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I’ve been outta work for close to two weeks now and am loving it. So far it’s an extended vacation without that return date looming at the end. Getting moved out of our apartment was more work than expected but very rewarding. We got rid of tons of stuff and managed to fit pretty much everything we own into and 5′ x 8′ U-Haul trailer, which we drove back to my parents in Eastern Washington.

We spent about a week with my parents visiting with family and taking care of last minute details. Nathan and Katie even stopped by. I did the Rat Island Swim, and annual event that my dad and his friend Pat started and for the most part have been the only participants in :-) We didn’t have to go anywhere far from home since all the family came to visit us. It was a great chance to relax and unwind after the semi-frantic moving and goodbyeing in Seattle.

Ithaca’s Gorgeous Gorges

We went to Ithaca, New York, with Abbey over the weekend to visit Kim’s friend from high school, Karla. We had a blast seeing the gorgeous gorges and the town. We played in some waterfalls and jumped in the deep pools. For dinner we ate at Moosewood and Kim has a very detailed review of Moosewood. After dinner we went to the ABC cafe for dessert, and then to a bar to listen to live reggae and enjoy 50 something beers on tap. It poured most of the weekend there, but it sounds like everywhere in the Northeast has been needing the rain.

Now we’re in Connecticut visiting Kim’s friends and family, including some eatin at China Pan.

We’ll be off to Florida in a couple of days. Then Peru.

My little brother Nathan and I tried to summit Mount Rainier. Unfortunately I got sick the morning of the ascent, so we didn’t end up doing it. It was still a lot of of fun and I learned some of the basics of mountaineering and got to spend some good time with my bro. I was fortunate not to have to rent any gear since Brian let me borrow a bunch of his (thanks Brian!) since I had already packed up all my winter gear and stored it at my parents’.

We started out Wednesday night from Seattle and drove to the park. We went to the Paradise Visitors Center and picked up permits and Nathan’s girlfriend Katie planned a route for herself to do while Nathan and I went up the mountain. The route had changed slightly since Nathan climbed it in July with Katie. The new route added about an hour to the ascent time which I wasn’t too pleased about since I wanted as easy an ascent as possible. Katie started hiking that night and Nathan and I camped out. We spent some time going over how to setup rescues if the other person fell into a crevasse.

Thursday morning we hiked up to Camp Muir which is a little above 10,000ft. Nathan hikes fast! It took him a little over 3 hours and me a little under 5 hours. It’s definitely the hardest 4 mile hike I’ve done. I’m not used to massive elevation gains over such a short period. Most of the hike is through snow fields. It was a warm sunny day. I got up to Muir around noon and Nathan had already set up the tent. After a little rest we practiced setting up anchors with the ice axe and picked and some self arrest techniques. Other than that it was mostly resting and acclimatizing to the altitude which I wasn’t noticeably having a problem with. We also drank lots of water from melting snow, which is what I’m guessing made me feel sick the next day since we just warmed it and didn’t boil it. Nathan probably has a lot more immunities to stuff in bad water than I do. I went to sleep around 6PM since we were waking up at 2:30AM to start the climb to the summit.

I slept pretty much straight through to 2:30 except for being awakened by the noise of the guided groups leaving earlier. I woke up to go and realized something wasn’t quite right with my stomach. Nathan and I got roped and geared up after going to the bathroom (which an amazing thing to have at 10,000ft in a little camp) and started up the mountain with Nathan leading. For the most part the trail was like a hiking trail through snow so it was pretty easy. We had been going for about 15 minutes and my stomach wasn’t improving. We reached some scree before heading out onto the Ingram Glacier and I was sweating profusely and chilled. The sweat was just pouring down my face and it wasn’t from exertion or altitude since we hadn’t even ascended 1000ft yet. At that point I knew we’d have to turn back. We hiked up a little farther just to see the glacier, even though there wasn’t much to see in the dark. The sky was clear as could be and you could see the line of the milky way and all the stars very clearly in the sky.

