Salvador

Salvador is a city of several million people site along the northern edge of the Baia de Todos os Santos. It was founded in 1549 by the Portugese at great cost. The local Caete Indians killed and ate both the first governor and first bishop. The city traded hands between the Dutch and the Portugese a couple times until it was eventualy heald on to the Portugese. The city also served as the capital of Brazil for a period of time.



The early colonial period has resulted in a historic city center atop a hill known as the Pelourinho, which has cobbled streets and plazas and is lined with resaurants, bars, shops and pousadas/hostels. All of the buildings are painted light pastel colors with white trip. We are nto sure if there is a formal building authorit, but it seems that the colors al work very well together and you wil never find tow buildings next to each other that clash. This section of the city is the tourist center and very much feels it. Despite the large numbers of tourists there are a lot of locals as well who are out to enjoy themselves. The Pelourinho is also one giant party every night of the week with very loud music being played in almost every place imagineable. Rebecca and I were not totally into the loud urban party scene and so we kept our tourist activities to visiting a couple of local markets, the Museum of Afro-Brasilian Culture, and a couple churches.

We also found an excellent locals bar with amazing sunset views that you may be able to convince me to tell you how to find...


On the recommendation of Mitch and Taylor and several other travelers we soon left Salvador and headed off to Lencois...

We have discovered that while the big cities of Brazil are interesting, they are not what we want our tip to be about. We have found that we enjoy the smaller out of the way places much more and are going to try and focus on them and only briefly stop in on the larger cities as we head north.

Birthday

April 8th was my 27th (Yikes I am geting old) Birthday. Rebecca and I were still in Itaparica on the night of the 7th and so Mitch and Taylor took us out to dinner at a smal little restaurant that only the locals know about and would NEVER appear in a guidebook. They went way beyond the necessary call of suty and called ahead to tel them that we were coming and that it was my birthday.

The family that runs the restaurant went over the top. There were five huge dishes for the four of us that included chicken stuffed with ham and cheese, rice, salad, a shrimp stew, and a Bahian specialty - stir fried salted beef, which sounds a little odd, but was very good. They even baked a giant birthday cake for me with guava frosting. The entire restaraunt (four tables) sang happy birthday to me and I shared cake with everyone.



From the restaurant we headed off across town - with half of the cake left - to the central square where there is dancing every friday night. We got about half waythere when a torrential downpour of rain opened up and the four of us ended up hising uder the awning of a vendors stall for about 30 minutes by the main pier. Once the rain let up we headed on and ran into a group of young guys who were hanging out "gaurding" the pier. They sang happy birthday to me as well and we gave them the rest of the cake as a thank you.

We did eventualy make it to the central square, but the rain had put a damper on things, so we just had icecream and called it a night.

I want to send out a HUGE thank you to Mitch, Taylor, and the rest of the Sacatar staff for their wonderful hospitality while we were there.

Sacatar

Here are a few photos of Sacatar. We have been spending our days reading books, taking walks on the beach and napping beneath the coconut trees. We have also done a bit of exploring of Itaparica itself, indulging on icecream, and watching the sunset.

The sights of Rio

Since my camera was stolen a few days ago picture taking has slowed down a little. I am extremely lucky that Rebecca is carrying two digital caeras with her and that she is nice enough to let me use one of them. This is especially great since a new digital camera is about four times as expensive here as it is in the US.

Rio is an amazing city of giant green tropical forest topped basalt spires rising out of the blue Atlantic Ocean. The people are colorful, friendly, and exceedingly passionate about everything that they do, from family to work to play.

Our time in Rio was spent principally seeing the major sights (Corcovado and Sugar Loaf), photos of which can be seen below. A friend of Rebecca´s was also generous enough to take a day off work and drive out to one of the locals beaches to the south of town called Prainha.

To get to Corcovado you travel on a small train from the neighborhood of Cosme Velho. The train winds its way through grren forest where you can spot small monkeys. Don´t believe the guidebooks about the price! It is 35 reis ($17) for a return ticket.

