Running

Allright, I'm addicted. The Portland marathon is in 3 weeks and 2 days and I have already signed up for the Columbia Gorge Marathon which takes place merely 2 weeks and 6 days after that. I couldn't resist. It looked so beautiful. Plus, I'll be in shape already, right?

After this, I might need to take some kind of break from running... I guess. Maybe, find me a good yoga studio again or take up swimming (as if). Maybe we'll try for the 100 mile bike ride on the fixie. One can only dream at this point.

All the best kiddos. Try to keep in shape.

MIA

So, I've basically been missing in action for the past few weeks. The thing is, that both my phone and my computer went down at the same time. At said time, I entered into a technological void.

In truth, It wasn't that I had no access to the world of technology (I had a borrowable, roomie computer and many people with phones around) but none of that was mine. Soon, I returned to the land of cellular phones but it was not such a quick process to find the right computer. After much deliberation, I have my "new" macbook pro off of the apple refurbished web site. I can only describe it as buttery. Everything is so fluid and beautiful, it makes me wonder how I made it through the two past years without a mac. This, simple and intuitive, design is what I am made to use. I think I'm in love.

So, what has happened in the past couple of weeks? So much... My sister, and most ardent reader, Katelyn, visited and then skipped town. We went to the highest point in Portland, to the famous international rose testing garden (where they breed new types of roses and keep roses from all over the world), to the gorge for a beautiful hike, on many a run and bike ride. We put fall crops in the ground for the garden and we made sun dried tomatoes and harvested a boat load of grapes and asian pears from my back yard. Also, we went on my personal favorite September activity, swift watching.

Now, if you have been reading this blog for some time, then you have already heard of swift watching but if you haven't you can read about it here. Make sure to check out that picture. It is beautiful. Since, I went with Katelyn, I have gone one more time with Alex- the gentleman that I am dating- as well as some friends and coworkers and I plan on going again on Friday. This year, I will get the most out of swift watching.

Outside of that, I have been getting sweet mail from friends and loved ones. Alex went away for a week and sent me three pieces of rad snail mail. Natalie, who lived in house for the month of August, sent a beautiful handmade card, and Rachael sent a sweet postcard from NH. All in all, it's been a good mail week (not to mention I got a computer in the mail).

Work has me by it's talons for the next couple of weeks. Today will be my 9th day at work and I have 5 more days to go before my break on Tuesday but believe you me, Tuesday will be a sweet lazy day.

Running is getting more intense as we prepare for the longest of our pre marathon runs on Saturday. It will be a 20 miler. But, right after that we go into tapering and I am, as of yet, undecided about what will follow the marathon. Maybe a half in December? Maybe for the winter, I will transfer to an indoor exercise program. Back to yoga perhaps... There is plenty of promise about, as the air grows crisp and fall approaches. Anything goes.

Sorry for the helter skelter fashion of this post. I avow to update more concisely and frequently in the near future.

All the best sweet ones.

Camps for Champs: I've said it once and I'll say it again

Yesterday I was on my first non campsite based camping trip and, to date, my favorite camping trip. The last trip I went on was good company and definitely had some perks but this camping trip was just above and beyond.

Firstly, we biked to the park in which we camped, secondly we cooked trout wrapped in fig leaves on the embers of a fire, thirdly, there were barges floating by our shore at all hours of the night, fourthly, such good company. fifth, did I mention we camped on the shore?

The weather was beautiful after raining intermittently all day it cleared up where we were and gave us a pretty sunset and some light to collect firewood by. Delicious snacks were packed and, of course, no pictures were taken. Sorry guys, you're just going to have to imagine. The one downside is: the ground is not comfortable to sleep on. Who knew?

Hope you all are getting some adventures yourself.

Adventure time

I have been hanging out with a bunch of adventurers. We've gone on adventure runs where we ended up sliding down steep embankments to get to roads and finding secret parks and happening upon beautiful rose gardens.
We've gone to parties where we danced all day and then walked across the city stopping only for peanut butter and jelly fries.
We've caught cherries that were impromptu picked from up high and thrown into waiting baskets (made of t-shirts being worn).

Work has been plentiful but oh, there is so much time in a day. Yesterday I visited the Rhododendron garden and stopped by a vietnamese sandwhich spot and ate green tea and red bean cake. It is good to be young and full of hope and energy.

I hope that you are finding some adventures of your own out there.

Best,
Rachel

Day one of the Adventure

Surprise, surprise, I didn't take any pictures from the road.

But, no worries little people, I redoubled my efforts upon arriving in Seattle.

Here you have what I had:

building that looked cooler in real life (dagnabit my lack of camera mastery). 

 part of a underwater scene mural

Another part of that mural 

Some of the street signs are on the corners in the ground 

 Another example (and a glimpse of my new shoes)

First picture from Pike Place Market. The first of many "neon" sign viewings.  