We got back down to camp pretty quickly, arriving around 4:30, and I went straight back to sleep until about 9:30 when the sun made it a bit too hot to sleep. I must have slept 12 hours at Camp Muir which wasn’t surprising considering I was tired and sick, but I was surprised that Nathan slept about the same amount even though he’s in much better shape and wasn’t feeling sick. We woke up and enjoyed the view a little while before booking it back to Paradise. Fortunately Katie finished her hike a little earlier than planned so we didn’t have to wait another night before heading out.

It’s the day after getting back now and I’m sore, but not nearly so sore as I would have been had I made it to the summit. I think summiting Rainier is definitely something that most people in decent shape could do with a little bit of training. It’s something I hope to try again in the near future. After seeing some of the people in the guided groups who made it to the top I’m sure I’ll be able to as long as I don’t get sick and the weather cooperates. Now I have to continue packing all my belongings up in preparation for Peru!

A lot of people have been asking about where we’ll be when. My last day at work is the 22nd of August. We’ll probably be climbing Mt Rainier with my little bro that week, and then tying up lose ends in Seattle and leaving the 28th for Eastern Washington to see my family. September 5th we’ll be flying to Connecticut to see some of Kim’s friends and family. On the 12th we’ll be flying to Florida to see Kim’s grandma and parents, and later my aunt in uncle. Finally on the 25th we’ll fly from Miami to Lima, Peru.

We’ll be volunteering in Huanchaco for a volunteer agency called Otra Cosa. To start I’ll be teaching English at the volunteer language school
and Kim will be helping out in the vegetarian restaurant. A month later we’ll both be teaching English to guides in Leymebamba.

After that we’ll probably be doing some hiking in the Andes near Huaraz and of course hike to Machu Picchu.

After that we’re going to just see how we feel. We’re tentatively planning a trip through the Amazon by boat to go to Brazil and a visit to Ecuador to visit Madre Tierra was recommended to us and sounds like a nice treat after a lot of roughing travel. Everything for months after that we’ll figure out as we go. Who knows, maybe we’ll end up in Antarctica, but I doubt that’s in our budget this trip.

In April we’ll see how our money is holding out and either change our return flight to stay longer or come back to the US. Coming back we don’t really have definite plans on where we’ll be living or working.

Some friends of ours, Michael Stern and Rebecca Goldstone, recently returned to Seattle after living a year in Africa setting up a non-profit foundation called Kibale Rainforest. They gave a talk about their experiences and it sounds like they’re doing a great thing. It’s certainly inspiring to see a couple so young and so motivated making a difference and doing something so altruistic. It makes me feel that my upcoming trip to South America to volunteer is actually selfish since I’m doing it in large part because I want a big vacation, but on a positive note it makes me realize how possible it is for small groups of people to make a difference, and that young people can be those people. Kim and I haven’t gotten to spend much time with them since they’ve been so busy, but they’ll be staying with us the next few nights so we’ll get to hear some of the details.

I should have posted a link to this a while ago, but I helped Kim setup a blog where she’s showing off her culinary creations. Go to www.kimmykokonut.com and see the fun stuff she’s been doing including lots of bread, kombucha and other cultured foods.

Also in the works is an online cookbook that I’m developing that will allow people have their recipes online and searchable. Check out the Cooking Compendium. The most unique feature and reason I’m doing it for Kim is food costing. At some point it will also be able to calculate nutritional information. It’s still in progress, so I welcome any feedback or bug reports. Share some of your favorite recipes with us too :-)

For the second year in a row Kim and I went to the Gorge to see a few days of bands at the Sasquatch Music Festival. It was only two days instead of three this year, and nobody went with us this time whereas Travis came last year.

The highlight of the weekend for me was definitely seeing Manu Chao play. I found his music while living in Spain thanks to my roommates. He played third to last on Saturday night, and played longer than most other bands. He played a few songs I haven’t heard before, but played a lot of the songs from his Clandestino album that I wanted to hear. Of course, nothing he played live sounded quite like the songs from the album. His band, the Radio Bemba Sound System, was very energetic and had the crowd jumping up and down and waving their hands pretty much the whole time. He wove a small bit of Bob Marley’s song “War” into his mix too. The rest of Saturday was fun, and the weather was gorgeous. I really don’t care that much about Bjork’s music, but she was interesting to see live.