Corcovado and views therefrom...

Sugar Loaf guards the southern entrance to Rio harbor and offers even more amazing views of the city than Corcovado in my opinion. As with the Corcovado it is 35 reis to get to the the top and back.

Views of Sugar Loaf and Rio as the lights come on...

Prianha and Rebecca´s friend Anibal...

For safety in Rio... can you figure out what is strange in this photo?

Besides being very beautiful, Rio is VERY expensive. Money just seems to vanish from your wallet and you have no idea where it went. Because of this Rebecca and I have moved on from Rio to a town called Itaparica, which is located on an island across from Salvador. We are currently staying with Mitch and Taylor, two friends of my father, who run an artist residency called Sacatar.

The place is BEAUTIFUL to say the least. we have our own house, cook, and private beach. I promise to taek some photos in the nice afternoon light today and post them soon.

Be sure to also check out Rebecca´s blog (link is to the right ------->) to see more pictures and get a different perspective on our trip.

Caipirinha....

Caipirinha (pronounced: kai-pir-een-nya) is the best alcoholic drink in the world. No contest! It is made by placing a diced up lime (one per drink being made) into a shaker. The limes are then crushed thoroughly. One to one and a half large (vary depending on taste) spoonfulls of sugar then added to the limes. Crush again. Add Cachaca (pronounced: ka-sha-sa), cracked ice, and shake very well. Pour into a glass unstrained and enjoy.

Be careful... mischievious behavior starts after two, trouble after three, and god help you and those around you if you get to five...

Brazil´s Two Major Religions

Today Rebecca and I went and took in a bit of Brazil´s two major religions. We started the day by going up to the Corcovado, which is the famous giant statue of Christ with his arms outstretched. It sits on this hill way above Rio and it can be seen from almost anywhere in the city. It is more than 30 m tall and weighs around 1000 metric tons. It is a total tourist trap where everyone lines up to get their picture taken in just the right spot. On the way down we took a cable car type train and we got to see several monkeys playing in the trees.

The second religious experience was a trip to Maracana Stadium to see a futebol match. The game was between the two best teams in Rio, Botafogo and Madoreira. There were well over 100,000 people there and it would have been more if some of the sections were not being repaired. It is AMAZING to say the least. EVERYONE is wearing their team´s colors and jumping up and down rythmically to the unceasing drums the fans have brought to the game. They also all sing songs in unison to celebrate their teams and even individual players when they score goals.

The passion that they exhibit is unparalleled by anything I have ever witnessed. They clutch at the bars and handrails and yank at them with all their strength when there is a near goal and curse like a drunken sailor when something bad happens. I do not know what they mean, but I am certian that I know every portugese swear word in the book now.

They hurl toilet paper down from the upper deck of the stands to empty sections below. They light fireworks in the middle of the stands. At one point there was a huge explosion and all of the toilet paper in one area caught on fire. The fans had SET OFF A BOMB in the stadium!!! A firetruck had to come and put out the fires. The game carried on like nothing had happened by the way. It didn´t even pause for a minute.

I am sure that you are wondering where the pictures are... Well that is a whole story in and of itself... I foolishly took my camera to the game and at some point in one of the the massive crushes of people was relieved of it. It was taken straight out of a buttoned up pocket...

Fortunately it was only the first day and I did not lose too many pictures. It still sucks because I now have to go out and buy a new camera and memory cards. I know that i can get it replaced through my travel insurance when i get back, but it is stil a pain in the butt right now. So, that and plane tickets are the plan for tomorrow.

Bec and I are headed for Salvador and Scatar on Wed. morning.

I will try to get a few pics up next post.

