Family, that's what it's all about. Ty and Meghan spent Xmas eve with us then we all drove down to Eugene for Christmas with the entire family. As always Kaylin and Brooklyn were the center of attention. Andy deep fried an 11 pound turkey that was fabulous. I think he just inherited a tradition. The kids were fun, Santa was good to all and we were just so thankful to all be together. The next day we were invited across the street to a wonderful neighbor's birthday party. This ain't Klamath. When we moved in the average IQ of Cascade Ave dropped about 50 points. The neighbor Cliff is a statistics prof at OSU (I hated statistics). We chatted with a really nice lady who is doing Oceanic Paleantology of Foraminifera and then spectroscopy of their oxygen isotopes to evaluate ancient ocean temperature in the Bering Sea. Honest! It just goes on like that. But we didn't chat too much as Cliff's son was part of the four piece group playing incredible stuff on the mini stage they have in their living room. Previously we had been to the block Christmas party held by a pair of married doctors and I quite enjoyed meeting the entomologist and her forestry professor husband. Gee we feel dumb. It does rain a lot in Corvallis. The snow was in November we had a wet Christmas, not a white Christmas. Today ( December 27, 2010) the contractors are done! Please come visit.
As we get more moved in every day we have had some time to go Baby-sit Kaylin and Brooklyn and to have them here with us. They are just such a joy and usually have us howling with laughter in no time. I'll post a video of them dancing to the Beaver fight song over Thanksgiving weekend.
Just before Thanksgiving Tyler and Meghan arrived here in Oregon after 10 months plus on the road. Ty looked a bit like a Yeti as he hadn't had a shave or a haircut in months but we didn't care, it was just so good to see them and to have the entire family together again. Those of you who have followed their bus crash in Turkey should know that they both seem just fine now that they are back in clean sheets and western food once again.
Our new life in Corvallis is certainly not dull. Last Sunday (Halloween) Madri called us and invited us to join their two little trick-or-treaters for candy collection. Holy Sugar did we ever enjoy the show. Kaylin (Princess Arial) knew the drill and went flying door to door. It was Brooklyn's (a crab?)first attempt and she mastered the skills quickly demanding "nandy" at each door. It was just what we needed and reminded us of just why we are now living in Corvallis. Those kids are just sooo much fun. We have been doing beaverthings all week. We donated our pottery gear to the OSU craft center. We had a great weekend with Carlyle and Barb Stout watching our Beavers defeat Cal. We had a blast of Indian Summer and rode our bikes down to the river front for dinner and last night we went to the Thursday night Beaver talk show and had Mike Parker (The voice of the Beavers) sitting across from us and as he is such a friendly guy he introduced himself and was full of questions about us, our past, our days at OSU and it came up about Dick Fosbury (the high jumper) being my roommate. Mike jumped on that tidbit and I shared some stories. Then when he went on the air he opened the show by introducing Sheryl and me and relaying the Fosbury stories. He even got our football coach, Mike Riley involved in our Fosbury stories on the air. It was fun but a little bit embarrassing at the same time. Oh well I guess we will just have to deal with our new celebrity status. THE HOUSE: Every day we are seeing progress but we sure have a long way to go. Our big news is that we now have our kitchen 99% done! Whew! We also now have a functioning bathroom on the ground floor, although there still is not a door so we hang a curtain if you need to use our pot. Our master bath is under construction and has a tub but nothing else yet. A couple of more weeks and it should be done. Then we need some new doors, new windows, to paint, drywall, carpets, unpack two storage sheds, build storage in the garage, turn a giant garage closet into a shop, build a backyard storage shed...oh you get the idea. House-wise our most fun aspect has been the granite kitchen counter. We went off to Salem and selected the stone ourselves and we love it. I'll add some photos. But our biggest excitement is that a week from today (Nov 12) Tyler and Meghan will roll into town having completed their year on the road. We are REALLY looking forward to seeing them again and seeing their photos, hearing their stories and just catching up.
