Trying to keep track of it all...

Where the hell have you been?!

2008-08-23T12:59:00.000-07:00

So there's been a bit of a hiatus here at bigblackvan.com while we plodded along and worked on the house and the boat and uh, work.
There was never really anything to report, so I got bored.
Well, here's the next step in the evolution.

Meat.

Is it a step forward or step back, who knows. Really, who cares...
Anyway, here's the back story.

Last winter I bought a smoker, mostly because I couldn't get as much smoked salmon as I wanted without going completely broke. ($18.99 a pound!) So I wandered around the endless aisles of Ebay until I found a scratch and dent great Outdoors Smoky Mountain Series Propane smoker. Got it for $6.00, plus $30.00 shipping.

Not too bad.

Got the scratched and dented box via UPS and put it together. I straightened the bent bits fixed the broken bits (took me all of 15 minutes) an gave it a try. Love it! Totally hooked.
So since last winter I've smoked pork ribs, pork loins and tons and tons of salmon.
I never really kept good track of my recipes and whatnot, so I've had mixed success. Its all good, and it all got eaten, but some was definitely better than others. So instead of continuing to shoot in the dark, I thought I should start keeping a smoking log... or blog... or smlog.

So here it is.

Welcome to my smlog.

Just back from Alaska

2006-07-03T17:29:00.000-07:00

Had to go to Alaska for work recently.
Never been before. Pretty neat.
Spent about a week in Ketchikan working on a boat that had run aground.
Needed some mechanical work and a lot of fiberglass repair (thankfully not my dept).

Took the ferry from Bellingham to Ketchikan. Took 3 days. Kinda like a mini-cruise.
Except no cabin, so we had to sleep in sleeping bags wherever. Some people duct-taped tents to the aft outside decks.
Was still fun though.

Ketchikan was interesting. Pop. 8200 and only 26 miles of roads.
The only way in or out is by boat or plane. No highways, and no way to get to the next town by car. I guess the mountains and the ice fields kinda get in the way.

Will probably have to go back in a couple of weeks for sea trials.
Here are a couple of pics of note:

Thats Rob the carpenter and Dave the fiberglasser. My two coworkers.

Nice view of the inside passage.

Approaching Ketchikan.

Ketchikan and the surrounding mountains.

Theres the ferry.

Picture of some of the damage. This is the starboard side roll stabilizer. Keeps the boat a little more stable so that the passengers dont get seasick. Its not supposed to go into the hull like that.

Heres the hole left behind after I removed the stabilizer.

Heres the hole from the inside after Rob the carpenter removed all the woodwork and Zach the mechanic removed the hydraulics and the guts of the stabilizer. Now Dave the fiberglasser can get to work making the hole go away.

Thats it!

awww... how cute. (retch)

2006-04-15T18:12:00.000-07:00

Heres a cute pic I found the other day.
This is from Thanksgiving-ish when we unstepped the mast on our boat.
Just thought I'd share.

My keyoard ha rapped out.

2005-11-06T16:33:00.000-08:00

ooted up the old omputer thi morning to type omething up and notied that a ouple of the key weren't working.
ee if you an gue whih one hae gone tit up.
It tarted with the and the and then a the day progreed it moed onto more and more.
The tupid thing i thi keyoard i only aout a year old.
Mirooft Natural Elite. $45.00 well pent!

What a pain in my a!
Dammit...

Can't jinx it...

2005-10-22T18:00:00.000-07:00

Went to qwest.com this morning for my once monthly DSL availability check.
Been doing it for over a year now. Same response every time.
Not available.
Not available.
Not available.

But this morning I got something different...

Technically, it's still not available, but what is that I see glimmering over the horizon? Could it be a tiny ray of hope?
Could this be the end of my internet exile (24.0 kbps dial-up for the past 16 months. You try it.)
Can't jinx it. Must not get hopes up.
Must keep silent and pretend I didn't see anything at all. Will continue on as I always have crawling through the darkness of this internet hellscape.
I see nothing....

My own personal torture...

Update on stuff and stuff...

2005-08-07T09:13:00.000-07:00

Its now "summer" here in the Pacific Northwest; which means its gorgeous pretty much every day for about 10 weeks straight.
Sunny, blue skies, about 82 degrees with low humidity and low fifties at night.
Every... stinkin'... day...
Its unbelievable.

So with all the good weather, we've been super busy.
Working on the house and the boat. Doing a bit of boating (on other peoples boats).
Went on a motorcycle ride up Mt. Baker. Explored the coast a bit.
And this is the busy season at the boatyard so on occasion I've been working six day weeks and ten hour days.
Whoo, I'm exhausted!

