Cliff Jumping

I really should have considered what I was getting myself into when I decided to come visit Laurenne. The father of one of the other girls in the house is visiting, and he said he can’t appreciate a sport unless it’s possible to kill yourself participating in it. This seems to be the consensus on fun things around here.

We jumped off cliffs into a lake yesterday. Big cliffs. I think the biggest was about sixty feet off of the water. Birds were flying about thirty feet lower than our jumping platform. It was pretty terrifying, but also really fun. It was ridiculous how fast you fell before you hit the water, which is like concrete from that high up. I accidentally forgot to do the "pencil move" as I entered the water once and slapped my forearms on the surface. I have marks on my forearms today, but it was worth it. I jumped three or four times from about sixty feet, and jumped off of some smaller platforms. It was a pretty cool spot because we could jump into the water, turn around and do some rock climbing on the face of the rock we just jumped off. My rear end is a little sore today, but other than that I came to no harm.

Yesterday evening we went to a barbecue at Lindsey Vaughn’s house, a World Cup skier. I don’t know anything about ski racing, but she had several trophies in her downstairs room, so I think she’s a badass. The party was fun, a lot of cool people. Afterwards there was an informal dance party at Laurenne’s house which turned into a golf-course-streaking, drinking-game, indoor-climbing party. As far as impromptu dance parties which turn into other parties go, it was pretty solid.

I’m having a very splendid time. Laurenne’s friends are really friendly and fun, and I’m really glad I came to visit.

SAC to SLC

This should have been posted a couple days ago. My bad.

I’m finally in Utah, after thirty hours of travel.

My second train trip was…unique. A woman traveling with three kids sat in the row in front of me, and I soon got to know the kids very well. By the end of the trip (at four in the morning) they were climbing all over me trying to hit each other, while I did my best to break it up and remain uninjured in the process. I was glad to meet them; they kept the trip very exciting. The train, I decided, is fun because you get to forge some relationships while you travel. The man sitting next to me was a Vietnam veteran on a mission to visit all fifty states. The trip was very beautiful too, riding through the Sierra Nevadas. We had a tour guide for this part of the journey who explained several landmarks as we traveled past them at peak train speed, which was about forty miles per hour. The train was certainly an adventure though, I'm glad I took it.

Laurenne picked me up from the train station at six in the morning. I slept for six hours at her house. With her friend Tommy, we did some rock climbing today in the Upper Cottonwood region. It was a very beautiful spot in the Wasatch mountain range (I think) and the rock was different than anything I've climbed on before.

KFS to SAC

This week, I once again find myself doing something fun and feel compelled to share it with everyone on the Interweb. I’m on my way to Utah to hang out with my friend Laurenne, riding the train from Klamath Falls to Sacramento to Salt Lake City over the course of thirty hours. At the moment, I’m sitting in the Amtrak station in Sacramento. It’s too cold to go outside and explore right now. As much as I’d like to avoid contemplating the traumatizing train ride I just endured from Klamath Falls without the professional help of a therapist and a chiropractor, I will recount my experiences so we can all wallow in mutually foul moods.

Luckily, the train was late departing Klamath Falls or I would have missed it. I was having too much fun down at the Creamery to pay much attention to the time, and when I got home to prepare to leave it was already 9:30 pm. The train was scheduled to leave at 10:00 pm. I showered as fast as I could and packed up some things I had been saving for the last minute so the trip would be more exciting, and Dad took me down to the train station at 10:05 pm. The train showed up at 10:30 and, after being assigned a seat on the top deck of the two-level train, I climbed on.

