Lesson learned/Empire Builder

The weather turned really nice my last couple days in Seattle, so I took the opportunity to go for a walk in the Cascades. I rented a car, and drove an hour east of town to do a little hike up Granite Mountain. It was only 8 miles round trip, but included a pretty decent elevation gain - almost 4000 feet. So when I got near my exit off I-90 (I remembered it was exit 45 or 47 or something), I reached in the back seat for the map. At exactly that moment I realized I was incredibly stupid. I had left my backpack with the map and my long sleeve shirt and my sunscreen and all my food and water at the car rental shop an hour away. So I called them and said "hey don't let anybody steal my stuff please" and decided to just go on the walk. I mean, its only 4 miles uphill, and the rest is downhill. Should be no big deal. I knew from El Cap that I could function pretty decently when super-thirsty, so I gave it a shot. I tried to go fast because I didn't want to get a sunburn either. I didn't even get that thirsty, mostly because there was some snow at the top that I chomped on, and because some guy named Steve carried food and water to the top for me. I mean, he didn't know it was for me when he carried it, but in the end that's what it amounted to. I might not ever bring my own food and water on a hike again. Lesson learned. Anyway, I ran back on down the trail and moseyed back to Seattle.

1. Most of the way up Granite Mountain, looking south at the flanks of Rainier.

2. The lookout at the top of Granite Mountain, with Rainier partially masked in the distance.

3. Me happy that I found a patch of snow, staving off dehydration for a few more minutes.

I caught the train yesterday afternoon - the Empire Builder - for my 48 hour run to Chicago. I think thats a pretty good name for a train, sounds tough as hell. The train goes right past Puget Sound, with beautiful views of Mt. Baker and the coast there. Now we're just rolling into Glacier National Park, and the scenery is satisfying in an idyllic rural-America kind of way. I met some nice folks on the train, although their political affiliations seem to be about as far away from mine as you can get. It's interesting to hear what they are thinking about, but sometimes hard to keep a straight face. I just try to be friendly and non-confrontational and mostly keep my mouth shut. My neighbor just pegged me as someone that would appreciate "The Great Global Warming Swindle." I'm from Berkeley for pete's sake. Leave me be.

1. Puget Sound just north of Seattle, with Mt. Baker off in the distance. The top of Mt. Baker is 30 miles from Canadia.

2. Looking east toward Glacier National Park. This part of the trip was gorgeous, big rivers and forests and mountains.

If you want to check out a great folkish album with a little country bent to it, go get Lyle Lovett's "Pontiac". I've been listening to the album non-stop the last couple days, and highly recommend it for audio consumption.

Guess thats about it for now. I enjoyed Seattle, especially getting back in touch with my old friends, and am excited about getting to Chicago (only 32 hours left!). Alright I'm gonna pretend to watch this movie so the guy doesn't shoot me, and maybe he will stop offering me Slim Jim's if I have headphones on...

Seattle + Yosemite trip report from May

I'm up in Seattle now, staying in the plush guest room at Ara's house. Ara is an old friend from college, who I haven't seen for probably seven years. I sent her an email the other day to see if she wanted to meet up while I was in town, and she proceeded to offer me a place to stay for a week. I didn't think she would remember who I was. She has been a great host, and I am having fun getting back in touch. Her boyfriend Eric seems like a good guy, and he has a beautiful Larrivee guitar and a mandolin to boot.

Today I finally escaped the heat wave that was slowing me down in Portland. It was nice and cool and I could wear the warm clothes that I dragged all this way. It rained a bit, so I left my camera in its case today when I explored downtown Seattle. I did a tour of the old downtown, which is buried beneath the current downtown, and learned about the history of Seattle. This could have been boring, except that the tour guide was pretty hilarious and made it worth the 15 bucks or whatever it was. Seattle also has a semi-ridiculous history in some aspects, which helped.

Also, today I bought the most expensive pint of beer of my life (not counting those sold at a baseball stadium) - $5.75 for a Newcastle at some pub downtown. I guess beer is very rare here.