The boat is coming along nicely. I'm doing all the external work while its nice so after ripping out all the internal systems (wiring, plumbing, etc.) I've been concentrating on the hull. Fairing and prepping for bottom paint. Dusty dirty job. Next we'll probably give the topsides a quick sand and wax just to keep things looking good until next summer.
One of the shipwrights at work has been nice enough to build us some new cockpit hatch covers, and is going to help us pattern out a new cabin sole, and replace the cockpit coamings (I know some of you may have no idea what these items are, but there are some pictures coming up so hang in there). Once the new hatches etc. are in place the interior will be watertight, and I can spend the cold dark winter in there running new wiring and plumbing and installing an engine. That's when the big bucks start flying out the window.
I've been posting a few photos and kind of keeping up a progress report on The LeComte Owners website. Its an online forum and info site for the kind of sailboat we have. I go into way more detail on some stuff over there, and other people have given me recommendations and whatnot. Just if you're interested. Heres a direct link to the forum. I post as fusto.

So that's that with that. Here are some pictures to keep you entertained.

Here's the old cockpit hatch. It literally disintegrated in my hands. That's what 40 years in a marine environment with no maintenance will get you.

And heres the new one. Its half inch marine grade mahogany plywood with a teak inlay around the perimeter. Its not as fancy as the original all teak hatches but it'll be a lot more solid and weather resistant.

Here's where the hatches go. And the coamings are those long pieces of wood that go fore and aft that the winches are attached to. They were originally made of plywood which has since delaminated.

This is the hull. The shiny spots are epoxy patches that I had just applied. The hull had a blistering problem that the original owners fixed by sanding the bottom off and applying straight epoxy. That's not the best way to fix a blistering problem, but now its too late. So I'm sanding it a bit and filling in any low spots. Then I'll apply a special epoxy bottom sealer, then the bottom paint. Should work out fine.

Here's a close up of the blistering. This was caused by bad gelcoat (the shiny layer of fiberglass on the outside of the hull). In the 60's and 70's fiberglass boats were still a relatively new invention so manufacturers really didn't know what they were doing. This was good and bad in that boats made them were so heavily laid up that the hulls were nigh indestructible, but because they didn't really know what they were doing with the different resins and whatnot some boats ended up with blistering problems. Its essentially water permeation through a porous (bad on boats) gelcoat layer. Water builds up in the glass and creates little blisters. Once fixed its no longer an issue. And its relatively easy to fix.

This is a shot from up on Mt. Baker. Last weekend Tabitha and I and Pat and Willow from work went on a motorcycle ride up the mountain. As you can see spectacular views abound.

that's Tabitha, Pat and Willow. Pat and Willow are fellow boat mechanics and motorcyclists.

Mt. Baker. Our local active volcano.

Pat found a nice little ice cave to cool off in.

The ladies and the bikes.

This has been my means of conveyance to and from work lately. Its our work skiff. At the end of the day I jump in, zip across the bay and I'm home in about 15 minutes. Beats the hell out of driving.

Oh jeez, what have we done now?

2005-07-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, we bought a boat.
Needs a "bit" of work though. More on that later.
Heres a pic of her for you though.

Traffic court!

2005-02-15T20:54:00.000-08:00

So today, being the scofflaw that I am, I had to go to traffic court.
It was kind of interesting actually. Not something that I hope to ever have to do again, but watching all the other scofflaws before me was mildly entertaining.

But you dont care about that, you want to hear why I was at traffic court.
Well... OK.
But its really dumb.

I and a couple of other guys were heading back to work after lunch a couple of weeks ago, and I got busted going 36 in a 25 mph zone.
I know, I know! I'm insane risking peoples lives like that. But if you've read anything at all on this site then you know that I'm pretty much fearless, and routinely break the law.
Ahem... anyway thats not why I went to court.

After pulling me over the officer told me what I had done wrong and asked me to present my license, registration and proof of insurance. So I dug out my license and registration and handed them over.
He looked like he was still waiting for something.
"Uh, is there anything else?"
"I still need your proof of insurance sir."
"Isnt it on the registration?"
He looked puzzled.
"No sir, its a seperate document."
Now it was my turn to look puzzled.
"A seperate document?"

Now you see I'm from Massachusetts where you can't register a vehicle unless you have insurance first. Because of this they just put your proof of insurance on the registration itself.
While mildly inconvenient paperwork-wise, this always made sense to me because what state in their right mind would allow people to register vehicles that are un-insured.
Yay, Washington!
Yeah, here you can get plates (or tabs as they're called out here in the wild wild west) and drive around willy nilly running into houses and other people completely un-insured. Isn't that great? It's a right dammit!!

whatever...

So, anyway I and my two buddies from work looked through every nasty, wrinkled, cookie crumb and french fry stained document in the car, but to no avail.
All we were able to find was an old insurance document from last year when we lived in Maine. It had the policy number on it though, so the officer who at this point was laughing at me (along with my two dumbass co-workers) offered to call Progressive and check it out.

