Headin' Home and Hood!

After staying the night at Damion's I got up said goodbye to family, and headed on up to meet Emily for some Thai Food lunch.  Thereafter we goofed off near the point of the mountain where she was able to introduce me to a few of her parasailing buddies, and I got to fly and crash my RC glider.  It was really gusty, and there was a snow storm approaching in the distance.  After getting rather cold, I went back to drop Emily off, and went to the McEntires to watch 24, eat pizza, and then watch Ninja Assassin.  I crashed on the sofa that night and departed for Kent early the next morning.  By the time I arrived, I had about an hour or so daylight left, and I spent it catching up with my parents.  The next few days were spent unpacking a lot of my stuff, and playing with some of my expensive toys I had ordered while out in AZ.  Specifically, my new camera and lenses.  I also managed to revive one of the toasted computers downstairs, and establish a working FTP to use while I am gone.  I had wasted several hours trying to revive my personal computer, but after a long time I can only conclude that the PCI bus is toast on the motherboard.  Oh well.  Another project for another time.  One evening I met up with Yuka and a bunch of friends at a bar in Seattle for her birthday.  It was nice catching up a bit, and showing off my new camera to some other photo-nuts at the bar. 

The weekend brought up an opportunity to go out to Mt. Hood w/ Emma, Jaime, Breanna, and Brent.  The weather was looking great for the weekend, so we headed down there around 5am.  After a few gas and snack stops along the way, we got to Timberline Lodge around 9:30am.  The conditions were great.  Even though near the top of the lifts it was a bit crunchy and slick in some areas, it wasn’t that bad.  The groomed stuff was fine, but off the pack there were some inconsistencies.  I was pretty upset that I forgot to charge my camera battery before coming up, because it was blinking the “low-battery” light and only had a few exposures of life in it.  Down lower on the mountain by some of the trees, there were many trails and jumps with lots of fluffy powder to cushion botched landings.  Towards the later afternoon, the snow started to melt slightly.  It was perfect packing snow, and I couldn’t resist scooping up handfuls while on toe-edge, and flinging them at siblings or simply even trees.  We spent some time out in the backcountry hitting some great jumps, and going off some steep cornice overhangs.  There were a few great photo ops, but my camera finally died, so we used Emma’s phone for several shots.  Breanna lost her Ipod when she wiped out in the most hilarious manner.  The next run down I managed to find it about where she had landed, and it was still playing.  It wasn’t long until they started to close down the lifts.  Time flies.  Though, we were all pretty beat, sore, and tired.  The wind had really picked up and while one was on the lifts, it was nearly unbearable.  We packed up, and headed down to Gresham at the Hampton Inn.  There we kicked back in the hot tub, and ordered some pizza.  We feasted heavily and goofed off for the rest of the evening.  The next day we checked out, and headed back up to Kent for another Sunday with the family.  Shortly thereafter I discovered that I would be going to Kansas instead of Chile for my next assignment.  I was really looking forward to going to Chile, but I suppose I’ll have to chase tornadoes instead.