Big Wheels Keep on Turnin'

We finally got to meet Clarity Blue- She's a peach

We had tea and crumpets at the local brewery

Walking the trails in Corvallis

Camping above Mt. Shasta

Michelle and Clarity down near the Hood River

We are in Hood River, OR with our friends Steve and Michelle and our new little friend Clarity. The weather has been hot here and yesterday we all got sunburnt on the Hood River watching kite surfers and wind surfers. The truck is running well, the trailer is holding up, and today we head for Mt. Vernon, WA to visit more friends before the border crossing and slog through Canada. Keep your fingers crossed that everything holds up!

Hot and Bothered

The city of San Francisco is giving us an 86 degree sendoff.  Today the temperature will hit 86F and tomorrow is supposed to be 90F.  The East Bay is on enforced water rationing and I've been told the cost of iced lattes is skyrocketing.  We are leaving just in time.

She's My Little Runaway

Angela is calculating the number of warm Alaska nights this little sapling represents.

Extreme shrinkage in the Eel River after the marathon.

I locked in the hubs and drove through this 5,000 year old behemoth.

Utilities included.

A town full of Angela-size people live here in their tree houses, they asked Angela to be their Queen.  She said no.

Kari would not stop barking so we put her in the back of the truck with Payton.

Guitar 'round the campfire.

Matt even brought lyrics for Angela to sing along too. (she sounds just like Dolly Parton)

Mazzy loves a good hug.

Lotta leaves here, lotta leaves.

Angela and I are just back from another half marathon, Avenue of the Giants.  I still can't feel my legs.  I did a personal best of 1:45.23 which means my average mile was done in 8 minutes 3 seconds for 13.1 miles.  Yeah, not too shabby for an old man.  Angela met her goal by finishing without collapsing.  We're all winners.

My what a DUKTIG dog you have, and your IVAR is SKÄRPT and EFFEKTIV!

This is Robber, he gets in trouble at the Dog Park and then pretends that we're his owner.  

Best breakfast burritos in town, The Green Chile Kitchen, two blocks away.

Concrete words of wisdom...

Princess of the Presidio

Trader Jose- at $5.99/6 pack it's a decent Corona knockoff..

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Well Angela and I had a wild and crazy weekend that started with a trip to IKEA in Emeryville.  Emeryville is an industrial hell-hole between Oakland and Berkley that has a higher kill ratio than Baghdad (if you don't believe me check Wikipedia- it's true)  Getting off the freeway there is nearly as dangerous as the place itself.  Although now there are expensive lofts and condos popping up like mushrooms in a cowpie and soon it will be the new "it" place- provided they fix the impossible offramp which chokes traffic to a gagging blue standstill every day at 5pm.

So we hit IKEA and learned a bunch of Swedish words and bought nothing but Swedish fish and 50 cent hot dogs.  Then we rolled to Berkley for a birthday party park picnic with an old friend from Fairbanks who I hadn't seen in about 15 years.  He was taller.  Then we battled traffic home and geared up for today when we sold off our bedroom furniture.  We bid a tearful farewell to our particle-board friends and sent them on their merry way.  They now live with a girl from Mexico City and one from Guadalajara who I then helped move their junk for the rest of the day.  It was good training for our upcoming move because I saw the benefit of downsizing.

On the morrow it's back to the salt mines...

Sometimes you eat the Shark, sometimes the Shark eats you.

I awoke this morning with the horrible realization that I had left my cordless $400 Makita drill "Shakira" in the back of my truck along with my $300 framing level, on a Friday night, in San Francisco, mere blocks from cracktown.  I flew from my bed, sprinted down the stairs and found everything in my truck as I had left it.  Thank the Crack Lords, the Karma Fairy and the fact I happened to have pajamas on for once.

In a related but not so lucky story a man was eviscerated by a shark near San Diego yesterday.  His last words were apparently "Shark!"  Beats the hell out of "Volvo!"  We should all be so lucky.