I sat next to a kid from Mazama named Eric. He was pretty shy, but we talked for a little while before both trying to fall asleep. Trying to fall asleep in that seat was like trying to make a basket in one of those carnival games where the hoop is smaller than the ball. I gave it a couple stabs, sitting this way and that way, stretching out my legs until I was sliding out of the seat, curling my legs underneath me like a chicken. Eventually I figured out some of the little tricks, like the foot rest I discovered hiding underneath the seat in front of me, and I started wearing both my jackets, one over my legs and one over my head, in order to block out the cold and the light, but let’s face it: the basketball was bigger than the hoop, and no amount of fidgeting in my seat was going to win that ridiculously huge stuffed panda hanging in the smoke cloud above the drugged-up carnie. Eventually, after making all the right adjustments and using the Styrofoam pillow the train so graciously loaned me, I found the perfect sleeping position; that is to say, the basketball was perched in the center of the rim, clearly too big to fall into the folds of the sleepy net below.

After reaching this fateful realization, I began to take more rash shots at the hoop, trying to bend it to my will or otherwise just trying to pass the time, because I really didn’t have anything better to do at three in the morning on a train in the middle of northern California. I tried to sleep with my head between my knees, and with my arms tied into knots. I think I may have spooned Eric for a few minutes. Sorry, man. In the end, nothing worked very well and I resigned to accept that the carnie had won this round. They seem to win every round. Which leads me to an important life lesson which I hope to pass on to my kids someday: If you want to be a winner, become a carnie.

Mother's Day Quilt

It is now time to tell the tale of the Mother's Day Quilt, one of my greatest creations, perhaps on par with my novel or my homemade harp. It is a sad, dreary tale which involves false hopes, deceptions, and the unconquerable virtue of a brand new quilt.

It was April 2008, and I had dedicated myself to finding the perfect Mother's Day present. I was living in Los Angeles at the time, and I recruited my friend Colin to help me scour the dirty streets of the city for some object of such unfettered beauty that it deserved nothing less than my mother's possession.

I remember it was sunny that day; as many a day was in that neck of the woods. We were soon sweating in my red pickup truck, and looked all the more feverishly for an appropriate gift. Driving through the textiles section of the hellish city I must call home for well nigh two more years, I stumbled across the winning idea in a euphoric stupor of heat-induced intuition. My mother and I would make a quilt together!

I parked my car quickly and lost no time in diving into the collections of the LA textilers. The fabrics I found there are too numerous and too graphic to dwell on; I can only say that the image of one particularly graphic fabric pattern involving a shoe horn, a Tanzanian chimpanzee and a 1973 Chevrolet Corvette will reside, unwanted, in my mind for some time to come, taking up residence in that sector only frequented by irrational terrors and the ghoulish spectres of the night. We shan't dwell on these terrors now. For in that forgotten district of cotton, polyester and Vietnamese salespeople, I found several fabrics to my liking: a print of dancing elephants, a collage of cowboys and bulls, a phantasmagoria of dinosaurs, some beautiful roses, one fabric emblazoned with USC, and a spread showing various cities and landmarks along the iconic Highway 1 up the California coast. Elated to find so many appropriate fabric patterns, I rushed home to my dormitory, eagerly awaiting my return home to present my gift to my mother.

Time passed slowly. Exams weighed upon my soul, and it was only the occasional fleeting glimpse I could spare for my exceptional Mother's Day gift, but eventually it was time to go back home. I remember the moment vividly: I walked through our solid oak front door and marched up the stairs into my mother's waiting arms. In her eyes I could see the genuine happiness engendered by my return, but also something more; a longing, a desire perhaps, for the perfect Mother's Day gift; and upon discerning this inner restlessness, I knew the gift could wait no longer. I backed out of my mother's embrace and, with a gallant flourish of my hand, whipped the blue plastic bag of fabric from my luggage and placed it into my mother's waiting arms. I stood back.

She opened the bag. "Fabric? What is this for?" she asked.
"We're going to make a quilt together!" I exclaimed jubilantly, expecting to hear her elated whooping in a short time to come. But the elated whooping did not come.
She paused. "Do you know how much work it is to make a quilt?" she said.
"Well...is it a lot of work?" I asked, my smile fading.
"Yes. It is a lot of work."
A pause.
"Uh....Welp, guess we better get started!"