After an interminable 15 minutes (thanks Jim and Duncan!) he came back to the car. "I'm sorry sir but Progressive says that this policy has expired."
"What? Oh thats right. When we moved here Progressive had to set up a whole new policy for us, because our region had changed."
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to write you a ticket sir. If you could have proven your insurance coverage I would have let you go with a warning, but now I have no choice."

Yeah, great... thanks...

So he writes me a ticket for... $690!!!
$550 for no proof of insurance and $140 for the speeding (which again was a diabolical 36 in a 25).

"Sir, if you check the box marked mitigation hearing and go to traffic court and prove your coverage, you can have the fee reduced to a $25 filing charge."
I picked my jaw up out of my lap and thanked him for his time.

Needless to say Tabitha was not happy.
And my coworkers of course thought this was hilarious.

So thats why I was at traffic court today.
I told you it was dumb.
I ended up paying the $25 filing fee and the judge reduced my speeding from $140 to an even $100.
Guess I'll take what I can get. Could've been a lot worse, to the tune of $565. Dont really have that kind of scratch lying around to waste on stupid traffic violations.
Which brings me to our next bigblackvan installment:
"Taxes! Why you should pay your quarterly estimated or How I learned to love the IRS"

Stay tuned!!

skiing, skiing, skiing

2005-01-02T19:43:00.000-08:00

Right now, its all about the skiing...

Lazy lazy lazy...

2004-10-24T08:45:00.000-07:00

For some reason lately I just haven't had the time or energy to post anything here.
Been working a lot. And when I'm not at work I'm here at home working on the house. Blah blah blah... Oh you know, the usual range of excuses.

So lets see, what did we do this summer.
When we weren't spending time getting settled in we got to do some exploring. Went to a bunch of neat places out here in the Pacific Northwest. Climbed some mountains/volcanoes, looked at some glaciers, went for swims in mountain ponds. It was a beautiful summer too. Never too hot, cool at night and sunny, sunny, sunny.
Lately though the rains have started for the winter. And the wind! Whoo, had a fun ferry ride the other morning. Lots of bouncing around. So I've been told, Hales Passage which is the small channel that the ferry crosses, gets quite windy in the winter. The wind blows between the island and the mainland and creates a little venturi effect. Hundred mile an hour winds are not uncommon. And apparently happen on a regular basis.
In the 40 years that the ferry has been running, they've shut down twice due to weather, and one of those times was because the dock had blown away.
Should be wild and woolly commuting this winter. Looking forward to it.

Work's been going well. It's slowed down some since labor day, and I take the odd day off here and there. But thats fine with me, (as long as its not too many odd days off) gives me time to futz around the house. So far I really like working at the boatyard and being a boat mechanic. Every day is something different. Keeps it really interesting. I've been learning a lot and the people I work with are all really great. Its a good company thats growing, and I feel like I found a comfortable niche there. I just hope it stays busy. It should though. Were getting a new travel-lift in a couple of weeks that will allow us to haul out 150 ton boats. That pretty much opens up a whole new market for us. With our old travel-lift we were limited to 35 ton boats which were mostly small pleasure boats. This big travel-lift will let us haul out the big commercial boats. Fishing boats, ferries, whale watch boats, etc. etc. And we'll be the only people in town with that capacity too.
Guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

Been working some on the house. We built a small deck off the kitchen and have started to do some landscaping. We also tore down one of the out-buildings the previous owner had built. One yard conundrum is that we have a shed in an awkward part of the yard that needs to be moved about 75 feet. Not sure how to go about it though. It's a big shed. Very heavy. But its in a really dumb place.
Tabitha's started painting and we put up some finishing trim around the inside of a couple of the windows. We've got a plan started for reorganizing the kitchen, and in the spring we hope to build a front deck/entryway. I know we've only been here 4 months but were trying to not wait three years to make the house the way we want it like we did in Boston. We finally got our house there exactly how we liked it and then we sold it a few months later. Not this time 'round.
It is nice having our own place though. And this island we live on is gorgeous! We have a beautiful view out over the water towards Bellingham from our backyard, and its really quiet and dark at night.
There has been a lot of development going on here though, and it seems to be increasing. Since we both are from an area of the U.S. that we've seen get developed into oblivion (Cape Cod, MA) we fear the worst. Unfortunately it's already started to hit close to home.
There's a lot that was for sale right behind our house, kinda down a hill/cliff towards the rear of our property. And it sold just before we bought this place. Well they came and cleared it the other day. Cut down about 20 trees right behind our house. It dramatically improved our view, which is a plus I guess, but were worried about the potential construction. I just know they're going to build a 4 story tower or something and block out our view entirely. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.
We're going to try and pay attention to their progress though, and check for permits and filed plans, 'cause the standard practice out here is to just run willy-nilly and do whatever you want with or without permits. We dont want to be nosy, or "those kinds of neighbors" but we need to protect our investment and our quality of life.
Thats what I'm going to keep telling myself anyway.