 Shellfish at the market

 Lil' clams

 Flowers at the market

 I'm tellin' you. They love neon in this town

 Or garish signs at least

 My pants and my shoes on "vacation"

 This is when I was figuring out if you could take pictures through view finders.

Down at the dock some detritus and a ship  

Some neat column sculptures 

 Another in the series of "columns"

Mural at the hostel

Photodocumentation

These pictures are from my friend's cell phone. I'm hoping that we can soon get even better pictures from our new friends but so far it's a no go. So, here's what we've got.

Sea Lion on a Buoy

 Harbor seals (we were actually much closer than all of these pictures lead you to believe)

The Coast from the water

 Sea caves that we almost went inside.

Eclipse (might just look like the sun in this picture).

Whales!

Went whale watching in a tiny boat.
It was awesome.
Watched a mama and a baby Grey Whale spraying simultaneously.
Looked at the Oregon Coast from the ocean.
Saw the solar eclipse from the sea.
Spotted an endangered Steller Sea Lion and some bespeckled harbor seals.
Rode in a car with a friend.

Forgot my camera.

Still, I made friends with one of the ladies who went awatching with us and she may send me some pictures. Stay tuned for updates.

Love,
Rachel

Weekend "Adventures"

This obviously, isn't a picture of me (unless you readers who haven't met me believe me to be a 7 year old boy, then believe what you want). But, this is about how I looked like yesterday while learning to fly a kite. A short run, is good for ascent, is what I learned.

Why did I go kite flying you ask? I went as an adventure for the weekend. I was supposed to go canoeing with a boy that I met last week as a sort of date.
Unfortunatly it ended up being to cold to canoe so we flew kites at a local park when it got warmer. It was magical.
This picture and an article on flying kites are brought to you from http://www.dailycandy.com/kids/san-francisco/article/82847/Tips-for-Successful-Kite-Flying.

Aside from our kite flying adventures we went to a show on Friday together, out to get lunch the next day before my time at the Restore. We met up and watched a movie in the evening after the Restore and regrouped again for brunch and kite getting/flying adventures the next day.

We spent all morning hunting for a specific article of clothing at the mall, collecting a couple of kites (the first few places we went didn't have any), and getting chicken samples from the Mall's food court. Did you know you can do that?! I had no idea. It was weird to be in a mall but kinda fun to be there ambling aimlessly, looking at people, and eating free food. Afterwords we successfully tried to fly kites and then hung out with my roomie Sauce.

It feels like Romance is in the air. Though if could just be allergies. Don't get too excited people.

All the best,
Rachel

Bagby Hot Springs

This Sunday, as a special welcome to Oregon treat (to me), I rented a zipcar for myself and some friends and we went up towards the mountains and to a hot spring known as Bagby Hot Springs.

I have no experience at a hot spring and this was an interesting start. The place was up a beautiful hike passing the gorgeous Clackamas river multiple times and finally getting to a rustic, but developed, hot springs with a set of wooden tubs.

Unfortunately, the day that we went there seemed to be some difficulty with the water flowing into the tubs. So, it was a very long wait for a hot springs fed tub for the group. Still, the company and the trip was pretty much worth it even if we had ended up absolutely nowhere.

The trip back (some would say the highlight) incorporated a very strange safari themed restaurant in which we spent over two hours despite being one of only two tables there. It was a bizarre restaurant full of taxidermied exotic animals, a stage with a disco ball, hunting themed video games, and very few unfried vegetarian dishes (I'm talking friend zucchini, fried mac and cheese, and onions rings as a selection of the meatless options). Pretty sure the healthiest option was fettuccine alfredo.

While, there were some set backs in the operation of the adventure machine, It was still a great time. It was weirdly, invigorating to drive a responsive car through curves and up hills. And, it was really nice to see everyone that came along and admire the beauty of this state that I now live in.

Hope you all got into something fun this weekend.

Trading Up

In the past week both of my parents, independent of one another, told me I looked like a bum. For real, the terms "bum" and "bummy" were used to describe the state of my apparel.

Since I am, in no way, a fan of shopping (except of the online variety for non clothing items), they have been hard pressed to get me looking more middle class some other way.

The compromise that we settled on was that while they were both out working and earning the money to buy their own new clothes, I  stay at home and look through my mom's overstuffed closets and find some things to replace the particularly unseemly contributors to my wardrobe.

I pulled this from an online dictionary so that you all could see the irony in this set up (and possibly the reason that I really am a bum).
bum ¹  (bm)

n.