Lots of news on the moving front these days. Our "sale" in Klamath fell through at the last minute. An older woman was buying the place and it really needs young folks to maintain the homestead and I think her kids finally talked her out of it. That hit us hard but within a few days a nice young couple who reminded me of Bryon and Sheryl circa 1977, found our place on their own and have made an offer and it looks like its a deal but my oh my have we ever had issues to deal with which included a plumber, an electrician, and anti arsenic reverse osmosis water system, a couple of miners who dug out our crawl space, an under the house vent repair guy, dry rot removers/carpenters...the list has seemed endless but I think we are now done! Hopefully by November we will have a check in hand!
In Corvallis it has begun! I hired Evan Pine for a couple of days to help with the demolition of our kitchen and two bathrooms. Slegehammers, crowbars, cursing, swearing, many trips to the dump and finally a rented jackhammer and we turned our beautiful new home into a war zone. Fortunately Evan is really good at wreckin' stuff and his efficiency was remarkable. We both worked two days and he must have done 80% to my 20%. BUT....Its done. I'll add photos. We have ordered up a new kitchen and such and in about two weeks it should begin to get installed. That step will be a lot more fun. Until then we ae camping out here again. Thank god for the microwave.
Over the last twenty years or so I have been hearing about the Burning Man Celebration, Festival, Party, Extravaganza, Orgy, held every year out in the wastes of Nevada known as the Black Rock Desert.Mostly it has had a reputation as a place where people got naked, had sex and did drugs. So when my good friend Mike Reeder invited me to join a bunch of retired teacher guys to attend Burning Man this year, of course I said “yes!”It actually wasn’t something I have ever considered attending but my retirement philosophy is. “Don’t Say No.”So I said yes.
Eight of us took off into the desert after a 5-hour drive, and it was wild.They had 6 lanes set up to accommodate the 50,000 attendees and the traffic slowed to a crawl as the dust began to blow, then the summer rains came, turning the rain as well as the road into mud.It took us six hours of waiting in an enormous mass of humanity as the evening turned dark for us, to finally enter this near mythical area known as Burning Man City.We had no idea where we were but we saw others camping so we pulled to a stop, set up our tents and screwed up our courage to venture into the “Center Camp,” in the dark, on our bicycles.It was a half-mile ride through the pitch dark where we finally emerged into what was probably the most fantastic scene of my lifetime.It was as if we really had dropped ourselves into that famous bar scene in the first Star Wars movie.In the center of it all, moving across the desert were dozens of “mutant vehicles.”Private individuals, or perhaps groups, build them all, and they light up at nighttime into the most amazing, colorful assemblage of creativity on the planet.I simply cannot describe them and when you look at these pictures you will surely think “what’s the big deal?’Well it’s HUGE. I was Astounded! Breathtaking, Awe Inspiring. A living Dream.Pictures simply cannot capture it.Today we are home and all of us are so very disappointed with our photos as they cannot begin to recreate the experience. Nor can my words.
The second night when we ventured out into the dark we found an enormous steel beast that some wizard had built over 7,000 hours and at a cost of $70,000. It looked like an eight-legged dinosaur and weighed tons.He fired up its engine and it began to walk across the desert with these thunderous footsteps that shook the very earth. Oh it was wild.
Burning man is about art, creativity and giving. There are virtually no rules other than leave NOTHING behind. There is no trash.Much to our surprise there was no evidence of drugs or alcohol. Nothing other than coffee and tea is for sale. There are no drunks, no potheads.Oh it must go on, but we didn’t see any of it, just 50,000 folks all getting along beautifully.
Sex? Oh my.No rules for maybe 5% of the crowed meant no clothes.There were some partially nude men and women. Some totally nude. The old man (80?) camped next to us was essentially in the buff the entire time. Wow his butt cheeks sure got red!Even with all that skin showing it didn’t strike me as being as sexually oriented at Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Folks didn’t seem to be “hooking up” as much as simply “letting it ALL hang out”.If nudity offends you don’t even consider attending Burning Man.
