Sunriver Thanksgiving 2007

For Thanksgiving this year I rented a vacation house in Sunriver for Emily, and I and my OSU buddies. Emily had a rough time traveling and the airlines lost her bags but after a night in Portland we were able to make it to 2 Gosling in Sunriver by Thursday afternoon. Shortly after we got there everyone else arrived and we began to cook our Thanksgiving Feast. We had mashed potatoes, potatoes au gratin, green bean casserole, pot stickers, and Thanksgiving egg rolls.. We made the egg rolls in an assembly line and put in sweet potatoes, veggies, stuffing, and cranberry sauce - it was like a thanksgiving explosion in your mouth after wee deep fried them. Speaking of Deep Frying Tristan is the king and that turkey was the best I've ever eaten. it was even injected with Tristan's special turkey sauce. It was very cool to see how he and Brie dropped it into the hot oil with a broom handle. When the turkey went in the oil erupted all over the ground. That night we had a great display of Mac's very disturbed mind playing Taboo. He quit playing when he got the to the word "Corn Beef Hash"... hahah. Mac passed out around midnight but woke up at 4am to see a very drunk Brendan and Tristan in a sparring match which sounded to me downstairs like the house was coming down. The next morning they both woke up with black eyes but don't remember anything.
Friday we went skiing at Mt. Bachelor. It was Toshi, Mac, Emily and I. Emily lost her Burton mittens but they were found a few days later and we got them back. Emily even found a $600 Blackberry phone on the slopes that we returned to lost and found. Funny thing about that is when the women there called the number the man had left for a contact the phone in her hand started ringing. If you don't get that.. take a second and think about it. As the day wore on the snow cover got thinner and thinner until we were pretty much skiing on grass at the end of the day. We even ran into Quinn and Ashley Hatfield on the mountain but they headed up to Mt. Hood the following day so didn't hang out with us at the house.
When we got back to the house Kristen had cooked soup and the other 20lb turkey I had bought in the oven. We again had a great feast and this night got even more tore up. Mac decided that we should all go on a drunken bike ride around the neighborhood. Chris Holm and Tiffany had shown up so Chris went with us as well while Tiff stayed inside and played video games. Toshi even got a ride on the back pegs of Emily's bike from the garage. Our house had about 10 bikes in the garage and all the bunk beds had stuffed animals in them which made for an interesting weekend. That night we also cooked a duck and had a dance party. Everyone enjoyed the hot tub again which made us even more drunk. Mac passed out and the evening was even foggy for Emily and I.
Saturday we all took it pretty easy. Bart, Splinter and Emily and I took a walk up the closed snow covered road to Paulina Lake in the the Newberry Volcanic National Monument nearby. On the way we saw beautiful Paulina Falls and got some photos in front of it. Saturday night we pretty much relaxed and watched movies, and I finished up the last of the booze.
Sunday we drove to Smith Rock to watch Toshi and Levi climb and take a hike around the park. Chris and Emily and I went over the class 4 scramble of Asterix pass to get to the other side of the park. We then followed Crooked River back for half a mile to where Toshi was. Smith Rock is truly an amazing place. It's like a giant crown of rock rising out of the high desert. There are literally thousands of climbing routes there. Emily and I then drove to Portland to get some dinner and show her the city. We stayed overnight in a hotel there and then I got her to her plane at 7:30 in the morning just in time for me to get back and make it to my Statistics class for the quiz questions.
It was a great Thanksgiving and thankfully nothing got damaged in the house. Tristan, Brie, Brendan, Toshi, Levi & friend, Emily, I, Somes, Holm, Tiffany, Bart, Karen, and Mac all came along. Emily had a great time and hopefully it's just more incentive for her to move out here pronto!

Toga, Toga, Toga!!!

Last night the party house (Jeff, Anna, Hodak, Chris, Cheney, Casey) threw a raging Toga Party. Brendan and I showed up around 10:30 and it was already slammin'. They had a Keg of PBR in the back and were collecting money for Hodak's bike replacement fund. When we showed up it seemed like there were a lot of undergrads there and people we didn't know but apparently they were all Chris Somes' buddies like Eben and Caleb. Anna helped me get my Toga on as well as Brendan. Gabrielli had a sick mix of songs going so I didn't break out my laptop until nearly midnight when I had several requests (I'm not going to ever talk about what happened to me Wednesday night at Chris Holm's birthday bar hop). In any case, it was a typical drunken party until a few of the guys in the room lost their togas and became shirtless, then it became a man eating affair for the single chicks in the room. Honestly, I've never seen girls attack guys like I did last night. A few of my buddies like Somes, Jed, and Logan literally were being attacked on the dance floor it seemed. Pretty damn impressive. Moe and Diego even showed up with a whole quarter keg of Oregon Trail for the party as well! Thankfully, I was taking the night off of drinking so I did not partake in any of the shinanigans I saw happening. At the same time a round of "face first" was started on the stairwell and I got to watch everyone eat rug when they got to the bottom step. Then Laurel decided to ride a bike down the stairs as well.... Crazyness. I ended up yanking my laptop at 2:45 and driving Brendan, Ruth, Kristen, and their friend home. Brendan's keys and jacket ended up going home with Kristen's friend but he luckily spent the night at my house and found them today while I was at a CMRU mainline failure training in Avery Park. Great night and great party. I highly suggest if you are reading this that you click on the title link to see a slideshow, but you have to be my Flickr friend of course to be able to see it.

