Training for a half-marathon

It's hard to run when your lungs and head are filled with fluid. But even when you're sick it still gives the strong sense of satisfaction and peace. Starting out the ache in my legs is very prominent, I move slowly and the dull pulse in my head makes me want to turn back. As the hill levels out, my feet, my steps, my lungs, my breath level out as well. I become a fluid machine and my mind starts to drift. Aided by mellow beats from my headphones, a type of meditation settles in.

Training for a half-marathon is a prime example of the saying "It's not the destination, but the journey". Completing the race is not the reason for running it. It motivates me to run several times a week which no matter my mood, whether I'm tired, energized, grumpy, elated, full, hungry, a run always brings me peace, calming energy, patience and renewed exuberance.

I read an article about meditating while running. The gist was that it makes you focus on your surroundings and think about nothing...also that this wasn't possible to achieve while listening to music. For me music aids in the meditation. Once I reach a groove my surroundings become clearer, the air tastes crisp and the vegetation pops. I can either think about nothing or I can think about everything that has been hiding in the back of my mind...and create solutions to them. I create brilliant plans. I direct my future, consider what I want out of life. It serves the same function as a really good hike, but is more accessible and gives me quicker results.

Orcas Island!

Kelly and I made a quick drive back up to the NW. Colorado was great, we spent all our time working, hanging out with friends and snowboarding. Nothing super eventful happened.

I learned quite a bit about making sushi from working at a sushi lounge called Storm King.
I bowled a 198 in Leadville.
We watched the snowboarding grand prix.
...
Honestly I can't think of too much more.

Since getting back on Orcas we have been working and planning a lot for the season. The new staff showed up last week and we have had a fun first week of training.
We had an amazing race style event leading to our first group barbq.
I've been running a lot preparing for the half marathon in June and been paddling in the bay.

Just thought I would add a short update. More to come when I have some more adventures.

On The Way to Colorado

Last you heard we were in Port Townsend, but shortly after my last post we left on a month long mini road trip to end up back in Frisco, Colorado (where we lived two winters ago).

First stop on our trip was of course Orcas Island where we stayed for about a week and a half. We saw our old friends and solidified our decision to come back in the spring as leads. We also went on a three day kayaking trip (in October). Needless to say it was cold and rainy and windy the whole time, and it was awesome! Good practice for potential long paddles in my future. The rest of the time there was spent relaxing and catching up.

We next went to Bellingham and stayed with Alex and Sam for a few days. I got to show Kelly around my old stomping grounds. We went on a classic hike up to Oyster Dome and got an amazing view of the San Juans from another angle.
"Hey, we were just there!"
We went out for a beer and some darts one night and I got to see my friends Lynn and Scott who I hadn't seen in like four years or so.

Montana came next where my brother just bought a new house in Missoula. We spent some quality time with Pete and Krista, went to a slightly overpriced David Sedaris show and took a stroll down to the river to see "Brennan's Wave", a man-made standing wave for kayaking. Pretty sweet.

Then we booked it down to New Mexico with a short stop in weird Utah. On a Sunday, where you cannot buy alcohol anywhere...all I wanted after a long day of driving was to drink a beer and watch football. Not a chance.

We spent my birthday with Kelly's parents and went out for some Mexican food, went for some walks and visited a little farm.

Then we visited Tallie and Clarkie in Albequerque. Wine drinking, Mad Men watching, rock gym climbing, and Halloween. We ended up at a house party (I was a rake and Kelly was a pile of leaves). After looking around at the party we realized that everyone looked real young. Then I noticed the glass case with gold trim and pictures of old people in them. Then I saw the home office with like a scanner and computer and drafting table. Then it came to me...this is someone's parents house and these kids could be like 18? Hmm...time to roll out.

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Now we are living with Emily, Wizzard, Suzanne, and Pete. That's right six people in a three bedroom. After a good three weeks of looking for a job I finally found one rolling sushi at a lounge on the mountain. It started out slow then there was the really busy winter vacation time where everyone in the house was working all the time. And now it is slow again. However we finally got snow! It has been snowing constantly for like a day and a half. It had been super dry up until then.