I am off

This morning has been a flurry of activity including laundry, running around town to get a few last minute things, cleaning my room and of course packing. I have tried very hard to not overpack, but I am afraid that I have... This is a journey of mixed environments. I need nicer clothes for going out in Rio de Janeiro, but I need grubby ones for the boat trips up the Amazon River. The necessities for each portion simply become a space hog in the bag during the opposite part of the trip. So following my life's trend, I am going casual. Big surprise, I know.

Anyway... My plane leaves tonight at 10:00 PM. The next post will be from Brazil.

Take care,

Owen

The Path of Adventure

People wrote that they really liked the post that explained where I was going when I went to Southeast Asia, so I have decided to do it again. Below you will find a map that shows were Rebecca and I will be traveling. As is always the case with international travel anything I describe below is subject to change at a moments notice for an infinite number of possible reasons.

Rebecca arrives in Rio de Janeiro March 29th and I join her there April 1st. She has agreed to meet me at the airport, which is a really good thing since I will have been traveling for 32 hours straight when I arrive. We will probably spend 4 or 5 days in Rio seeing the sights and spending a lot of time on the beach allowing Rebecca to get a tan after her long winter in England.

After Rio we will be heading north to Salvador and to a place called Sacatar. Sacatar is an artist residency program similar to the one that my father runs in California. Mitch and Taylor, Sacatar's directors, and good friends of my dad, have agreed to put Rebecca and I up for a couple of nights. We will also be checking out the sights in Salvador as well.

From there we will continue north along the Atlantic coast stopping at whatever places interest us. Recife is supposed to have good scuba diving and there is supposedly a beach called Pipa to the south of Natal that has great surfing...

Turning northwest we will make our way to Belem, the major port city at the mouth of the Amazon River. After a few days there we will embark on a five day journey upriver to Manaus. We will hopefully have the opportunity to spend some time out in the jungle outside of Manaus. From there we continue farther up river to where Peru, Columbia, and Brazil meet. Tabatinga is the Brazilian city at the border and Leticia is the Columbian town. We will cross the border into Columbia and then catch a boat from Leticia to Iquitos, Peru, which is another day of travel upriver. In Iquitos we are going to get to meet up with colleagues of Rebecca's who work at Zoo Peru. From there it will be time for me to head home. Rebecca will continue to travel through Peru, Bolivia, and Chile for another five weeks until she heads home to Australia.

An Introduction

For this trip I have a very important introduction to make. I would like you to meet Rebecca. Many of you have heard me talk (probably too much) about her. We originally met in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in August of 2005 because we were both staying in the Okay Guesthouse (I highly recommend it.) near the royal compound.

We had both seen each other in the guest house common room, but finally met properly in an internet cafe nearby when we were both really annoyed at another patron who just let his cell phone ring and ring without ever answering it or turning off the ringer. Rebecca says I had one hell of a look on my face. She later confided to me that she thought I was going to kill him right then and there.

Fortunately my scary face did not send here screaming and we ended up hanging out and chatting back at the guesthouse for a good portion of the afternoon. She turned out to be a girl after my own heart when she asked me if I wanted to go and get ice cream with her. Me, get ice cream? Is the pope catholic?

We walked down around the corner to the big new grocery store that had a huge selection of ice cream. After much discussion and deliberation we selected ice cream (I can't remember exactly what flavors.) and headed out to the park across the street to sit around in the grass and enjoy the late afternoon. We ended up spending about 4 hours just sitting around in the park talking about anything and everything. It was a wonderful conversation and it left me with the feeling that we had only touched about 0.00001% of what we could have talked about.

Not long thereafter we went our separate ways. I to Siem Reap/Angkor and she to Vietnam. We stayed in touch via e-mail and made plans to meet up in Thailand. We eventually did reconnect on Koh Phangan for the full moon party. Rebecca, her friend Kym from Perth, and I had a wonderful time dancing the night away.

Rebecca is originally from Sydney Australia, but she has spent most of her life in Perth out on the west coast of the continent, where her parents and little brother still reside. Her life's passion, aside from travel of course, is environmental education and outreach. She was working on environmental education programs for the Phnom Penh zoo we originally met last year and she is hoping to return to Cambodia in September to do more outreach type activities in some of the more rural parts of the country.