1. A tramp; a vagrant.

2. A lazy or shiftless person, especially one who seeks to live solely by the support of others.

 Here are a few of the goods:

Burnt orange shirt longish sleeves 

Replaces grey shirt three quarter length sleeves with weird fasteners on them

 Black V-neck Tee with "paint" 

Replaces Grey V-neck that shows every drop of sweet my body releases

 Lace tank top

Replaces 50's diner waitress shirt with ink marks all over it.

 Burnt orange coat dress

Replaces burnt orange "potato bag" sweater dress

White fluffy skirt and Black tank

Replace too large grey tank and nothing

I'm happy with most of my selection and they're happy that I'm trading up to clothes that I can get a real job with. Oh, a real job. That's what I'm supposed to do with my life.

I'm looking forward to my return to Oregon, new stuff or not. Yoga (at multiple studios), Whale watching, Hot springs going, Desert visiting, and $2 beers, all await me. And now that going to Oregon no longer means going back to a place where I have no one I am pretty excited to see all of my friends and housemates (the two are not mutually exclusive).

Shout outs to Mom & Dad for always looking out for me. Shout out to Oregon, I'll see you soon. Shout out to Mamaw, I miss you already.

Into the Wild and other Christmas Adventures

Katelyn and I spent Christmas morning hiking at a spot called Angel's Rest. Much of the time, we were wondering about what in the world we were doing outside, in the rain on Christmas day.Some of the photos may reflect that.

Katelyn, unsure about the babbling brook. 

 Me "why are we doing this"

 Katelyn's finally coming around to the hike (in the background is the beautiful Colombia River)

 A beautiful tree burnt in a past year's forest fire

 A little gnomey doll we found on a tree.

 At the peak of our hike

 There was a lot of fog but we know the view would have been spectacular

Bracing against the cold under this tree.

 Frowning at the cold, in front of the void.

A window into the void through these rocks

pictures really can't do it justice

We spent the rest of our day baking labor intensive cookies, making (and eating) curry and coconut rice and watching Christopher Nolan movies with my friend Jon. Making cookies, eating curry and watching movies is my and Jon's new Christmas tradition. We did it last year and hopefully we'll do it in years to come. After Jon left Katelyn gave me some delicious looking canned foods to eat. We got into one of them this morning. 

Canned goodies

To continue our Christmas festivities we will be opening a package we received in the mail today from home.

Hopefully you all are having safe travels and fun times out there over this holiday season.

long time no post

Can anyone tell me what my little sister is doing going to CA? I for one have had no news to talk about until today (hence the long pause in posts) but somehow Katelyn, the aforementioned little sister, has made plans to hit up CA and I didn't even know about it.

You people need to keep in touch with me. I've spent the last couple of days making carrot juice at my neighbor's house and you've spent it doing god knows what. No one ever tells me anything. Also, that carrot juice did turn out delicious. I'm trying a kind of crazy diet right now to stop the pattern of reoccurring yeast infections that I've been getting (sorry, TMI I know, but it's a big part of my life right now) and you guys are climbing mountains, training for half marathons, taming lions, etc etc... I feel so cut off.

Alls I'm saying is "call a sister from time to time and tell her what you're up to".

Canyons and other adventures

Hey! Hey! Pictures. Yep, I've got something special for you.

Yesterday Katelyn and I went to an awesome canyon while Stephanie was at work. Yay to visiting sisters who live in awesome places!

Then last night, after the work day was over, we all headed over to Aspen to meet with Stephanie's friend Jenny, eat an overpriced dinner, and watch a kinda strange show. Sorry, I don't have pictures from the show. I forgot to bring my camera there. But, here's the canyon

Black Rock Canyon (see that little river down there?!)

Some of the high peaks inside the canyon which was crazy deep

Rocks, bush, and the sky at the top

Lichen on the rocks at the canyon

Stay tuned for more great pictures. It's vacation baby!

untethered

Recently, I've been feeling a little un-moored not having my usual friends and family around. It's strange to start over, have to make new friends, find new jobs, make connections with people you're not sure about making connections with.

It seems like this feeling comes and goes but that it is stronger now than usual. I wonder what it is in me that needs to adventure and to test if I can make it on my own. It seems like it would be safer, I'd keep more relationships in tact, and put down roots if I just stayed in the same place. At the same time, the idea of putting down roots is, in itself, terrifying because it seems crazy to root yourself somewhere when you don't know anything about anywhere else and you don't know what you're doing there in the first place.

Do people deal with these issues their whole lives? I sometimes want things to be simple and to know what is a good decision but I guess that wouldn't be very exciting.

Here's hoping that all of you are figuring out the answers to your questions and continuing on your own adventures as best you can.

Upon Checking my Email

Today as I checked my emails what did I find?!?

A friendly little email reply from a soon to be couch surfing host who is going to let me stay on her futon or love seat while I get settled into Portland. Hip Hip Hurray!!