Well that was my short update. And soon we will be moving on back to WA. Thanks for reading!

Overanxious rangers, freezing fishing mission, and hypermiling to Chimacum

When Kelly and I set out on our five day backpacking trip to high divide and the seven lakes basin we were expecting rain but had high hopes. There had just been a storm and there was supposed to be another one coming in during our trip. There was a typical overcast mist in the air as we entered the ranger station in Port Angeles. We asked if there was much snow on high divide yet, the backcountry ranger shrugged and said "not much". He routinely typed out our pass and handed us the bear canisters and we headed on our way. Just as we were going to pull out of the parking lot though he came marching up to the car.
"So looks like you got some weather coming in on Thursday. You looked at the weather report?"
"Yeah, I saw that there was a bit of a storm coming in" I replied.
He smiled a bit unconvincingly "Well you got warm clothes I see...waterproof jackets...so if you get caught in a snow storm ya know, just hunker down."
That made us a bit more uneasy...we didn't really want to "hunker down" in a snow storm at 5000 ft. Our first two nights were at a bit lower elevation though. We figured we would just go those two nights and see what the weather is like.

As we arrived at the trail head just a bit above Solduc resort the weather was alternating between rain and mist. Random tourists trudged off the trail wearing multicolored see-through ponchos, getting their picnics out under umbrellas. As we set off for a short hike to Mink lake we passed the ranger station and noticed that we were being followed by what seems to be another overanxious ranger. He was very polite and in a round about way asked for our wilderness permit and made sure we had bear canisters. Just like the other ranger he seemed to think we were a bit crazy to be going camping in...oh no...rain! He also sort of listed items offhand that we would need...but that he could obviously see we had.
"I see you got your pack covers and rain gear there. That's good. Warm clothes?"
Can't blame him, probably get a lot of people who come completely unprepared for the drastic changes the northwest weather can make. We tried to put him at ease and then headed up the 150o ft elevation gain to our first campsite.

It felt real good to be hiking with a heavy pack again. Tiring, but good. I had never seen so many different kinds of mushrooms at one time before. So many huge obviously poisonous ones, a few golden chantrelles and countless others. As the rain pattered on my shoulders and seeped into my hair I hit the zone of thinking about everything while at the same time not thinking about anything. We stopped occasionally to munch on delicious wild blueberries.

When we got to Mink lake the vision in my head came true. There was a big opening of blue sky directly above the water. The vegetation on the edges of the lake glistened bright green with the reflection of the sun in water droplets. During camp set up Kelly and I realized just how cold it was. Just a week earlier and I think we would have missed the cold snap. The good thing is that there was no one else anywhere near us, we had the place to ourselves. After a burrito dinner we got in our sleeping bags and fell asleep to the sound of raindrops dripping from fir branches.

The morning hit us cold but rainless. So we quickly ate our oatmeal, drank our coffee, stocked up on water and set off to make tracks over two small passes before ending at deer lake. We got up into snow encrusted alpine meadows. And it stayed mostly rain-free the entire hike. We were hoping to see a bear but a deer and a grouse would have to suffice.

When we got to our campsite I made some coffee with a bit of whisky in it and I set off to try my hand at fishing. I hadn't fished in about a decade...no idea what I was doing and so I didn't catch anything. But had a good time yelling at the stupid trout to get on my lure.

Kelly and I looked up at where we were supposed to be headed, high divide, and it looked fairly covered with snow. And there was supposed to be a good storm coming through the next day when we were planning on hiking on the highest part of the ridge. Not much to our liking, so the next morning we headed back out to the car, satisfied in our decision not to get caught in a snow storm.