Ok, thats enough rambling on at the mouth (fingers?). Here are a couple of pictures to keep you happy.

We drove 14 miles up this old abandoned logging road in the North Cascades National Park, until we got to the end and then we hiked up through a heather meadow to a beautiful glacial lake on the backside fo Church Mt. It was absolutely one of the most spactacular places I have ever seen. The water in the lake was carribean blue and clear as glass. But being a glacial lake it was also COLD! Still went swimming though.

Here's Tab in the heather meadow.

The lake from a distance.

Some kind of manatee or other bizarre water creature grinning like a fool because its freezing to death.

The lake from another vantage point.

And another. Pretty isnt it?

Lummi Island Rainbow

2004-09-10T21:59:00.000-07:00

There was an amazing rainbow out over the water the other evening, so I ran out and took a picture.
Heres the rainbow out over Hales Passage, thats Bellingham/Fairhaven across the water.

Pics from the Road...

2004-08-04T21:49:00.000-07:00

Here are some pics that I took on our cross country trip:

Here's me driving the big rig. I spent a good half hour taking pictures of myself due to sheer boredom. Tabitha thought I was having a seizure or something, I guess I was swerving a bit.

There she is!

This was pretty much her view for 7 days and 3600 miles.

And this was mine.

Now thats a speed limit!

Too bad I was stuck at about 62.
Unless of course I was going downhill then I could hit about 70.
Uphill about 35...

The good old US of A's famous corn filler.
Got to put something between the coasts, right?
Keeps it crunchy, even in milk!

Flat flat flat flat flat flat flat flat flat...

We hit some neat looking storms in the midwest.
Not sure where this was.
I kept expecting to look in the rearview mirror and see a tornado coming up behind me trying to pass.

This was in Montana somewhere. I thought it was kind of a neat hill. Maybe its a butte even?

Here's our little convoy having a lunch break.
Ayuh, hanging out with the big rigs.

It just goes on and on and on... Kinda like me.

Notes from the Road (warning: a bit long)

2004-07-30T08:23:00.000-07:00

Trip body count:
2 birds
1 snake
3 Monarch butterflys
about 10000 bugs

Trip stats:
6 days driving
total mileage, 3800
700 miles longest day
435 gallons of diesel
120 gallons of regular gas
$71.55 in tolls
23 bottles of water
2 skeevy hotels

Ohio most dead bugs
Ohio worst highways
Montana best highways

It takes 3 days of driving from the east coast to get anywhere interesting.

Chicago looks icky from the highway.

Up until we got past Chicago we were sure that the fabled "wide open highways" of the U.S. were just that, a fable.
Then we found them. Wide and open. Not a strip mall for hundreds of miles and exit signs that have just a number and "ranch access" on them and go directly to a dirt road.

Lots of friggin' corn. Who the hell eats all this corn?

Really hot and humid until we got about mid-midwest. then it got cool and dry.

The midwesterners love their waterparks. Guess 'cause theres no ocean nearby.

After Chicago the highways turn into those stupid poured concrete highways. You know the ones that go "thup... thup... thup... thup" as you drive over them.
Except that in a big 25 foot moving truck with a full trailer with a jeep on it the "thup thup thup" turns into "bang bang bang" and I got so jostled I felt like I was going to throw up.
Here let me help you visualize this:
Remember when you were a child and you got bounced up and down on somebodys knee, or perhaps you yourself have bounced a child on your knee, that was about the same force of bounce I was experiencing.
Now imagine that kind of bouncing for about 1500 miles.
Now imagine trying to drink coffee for 1500 miles while being bounced like that.
Needless to say I was not amused.

In Ohio or Wisconsin or whatever we passed a "Traffic Paint Test Area". This was basically a section of Route 90 where they let the Dept. Of Transportation guys go nuts with the line painting truck. There were zig-zags, and lines and dashes, and curly cues it was crazy looking. I had a great mental image of the DOT guys out in the middle of the night drinking and whooping it up and painting highway lines all over the place. hee hee...

When we reached "the west" the speed limit jumped up to 75. I think mainly to taunt me since I was stuck at 60.

I had to find a new radio station about twice a day, and when we got to the midwest it became increasingly more difficult to find any decent ones. I did however have my choice of bible, farm report, and country music stations.
When I was able to tune in a decent rock station, I found that they all had monosyllabic tag names that the DJ would say in a loud aggressive voice before going to commercial.
Stuff like: "98.2 THE CROW!"
In addition to the crow there was also the bear, the snake, the wolf, the lion, the laser, the eagle, the bomb and the blaze. Not sure why a radio station would want to identify with a crow, but whatever...