Sunday was frickin windy and cold. Early in the day I mostly just tried to deal with the wind and rest. When it became apparent that our primo hillside seats were way too cold to sit in we started moving around to the other stages and had more fun. Smoosh was definitely one of the most novel bands I saw. It’s two barely teenaged girls who put on a pretty good music show, far beyond what you’d expect from girls their age. If I had a daughter I definitely would want her to see these girls rocking out as an example of what young girls can achieve. After their show the wind really picked up and they shut down the main stage for most of the afternoon. This had the side of effect of forcing the Beastie Boys and Spearhead to play at the same time on different stages. We decided to see Spearhead and were not disappointed. They played the longest of any band at the festival and included an awesome cover of Sublime’s “What I Got”. We tried to run over and catch the Beastie Boys before they finished, but their set was very short. We only caught the last little bit of Sabotage, which apparently was the encore.

I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to see some music at the Gorge the last few years as it’s an amazing music venue, even if the unpredictable weather can be a little overwhelming.

I haven’t been writing as much lately, but I’ve definitely been reading more. This is mostly due to the fact that I’ve realized that I miss reading fiction. It seems like since I’ve graduated from college I’ve been drawn almost completely to nonfiction: biographies, educational, motivational, historical and scientific books. While I enjoy reading those books, it’s much more rare for them to suck me in and keep me up reading almost all night like I used to. In fact some of them help put me to sleep even when the subject matter does interest me.

Part of the reason I’ve been avoiding fictions is that I didn’t really like the fiction I was choosing. I was trying to read most of the books from a list of the top 100 best novels, but some of them, while great pieces of literature, bored the crap out of me. I recently found a book list that so far has really appealed to me: IBList. I was looking for the IMDB equivalent for books and it led me to IBList. While IBList isn’t nearly as expansive or useful as IMDB, it’s pointed me in the direction of some great reads. The top books on the site are really skewed toward science fiction, which is alright by me because I’ve been really into that lately.

I just finished reading Flowers for Algernon. I picked it up and couldn’t set it down until I was done. It kind of reminds me of the way Of Mice and Men made me feel. Anyway, very highly recommended. I just realized I ought to sign up for an account and contribute at least some ratings to IBList, if not reviews.

Here’s another post that I forgot to publish about the Iraq war from Les, my friend in the army.

What has happened to this nation’s ability to become angry? What has happened to our righteous indignation over the death of our Soldiers? Where is the public outcry when terrorists detonate a tank full of chlorine on a crowd of civilians, burning their lungs and subjecting them to a horrible death over next few days as they choke to death on their own mucous? How about when they hack the heads off of our citizens with a blade that is deliberately so dull it takes several swings before it comes off? How about when they lob mortars with a careless disregard and blow up a playground full of kids? Or how about the man who gives a ticking time bomb to a ten year old kid that detonates on him, blowing of his hands and peppering him with shrapnel? I have seen all of these events, and what makes the news, people crying that we should get out. Have we become so cowardly that when evil raises its head we run and hide? It didn’t used to be this way, there was once a time when any one of these would have had people lining up to get the enemy, when crimes like these would not stand before the righteous. The News and the public should be calling for blood and vengeance on the people who would act with such malevolence. Instead of calls for withdrawal, there should be accusations that we have not prosecuted this war aggressively enough. Instead of bemoaning the loss of our service members, we should be kicking down doors in pursuit of those behind their deaths. There should be no question that that those who would dare to harm our citizens will be hounded like the dogs they are. It does not matter why we have gone to war at this point, what matters is that there are evil men here that need to be stopped. If we can longer find righteous anger within ourselves than perhaps “land of the free, and home of the brave,” is the last lament of a dying nation.