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I did get another chance at fishing though. Last Saturday Stefan, Joss, Homer and I set off on a little fishing day trip to Silver lake. As we pulled up the the trailhead I looked down at my gas meter just as the little E light blinked on. We had been driving for what seemed like ages since Quilcene and apparently, Stefan informed us, there isn't even a gas station in Quilcene, the nearest one is in Chimacum. Hmm...that was stupid, it appeared that on our way back from the hike we were going to run out of gas. I have never run out of gas, I like to think that I am enough of a forward thinker to fill up when it gets low. I guess I kinda forgot to do that this time. We decided to deal with it later.

We set off just before a bunch of Asian guys about our age who were grossly underprepared. They seemed to all be wearing basketball trainers, shorts and cotton tee-shirts. And the one day pack between them could not have contained much. Joss set out ahead to see if he could bag a grouse while Homer, Stef and I trudged up the seemingly unending, very steep mountainside. We played leapfrog with the unprepared group and as we increased in elevation it seemed to start to get very cold. A few groups of smart-ass middle aged folks came down wearing full-on, warm raingear commenting that we should look out for the group of boys ahead of us. Also commenting on our intentions.
"Going fishing?" no, we are just carrying fishing rods...
"Oh the lake is frozen."
Good one buddy. Real funny. Hopefully he was joking, I think we all half believed him at first.
Once the group of underprepared Asians heard there was a lake they were dead set on going also. Luckily when we got to the turn off for Silver lake we mentioned to them that it was about another 2-something miles to the lake. Oh did I mention that by this time it was snowing? I think the distance and weather convinced them to turn back.

After what seemed like much more hiking then we were expecting we made it to the lake. The trees all around were crusted with snow. As we started fishing the ends of our rods were icing up and generating frost. Made it a bit harder to cast.

Stefan caught the first one and expectedly, instantly started gloating about it.
"Well, real fishermen do it this way.", etc...
Joss and I started getting some serious bites and it wasn't before too long that I dragged one in. Joss got two right up to the edge of the lake and then they flapped off the hook just at the last minute. And Homer would never get a bite when he was looking at his bobber, but everytime he left reaching distance of his pole we saw the bobber start to dip and he would run back just as the fish stopped biting at his bait.

Needless to say the later it got in the day the colder it got, so about 5 o'clock rolled around and we were all freezing, so we set off back up and over the ridge. The last mile before the parking lot was covered by trees and super dark. We were in ankle rolling town, roots and rocks threatened us on every step. We clapped to scare off the bears and cougars and planned our methods of killing four attacking bears at once.

When we finally made it down to the car we looked at the gas gauge and Stef made the prediction that we would definitely would make it to Chimacum if we "hypermile" the entire way. So I basically glided down the entire road to Quilcene in neutral and then took it real, real easy on the uphills, gathered as much speed on the downhills as possible and we ended up making to to Chimacum with .2 of a gallon left. Success! After a healthy dinner of gas station fried chicken and jojos I went home exhausted but satisfied.

Breaking the block -- The weekend of awesomeness.

I have been having a hard time getting myself to write on this thing since we got back from Ecuador. So I am just gonna go for it, it may be a bit of mental splatter though.

Was it two weekends ago now...three? Well I meant to write about it. About the weekend of complete awesomeness. So it all started with our friend Andy deciding to come visit us on his few days off from Orkila. Then it turned out that Emily was also on Orcas and so hitched a ride. This also inspired Ethan to hitch down the next day as well. Meanwhile James is over in Port Angeles and Danielle on her way to visit him from Seattle. Wizzard hears of all of this and...boom! on a plane and getting picked up by Danielle. This is just a recipe for an amazing weekend on the Peninsula.

We played games and music the first night in our little cottage accompanied by Heather, Kevin and Spencer. The next day I had to work a double (the usual thursday) but James, Andy, Emily and Kelly reverted to their childhood roots as they scared each other all over Fort Wardon...and Andy has plenty of pictoral and video proof of it. That evening was host to an epic Clue: Master Detective battle. We wore masks and all...and if I remember correctly...no one won.

