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Uncle Markie out and about.

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Tue
16
Aug '11

Day Starts In The Toilet.

And Ends Beautifully.

Not enough sleep.

The 8:30am call from my broker’s assistant telling me how to fill out forms that I hadn’t even printed out yet was the second she had placed. Apparently I slept through the first one. Crisis number one. Non-savable encrypted PDF that I can only fill out and print, and I can’t even cheat and print it to a PDF file so that I can add my signature to the damn form electronically. A six page form, that I now have to print out, sign, scan and email back to them before I can leave town.

To do it I had to pull the scanner (which is actually a dead inkjet all in one) into the living room and hook it up to the machine that can actually create PDFs and my laptop’s ability somehow got scrambled. Oy!

Crisis number two… while having packed MOST of what I need, I haven’t packed the talisman and its box, or the ice box. And by the time you know it, SHIT, the trunk is full, the floorboard of the passenger side is full, the front seat is full. No picking up hitchhikers this trip!

The plan was to get out of the house by 10am. In reality 11:05.

  • 30 minutes into the drive I realized I have forgotten my lounge chair for in front of the cabin
  • 60 minutes into the drive I realize that I most likely have forgotten my good camera
  • 2 hours in I stop for cheese to go with all the meat that I have in the cooler and realize I’ve forgotten the asparagus and the spinach/yogurt dip that I was going to buy dipping vegetable for. I leave the store with twice as much ice as will fit in the cooler, cheese, cheese/salami rolls and marinated olives.

After such a crazy morning I didn’t even bother to turn on the radio (other than a flashing traffic alert notice). It was just me and the purr of the engine and the whistling of the wind. Very soothing. Makes me not care about the three items above.

In my franticness of leaving I decided to skip Costco in Portland and cruise straight south through Portland and take the left at Salem, the high speed way since I was an hour behind rather than going the scenic back way. After being behind the wheel for an hour, the new plan was to skip Costco, but stop in Woodland at the just off the freeway Safeway for gas and cheese, which would be quicker than NY trip to Costco. That would give me enough gas to get to Breitenbush Hot Springs the back way, and still have enough gas to get me back to Washington on the return home.

Final remaining shopping item was booze since my order for $100 of brown liquor from California isn’t coming. Hail Estacada! It only took me 10 or 15 minutes to find the liquor store (damn state stores), but they had the Aberlour 12-year on special for $7.00 off. I should have stopped at the 2nd Hand Store that looked heavy on the junk — hopefully they will be open on Sunday when I might have more room.

Contrary to Dancing Bear’s theory, I don’t think coming the back way taking longer. Caveat is… coming from Seattle because you slice off about a half an hour by bypassing the central route from Portland. It ends up being the same. I left at 11:05am, got to the front gate of Breitenbush at 4:10 with:

  • The Safeway Food/Gas stop
  • The wrong exit detour (damn Streets and Trips — really, get off the freeway, get back on the freeway, go two exits)
  • The booze run in Estacada

Checked in, unloaded, iced beverage in my hand by 4:30. Set up the computer, charge the camera, charge the cell phone, blog, chill. Speaking of chill, the passenger side carpet got a chill from melting ice.

It was a nice hour and a half of being in the woods, scotch in hand, the sound of the river in the background before heading to the dining hall, wine in insulated coffee mug for what I rightly assumed was a carb heavy dinner. Two plates of salad later and with the wonderful company of Wind and Keystone we were headed back to the cabin to see if a last minute move could be accommodated. I begged not — it’s so tacky to have magic marker changes on registration envelopes.

My evening entertainment was pulling on of he chairs from the cabin and having an after dinner dram of scotch reading the Wall Street Journal. The alternative was waiting straight people “kelp dance”. It’s so odd being here when it isn’t a “closed camp”… I have to remember to:

  • Keep my clothes on
  • Not go into the woman’s bathroom because it’s more convenient
  • Not just whip it out in the woods and take a leek
  • Not swear as much since there are children around

My goal of keeping to gathering to 150 faded with heartfelt pleas, which I starting ignoring when we passed 180. Beyond that the kitchen can’t function. Feeding 180 men is twice as hard as feeding 180 men, women and children. We eat twice as much.

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