Anyway, I included some pictures from my climb up El Capitan in Yosemite earlier this year, because I like to show off I guess. My buddy Wes and I climbed Lurking Fear this spring. It took us about five days on the wall plus a couple days hiking to get from bottom to top and back. Unfortunately we only had a Korean War-era digital camera, so the pictures weren't super exciting. But it gives you some idea of what we got up to. As we were sitting on the portaledge one night, preparing for hours of darkness and fitfull sleep, we tried to distill aid climbing into 3 words. If I recall correctly we came up with: work, fear, commitment. It was all worth it, though. If you can't make it up the steep side, I recommend doing the hike up the Yosemite Falls trail, and then turning left (man, you gotta make a left) and walking to the top of El Capitan. There is an unbelievable view from up there, looking down on all the other Yosemite monoliths with a bunch of the high Sierra peaks in the distance. It is 8.5 miles one way, so a 17 mile round trip, with about a 3000'+ elevation gain. It would be a burly day trip, but doable without a huge pack. With a haul bag full of climbing gear on your back, the 8.5 miles down to the valley is almost unbearable. The only thing that kept us going was the thought of cold malt liquor and dollar-fifty burritos, piping-hot out of the village store microwave. And taco sauce, lots of taco sauce. And water. I forgot to mention that all we wanted in the world was water. We drank 7.5 gallons on the wall between us (which is like 60 pounds of water that we had to drag), and it wasn't nearly enough. I could barely swallow at the hottest part of the day I was so dehydrated.
Anyway heres some pictures (the dates are way off on the camera, they are from May 08):

1. Golly these hooks are spooky the first few times you hang off 'em. They work like champs, though. Wes even rode one a little ways when it slid a few inches along a flake, but it still hung on. He was climbing in the dark at this point, last pitch of the day. We named that particular hook Sparky.

2. That's Wes at a belay about 1/2 way up the climb. No going back now, especially after the big traverse I was climbing when I took the picture. There are a lot of ropes and random other stuff on these big-wall belays, and you have to be careful not to get 'em all mixed up or you will spend the rest of your life sorting it out. He did an awesome job of managing it all.

3. Me trying to think about something other than the chimney I have to climb up in a few minutes. I'm probably thinking about how I want a drink of water, but it is either gone or in the bottom of the pig (haul bag).

4. When you climb a brazillion feet off the deck, and it takes you a week of struggling to get there, it is mind blowing to happen upon some random frog going about its business (I respect its privacy). Was that frog looking at you funny Wes? There are also dive-bombing sparrows (or some other kind of LBB) that live in the cracks. You never know if it is a rock or bird winging past your head.
5. This picture kinda sums up how it feels when a couple regular guys try to climb El Capitan. It takes a lot out of you. But each time either of us felt like shit or was running out of gas, the other one was there to pick up the slack. It was a great trip, safe as can be, and one I will always remember.

7. Our summit pictures. Check out the mountains in the background, its amazing. You can see all of Tuolomne Meadows too, they are out of the frame to the north. The pirate flag is an essential piece of wall climbing equipment.

welcome to the jungle

Went to the zoo yesterday. I love the zoo. But it was easily 900 degrees out in Portland, so all the critters were super tired:


And apparently the zookeepers got sleepy too, because one of the rare, endangered Siberian Calico Snow Leopards escaped its cage. I was lucky to escape with the loss of a couple fingers in the attack, everyone knows that the Snow Leopard is the most ferocious predator in the animal kingdom.


Also went to a Portland Beavers/Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball game. It was hot there as well. Got 4th row seats behind the plate for 12 bucks, which was fun. I was sitting next to a bunch of scouts who just talked shit about the players the whole game. Guess they didn't have much to look at in the Padres/Giants farm systems.

In between the zoo and the ballgame, I got dinner and some beers at a pub downtown. It was pretty empty, so I was talking to the bartender about Portland, and he mentioned that it was a nice city, but the pace of life is too slow. Later that night I was talking to a lady a couple years younger than me who said the exact same thing, the pace of life is too slow. She blamed it on the proliferation of breweries in town, and on marijuana consumption, which is profuse here. I'd never heard complaints about a slow-paced city before, usually its the opposite.

Alright its supposed to be like 925 degrees out today, even hotter than yesterday. I'm gonna lay low, maybe watch some movies, read some books. I've been told that Man on Wire is really good. And I am reading Norwegian Wood by Murakami, which is excellent so far. I just finished The Plot Against America, which may be the only written matter more boring than this blog.

Another day another antler another hobo

Nothing too exciting today. Except for more hobos and antlers. Must be the state motto or mascot or something. We've got the poppy and the little bird with the thing sticking out of its head in California...not a pidgeon...ah whatever...and in Oregon they have hobos and antlers. Here are the antlers I saw today:

And here is the only hobo that I wasn't afraid to photograph, but trust me there were way more:


I ended my day in the grand tradition of Portland - going to a bar to sing pirate songs. Unfortunately I didn't know any of the words so I just listened. It was fun, they were really good singers. They do it every Wednesday at this pub in SE Portland.