On Friday we packed it up and headed out to James' tent village on the Elwha river. Once there we were finally all assembled and we loitered about throwing and kicking various items around as we all caught up. After a simple sandwich lunch we set off to the Olympic hot springs. After a short hike and a quick but enthralling game of pooh sticks off a very small bridge, we made it. Most of the pools were either too small, too algaey, or too occupied for all of us. But with a bit of patience the best pool opened up and we swooped in to take it. It was amazing to be with so many incredable people in a natural hot spring in the olympics, drinking whiskey and playing mini games of "let's see who can hit that first" or "see if you can get a rock to sit on that log from over here". Happiness is what I would call it.

That night we had a brat and veggie barbeque and hit the sack early. Because the next morning we got up and headed to the Hoh river basin. The only temperate rainforest in the U.S. (and North America?). James and I donned hard shell kayaks (the one that I recently purchased) and everyone else was in an inflatable kayak, creating a fleet of duckies! James valiently and successfully led us all down a super fun and beautiful section of the river with only two unintended flips! River kayaking is amazing. So much different then Ocean. All you are doing is trying to avoid rocks and trees while keeping your balance in the boat. But it is so much more complicated than that. And it gives you such a rush and a sense of accomplishment...much like rock climbing.

After the paddle we headed back to Port Townsend for a bit of a rest before we headed out to Spencer's Robot vs. Ninja going away party. Spencer is known for throwing good parties and having a great time. I know I always do when I'm around him. He is in NY now doing what he loves and what he needs to do to get the knowledge to do what he wants to do later in life...aren't we all? Anyways, the party was a blast, a crazy shmorgasborg of costumes and beer pong and well, insanity. I think that is the only way to sum that up.

I think I really wanted to write about that weekend because it was so eventful. Other than that I have been working a lot waiting tables and cooking food down at Water St. Also kayaking a bit and climbing a fair amount. Going to bars, playing poker. But nothing quite that eventful. I have about 2 more weeks of it then it is on to eventfulness again! October holds a lot of potential in it. Backpacking, kayaking, coast and a road trip all beckon to Kelly and I...almost there. We will update again when something happens.

Spring/Summer Omnibus Update

(And by August 10th, I mean August 18th)

Oh my, it's August. 4 months have passed since the last update, which is completely inexcusable. Because things have been happening. Interesting things. Important things. To whom, exactly, these things will be found important or interesting remains debatable, but they are things nonetheless, and here is a list of them:

April-June

• Mike and Kelly return to lovely Orcas Island, WA to teach environmental education and be merry for the remainder of the spring
• We jump right into the beauty of the San Juans with an overnight paddle to Sucia Island with some wonderful friends.
  
• Wilderness First Responder certifications are bestowed upon us. We can now splint broken femurs with kayak paddles and build litters out of sticks and jackets. The most important lesson of all, however, is the discovery that fake blood is hard to separate from Gore-Tex.
• We bravely survive the Orkila Swine Flu Week of Doom, during which children were sent home on quarantined buses, suspect staff members were sequestered to separate houses, the wearing of masks and gloves became commonplace, and swine jokes ran rampant. The week culminated in Immunity Olympics ceremonies, wherein we were reunited with our infected brethren and our spirits were lifted through the running of relay races.
• We rejoice in the availability of kayaks and go on many-a-paddle. Cascade Lake provides a great place to learn new skills, sans salt and extra-cold water. Mike soon perfects his roll. Kelly needs a bit more practice.
  
• While transporting kayaks to said lake, we realize that the car looks damn sexy with boats on the roof.
• New friendships are formed, old friendships are strengthened, and some friendships are divided over the Pabst v. Rainier debate.
  

June

• With the Spring OEE season over, we head back to Port Townsend to enjoy the summer and save a little money. The Olympic Peninsula sure is hard to beat...
• On our first day back in town, we head out to Boom Fest, a giant community potluck/party and reunite with just about everyone we know. Hooray for summertime.
• We head to Leavenworth, WA with Leif and Freya for a few days of rock climbing and sunshine. Kelly actually climbs up a rock for the first time ever, starting with a trad crack route. She also realizes that she needs much more arm and finger strength. And a cute chalk bag.
• Kelly and Mike both make triumphant returns to the food service industry. Huzzah! Such is the way of summer employment in PT.
  