In South Dakota we passed a giant billboard advertising the worlds largest pheasant. I knew after we passed it I should have pulled the truck over and taken a picture, but there was just no way.
Too bad, 'cause it was hilarious.

When we hit South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana, all the Honda's, Nissan's, Toyota's and VW's disappeared. Big trucks, SUV's and Caddilacs were the order of the day. Buy American and buy big dammit!!

Anybody out there live in Phosphate Montana?

Trying to get diesel fuel is highly frustrating. At the truck stops and giant rest areas, you have to go to the special diesel pumps for trucks. The pumps are filthy with fuel, and they drip all over your hands, and on the side of the truck so you end up standing in giant puddles of diesel fuel to fill the tank. I was sure my shoes were going to melt before we got halfway across the country.
These pumps are also in the frigging dark ages as far as convenience goes. Theres no pay at the pump so you have to walk all the way over to the shop (which is acres away from the pumps) and give them your card and tell them which pump you want turned on and then walk back. Each pump has two nozzles, one on each side of the truck, but only one has a display and they both have individual pump numbers. So if you tell them pump 21 but you need to use the nozzle with no display, thats actually pump 22. But only sometimes, and of course the number stickers have long melted off from diesel spills.
The tank on my truck was of course on the wrong side. So I always had to use the pump with no display. To use the secondary pump you have to turn on the pump with the display and then lay the nozzle on the ground and go around and use the pump on the other side and hope you told them the right pump number in the shop.
And of course there are no signs explaining any of this, so clueless people like me end up standing around with a fuel nozzle in our hands looking like total dumbasses. I dont know why the truckers stand for it. It could be so much easier and cleaner.
Maybe they dont care. Or maybe it gives them a laugh. Whatever...

When we got to somewhere in the midwest, I forget where exactly I stopped at another truck stop to fill the truck up with Diesel. I got all set up at the pump and started pumping the diesel and what was coming out of the nozzle was bright green! Like the color of coolant!
I stopped pumping in a panic and kinda looked around, then went into the shop to see what the hell this green stuff was. The people in the shop thought I was crazy.
(Insert your own Jethro voice here) "Duh, all diesel is green."
"Um, no its not, diesel is pink."
"Nuh-uh only for tractors."
OK, so apparently on the East Coast all diesel is pink, and in the midwest, truck grade diesel is bright green and farm grade diesel is pink. Great, thanks for telling me. I almost pissed myself thinking I had just pumped some foreign substance into the fuel tank on the rental truck.

In Ohio, Wisconsin and PA there were tons of cops out on the prowl. When we hit "the west" they all vanished and the speed limit jumped to 75 mph. Didnt see one single cop in the 650 miles it took us to cross South Dakota.
And with the 75 mph speed limit, nobody was driving excessiveley fast, and there wasnt a bloodbath of car wreck carnage on the highway. I'd say that people were driving about as fast as they do on the east coast (75-80), except now that the speed limit actually reflected how fast they were going, it was legal.
So no need to hide cops everywhere to pull people over. Made a lot more sense to me. And probably saved the state a lot of money.

OK thats it.
I highly encourage anybody reading this to try a cross-country trip. This was my first and I found it amazing. It really gives you a much more global sense of our country and of the continent we live on. The changes in terrain and climate and local color is fascinating. And the fact that we have these broad ribbons of highway that go for thousands of miles, really gives you a sense of Eisenhowers vision when he came up with the idea for the Eisenhower Interstate System. I mean we traveled one highway (Rt 90) from its start at mile 1 in Boston to its absolute end 3400 miles away in Seattle. It really is something.

Oh man, too much stuff...

2004-07-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

I gots a ton of stuff to write about, but no time to do it. I'll get to it in bits and pieces, I promise. In the meantime here are a couple of recent pics:

Me and the cat sacked out on the couch after a hard day of unpacking and moving furniture. I mostly moved the furniture, he just kinda acted as foreman. Still a tiring job though.

This is a pic out of our backyard area at, I swear, 10:15 PM. The sun sets ridiculously late here on the furthest west fringes of the Pacific Time Zone. You can just see Bellingham lit up across the water at the very bottom.

I just took this pic walking back from a swim at our pond up the road. This is a view across Hales passage looking towards Bellingham and Mt. Baker. This view is literally 50 ft from our house. Can you believe it?!

