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| Boardman, Oregon (21 December 2007 - 1 January 2008) |
Two nights before I left, Todd Sarah and I had an early christmas opening presents, and I got out my box that my family shipped to me from Australia, that'd been sitting on my floor for about 3 weeks. Todd was stoked with his genuine Australian boardshorts picked by Andy from home, black quicksilver and perfect for the ol dirtybird. Sarah had a new outfit and lotions & I was spoiled with leather gloves, a navy blue business shirt & a black scarf. BUT, out of the box from home came an Aussie beanie & scarf (green & gold), Aussie beer cooler, a giant Australian flag windshield thing for the car, even four little Aussie flags! Todd's loungeroom was covered in Aussie gear and I was convinced Mum & Dad had robbed a souvenir shop.
But it was great, soon after arriving in the US I realized I didn't have much Australian stuff to show with pride, only really had my Aussie boxer shorts, which doesn't really count you know? :) So now i'm set, gave Todd a spare flag & took the stick out of another & tied it to my suitcase handle so I can spot my typical black suitcase apart from the other dozen ones like it on the airport baggage carousel. I then got to packing everything I have in the back of my car to move to Colorado. The plan was to finish work with Metavante on December 14, giving me almost a week to hang out with my mate Paul who was my first visitor from home (champion!), pack everything up and drive up to Denver. My friend Stacey, being the awesome girl that she is, let me stay overnight (again) at her place in Aurora and offered her car port to stow the Jeep & all my stuff, while I flew out to Oregon for Xmas and New Years. I would return on the 1st. Stacey was even kind enough to drop me off at the airport before work in the morning, so I hung out and had an awesome breakfast burrito in the terminal at a mexican joint.
Sitting in the gate lounge early for the flight, I was fooling around with the laptop and the dodgy airport wireless, when I suddenly realised, I was surrounded by beautiful women. There were 5 in the seats around me, all stunners, reading books, listening to music or on the laptop, and I thought mmm, I love Colorado... to the point I was inspired to message Todd about it. His reply was that he was stuck at work, in his fishbowl office with his co-worker/subordinate who can't understand english. I probably found it funnier than him. On the flight, I was in the middle seat again, had a good run of window seats there at the start, now it's like a curse and I never get it, always peering past people who don't care about the view outside and would rather sleep. But I sat next to a girl who I chatted to, she'd been all around the world and stuff and was only 18 (lucky with parents) and she was born & bred in Salt Lake City. She told me some interesting stuff about the place, how the Mormon pioneers followed their prophet across the uninhabited countryside in the late 1800's until he saw a great lake, decided that would be the spot to build their city (saw it in a vision apparently). Too bad the lake turned out to be a gigantic useless salt marsh that often puts off an odour that reaches all the way to the mountains :) Pretty funny hearing it come from her, as she's one of the few people from the area that isn't Mormon. Still, out the window, the calm Great Salt Lake reflected the patchy cloud cover against a backdrop of snowed mountains that encircled the city. Known as the crossroads of the west, it was an impressive sight.
After a delayed flight to Pasco Tri-Cities in Washington, I finally landed and met up with Clay, who came to pick me up. He was on xmas break from his studies at the University Of Idaho in Moscow (no joke that's the name of the town). Down across the border to Oregon, I was introduced to the quiet little town of Boardman, and met up again with Dawn and Shannon, and met for the first time Dawn's partner Robyn Graff and his son Trevor, who had recently moved into the house. Dawn and Robyn work as teachers at Riverside High School, where Shannon and Trevor go to school and Clay graduated the year before.
I have so many highlights of my stay there, starting with going quad biking with Clay on the vacant land next to the house; Graff owns the bike and they had ridden a bunch of trails into the brush, complete with little jumps, steep drops and sudden hairpin turns. We went out in freezing conditions and when our hands were going red with cold we decided to head back for gloves, and for me to grab the camera. I'd only just begun filming on our cruise back down the road to the trails when it begun sleeting on us! We had no goggles so that was that, sleet in the eyes sucks a lot more than rain.
Another day we all got up early to make a road trip out to the Bull Prairie Lake in a mountainous national forest area to the south. Graf loaded the quad bike on the trailer and a couple hours later we turned off the main road onto the access road buried in over a foot of snow. I was paying keen attention to Graff's impressive driving, sliding around corners a bit with a trailer in tow and going maybe a tiny bit faster than I would have thought to be 'safe family driving' :) Upon arrival, I first saw the open flat white expanse which I knew to be the lake, but was shocked to see two groups of people out there! I hadn't expected that, and sure enough the lake was frozen enough to walk on, though a huge fracture and tyre marks at the boat ramp showed that the ice wasn't thick enough for vehicles. We piled out of the car and began a snowfight, I quickly put on a pair of snow shoes & pants as the snow was up to knee deep. Graff got the bike off the trailer & got out the rope and truck tube for some 'snow tubing'! Both the driver and the person being towed were perfect targets for snowballs and the bumpy snow made for some good tubing and crashes (though not as hard core as on the lake with Todd behind the wheel).