Weird, unique things like that are what I like about cities. Back in Berkeley we've got Thai Brunch at the Buddhist temple, or the Irish folk music at the Starry Plough. It is hard for me to accept just seeing stuff like this once, and then moving on to the next city. I like the idea of holding on to the things I enjoy and the people around me, a sense of permanence to what I do. Maybe traveling like this will help me understand that things are always going to change, and that is something you just have to get used to. Or maybe I will just move to Portland and hang out with the pirates for ever and ever.

Oh yeah here's a picture of a bunch of rugrats and Mt. Hood in the background. It has been just gorgeous here.


And yes I know it is a quail. What is that thing on its head anyway, a piece of flair?

Train + Antlers = Hobo

I have never been so happy to see an electrical outlet. I had pictured every seat on the train having an outlet next to it, so I could happily plug in my computer and watch movies or write about all of the weird shit I saw. Alas, the first seat I got had nothing of the sort. All it had was a neighbor named Karen, who is a nice woman from Bakersfield. She showed me the ropes - how to work the chair (stuff your suitcase under the legrest to hold it up if it is broken, which it generally is), how there are no electrical outlets where we were sitting...well those were the big things she showed me.

The train was packed leaving Sacramento, and the conductress was nearly at her wits end trying to accomodate everyone. But we all got on the train. Even with the gentle rocking of the train, sleeping was mostly a ruse. I closed my eyes to try and make my body believe it could slumber in a slightly-more-comfortable-than-an-airplane chair while trying not to lean/snuggle/drool on my neighbor. Conditions were not ideal for sleep. There was one guy with the grossest snore I have ever heard. Seriously. Some other guy scared the crap out of me during my one moment of actual sleep that night. He was walking down the aisle, and I guess the train jerked or something, and he tripped and caught himself on my chair. The result was me startled awake with some strange 50 year old man's face about an inch away from my eyeballs. Eventually the sun came up and I could stop trying to trick my body into sleeping. Luckily a whole slew of people exited train left at Klamath Falls (who knew it was such a destination), so I got a double seat all to myself. And as if by magic there is an electrical outlet by this one! I feel like I earned it.

The scenery was beautiful today, we passed Mt. Shasta this morning and saw a few other volcanic peaks along the way. There were ravines and rivers and gorgeous Jeffrey Pine and Douglas Fir forests. I got a picture of a hobo waiting by the side of the tracks in Klamath Falls. If you look closely, you can see his antlers, which are a critical component of hobo train-riding culture. This guy walked down the aisle later with a freakin antler in each hand.


Anyhow, my friend Claire picked me up from the train station this afternoon, we had dinner, and now I am lounging in a room way nicer than the one I left back in Berkeley. Maybe traveling isn't so bad after all.

To the station with a suitcase in my hand

So I am hanging out in the train station in Sacramento, waiting for the starlite coast to take me on the first leg of my trip up to Portland. I'm killing some time, playing some poker over my blackberry/laptop connection. It's all working great, which is awesome. What is not working great is this shrub in my peripheral vision, which is busting my stones at the moment. A completely innocuous bush, my peripheral vision has decided (repeatedly) that it is either 1. an indian or 2. some kind of knight or medieval guard or something. Maybe I should switch seats.

Anyway I included a couple pictures. One is of the creepy bush. Apparently the camera doesn't quite capture the peripheral creepiness as well as my eyes do. But I think you all get the idea of how creepy the shrub is. If not I have given you some hints as to what I am talking about.

The other is of me hanging out at the train station, decked out in my luckiest shirt (I'm not superstitious), putzing around on the internets.

This is the start of my trip around the country...will it be fun, boring, exciting, lonely, will I meet heaps of new people? Who knows. I'm sure some adjectives will be involved. At the moment I am open to whatever experiences I find out on the tracks. But maybe that will change after 16 hours of the click-a-dee-clack.

One thing I have noticed right away is the ratio of people I consider "my age" (18-29), and people that I consider "elderly" (30+) is greatly skewed toward the elderly. Perhaps this is because the elderly are the only ones that have the patience to deal with Amtrak. Maybe I can learn some patience. Or maybe I will just pull all my hair out.

Oh right, one thing that is definitely on my shopping list when I get to Portland is a flask. Where do you go to buy a flask anyway?

Leaving tomorrow

According to Amtrak, I'm leaving on the Coast Starlight tomorrow at 11:59PM from Sacramento, headed north. I am planning on coming back on October 17th. So far my stops are Portland - Seattle - Chicago - Laramie - Duluth - Philadelphia, with hopefully North Carolina and New York mixed in there somewhere. Looking at it now, I probably should have hired someone to help me plan all this. I've got a laptop, a camera, some clothes and thats about it. Guess we'll see what happens.

Anyway if you have suggestions of where to go/what to see, speak up.