothing. As you can see in the pics, we managed to string up a pretty good setup, which we placed our food in at night.
Bears were constantly on Jasons mind and he made both of us paranoid. With a campfire our viewing distance was like, 10ft if that. Pitch black and our ears began to trick is. We heard lots of sticks being broke and our minds got crazy on us. We decided to point the truck towards the road in case we had to have a quick getaway. We didn't have a gun or anything and hoped our bear basket thingy was good enough to keep them either away, or busy enough to let us get away! Did you know bears can climb trees and run up to 35 MPH?
The first night I slept very little. Jason snored the night away. Between his snoring, bear sounds, and my dreams I didn't sleep very well. When the morning came I was ready to go though! Today was hiking day.
A quick breakfast and packing up camp took us on our way to "Lovers Camp" which was a trailhead for one of the most used trails in the area. Don't know what it was but we went on it...remember we had no maps this entire time.
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