Posts categorized “Life”

Owens Beach is pretty at sunset…

A few weeks ago three of my friends did something pretty durned awexome: SEVENTY48.

“What’s SEVENTY48?” you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked. I really am. Good asking! Good for you! SEVENTY48 is an annual sea race that begins in downtown Tacoma and ends in downtown Port Townsend (which are Seventy nautical miles apart), and has a 48-hour time limit. SEVENTY48: get it?

Oh, and there’s a catch: all vessels must be 100% human-powered. No motors or sails of any kind. Only paddles, oars, hands, feet, etc. There are people in canoes and racing shells, stand-up paddleboarders, kayakers, and all sorts of the like. It’s also an “unsupported” race, meaning you can’t have people bring you food/water/supplies during the race. You have to bring with you everything you’re going to need to go Seventy nautical miles. Since the race starts at 7:00 PM, that usually means bringing stuff to camp along the way!

From the SEVENTY48 website:

Simply, SEVENTY48 is the spawn of Race to Alaska. The idea for the R2AK was born in a beer tent at a boat festival. SEVENTY48 was conceived after a beer at R2AK. Rules are simple: no motors, no support, and no wind. That’s right. HUMAN POWER ONLY. Pedal, paddle, or row. We don’t care. It’s up to you. (And this is a boat race. Leave your 10 speed-towing-a-canoe idea at home.)

My friends each took out a single kayak from NC Kayaks. That’s probably because NC Kayaks is owned by two of the three friends who participated in the race. Look how pretty and sparkly:

Oooooh pretty…

These aren’t your regular kayaks. They’re what’s known as touring kayaks: kayaks designed for fast, straight operation on lakes and oceans, not for dodging rocks in white-water river rapids.

From the NC Kayaks website:

A touring kayak is a type of sea kayak that is designed with long distance travel in mind. Our kayaks are fast, light, hard tracking, durable, look good, and have enough storage you can really go somewhere.

My family and I went out to support our friends: we headed down to the Foss marina on Friday evening (the race started at 7:00 PM) to see them off.

There they go!

Then on Sunday we drove up to Port Townsend to cheer them on as they came ashore at the finish.

Here they come!

One very cool detail is that the SEVENTY48 organizers provide each boat with a GPS tracker, and setup a nifty tracking website where you can track the progress of each of the teams.

Look at ’em go!

It’s quite a feat of endurance as well as logistical planning to not only be able to row for Seventy nautical miles but to figure out what you’ll need to pack for the voyage, and how to pack everything you’ll need into the hull of a kayak (NC Kayaks happen to be pretty roomy, which helps).

The winner this year complete the race in under 11 hours. Last year my friends completed the race in just over 45 hours, and finished in last place of all the teams who actually finished the race (there were a bunch of teams that had to drop out for various reasons). This year they vastly improved their times and completed it in under 41 hours… and still came in last of all the teams who actually finished the race (a bunch of teams dropped out again this year)!

It’s such a momentous feat that all of my friends got tattoos to commemorate it, with their completion times. They’re going to add a new line for every year they participate!

Oooooo tattooooo…

Yay for friends doing awexome things! Be sure to check out the SEVENTY48 website to learn more. My friends also wrote some blog posts about the event over on the NC Kayaks website, so be sure to read those as well for a more on-the-spot perspective. Maybe someday you’ll do something as awexome as SEVENTY48? I mean, probably not, but who knows?

WOT TH’!? WUT THE WUT!?
Yes, it’s me, posting for the first time since early June. I took the entire summer off from this website. And in that time, some things have changed in my life:

1. My wife started working from home
   Today, actually! We used to work close enough together that we would carpool to work and back (I’d drop her off and then continue on another ten minutes alone). Now? Not so much. So instead of carpooling…
2. I’ve started taking mass transit
   I now take the train to work! This has two new consequences:
   1. The train station is two miles from my work
      So (starting today) I will be walking four miles every day, automatically. ♫ Get in shape, girl… ♫
   2. FREE TIME UPGRADE!
      I now have about 40 minutes twice a day all to myself (sans close-proximity strangers) on the train during which I can get work done!

What work am I gonna get done with all that free time, you ask (who am I kidding, nobody is reading this)?

Well, for one thing I can actually update this here website right here quite a bit more. Probably not as much as the infamous March of 2017, during which I posted an update every single danged weekday. But more frequently than once a month. Let’s set the bar at 2 to 3 posts a week.