Me and Lou Seal (the SF Giants mascot)

Me, Lou Seal and Angela- keeping the crowd on their feet..

I caught a homerun!! (with some help from Photoshop)

Overlooking 3rd base.

Way up top.

Timmy was tall enough to ride the Guzzler, I really shouldn't comment on that...

Angela could have used a little more sunblock and a few less pins, the extra innings were tough on her...

Angela and I finally took in a Giants game, vs St. Louis Cardinals, my first baseball game, ever.  Of course the Giants lost (in extra innings) we drank some overpriced ballpark beer and ate some killer garlic fries.  The Giants stadium doesn't have a bad seat and since it wasn't a sellout game we sat somewhere different every 20 minutes or so.  It was sweet.  We watched a couple home runs go into the crowd and one into the bay.

Sweet Barley Pops

Trader Joes now carries ACME BEER for $2.99 a sixpack.  I had to give it a whirl.  It tastes like 50 cent beer, go figure, still pretty cool.

I'm now trimming out the roof on the jobsite and getting sunburnt as hell.  I'm officially a redneck and can feel my patience getting shorter along with a sudden need to yell obscenities.  Strange.

And last but not least, Mazzy got a new monkey to play with!  So much fun with cotton stuffing.

The Week in Review

Gas in San Francisco is nearly as expensive as Coldfoot, Alaska- actually, I think I took this pic on Monday so it's probably there by now.  I demanded the return of the 3's but this man spoke no english and thought I had to pee.  Whatever.

Angela did NOT buy these glasses even though I begged...

Me and my transit...

The view from the penthouse, note the lack of hot tub- despite my daily rants the architect refuses to budge on this essential city survival tool and beacon of wealth.  Perhaps I should return to Alaska where people listen to me...

View from Master Bedroom, there will be French Doors here...

View from the street, you actually can't see the 4th story so it doesn't look so big, but it is.

One more thing of note:  Angela and I went and saw Billy Connelly live last night and he rocks, I say goddamn the man is funny.  His best line of the night:  "San Francisco, I love you guys, Bill O'Reilly hates you and that's all the endorsement I need."  What a guy.

Amazing Grace, How Sweet the Sound...

Today was a good day.  We started off with breakfast at a local bakery and then met up with friends Matt and Kari around 1pm to run from our house to Sausalito, I think about 7 or 8 miles.  The trip was in preparation for a half marathon we will all be running together in one month.  I also wanted to fulfill a promise to our departed Gold Angelfish Baptiste.  You see Baptiste left Girdwood with me a year and a half ago but the ride through Canada was too much for him and he was belly-up before we made it back to American soil.  But I swore to him his final resting place would be the San Francisco Bay and he has been in our freezer ever since.

But a promise made is a debt unpaid so today I ran Baptiste to the middle of the Golden Gate bridge and gently pulled his frozen corpse from the ziploc bag he had been residing in.  As Matt, Kari and Angela sang Amazing Grace he took one last graceful dive and floated gently down into the bay.  We sang an abbreviated version because we were quite sure it is illegal to throw dead fish off the Golden Gate Bridge.  I could be wrong.  But we wiped away the tears, didn't see the po po, and continued on our jog to Sausalito, then the ferry back to SF for beers and bloody marys at Gordon Biersch Brewery. 

 It was a good day.  Rest in Peace Baptiste.

This just in...

Angela and I are currently shaking in our boots after a near death experience.  We were walking Mazzy down the sidewalk after a nice dinner at Matt and Jeans.  Suddenly, we hear a Ford Explorer tearing up the hill towards us to a "T" intersection, it crests the hill at 45 mph, the front tires leave the ground for an instant like a scene from "Bullet", and then it pile drives a parked car into a tree 15 feet in front of us.  My first reaction is to duck behind a car and call 911 because I'm thinking the driver is either on drugs or being chased by drug addicts, so I do just that.  Meanwhile Angela chases after Mazzy who has gone tearing down the street headed for home.  She saw Death's dark shadow and took off like one of Lance Mackey's lead dogs.