Ok, thats it for now, I've got lots of notes from our x-country trip, and all kinds of other stuff to impart, but for now you'll just have to be patient.

graduashun and da fyooture

2004-06-28T04:17:00.000-07:00

So now that I'm all edumacated, The Landing School gave me an actual diploma and a graduation ceremony to boot!
Pic 1, Pic 2, Pic 3
(Tabitha took the pictures and she has a bit of a shaky camera hand)

This past year was pretty intensive and hard at times, but totally worth it. The graduation ceremony was fun, and even though the weather was crap here in Maine we all got to go out and see the launching of the two power boats that the cruising boats class had been building this whole year. They came out real nice and it was cool to see them actually in the water, after having seen them in bits and pieces all year.
Ken and Roger our systems instructors for the year, were all dressed up and grinning from ear to ear during the whole graduation. They seemed really proud of us and happy to see us all ready to head out into the world.

So now that I've got my bevy of ABYC and EPA certifications in hand, its off to the workforce!

Tabitha and I are leaving the Atlantic shores for a bit. Were going to go and try out the north Pacific for awhile. Were in the process of buying a house in Washington State. Its a little cottage on an island just off the coast of Bellingham. It needs some finish work and a lot of landscaping, but the potential is there.Here is a little archive of photos if your curious.
Bellingham is about an hour and half north of Seattle and about an hour south of Vancouver. Its kind-of a college town, which is good and bad. Western Washington University (WWU) is there and they have about 15000 students. That means there are a lot of amenities in the town geared for college students which is cool, but it also means there are a lot of jerky college students around all the time. At least the island is pretty secluded and should be quiet.

As far as recreation goes, it would probably be easier to list whats not available!

We'll be about an hour from some amazing skiing (downhill and x-country) on Mt.Baker (900 inches of snow a year!). As residents of the island we can have a mooring in a little cove by the islands boathouse, so boating is an option. Mt. biking is everywhere. The North Cascades National Park is about an hour from us for some serious Alpine Hiking. The Olympic National Park is about 3 hours away on the Olympic Peninsula for more hiking and mountain climbing. The island we'll be living on is half mountain, and I guess there are some hiking trails there as well. The island is also on a marine kayak trail, and there are beaches, and cliffs and all kinds of stuff to see. Bald eagles, Orcas, dolphins, seals, etc. etc.
Also Las Vegas is a shuttle flight away, as is San Francisco, Los Angeles, and just a wee bit further is Hawaii!

I think theres enough stuff to keep us busy for a good couple of years.
That was pretty much our impetus to move somewhere totally different. We wanted some new places to explore, new people to meet and talk to, see some big mountains and a different ocean. The attitude on the west coast is different than New England too. More laid back, and relaxed. Well as far as we could tell. Ask us again in a couple of months.

I also already got a job out there. When we were on vacation there in April, I walked into the service office of a boatyard (Seaview North) down by Squalicum Harbor, and chatted with the service manager for an hour or so. He said to keep in touch, so end of May I faxed him my resume, and then about 2 weeks ago he called up the house, and said he had a place for me. Cool!
After we get into town, he said to come by and we'll work out the details. Hey, cant argue with that. A new house, a job I dont get it. Must have done something right along the way there.

So were moving out tomorrow. Heading down to the Cape for a night, to pick up some sundries, then off cross-country. Should take us about a week we figure. Deciding factors will be our stamina for long days of driving and the cats tolerance for car trips. I'll be driving the big rental truck with our Jeep on a trailer behind, and Tabitha in the VW with the cat. Should be quite the little parade.

So wish us luck and look for some new postings after we get there.

Hey Buddy your boat is crooked...

2004-06-25T13:21:00.000-07:00

Since this was our last week of school (sniff) the instuctors took us out sailing on Casco bay yesterday.
We were sailing a Swan 40 that had been refit by the class 2 years earlier. The boats we were working on this year, ran into some parts shipping issues and were unable to be launched. So the instructors dug up this sailboat and a nice powerboat for us to play on.
It was a typical Maine day, cold, foggy, rainy, but we had a very nice breeze. Loved it...

Soup on my car!

2004-06-08T16:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know I havent posted anything in a long time. I've really been slacking. Its unforgivable really.

But something really weird happened this morning that I just have to share.

About 7:00 AM I went out to the car as usual (it was parked on the street, not in the lot) to go to school, and as I was walking up I noticed that somebody had squirted something all over the windows.
Upon closer inspection it appeared to be butternut squash soup. Or a mango smoothie.
Pretty weird, huh?
Anyway, I went back up to the apartment and got a couple of jugs of water to wash it away, and since it was apparently fresh it came right off.

This guy Dave that I carpool with, suggested that maybe somebody had actually thrown up on the car. So I explained that it was definitely squirted. It was in swoops and swirls, not a big blob.

What I cant figure out is why somebody was walking around the back streets of Portland at between 6 and 7 AM with a squirt bottle filled with squash soup. And secondly why me? What did I do to deserve a souping?! There were lots of other cars parked near mine, and none of them had any soup on them.
I was parked in a regular spot on a public street that I've been parking on for about 10 months now, with nary an incident (except one towing for street sweeping, which they never ever do).

sigh...

