bland and without passion

The lines make me tired.
Riding in the back seat on the way home from a weekend in Oregon. My driving shift just ended and now it’s my turn for a nap or something. According to the battery meter on this laptop, I only have about 26% left to write – that’s cool, because seeing the scenery go by out of the corners of my eyes is kinda making me sick. We just passed a town called Balls Ferry – I’m laughing on the inside.

Oregon was awesome. I flew in Friday night around 11:30pm, just as Sharaun and Ben were driving up to the Portland airport – timed perfectly. We spent Saturday bumming around, and ended up getting a new pack for Sharaun at RIE (the no-sales-tax-havin’ policies in Oregon made it a good buy), as well as some nice long underwear for me – you know, to keep the boys warm on cold overnight campouts. Saturday night was a mini family reunion of sorts at Ben’s folks’ place, where Ben and his siblings came together for some BBQ ribs and a multitude of other foodstuffs. Went to bed that night on an air mattress with a full belly and happy heart.

Sunday morning we woke up early, thanks to the cell-phone alarm (those things have really changed the way I do a lot of stuff), and packed up for the road-trip to Smith Rock. We stopped in the touristy town of Sisters on the way down, and walked a few shops before grabbing lunch at some place where I had an awesome prime rib sandwich. (My goal here is to *not* mention food in every paragraph, so as not to appear a complete glutton). Less than an hour later we had pulled up to the bivy camping area at Smith Rock and were picking pads and setting up camp.

Smith Rock is an awesome state park, they’ve put a heck of a lot of work into the place to make it very people-friendly. With it’s hundreds of climbs, it’s a seriously popular destination for sport climbers from around the world – and at almost any time you can see people tied in and climbing all over the rock-face. I likened it to be at a skatepark, watching some really good skateboarders at their best. Watching those climbers was great, we sat and watch a couple groups for a quite a while on our hikes, it’s just to fascinating – kinda makes a fella wanna try out the sport, y’know? (Maybe if I didn’t have to haul all the extra poundage up with me, I’d give it a go).

Anyway, we did a couple short hikes to some scenic spots. Really nice hikes, strenuous but not very long at all so not killers. The camping was also great, since the weather was gorgeous I didn’t bother putting the rainfly on the tent, giving us a great view of the stars at night. It’s great waking up and looking through the mesh at a sky full of stars, especially out there where there’s no artificial light to obscure any – it’s like the whole sky is speckled. When I was leaving Houston on Friday, I was actually thinking I’d rather go home to Sacramento and relax – but after the weekend I’m really glad we went. The combination of all the recreational time and work-related travel-time I’ve had lately has really been like being on some blissful extended vacation. Going back to the office for a four-day week tomorrow is gonna be like putting the shackles back on.

That’s it for me today, bland and without passion, but that’s it. Dave out.


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