During the days we rode our bikes mile after mile through this temporary city looking at the creativity oozing out of ever dusty pore.There are A LOT of actual art pieces. Some were simply fantastic.The camps themselves were just so much fun to see as these folks come year after year and set up elaborate “homes.”Some build two or three story structures. Some build geodesic domes. Some just go nuts.Man it was fun.
In the evenings we would go back into the center to watch all these magical mutant vehicles cruise through the night and to attend the “clubs?”One of my friends commented that New Years Eve in Times Square can’t hold a candle to what goes on at night at Burning Man.As there are no street/city lights, everyone wears personal lighting of all colors and every imaginable description.Some of it is sexually oriented, but most of it is not, its just simply wild.These clubs (sorry I can’t think of a better word) all play modern techno music where everybody just dances.Nobody has a partner, its just 10,000 lighted bodies gyrating in the night air in the most fantastic venues on the planet.
I have images burned into my mind that I will never forget.
We usually got separated in the dark so when we all got back to camp around midnight (it went on till 7am EVERY night) we would sit and tell stories. Yeah wild.
It’s called Burning Man because in the center of it all is a giant wooden, lit up, man-statue that gets torched off the final night.We had intended to stay for it, but the day before the winds began to blow and it was just so miserable we all left early, so we never actually saw The Burn. But none of us will ever forget our week at Burning Man.
For Several years Grant Pine and I have been planning to go tuna fishing off the Oregon Coast but somehow the summers just seem to slip away and we vow to go next year. Well, I decided that this was our year and got together 13 guys that went out Sunday August 15 and we had a great time catching what was for most of us, our first ever albacore tuna. We caught 28 fish. twenty-seven tuna and Grant caught a shark! I hope we can do it again next year.
In 1976 we moved into our little house in Klamath Falls and for the past 34 years we have fixed it up, added to it, and remodeled most every room. But life changes. Andy, Madri and the girls are now living over the mountains in Eugene and as of November 23 we expect Tyler and Meghan will be too, if they can find work when they return from their world travels. (Tonight they are in India). We have decided that in our Elderhood it would be wise to live closer to them and we want to see more of our grandkids and their adventures as they grow up, so we have made the enormous decision to move. We have spent time looking for a house in Corvallis where we went to Oregon State University some 40 years ago, and just last week we finally found a place we love and we bought it! So now we are trying to sell this house and as of tonight I think we have a buyer but time will tell. We are excited about living in a university town with all its cultural, sporting and artsie events. We will again have a life of the mind but we will dearly miss our good friends here in Klamath Falls, but it's only four hours away so we hope there will be a lot of visits back and forth.
For years we had heard about this famous free-spirited fair near Eugene that draws thousands of has-been hippies. Jenny wanted to go the day before her wedding so off we all went. Yowser. That place is the best people watching on earth. You see everything! You might notice in the video that I wasn't up for dancing in the hot sun as I was wearing my clothes so Sheryl found a new dancing partner who wasn't over dressed like I was.
This past weekend Jenny married Matt Solomon, a great young man she meet while in the Peace Corps in Kenya. They have been together now for four years and decided to get married along the banks of the McKenzie river in a beautiful ceremony that turned into quite a fun reception.
After surviving Disneyland and putting the kids on the plane home to Portland, Sheryl and I drove up the coast to Moro Bay, then the next day we headed to Berkeley, where we met with one of my best friends from fraternity days, Dave Smith. I still don't fully understand how it happened but twentysome years ago Dave got into the T-Shirt business and has made quite a career of it. We toured his production plant then had a wonderful meal with Dave and Jane at one of California's finest restaurants. We need to do more of that. Then for 4th of July weekend we went and spent a couple of days in San Francisco. Love That Place. We did our favorite Bike Ride, which starts at Fisherman's wharf then crosses the Golden Gate and around to Tiberon where we catch the ferry back to The Wharf. Sure, there is a beer in Susalito and another in Tiberon, so it's a fine day. The next day we went out to the Filmore for a jazz festival. Other than the fact there was almost no music, we sure had fun. Pure San Francisco with all its color, oddness and acceptance. It's good to get away but we did make it back to Klamth to spend the evening of the 4th with our group of great friends. Happy Birthday America.