Planning...

I have begun the arduous process of taking care of the numerous details that accompany a six week trip.

The most important of which was getting a Brazilian visa. Because the United States, for some reason, feels it is necessary to charge Brazilian Citizens $100 to come to this country, they have decided to have a reciprocal fee for US citizens visiting their country. Eye for an eye I guess, which really is fair. The thing that drove me nuts about the process of applying for a visa is that you have to apply to the proper consulate based upon where you live. For me, living in Hawaii, that is the consulate in Beverly Hills, California. No problem I thought. I will just mail it off like I did when I went to Kenya and Vietnam. Wrong! They do not accept applications by mail. Ok, so now what? That's right, a visa service company. These are companies which you mail all of your materials to and they submit your passport to the consulate. They charged me $60. Oh, and because neither I, nor a direct relative, is submitting the passport I have to pay the Brazilian Consulate an additional $10. But wait, that is not the last of it. I also have to cover the cost of FedEx'ing my materials back and forth from Hawaii which is at least another $30. So, all told, just getting the visa to go to Brazil is going to total up to about $200. In sum, who cares? Not me. $200 for a visa is totally worth it to get to spend six weeks cruising around South America.

Other things to take care of include:

1. Buying travel insurance.
2. Calling my accountant to let him know that I am not going to be able to sign any tax documents after March 29th.
3. Going to the doctor for a travel consult.
4. Getting travelers cheques.
5. Deciding whether or not to even bother taking real shoes.
6. Going to Longs to get all of the necessary toiletries and sundries. (I am hoping that I have been at this traveling thing long enough that I would be able to get everything I need in one shopping trip this time.)
7. Taking care of my auto insurance. (I get a break for being gone for more than a month.)
8. Dealing with the cell phone...
   

I will be certain to keep you apprised of the progress as it gets closer to departure time. Please feel free to drop any hints, tips, or suggestions into the comments section. Particularly if they concern surviving in the concrete jungle that is Rio or the natural jungle that is the Amazon.

Next Stop...

BRAZIL

My boss at work has generously given me SIX WEEKS off from work so I can go traveling this spring. And from what immediately proceeds this paragraph you van see where I will be headed. I have purchased tickets and will be leaving Honolulu on the 30th of March and will be returning to Hawaii on the 13th of May. Unlike my last journey to Southeast Asia, I will be traveling across South America with a companion. Her name is Rebecca and I promise that I will provide a proper introduction in the future.

Right now the plan is to arrive in Rio on the 1st of April and eventually travel up the Atlantic coast of Brazil to Belem, a town at the mouth of the Amazon River. From there we will be traveling all of the way up the Amazon to Iquitos, Peru. I will depart from there to begin my journey home.

Right now I am occupied with the process of getting my visa for Brazil, which as it turns out, is a serious pain in the butt for Citizens of the United States.

Like last time, I promise to write updates from the road on a regular basis. And as requested, there will be a higher picture to text ratio this time. ; )

Mom's Opening

Mom's big opening for her collage work was at the Braunstein/Quay Gallery the evening of January 7th. The event was a huge success. There was an enormous turnout of family and friends. Almost everyone from both sides of the family came down to see her work. All of my Mom's siblings and their families came, and my Dad's siblings were there except for the ones that live in other parts of the country. My great aunt Peggy and her husband Martin even made the journey from Naples Florida to come to the show. Mom was even willing to pose for a few photographs.

Mom's collage work is primarily made with old wood blocks prints from the early part of the 20th century. She spends countless hours painstakingly cutting out images from the paper and then arranging them into pieces. Most of the themes have to do with nature. Recently she has been creating pieces with lots of small squares with a mini collage in each square. She has also started illustrating dictionary pages. On a page that says bead, she has attached hundreds of beads. She also has one with buttons and one with snaps. One of the best pieces in my opinion is an old set of 25 encyclopedias in which she did one page from each one following the entry on that page. She did China in the C book. Electricity in the E book, etc... You can see some of her pieces up close on this page.