I designed the quilt over the next few days and began cutting fabric for the blocks. The quilt was to be huge: 85 by 85 inches, in order to cover my lengthy frame. I worked on the quilt day and night for one summer, and finished half of it before leaving for school in the fall. My mother finished the other half over the next few months, and now I have a quilt which I made all by myself! It is, no doubt, the best Mother's Day present I have ever given myself. And my mom was a very good sport about it. You know, I really fancy that mom of mine.

The Goodwill Car Thief

This is a story of an unfortunate event which occurred to me earlier this summer.

It was the day before my little brother's birthday and I was desperate for a present which would tell him exactly how I felt about him. Naturally, my first destination was the local Goodwill (you know, the one out by Wal-Mart on Washburn Way). On my way there, I called him to probe for ideas. I was very discreet.

"Do you want a blender?"
"No."
"Are you sure? They're pretty handy."
"Ya, I'm sure. Don't get me a blender."
"...I think I'm going to buy you a blender."

And with Jeff's blessing, I was off to do my shopping. I arrived in the parking lot of the fine establishment, parked my car (naturally, as I was in a lot dedicated to that sort of thing), locked it, and went inside.

I shopped vigorously for fifteen minutes or so, trying on various undergarments and headcoverings before finally admitting there was nothing there to complement my wardrobe and moved off to search for Jeff's blender. Alas, the worthy store failed me on this count, as well, offering nothing which would have suited my brother's fancy. Thoroughly depressed, I walked away from the Home Appliances and exited.

My first inkling of trepidation came as I reached my hand into my pocket to fish out my keys and it met nothing but the silky interior of my left pocket (which is where I always keep my keys. Right front is for the cell phone. Left back is for my wallet. And pencils, when they enter into the equation, accompany the keys in the left front.) Not yet conceding victory, I reached for my wallet, intending to use the spare I always kept there. But alas! I had switched wallets recently, and the key I had concealed was not a key for my Mazda pickup, but a house key.

I was worried. I was about to call my father for a ride when I realized that two years of higher education and several years of not-so-high education must have endowed me with, if nothing else, the skills to break into a '93 pickup. I immediately started pacing around the car, looking for a way in. In the interest of the continued safety of my car, I will not share the startling security inadequacies yielded by its first intense perusal. At any rate, none of these loopholes, even the glimpse of light and a Gatorade bottle through a small hole behind the battery, yielded entrance to the truck. I stood back to think.

And then I realized that Klamath Falls had been quietly supplying me with hundreds of ways to break into my own car by giving its most-outdated, least-prized and most-smelly possessions to the Goodwill for years. I turned to the now-muchly-appreciated trash trove behind me and dove in.

Ten minutes and three ill-fitting undergarments later, I returned to my truck with a set of two steak skewers. Total cost: one dollar. I lost no time in bending the tines of one skewer and shoving my arm through the 3-inch crack in the window. Five minutes and three numb fingers later, I pulled the lock up on my door and yelled for joy. I can honestly say it was one of the best moments of my life, and I look forward to doing it again. It's so rare to feel a real swell of accomplishment, to know that you've finally managed to do something which really matters in the grand scheme of things.

I had to go to Wal-Mart to get the blender.

Dirt Trough

This blog is meant to be the place I talk about the cool things that are going on with me, kinda like the one I had while at Queen Mary, but I also want to focus on some of the stuff I make with all my free time that no one ever gets to appreciate, and that's just a travesty.

The other day I made a dirt trough for Ariston's birthday. It was like a dirt cup, but made with two packets of Jello Pudding (which is WAY too much pudding, by the way) and placed in a ceramic brownie pan. We ended up finishing roughly one quarter of the total trough that night, and over the last three days I have cleaned out the rest of it in diligent, regular intervals of stuffing my face full of pudding, Oreo and gummy worm.

See? This is something people need to know about.