I also went off and explored, since it was only the third time I'd seen snow, and never so soft, fresh and deep. Out in the forest, some drifts were waist deep, and Flare the golden lab would stumble as he walked when his paws broke through some of the icy layers. What was so stunning, was it was absolutely quiet (when the quad bike went away up the road), and every 5 seconds or so clumps of snow would fall from a tree branch, knocking off other clumps and leaving a stream of falling powder and sound of a soft thud. I checked out one of the jettys for some photos, and saw Shannon and her boyfriend Cory walking clear across the middle of the lake. So I looked over the end of the jetty, very tentatively tested my weight, and stepped off the end onto the ice, onto the lake! It was such a profound experience, walking on a lake, haha stepping off a jetty for crying out loud. Nuts. Graf and Dawn were setting up chairs and fishing poles and the esky/cooler out on the ice & I helped him cut out a few holes in the ice with the axe. There were two main layers of ice, probably 4 or 5 inches thick all up. He had corn for bait? I guess that's normal, but yeah haha, slim pickings in that ice fishing business, people who know me know that fishing aint really my thang. Graf and Trevor set up a fire on the ice and began cooking lunch, while I stood to the side trying to figure out what happens when you build a fire on ice. I mean, I had never thought about that before :) and after a little concern, I reasoned to myself that a fire couldn't melt through the ice because it'd just go out when it hit the water. Which is exactly what happened, after a while a puddle forms, and eventually burning sticks will fall in the water and go out, and there is no chance of us hearing a big crack and all disappearing into the frigid water :) Although there was one problem, a male problem, see when one guy cuts a hole with the axe, every other guy there has to try to see if he can cut a better hole, soon there are holes everywhere. Ambling about the fire I walked backwards half into a hole, lucky the lower layer of ice held my weight, but Trevor was not so fortunate, he fell up to the knee into one of his holes :)
There was more excitement at the end of the day when Graf decided to take Dawn and Shannon each for a spin out on the ice on the quad bike. I could tell he'd done it before, the trick was to keep the throttle flat and maintain speed, with gentle turns going in wide controlled sliding turns across the ice. To slow down would put too much pressure on an area of ice, and there's a strong chance of breaking through. On Shannon's turn, Graf twice broke ice, probably that top layer, and he confessed after he came back that it scared the hell out of him. Pretty gutsy driving at 30mph straight down the boat ramp to the side of the big hole someone's truck made earlier. Oh don't forget, with your girlfriend on the back first time, and her daughter the next. He certainly had my attention, I didn't even want to think about what a sinking quad bike and flying / sinking riders would be like. And some people think that I'M crazy.
But all was good and nobody died and they lived happily ever after...moving on, Clay Trevor & I went to Anthony Lakes ski resort another day, where I tried skiing for the first time, and Trevor's first time snowboarding. The valley of the town of North Powder was in sunshine and clear skies, but clouds hung over the mountains where the ski resort was, and it snowed the entire time we were there, first time I had finally seen *real* falling snow! I rented blades, which are half-size skis and are easier to learn on apparently, and within 2 hours I was going down blue runs with Clay. Trevor did a good job of being 'one of those snowboarders' who fall spectacularly every few minutes for the amusement of people on the lifts. Anthony Lakes was quiet, even though Clay said it was busy, he's been spoiled, it wasn't hard to get on a run all by yourself. It was cold, Fahrenheit in the teens, I lost feeling in my toes and fingers more than once. Towards the end of the day it begun snowing harder, and I'd been crashing a few times; on my last blue run, the altitude and strain on my quads caused me to weaken at a few critical moments, and instead of turning left, I'd go right, off the packed groom and onto the powder, the nose of my skis buried and I did a forward flip to land on my back. I did it three times ay, can still feel the snow falling down my neck and back against the skin!