The show has been a huge success and mom sold two pieces that first night. She also recently found out that she sold the encyclopedia piece which was the biggest and most expensive piece in the show! We are all very proud of her!!!

After the opening the assembled mass of family members made our way over to Lulu's, which is a nice restaurant nearby. There were about 18 of us for dinner and we all had a wonderful time. As usual, the younger cousins took over one end of the table, dragged me into it, and we proceeded to have more fun than everyone else combined. Emma and Daisy (pictured) provide me with the latest and most important information about pop culture today.

My trip to California ended the next morning when I flew back out to Hawaii to resume my normal life...

San Francisco

The evening I returned from southern California, Joanne, who I met in Vietnam six moths ago, arrived on a flight from Las Vegas. Since I had last seen her she had made her way through England, Ireland, France, New York City, Miami, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Los Angeles, Colorado, Utah, and Vegas. She was in the final leg of her trip and had arranged to spend a couple days with me in California and then come out to Hawaii for a week or so to get nice and relaxed and tan before heading back to Australia.

She is the second of the people I met on my trip to have come and visited me. Mark, also from Vietnam came through Hawaii a couple months ago. That being said, all of you that I met on my trip and those of you who are old friends from the mainland are always welcome to come and enjoy the nice weather any time you like.

Armed with my Dad's car and a map of San Francisco, we headed into the city. Our first stop was the new De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. The completely new museum was finished in 2005 to much architectural controversy (I like it). One of the best features of the new museum is the 9 story tall tower which has a 360 degree observation deck on the top floor that you can go up to for free. It offers some amazing views of the central portion of the city.

After we enjoyed the view from the museum we made our way along to Clement Street in the Richmond District of San Francisco where we had dim-sum for lunch. Dim-sum typically consists of various types of meats and veggies wrapped up in dough and steamed. Lunch for two came out to about $5 and we were totally full.

After lunch we headed to one of the most recognizable structures in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge. Surprisingly enough, I had never actually walked out onto the bridge, so this was a new experience for me.


We only had so much time on the parking meter so we were only able to walk out to the middle of the span, but the views were amazing!



From the bridge you get one of the best vistas of San Francisco itself.


After enjoying our walk across the bridge we headed down to the north edge of the city to go to Fisherman's Wharf. The area is SUPER touristy, but we were able to accomplish two very important things. One, Joanne was able to continue her systematic sampling of every Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor, and, two, we were able to check out the california sea lions at Pier 39. They are an exceedingly noisy lot, but they are great fun to watch as they jostle for position on the platforms and push each other off. A pinniped king-of-the-hill sort of thing.

After seeing some of the touristy sites in the city we headed out to the Mission District to meet up with my friends Dan and Emily for drinks and dinner. We started at The Lone Palm where we had a couple drinks with some of Dan's co-workers from the Nature Conservancy. I was a little surprised when one of them, who I had never met before, called me a liar when I told her that I was an archaeologist and that I lived in Hawaii. My job and place of habitation isn't that strange is it? After drinks, we headed out to a really good sushi restaurant. After giving Dan and Emily a ride back to their house because it was raining, we headed back to my folk's house after long day.

Sculpture

After returning to northern California I went over to the ranch side of the Djerassi Program and took a few photos of a couple of the sculptures on the property.

Architecture Research

On the morning of January 3 my sister and I headed out from McKenzee's house in Costa Mesa, who was kind enough to allow us a place to stay (Thanks Kenz!). Our destination was Hesperia, California, which is about an hour up Freeway 15 north of San Bernadino, and is home to the Cal Earth Institute.

The Cal Earth Institute is run by Nader Khalili, who has spent his architectural career developing low cost housing techniques using natural earthen materials. His basic goal is to develop techniques for building sustainable, environmentally friendly, affordable housing.