July

• Summer carries on with a good balance of work and play: a few adventures in the mountains, some climbing here and there, and little-bit-o-kayaking.
• Kelly heads to the far-away land of Fort Worden State Park for a week to be an instructor for the Port Townsend Marine Science Center's marine biology camp. She gets to hang out with some pretty awesome kids and do lots of class teaching, tide pooling, critter poking, and peanut butter sandwich making. She also turns 25.
• Meanwhile, Mike heroically hones his mechanic skills when the starter in the car dies. Two days are spent replacing it. Next up: oil change.
• A heat wave strikes the Pacific Northwest. Air conditioning doesn't exist in PT, and a week is lost in a haze of sweaty lethargy.
  

August

• Kelly starts to write a blog, but it takes her over a week to actually post it. Typical.
• A hint of monotony begins to set in, but is thwarted by a whirlwind reunion of friends, the Olympic mountains and their hot spring, the Hoh River, Clue, robots, ninjas, and much more. Just what the doctor ordered. A full report to come soon.
  

Riverdancing grandmas and hat pumping islanders

Northwest rain spits on the windows of the ferry. After travelling for almost 24 hours, including sleeping on the floor in the LA airport, we arrived in Seattle. Immediately when we got to LA we felt we were in a land of giants. White giants. Americans are big, not necessarily fat, they just have very large frames. All of a sudden everyone can hear us, everyone looks like us. Everything is much cleaner, even in LA. As we taxi in the plane I make a comment about the clothing choices surrounding us.
"What are we in leather jacket town. In the midst of a leather jacket gang?"
Kelly and I chuckle with sleep deprived delerium. We both wish Leif was still travelling with us, so he could add to the trademark nonsense critisism that has been the form of communication for the past 2 months. A few minutes after the comment one of the leather jacket mafia looks at me and says "where are you from?"
Crap. He was standing right next to me...people can understand me now, time to start censoring my thoughts again.

We are greeted in Seattle by over joyed parents, my mom and Roger picked us up with Waterfront pizza in hand and huge grins on their faces. Can't really ask for a better welcome. Of course we take our requisite REI trip and Kelly and I wearily try on running shoes. When we finally make it home, instead of resting we have to go immediately to our storage unit and start packing, we only have one day in Port Townsend before heading up to Orcas Island. Our brief time in PT is dominated by sushi, decent beer, packing and visiting. We grab a cup of coffee with Alex and we talk about culture shock, motorcycles, instant coffee, future plans, cribbage legacies...it is good to be back, strange, but good.

When we get to Orcas Island we are greeted by a new face. Thomas asks if we are here for the WFR and we reply that we are, however we are also here for the next two months to work. We have to move our car, there is a group here, nothing seems to change. As we move our stuff in we are greeted by a few familiar faces but mostly new ones, all friendly, it feels like we all already know each other. There is a bond that people who have or do work here share. Whether you have met each other before or not, similar to the bond of people who grew up in PT, there exists something unseen, something cosmic. We sit around in the living room and catch up/learn each others stories. We get excited about the WFR and future kayak plans. Talk about slacklining and learning to roll a kayak.

Less than 18 hours after we arrived we start taking the intense 80 hour wilderness medicine course that is the WFR. After a day of learning how to approach and assess injured hikers, the whole staff almost takes trip to see a ska show down at the Lower. Less than 3 days ago we were surrounded by short ecuadorians speaking a foreign language, carrying bags of live chickens and small trees on trails between villages. Now we are in a dimly lit pub surrounded by friends and tall dreadlocked islanders. Surrounded by hippie chicks in flowing skirts and colorful scarves, old ladies who dance without abandon, throwing down the charlton and riverdance moves. Half myself feels like I have just entered a foreign country and half feels as though I have come back home.