The Callows have a cool Xmas tradition with a hand-knit quilt made by Dawn's mother like an advent calendar. Each day, it was someone's turn to choose from a selection of remaining decorations to hang on the appropriate day on the quilt, and everyone else had to guess which decoration would be picked. Shannon won, I can't remember the prize, but it was the morning ritual for all of December to get everyone together. After Xmas, the Callows were going to take me to Washington to Dawn's father's place a third of the way between Portland and Seattle. Early in the morning we set off West along I-84, which follows the awesome Colombia River, a very windy place. The westerly wind was pushing a near 2ft swell down the river in places, and I realized with a shock that I hadn't seen white horses (wind waves) since leaving Australia. We drove through the area of the river known as the Gorges, which is famous in Kiteboarding circles as the consistent wind funnels through a narrow gorge creating epic kiting conditions. When we started the drive, it was overcast, but a short way along the river it fined up for a while to sunny blue skies, and then past the Gorges and the Dalles Dam, it fairly suddenly turns to rain, then a mix of rain & snow. We came to the Multnomah Falls, a famous Oregon waterfall, and stopped to walk over and have a look. As far as lofty waterfalls go, it was the most impressive I'd ever seen, falling in two sections 542ft and 69ft high, and this cool arch bridge spans the lower falls. It's the second highest year-round waterfall in the United States after Yosemite Falls. The whole area is so constantly wet from high rainfall that it's declared as rainforest, one of the most northern latitude rainforests in the world, the trees are covered in moss inches thick. Dawn went to take a photo of me and accidentally shot a drop of water falling infront of the camera so it covered my face!
We drove near to Mt Hood which is a beautiful mountain, and past Mt St Helens, and I could see nothing for rain and snow! I was really bummed, but Washington is everything that I've heard; beautiful, but wet. Green and lush, and really wet. Went exploring the neighbourhood where Don (Dawn's father) lives and there is an old train track bridge that had been disassembled and the bridge span left sitting on the ground by the river. Weird to see a big old chunk of bridge lying around, sitting off the ground at one end!
I got a lot of reading done at Don's and we played card games that night, Dawn, Clay, Shaz & I were quoting movies, messing around & laughing so much I really felt like part of the family, which meant a lot, I made the right decision in spending Xmas with them. It was only the next day we headed back as Shannon had more basketball practice. Clay & I hung out a couple more days, some of the cool things we did was go for a night session of snowboarding/skiing to Meadows at Mt Hood. Once again Clay didn't crash at all (he wasn't going hard enough) and I had a good crash at speed right in front of him, dug a heel edge and went down hard on my back, goggles flew off, the works, Clay barely missed me & saw the whole thing. Meadows was pretty cool, bit more fun than Anthony Lakes, couple of guys on the lift in front were playing Marco Polo with other guys below, who called us fish out of the water. Also from the lift we saw a skiier line up for a jump, he wedged his right ski into the snow on the side of the jump, boot popped cleanly out, & he did a huge sprawling forwards face-plant, 'winding down the windows' flailing his arms around in circles the whole way. He was ok, it was soft snow, I could hear him laughing along with everyone else.
The Callows loved Carl Barron, I played both his DVDs for them and they were even quoting him by the time I left. We also played Monopoly, a college edition, and I neglected to tell them that my family won't play with me anymore because I win too much :) So after many threats of flipping the board and giving property away they declared me the winner, and we also played Game Of Life, although it was very different to the Australian version my parents have, has pros and cons, you don't sell your kids off at the end in the US version, and you can land on spaces that let you steal someone else's income, permanently! Until someone else steals yours. That was a bit funny, I was an athlete on a doctor's wage one sec, then a teacher's wage the next.
One last highlight was when Clay took me to the wildlife reserve in Boardman, and after cruising around he took me to a lookout on a hill. Unbeknownst to me until he told me as we drove up to it, that it was named Callow's Overlook, after his father who was the Reserve Manager and Biologist. Dawn had told me that it was only a few months after the family moved to Boardman when the accident occurred, a light aircraft plane crash during a waterfowl observation flight. Callow's Overlook is, in my opinion, probably the most peaceful location with the best view in Boardman, and a very fitting tribute to the work Mr Callow did for the refuge. Clay pointed out the area where the family lived in a trailer for the first month or so, until they found their current home, and I can't begin to imagine how hard it must have been, and how strong Dawn and the kids are to have pulled together as a family and made it through. They are all so awesome and they know how much I appreciated their hospitality and company, and I love them like my own family.
So on the 1st, my flight back to Colorado departed in the early afternoon, and for the second year running I was flying out on New Years Day bound for unknown adventures. As I said to Dawn, back in NZ when we all had met a year before and became friends, it was one of those things where you'd like to stay in touch, or see one another again, but on opposite ends of the world, you don't know if it will ever happen. But I made it happen and not for the last time, that's for sure!
2007 was good to me, that's very much an understatement, and I'm just so incredibly fortunate to have an even more exciting outlook for 2008.
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| Boardman, Oregon (21 December 2007 - 1 January 2008) |