At the Cal Earth Institute he primarily works with superadobe. It is basically 8 shovels of earth/sand/dirt etc., a shovel of cement mix, and a can (the big 6 lbs kind) and a half of water. These ingredients are mixed up either by hand or in a small mixing machine and then poured into sand bags. The sand bags are then laid out into a parabolic dome shape with layers of barbwire between them. The end result is a structure that can be constructed for next to nothing. Once people learn the technique it is possible to build a structure large enough for a family of 4 in about 2-3 days. Because the structures are made from earthern materials they are very thermally conservative, meaning that if they are heated - even with a small heat source - they stay warm, and vise-versa in terms of cold. In addition, when the structures at the Cal Earth Institute were subjected to a hydraulic earthquake test, not only did they pass with flying colors, they nearly broke the testing machine.

The potential applications for these techniques are very far reaching. In places like Pakistan where they had devastating earthquakes this past fall, this technique has been used to build housing for people who had their homes destroyed. Jim Guerra, a man that my sister met with at the institute, is teaching the technique to migrant farm workers. He is also spearheading a push to get the structures approved by the State of California so that they can be built on farmers' lands, thus providing migrant farmers a place to sleep that is a lot better than park benches. Representatives from the United Nations and many other organizations have traveled to Hesperia to see the work that is being conducted.

The basic techniques are also being further developed so that through a combination of building methods, full scale houses can be built. The institute is about 80% of the way through completing a 2500 square foot house for a total cost of about $90,000. It includes three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a two car garage.












It should be noted the Hesperia is in the high desert at about 3700 feet and so it was really really cold. Especially for the weenie boy from Hawaii. I ended up hiding in the car, which was warm from sitting in the sun all morning and reading while my sister interviewed Jim about his ongoing efforts.

The trip to the Cal Earth Institute was extremely educational for me. I learned a lot about environmentally friendly architecture, but more importantly, I learned a lot about my sister and her interests.

Road Trip to Los Angeles

On January 2nd Ceara and I departed from northern California for a four day to trip to the Los Angeles area. Ceara was going to conduct research on her batchelor's thesis in architecture that she is working on so that she can graduate from Brown University this May. She got a $400 grant from her university to conduct the work, so she was able to rent a car and have money for us to eat. She is researching low cost housing on the U.S. - Mexico border for migrant farm workers. In the future she hopes to be able to help alleviate the problem of people sleeping in cardboard boxes, under bushes, and in metal culverts like they most commonly do today.

We departed fairly early in the morning in a driving rain storm and the car was soundly pummeled all of the way south until we got over the Grapevine, which are the mountains just to the north of LA. With some time to kill in the late afternoon we headed down to Santa Monica where we wandered around the 3rd street promenade. We walked out to and along the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean and we also went to Hennessy-Ingall, which is one of the largest architecture bookstores in the western United States. Unfortunately for Ceara, she is a poor student and could not afford any of the really expensive books that she liked. Fortunately for me we did not have a lot of time left on our parking meter which meant that we did not have to spend all afternoon in the bookstore.


After we hung out in Santa Monica we headed down to Costa Mesa in Orange Country on the southern side of greater Los Angeles to see my friends Ian and Linda. Linda was one of the very first people that I met at college and She Ian and I all lived in the same dorm freshman year, which is now nearly a decade ago. In addition to them my sister and I also got to see their new baby girl Lindsay who was about 11 weeks old when we where there. She is absolutely adorable and as you can see she has a full head of bright red hair that sticks straight up no matter how hard her parents try to get it to stay down. As the single batchelor that I am, it is a little weird to have friends my age already married. It is even weirder to have had two of them produce a child. There is this perfect little human that is 50% Linda and %50 Ian. I have not had much experience with babies and was quite pleased when I was able to hold her for a few minutes and she did not start screaming. That being said, I am very glad that she is not mine and I have no plans to have one of my own any time soon!