For another thing, I can plug some headphones into my laptop and start a-writin’ some musics! That’s right, I have an as-of-yet-secret music project that I’m working on this fall. I’m very excited about it! It will be full of sick 8-bit beats!

For yet another thing, if there are any other creative projects I can do with a laptop, I can work on ’em! Like maybe write something (other than websitey stuffs)? Or maybe art something? Who is to be knowing? Not me!

Finally, I can take my Nintendo Switch with me and play some vid-goms. And then review them for this here website!

Ch-Ch-Changes

Coinciding with all of these life changed, you might have noticed (who am I kidding) that I’ve ever-so-slightly changed the header and right-hand sidebar (or if you’re looking at this on a mobile, the bottom-most section):

1. I’ve decided to discontinue my “Of the Month” features.
   It was just too stressful to have to figure out three things to feature every month. Doesn’t seem like it would be stressful, right? But I just wasn’t enjoying living under the gun of the beginning of the month decision-making process. So instead…
2. REVIEWS!
   This whole website is going to be pivoting a little bit to be more review-based than in the past. Whenever I see/hear/read something that I like, I’ll write a review of it. The latest reviews will always be featured in the sidebar “Reviews” section. I have decided on six categories that correspond to my personal interest: Music, Movies, TV, Video Games, Tabletop Games, and Books. Right now there’s a bunch of really old stuff in there, just because I haven’t actually reviewed anything in a looooong time. But those’ll get replaced as I review more things! First Up: a new album review, coming this week! HONEST! Oh, and I also created a new blanket “Reviews” category, and changed my site’s top navigation to have a link to that, so you can just go to one place to read all of my reviews of everything. Neat!
3. Featured Posts
   If I write any post that is of significant interest or length (like this one is turning out to be), I’ll add it to the “Featured Posts” category. And it’ll show up on the sidebar as well! Neat!

That’s about it.

TL;DR

I’M BACK, BABY!

A Lovely Salad.

I found a predictive text generator and fed it the entirety of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space. It gave me back these 4 paragraphs:

The trees grew afraid of her consciously lied to seeds. With the moments the shining of the trees increased strength. It was a fearsomely archaic place that everything the Indians there had stunted. The men who hastened through the strange growths would draw all the changed colour out of humans. God was not so near. The blasted landscape forewarned the fruit portents. Thought be near a window overlooking the yard.

He thought unaccountably of the strange meteor. It must be something. It had shrunk down to just ooze. He climbed in.

There were other realms in the ancient dust. Sunlight changed to lethal grotesque night. He indulged in fallen detective, but there was absolutely none. It had been powerful acids. He climbed through the strange meteor to the growing luminosity of nothing but gouged, curving poison.

The spaces and trembling party realised that nature mystery was all that frightful messenger from unformed unnatural life. They gouged ye stoutest gardners.

These are a lots of funs! I’ll post them periodically throughout the remainder of the month! I think I’ll add some more Lovecraft texts to the mix as well and see what kind of salad we get.

More details on how I did it:

I somehow stumbled upon the Botnik predictive text generator (I don’t remember how). I found the entire text of The Coulour Out of Space on the internets, copied it to a text file (love.txt) and uploaded it to botnik. Then I had a window of Botnik open and a window of random.org to generate a random number between 1 and 18, which I used to pick the next word. I would then go back and add punctuation and clean up grammar (trying to get tenses to match and eliminating extraneous words, for example) to get it to make some semblance of sense.

A Pictoral Journey.

Just this past rainy Monday, my family and I were all driving around in our car (well, Carrie was the only one actually driving; Avery & I were riding in the backseat). My 3-year-old daughter asked if she could use my phone to take photos out the window. She ended up taking 86 photos in about 10-15 minutes. Here are my nine favorite in random order (click any to embiggen):

Also, at one point she put the camera lens down right on her leg and said, rather ominously, that she wanted to “take a photo of the darkness.”

The Darkness

Where’s her Pulitzer for Photography, Pulitzer peoples??

Daaaaaaaaaaaang.

Yeah, that’s me, I’m the guy who got a Nintendo Switch on launch day (I pre-ordered it).

Let’s SWITCH things up in here. GET IT? SWITCH!?

So. Yeah. I may not be very productive for a while. Or I might be (even) more sleepy that usual. Bonus: I can bring this thang to bed and play there!

It’s Time. Ladies.

A new video in which I transition from my mighty Winter Beard to my more sensible Spring Beard.

For the Ladies.

I’ve been growing out my beard since the middle of November. Let’s check in on it, shall we?

It’s gettin’ pretty big! Also, checkout how freakishly long my eyelashes are!