Before I can even connect through to 911 the car suddenly roars back to life, backs up, and the driver floors it again and goes screaming past me to another intersection and around the corner.  I connect through to 911 and tell them accident #2 is on the way.  Sure enough, 10 minutes later we hear an ambulance and 3 police cars tear past us.  The driver made it through 2 more intersections before coming to another "T" intersection where she bounced off another parked car and drove into someone's house.  She was then loaded into an ambulance and taken to the hospital, no one else was injured.  

We stood there in awe of the carnage as neighbors came out and talked to us.  A few minutes later another officer pulled up and took my report, it was an open and shut case because the license plate of the hit and run vehicle was laying at my feet and the hit and run driver was laying in the hospital.  The parked car had all its windows broken out, the rear axle broke and the passenger door was completely caved in.  Ironically there was an anti-theft "Club" in the steering wheel so the car could not be stolen.  Here's a shot I took while the officer inspected the damage: Note the passenger door is gone and the vehicle is firmly wrapped around a eucalyptus tree.

10 seconds later and we would have been between the car and the tree, 10 seconds earlier and we would still have been in the middle of the street, and everyone was telling us how dangerous Alaska must be over dinner.  A little too ironic, don't you think?

Now Mazzy is curled up beside the bed as close as she can get in a place she never sleeps and snoring like her life depends on it.  Hopefully tomorrow will be better...

Back on the Chain Gang

Well, after 3 weeks in Alaska's Brooks Range I have returned to San Francisco.  Things haven't changed much but the trees are in bloom, daytime temperatures are about 60F and I went back to pounding nails.  Here's the week in cell phone pictures:

My buddy Matt atop Tank Hill overlooking western San Francisco, we took a run up here then went for beers and topped the night off with karaoke at Amnesia, a wee pub I highly recommend.
Angela started to blow away so I scooped her up in my arms, that's downtown San Francisco in the background.
Here's my foreman Dan as we put up the last set of stairs in the house.  They are much better than going up and down a ladder.
Mazzy welcomed me home with belated Easter wishes.  She is all about the Holidays.
The first thing I did was run to Trader Joes for a $4.50 six pack of Stockyard Oatmeal Stout.  I like it because it's dirt cheap, comes in a bottle, tastes like beer and has a picture of an old man on the front.  What more does a beer need?  So Cheers everyone, and in 5 more weeks I'll be headed north all over again...

Might as well Jump

I'm on my way home from the Brooks Range with a 4-day layover in Fairbanks. 3 weeks in the Brooks was spectacular, only wish it could have been longer, there's simply no place like home. More pictures to follow, just getting over prop lag and culture shock.

This shot was taken by my buddy Philip after I took him up on his foolish suggestion that I rump off a 15-foot rock with my skis on.

Bill Maher- the Politically Correct

I try not to rant political here but these latest words from Bill Maher were pure genius:

"Thank God for Congress, if not for them the president would have nothing to wipe his feet on except the Constitution, and then what would he wipe his ass with?"

On a lighter note, here's Mazzy watching Porterhouse steaks cook on the fire escape grill.  Mmmmmm, meat.

Ice, ice baby

Ang and I hit Squaw Valley on Saturday and had a glorious day in the sunshine.  There was a bit of wind but it was warm and neither one of us got badly hurt so I consider the outing a success.  The mountain was nothing but base and ice that softened a little as the day wore on but was difficult for the wee snowboarding one.  It was fun to watch people yardsale on the black diamond runs with nothing to stop them or their gear.  No yardsales for us though, just chilidogs and tuna sandwiches at the mid mountain eatery that had a very strange fast food look and was run entirely by Chileans.  I guess they don't mind working at 6500 feet.  Then we dined in Sacramento Saturday and caught up with the rellies a bit.  Good times.