It didnt really ruin my day or anything, it was more baffling than anything else.
It just was really inconvenient and seemed totally unnecessary.
But then I guess all vandalism is like that, isnt it?

Then again is souping somebody's car really vandalism?
What's next a taco in my tailpipe? Or a pizza on my sunroof?
It was so stupid, I wish I had taken a picture before I washed it off.
Oh well, maybe next time...

Vacation in Washington state

2004-05-02T13:41:00.000-07:00

in the end of April we flew out to Washington state to check it out and see if it could be somewhere we might want to try to live.
We're kind of burned out on New England, and think we need a change of scenery and attitude for a couple of years. Hey why not the west coast!
Never lived on the west coast before. In fact never even been to WA state before either.
Been to California a bunch of times, but never further north than say Ojai.

Turns out we loved WA and are seriously thinking about moving out there when my schooling is done.
We flew into Seattle, and then drove north up to the Olympic Peninsula and stayed in Port Angeles for a couple of days. Then we drove to Port Townsend and took the ferry over to the "mainland" then we drove north to Bellingham where we stayed another couple of days. Loved Bellingham. Lots to offer, nice attitude, on the water, lots of boating. Even kind of looks like Maine.
Heres a little montage of photos that we took while there.
Some of them get kind of artsy, feel free to skip over those.

Washington photos

Wow...

2004-04-04T19:46:00.000-07:00

This is some pretty heavy stuff.

Website of a Ukranian woman who goes for motorcycle rides through the "Zones of Exclusion" surrounding Chernobyl.
Amazing photos with good narrative.

I suggest you take a look.

This is my buddy "edited for content"

2004-03-27T05:04:00.000-08:00

Edited on March 27 by order of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, lawyers in the first part for the party of the second part. Ipso Facto, e pluribus unum, etc. etc. ad nauseum....

He wanted me to let you all know that he is a "edited for content".

Not sure why, but there you go...

Ayuh...

2004-03-23T17:54:00.000-08:00

Heres a little peek at how Mainers feel about folks from Massachusetts.
Not sure why theres such animosity, but I think it might have something to do with the way we/they drive.
What do you think?

Urinal use

2004-02-09T19:13:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of weird urinal-use behaviors that I've noticed and wondered about over the years.
They seem, at least to me, to be fairly widespread and totally inexplicable.
Details to follow.

note: if any of you readers happen to have any of these odd habits I apologize in advance for making fun.
On the same note though maybe you could help explain.

The first thing is the spitting thing.
Why when you're at the urinal micturating away would you feel the need to spit into your own urine?
It could perhaps just be a need to spit, and I guess I find a urinal a more appropriate place, then say the sidewalk in front of where I'm walking (a whole other rant).
But this kind of spitting doesnt seem to be an out of necessity kind of spit. Like a removal of beard hair spit or bad flavor spit. Its an intentional long drawn out gross spit. And sometimes theres more than one.
Most of the time it seems pretty unnecessary.

The second behavior is the multiple flushing thing.
I usually give the urinal a flush when I'm done (or when I get there depending on the state of the urinal), but dont really see the need to flush it 3, 4, or even 5 times while peeing.
Maybe it stems from a concern that the urinal will fill up and spill over onto your shoes?
Maybe boredom, just something to do while your waiting for you bladder to empty?
Or perhaps its just to make room for all the spit....

The hitchhiker's dilemma

2004-01-11T13:34:00.000-08:00

Over christmas break one year (circa 1992?) when I was in college, some friends (Nejem, John, and Jesse) and I were driving from my house on Cape Cod to Johns parent's cabin up in New Hampshire where we were going to stay for a few days.

We were just toodling along in, I believe my dad's old Volkswagen Vanagon, on our way north. It was late afternoon and we were kinda hungry so while going through Boston we decided to stop for dinner. We unanimously agreed to go to one of our favorite places to eat when in the Boston area, Pizzeria Regina.
Now ordinarily stopping for eats in Boston wouldnt seem like such a bad idea, but Pizzeria Regina is in the North End, and if you are at all familiar with the North End you know that 9 times out of 10 theres nowhere to park a regular sized car much less a VW van. Plus it was dark, and a weekday right around rush-hour, and about 10 degrees below zero so the odds were very much against our parking anywhere nearby. We also only had enough money for the pizza so a parking garage was out.

After aimlessly driving around the cramped streets for an hour or so we decided to just get a pizza to go. I dropped John and Nejem off out front and then Jesse and I proceeded to drive around the North End until the pizza was ready.
After about a half hour or so I pulled up out front of the restaurant where Nejem and John were waiting with a couple of steaming pies, they jumped in and we headed for the on-ramp.
Of course by now we were in the thick of Boston rush-hour traffic and the on-ramp to the highway was backed up right onto the street. We got in line with everybody else and slowly crawled our way towards the highway.