Out With A Bang...

Some of this story appeared in an e-mail or two, but I thought that I would share it with all of you.

So I had a rather rough last day of 2005. My friend Emily from college had been staying with my folks and I for a couple days before her scheduled departure back to Chicago where she is a graduate student. She was supposed to leave early on the morning of the 31st from the Oakland airport, which is about an hour and 15 minutes from my parents house with no traffic. Things didn't go exactly as planned.

There was a HUGE storm the night of the 30th-31st and so when we got up super early to head out to the airport in my dad's car we found that the road out from my parents house was blocked by a small tree that had fallen across the road. Mind you this is a single lane road that runs along a mountain edge with no rail on the down slope side and it was still dark and pouring rain at this point. We drove back to my parents house and got my dad and a chainsaw. My dad decided to drive my mom's car out behind us, but as he was backing out of the car port he accidentally drove the left hand side of the car off the driveway and down a hill. The car was sitting at an precipitous angle and so we called the whole thing off and went back into the house. Emily simply had to get another flight and chew on the consequences. This is just the way that things go when you live out here in Woopwoop. She managed to call the airline and get on the same set of flights the following day which was the 1st.

We all went back to bed for another 4 hours or so and then got up, and we glad to see that the car had not fallen down the hill. The power had also gone off while we had all gone back to bed. Dad, Emily, and I got into his car and headed out the road with the chainsaw to see if we could get to the end of the road and out onto the county highway. We found that an even bigger (1 m diameter) tree had fallen parallel with the road since Emily and I first tried to get out to the end of the road. To get out we had to set to work with the chainsaw de-limbing the tree to make enough space to get a car down the shoulder of the road. This took about an hour and a half. We then drove further on, cut off the small tree that Emily and I had first encountered, and then had to cut off two more along the way to the county highway. We picked up the newspapers and headed back in from the county road. (It is 5 km from the county road to my parents house.) We went over to the ranch side of Djerassi and got the ranch truck which is a great big monster dodge pickup truck and brought it back to the house. Using it and some chain we managed to get my mom's car back up onto the driveway.

Because the power was out we made pancakes on a cast iron griddle that we placed onto the gas barb-b-que. We did bacon as well!

After I took a shower in the afternoon I was walking down the stairs and my mom's cat was hiding halfway down the stairs curled up again the vertical face of the one of the stairs. I did not see her and completely ate shit and slammed my back onto the edges of the really hard wooden stairs. They do not have any sort of padding on them at all. I now have a big bone bruise on my right shoulder blade and several large abrasions on my back. My right shoulder and right upper arm are really sore and it still hurts to do a lot of things. I also jammed several of the toes on my right foot and so I was gimping around. And the cat of course escaped unscathed.

Another big storm was supposed to blow in for the night of the 31st-1st so Emily and I decided that we had to get off of the mountain so that if more tress fell we would still be able to make it to the airport. So we headed down to San Jose where a bunch of our friends from college were going to be throwing a party. I was already planning on attending this party after Emily had left, but because of the storm she got to come to the party and I got to spend a little more time with her.

The party was really great and we all had a good time. Bob and Tina did a great job hosting and it was great to get to hang out with Dan and Emily (different Emily), Greg, Mike and Meghan, Dave, Chris and Katie (Congratulations!), and every one else who attended. I was going to take a bunch of pictures of everyone, but bringing out my nice camera while heavy drinking was occuring seemed like a bad idea.

Emily and I got up very early the morning of the 1st and I managed to get her to the airport and make it all the way back to my folk's house in one piece where I begrudgingly fed the cat, took two tylenol and two pepto bismol, unplugged the phone, and went back to bed for another 4 hours!

Rats on Stilts

As I mentioned in an earlier post there is a variety of wildlife that lives around my parent's house. I caught these six mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) having an afternoon snack just below the deck. The deer around here are as common and fearless as a rat - except they have long legs - and they destroy mom's garden.