FTF Day 201-203 - Portland, OR - Sept 10th-12th, 2011

Reconnecting with a dear friend in my favourite city in the USA!

After leaving Merced, CA I wanted to get back up to Portland, OR.  I made the drive up I-5 stopping in Medford, OR for the night and then continuing on my journey the next day.  You see when I was there the first time, I did not manage to get together we my very close friend Melissa.  I felt it would just not be right for me to do this trip and not make any trip for her.  She has always been a big supporter of FTF and it had been some time since we spent any real amount of time together.  Even this trip I knew it would be limited as she has just started her 2^nd year of Law School.  So I arrived Friday afternoon and we headed out for happy hour and Gruner for some drinks and wonderful food.  Afterwards we walked the city for a while until we found Cacao, where you could sample small little cups of liquid chocolat.  We eventually headed back to her place to relax and watch a movie.  It was nice just to chill out with someone that knows me and I don’t have to tell my life story to. 

Saturday we made plans to go hiking, and Rose joined us.  She happened to be in Portland and wanted to come along for the afternoon.  We headed for eagle creek about 40 miles up I 84 from Portland in the hood river gorge.  When we arrived I noticed steam coming from the engine.  I quickly determined that the problem was a split return hose on the radiator.  I decided to let things cool down while we were hiking and then deal with it when we returned.  The hike was great, we covered close to 8 miles and saw a bunch of great waterfalls. When we returned to the car, I managed to choke the hose up and temporarily repair the split in the hose, then we refilled the radiator and were on our way.  Everything seemed normal but I made one fatal mistake, I did not runt he engine for a minute and then fill the radiator some more.  I assumed since the fill bottle was good that it would not be an issue.  Unfortunately the engine overheated again while driving down the interstate, after climbing down to the good river with every water bottle we had I managed to fill the radiator again.  We headed down the interstate again, but the engine overheated again and started knocking.  I called AAA at this point realizing I was doing more damage than good.  I had the car towed to a garage near Melissa’s place.  I was hoping a new head gasket would the most that the car needed, since 5 years ago I had a similar problem and managed to change the gasket out myself.

I went out in Portland Saturday night and met up with Rose and her friend Chris.  Melissa stayed in so she could get some reading done, after dropping me off at the bus station so I could get downtown.  I had a great night, and we hit a couple bar’s including the Mary’s club, Portland’s oldest strip club, which is a very social place that has as many girls as guys in the audience.  I’m normally not a strip club guy.  In fact I’ve only been twice in the last 10 years and both have been with Rose with friends in Portland.  Mary’s is so small that there is tiny stage for 1 girl at a time, no DJ (the dancer actually puts her own music on too).  It’s a fun place, I ended up talking to a group of people, guys and girls sitting next to us and when Rose and Chris wanted to leave I ended up hanging with them at an Kell’s Irish pub afterwards, and eventually the food carts for a late night Vietnamese Sandwich.  I taxied back to Melissa’s having had a great night and did not worry about my Jeep that whole night.

The next day I tried to get the car started but no luck, it was definitely losing compression.  I spent the day getting a bunch of odd jobs done around Melissa’s place and did a bit of work on her car.  Monday I was informed that it would there was no way to realiably repair the engine and that I would be better off replacing the engine.  This news came as a real shock, luckily the manager at the garage managed to find a used engine so they would install and make a few other repairs as well.  The repair costs would be as much as a new vehicle but considering all the money I had just sunk into the car and the fact that I would have essentially a new vehicle, I decided it was better than going out and trying to find a reliable used vehicle.  So while I waited for the engine to be repaired, I decided to rent a car and head to Eugene, OR for a few days.

FTF Day 201-203

FTF Day 198-200 - Merced, CA - Sept 7th-9th, 2011

Unexpected visit to Merced, CA results in lots of fun with some new friends.

Since I knew my car was getting towed to Merced, CA I knew I would be there for a day or two.  Since I did not have internet access, I asked CS friend, Sally, to post an emergency Couchsurf request for me.  I had two people get back to me ready to host Adam and Eddie.  I decided to stay with Adam the first night and Eddie.  Adam and I went out for some Mexican and then Frisbee golf afterwards.  He dropped me off at the dealership but unfortunately my car would not be ready until the following day, so I hung out in Merced for the day until Eddie could pick me up and host me for a 2^nd night.  He and hung out at his place and he had a couple friends over for some ping pong, beer and good times.  Merced may be a small town but I’ll always have good memories of my time there.

FTF Day 194-197 – Yosemite National Park, California – Sept 3rd-6th, 2011

Last minute trip with a couple other couch surfers to Yosemite to climb Half Dome

Soltan, a couch surfer from Charlotte had posted just a couple days earlier that he wanted to go and climb half Dome in Yosemite national park over Labour Day weekend.  Always up for fun and adventure I contacted and let him know I was in.  A few others expressed interest too, but bailed last minute with the exception of Robber, from Spain who joined us.  Soltan decided to drive his rental car out because he was thinking of of leaving Sunday night, while Robber and I were wanting to stay until Monday.  The drive was uneventful, but the traffic was heavy, Labour  Day weekends are always this way.  On the way there my car was starting to make a squealing noise, I determined after a quick stop that the clutch bearing on the A/C compressor was going bad.  I kept my fingers crossed and hoped it would last the weekend. 

