I just remembered that I started a blog last week and haven’t added to it in five days. Tomorrow I have to write a new editorial for the paper. Here’s the last one from two weeks ago. Washington seems like a distant memory. It’s good to revisit it.

What I did on my summer vacation


The cuts on my hands from shucking oysters are almost gone and so is the sunburn on my neck. Now as I sit here on this 45 degree rainy day I feel like it’s fall and I’m writing a “what I did on my summer vacation” essay.

When I left Steamboat two weeks ago the Yampa River had already found its bed to be too small and was rudely encroaching on people’s back yards and even some roads (see last issue’s cover). At that time Mt. Werner above the Gondola had no bare spots, and to make things worse, the skies were full of snow. If it cleared up and got hot for a few days, Denver news teams would be featuring the Dream Island Yampa River Regatta. Just as soon as the last of the Locals were delivered, I high tailed it to Denver to catch a plane to Seattle. Whatever natural disasters that might have happened would have to happen without me. I had a race to run… or rather, to ski. (see Idle Thoughts issue 8.10)

Besides missing my flight by four minutes and spending an additional half hour assisting a fellow passenger and her two small children, the trip was uneventful. Before I knew it I was at a restaurant in a yuppified version of the town where I grew up. The assortment of wines and cheeses was Kirkland, Washington’s version of fast food. It was delicious but it didn’t take my mind off of the impending race. It did, however kick off my birthday festivities. Birthdays are a great time to go home because people feel obligated to hang out with you. A few hours later my friend Kirsten and I met up with some friends on a sail boat on Lake Union sipping tequila. Something about the combination of the two successfully took my mind off the race.



The next day started like any post birthday should, with a few asprin and an energy drink. Soon I was up in Bellingham meeting the members of my race team, Boogie Universal’s Electric Mayhem. We spent the evening ironing out logistics and sorting gear. Turns out my brand new boots didn’t fit my borrowed skis so I had to borrow boots too. I was glad I tested them out that night. I was the first leg of the race, and no skis would have caused our whole team to have to forfeit. I spent the next four hours sleeping the kind of sleep you would imagine sleeping if you were 35 feet up in a tree house the night before your first race.



The drive to Mt. Baker was awe-inspiring. The mountains around Steamboat look like molars. That region of the Cascades looks more like canines chipped by Gobstoppers. By 6am it was already t-shirt weather. My job when the starting gun went off was to charge the undulating four and a half mile figure eight loop and hand my timing chip to my teammate Tim, a.k.a. Santa Bunny. The race was half Alice in Wonderland, half James Bond ski chase. I managed to finish well ahead of Guy-In-Tutu and just in front of Umbrella-Hat-Wearing-Lady-In-Dress, but Man-In-Cow-Suit managed to finish just ahead of me. By 9am, Santa Bunny was charging up the mountain with snowboard on back and I was catching my breath wondering why I was so freaked out about this race and if someone had put something in my coffee. Our team finished somewhere in the middle, but due to our team spirit, Eric our road biker’s photo ended up on the cover of the Ski to Sea section of the Bellingham Herald the next day.



The rest of the Northwest portion of my summer vacation consisted of wine tasting, oyster feasts and ferry rides, but due to lack of space, I think it is best to get back to Steamboat.



Back in The ‘Boat, things had not gone as planned. The “Epic Floods of ‘08” were cancelled (or postponed) due to cold weather. Apparently, after hearing this, a suicidal raccoon decided to cause a disaster of his own by getting intimate with a piece of equipment with 12,000 volts running through it. I was sorry to have missed that. I heard Lincoln Avenue offered some brilliant star gazing opportunities.



It has only been a week since I got back to Steamboat, but thanks to long warm days, I have managed to fit in two weeks of work on the paper and a trip to the desert to roof a friend’s A-frame. The town’s spirits are high with everyone in kayaks, rafts, on bikes or lazily walking the streets. Now that I have a moment to relax and gaze out the window at this second day of rain I finally have time to look back fondly at my summer vacation. What day is it? June 4? What am I doing looking back at my summer vacation when summer doesn’t even start for two more weeks? I better wrap this up. I still have some spring to enjoy!