We were scarfing our pizza while we waited to get on the highway, and as we progressed slowly forward, we passed a hitchhiker at the base of the on-ramp. I cant for the life of me remember what the destination on his cardboard sign was or where he was going, but I do remember that it wasnt anywhere we were headed.
He looked pretty miserable standing there in the freezing cold Boston night, surrounded by slow moving cars, and as we passed by Nejem opened the window and asked him where he was headed to.
He pointed to his sign, said he'd been standing there for hours and asked if we could give him a lift. Nejem told him sorry, but we werent going that way.
He looked a little crestfallen, so Nejem asked him if he was hungry, and held a piece of steaming greasy pizza out the window. The guys face lit up, but with his big backpack, bulky gloves, and cardboard sign he didnt have a free hand to take the dripping pizza.
At this point traffic was starting to move a bit faster up the ramp and he was walking slowly along side us unable to give up the idea of a piece of fresh pizza. Nejem was still holding it out the windowbut the guy just didnt know what to do with it.

Finally as people behind us started beeping irritatedly Nejem said, "Hey man, hold out your sign".
After a second or two, he took his cardboard sign, held it out like a plate and Nejem put the pizza on it, the grease from the cheese immediately obliterating his hopeful destination.
At this point he was running along side us shouting a thanks and trying not to stumble as we drove off up the ramp and onto the highway.

As I looked back at him out the rear window I remember he stopped running and was just standing there looking down at his bounty of cheesy pizza and his ruined sign, and he looked... well, very conflicted.
I have a perfect mental image of that momemt for some reason. And to this day have never forgotten the look on his face. Not happy, not dissapointed, just, conflicted. Happy to have pizza, but unhappy to still be on the side of the road at night, and now without a sign.

I think unwittingly we may have tapped into something very elemental in human nature that night. Not sure what, but theres definitely something there.
Something to do perhaps with where we are ultimately trying to go in life... and the need for a slice of pizza.

Of dubious historical significance...

2003-11-02T13:11:00.000-08:00

This sign is out on the street in front of our house:

What it says is:
*HISTORIC SITE*
HANGING OF THOMAS BIRD

So apparently we live on the site of the old Portland gallows. Great...
I guess the location kind of makes sense though. We're just on the cusp of the downtown area, way up on a hill (Bramhall Hill) that overlooks all of Portland, and up the coast. A lovely location for a hangin'.

Poor old Thomas was a pirate, and he was the first to be hung under Article 1, Section 8 of the new constitution (whatever that is), way back in early summer of 1790.

Heres a shot of the text on the sign

I guess its kind of interesting, but like I say above its definitely of dubious historical significance.

Heres a shot of the illustration that accompanies the text.
A lovely little rendering of old Thomas getting strung up.
Looks like Abraham Lincoln made an appearance (guy in the big hat).

These "Historical points-of-interest" signs are all over Portland. But this is the only one I've seen so far thats creepy and mildly violent.
Most of them are more in the vein of "On this site in 1754 Joseph Oldguy took a nap." or "This street was paved with cobblestones in 1795". You know ho-hum whoop- de-doo kind of stuff.
I suppose you could say that were lucky to live in such a historically significant area, but I say its still kind of weird.

Oh, and the sign is sponsored by "Jordan's Meats". Makes me want to just run right out and buy a flank steak.

Playing poker with fiends

2003-10-12T20:29:00.000-07:00

Tabitha and I went out last night to the house of a friend of mine from school. He and his wife were having an impromptu poker game, and they invited us to play, probably thinking we were easy marks.
Being easy marks, we thought it might be fun so we went.

There were 7 of us there, people I know from school and their significant others.
'Till the wee hours we were drinking beer, making fun of each other and just generally having a good time.
They were playing for real money, which kind of threw us at first since we had no experience at all.
But it turned out they were only doing a 5 cent ante. We figured we could handle that so got $5 in chips each and dove on in.

After the basic rules were explained, and we got the hang of the multitude of poker games (anaconda, show-me stud, five card draw, texas hold-em, seven card stud, mexican sweat etc. etc.) we did pretty well. We lost fairly steadily at first which made the other people playing happy they invited us.
After awhile though we got the hang of it (much to their dismay), and then Tabitha won a couple of big hands and started psyching the other people (and me!) out.
All told at the end of the night, we ended up only 45 cents down from our original $10.00 investment. Not bad for 4+ hours of entertainment.
Hey, thats significantly cheaper than going to the movies.

One side effect of the evening is Tabitha is now hooked.
She says she's gonna hit the library and pick up Poker for Dummies, that way next game night we'll (she'll) be armed to the teeth. I guess she's finally graduated up from the slots.