When we finally arrived in the park, we managed to secure our half dome permits, and camping at Yosemite Valley Meadows for Sunday night.  We also made arrangements to camp in the backpacker’s campground Saturday night, so we could leave early the next morning.  Shortly after that the clutch bearing in the jeep seized up, and the accessory belt stopped turning, noticeable by the fact that the alternator stopped working as well as the power steering pump.  Luckily there was a garage in the park and I managed to get it there.  After a quick assessment, they concurred that the clutch bearing was done.  So they proposed ordering an idler pulley to replace the compressor, since they can’t do A/C work, but unfortunately it was late Saturday and nothing would be open again until Tuesday.  No worries, there are worse places to be stuck for an extra day.

Sunday morning Soltan and I quickly made our way up to Little Yosemite Valley campground about 2 hrs from the trail head, I setup camp, dropped some gear and then we continued up to half dome.  We arrived at the cables, and then slowly made our way up to the top of half dome.  The cable are to assist people climbing up the bald, steep and somewhat slippery rock surface that makes up half dome.  The views from the top were very impressive.  It’s pretty obvious why this is such a popular hike.  We stayed for about ½ hours then made our way back down, mostly running.  Soltan is an ultra marathon runner so the two of us really pushed each other to move quickly. 

That night I camped a Little Yosemite Valley, Soltan and Robber headed back to camp.  I had a pretty quiet night, met a few people around the campfire and then headed out early the next day.  I setup camp in the backpacker’s campground, went for a run and relaxed.  The next day I had the truck towed to Merced California so that it could get the A/C system repaired at the dealer there.  Thank goodness I had AAA plus.

FTF Day 194-197

FTF Day 192-193 – Berkeley, California – Sept 1st-2nd, 2011

Laser Tag, homeless people and more in Berkeley

I visited Berkeley for some downtime and to check out the city.  It was a lot different than San Francisco (which is just across the bay).  I couch surfed for 2 nights with Ankur.  He has a well located place and I did some nice runs around the hills and campus.  The real highlight of my stay was playing Laser Tag on campus with him and his friends.  They have a dozen Nerf Laser Tag guns and we would set boundries and run around like 8 year olds shooting each other at night.  At one point during the games, this undergrad girl that looked like she was headed out for a night on the town stop, looked at us and said “What are you doing?”  The 2 or 3 of us standing there with toy guns in our hands responded:  “Playing Laser Tag”.   She looked disturbed by this and walked away.  It was so dorky, but way cool at the same time.

FTF Day 192-193

FTF Day 175-192 - Seattle, WA to San Francisco – August 15th-31st, 2011

Reconnecting with a old friend

In short my friend Kate flew over from Australia to join me on a whirlwind trip from Seattle to San Francisco.  It was a very, very busy trip.  We took in Portland, the Oregon Coast, Crater Lake NP, Redwoods NP, Bend, Oregon and the Hood to Coast relay.  I could really not keep up with the blog during this time.  So I will let the photos tell the story.

Enjoy


FTF Day 175-179
FTF Day 180-183
FTF Day 184-185
FTF Day 186-187
FTF Day 188-189
FTF Day 190-192

FTF Day 173-174 - Mt. Baker, WA – August 13th-14th, 2011

Mt. Baker (10770ft) Climb via Boulder Glacier Route trip Report

We started late on a Saturday afternoon.  It was not really a concern though as we had given ourselves 3 days to climb the mountain.  We loaded up and got on the trail.  The trail was not well maintained, and we had several places where we had to crawl over or under trees not usually a big deal, but when you are carry 64lbs of gear it's not the easiest thing.  After about 3 miles we came up on a 2nd climbing team that was ascending a rocky scramble, there was actually a rope in position and they were using as protection to climb the 80 ft or so cliff.  Brian and opted to not use the rope and just cautiously made our way up the face.  Once on the ridge line we hiked about another mile, eventually onto a snowfield.  We stopped where the team ahead of stopped and made camp on a flat outcropping that was dry, we were at around 5300 ft.

After setting up camp we talked to the other climbing team, since one of their members was sick and the other was inexperienced one of the four was going to climb the mountain, Dave.  Dave asked us if he could join us, and we invited him to join our rope team, 3 is always better than 2 in a crevasse rescue situation so we were happy to have him along.  In addition, Dave had a lot of experience.  Afterwards we practiced crevasse rescue techniques and went to bed. 

We woke up around 2:30AM, ate a quick breakfast and setoff for the summit.  Initially we did not need to rope up, the snow was good and there were no crevasses anywhere in the area.  After a few hours of climbing the sun came up and we were presented with the most amazing sun rise.  Clouds were below us and above us and we could see Shuksan popping up through the clouds.  It was breath taking.  About this time, we decided it was best to rope up for the remainder of the climb.  Dave took the lead, I was in the middle and Brian brought up the rear.  We climbed higher and higher until we were engulfed in the cloud cap near the summit.  We started putting willow wands in so we could find our way down.  When we finally reached the flat top of the mountain we heard two other teams approaching in the fog, they had come up the more commonly used Coleman Demming route.  All 3 teams went to the top, took a few summit shots.  Then Brian payed special hommage to the mountain and we started making our way back down. 

Once we arrived back at the spot where we roped up, we decided to descend using a much more efficient manner, glissading.  For those of you don’t know glissade is the French word for slide.  It basically involves sliding on your butt down the mountain, using an ice axe to sort of control yourself.  We were able to do several glissades in a row and then we had a relatively short walk back to the camp.  We arrived back at camp by 1:00pm, exhausted but happy the climb went well.  Brian and I made some lunch and then crawled into the tent for a few hours of rest.  Dave and his party packed up and headed for the parking lot.  Once we woke up Brian and I packed up camp and made our way back to the parking lot, arriving sometime just before dark.  We had a 2 ½ hour drive back to Seattle and stopped at Dairy Queen for our well deserved treat and then headed back to Brian’s place.


FTF Day 173-174