Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Kayaking...


Me and abby went Kayaking the other day on lake union. Our friend Tim works at NorthWest Outdoor Center, and he snuck a few boats around his boss for us to hop in, and we went all over the bay. It was hot and beautiful, and I got quite a few good pictures. There was awedding going on at Gasworks, complete with brass band and lots of dancing. I think the couple must have rowed over, because we came upon this fearsome looking craft in the shallows. The picture of the flower I took early the next morning.






t-minus 15 days, 4 hours, 34 minutes
364 hours

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

working, toiling, sweating...

I've been working a ton the past couple weeks. I leave in three more! I just picked up the book on tramping (hiking) down there, and I am psyched for some of the areas I'm going to explore!

I stumbled upon my friend Ian's website, he's always been an adventurous guy, but he's outdone himself this time.   he's in Antartica at Mcmurdo station, and some of the pictures are amazing. In his last post, he's excited because of temps forecasted in the positive for the first time since he arrived.

A little eye candy: breakfast in Utah.


Thursday, September 07, 2006

Big news!!

I bought my plane ticket yesterday! I'm going to find some crazy way to get to San Fransisco (or just take the train), and fly out Oct. 12th at 9:30pm. I'll leave NZ from Auckland, the largest city at 8pm on the 21st and arrive back in San Fransisco at 11:15am the same day. I'll recover almost 9 hours. Weird.

Its a 13 hour flight and 6,500 miles (10,500 km) each way. Crazy.

Mount Si hike






Me and my mate Otis climbed Mount Si on Tuesday, just before he started at Garfield again. We got up with the sun, left Seattle around 7:15, hit some traffic across the bridge and on the eastside, and started up the trail at about 8:15. We summited around 10, spent about 45 minutes eating and enjoying the view, and ran down the trail, arriving back at our car at 11:54 sharp.

Mount Si has a big frickin' pile of rock that makes up the true summit, which requires a bit of a scramble to get to the top of. Called the Haystack, most of the people who make the hike (probably 99% of them, and Si is rumored to be the most climbed mountain in the US) stop about 500 yards short of the base. A 200 foot scramble later, and you are treated to 360° views of Snoqualmie Valley, Seattle, and the Cascades. Its really very cool. The steepness of the west side of the mountain gives you an almost vertical 3500ft drop to the town of North Bend. Cool! Afterwards, we soaked in the river for a while. Good day.

Saturday, September 02, 2006

Alaska in July



These are some pics from Alaska. My dad took these from his kayak in 2001.The snow melt made waterfalls like this everywhere, and the birds nesting around them made it only more spectacular! Click for the bigger version to get the full effect.

Google Maps Pedometer...

Ever find something random that you can play with for hours, with no goal or particular reason? Well, check this out. Google Maps pedometer. You click anywhere on the map of the world to make a waypoint, then click somewhere else to measure the distance between the two spots. You can create very complex paths. Cool...

Link