OSU Vs. U of W.

Friday night was a rough one for me. First I had to endure the movie Darjeeing Unlimited with Brendan and Hodak. The same producers as "The Life Aquatic" and "The Royal Tennanbaums" made the same crappy film this time about 3 brothers riding around aimlessly on a train in India. I swear my life on a daily basis is more exciting then that two hour film. We could call it "The Ellinger Unlimited"! After the movie Brendan came over for some drinks and then we headed to the soccer game. There were a lot of people there including Toshi in Levi's Towelie costume from Halloween and of course Brian was the king of the night... completely trashed and cheering so much he nearly lost his voice. Pretty funny! The party then turned to Levi's where we watched a bit of fight club before returning home at 3am.
On saturday after studying all afternoon I headed over to Hodak's to pregame before the OSU football game. There I found that Hodak had sealed a PBR can into a window with plastic by accident to keep the house warm.. haha. I also learned from Dave that you can pay a tip a pizza delivery with 3 Michelob Lights... ha. We drank a bunch of beers and then headed to the incredibly packed game. By halftime we had taken out their quarterback and were winning by a good margin so we left for halftime to drink some more and make some brownies :). We went back to the game near the end to see OSU take the win and then back to Hodak's again for a party for Chris Somes' birthday. Near the end OSU definitely scored (the beaver launched in the air and laid the ball down on the end zone line) but they called it no touchdown. Was followed was the longest boo (like 10 full minute) I've ever heard. Sarah and Heather joined us and we had quite the dance party as usual. Brendan and I went home at about 3am with Brendan on my longboard... after several falls we made it back to my place and he realized he lost his camera somewhere. So, I gave him my headlamp and he actually went out and found it! Pretty impressive! Great night but I was so drunk that I didn't wake up in time in the morning to go biking with the boys like I wanted to! Oh well... Happy birthday Somes!

Make em' Laugh

So for those who read this and know me well you know that my life is in constant turmoil. I'm stuck between departments in Graduate School without funding, I've got to find a job soon to pay my bills, and I have a daughter, girlfriend, and family that I'm a continent away from. Life for me is generally a struggle but I get by day by day through making others around me laugh. If I was Popeye you could call laughter my spinach. My sense of humor is what gets me through in life. And every time I make someone laugh around me I feel better about things in general. Whether it is dressing up like an idiot to get a chuckle from my friends, or cracking a silly joke to the poor girls who work all day at the fast food joints in Moulton Union. Cheering people up around me during my everyday travels and activities is what keeps me going and I'm always willing to put in the extra effort to do so. If I stumbled upon a magic genie and had only one wish it would be that all the weapons in the world would turn into kielbasas. Because honestly, who could stay angry at someone when they are pointing a ridiculous kielbasa at you? Not only would everyone fighting burst into laughter, but it would provide a tasty treat for those hungry starving freedom fighters out there. And if it actually did come down to physical contact I don't really think I'd actually mind being beat with a delicious stick of beef! How awesome would it be if the weapon arsenals around the world looked like this picture? My only worry would be the kind of torture techniques they'd come up with using this weapon..... If you're not chuckling by now get your pulse checked.

Elliot Glacier with the OMC

Last night I met up with a few members of the OMC at the Tilly Jane Campground on Mt. Hood after a great day of skiing again at Timberline on the Palmer Glacier. I got to the campground around 6pm after getting a bite to eat at Government Camp after skiing. After a few hours of writing in my journal to Ellie, and rating my absurd amount of MP3's on my ipod Kalin (president of the OMC) and his girlfriend Denise showed up. Denise I found out is a waitress at Bombs (oh.. got's the hookup now!). In about 15 minutes we had a raging fire going in the pit with wood Kalin brought and left over wood from previous campers. At nearly 11pm James, Brian and Demi showed up in Brian's killer $350 truck. We all chilled out by the fire chatting a bit until James announced we needed to leave camp by 7am to be able to ice climb before noon hit. Thus, we all scrambled for bed. James ended up sleeping next to me in the bed of my truck where I used my bag inside of my roomates bag to keep warm (worked great).
In the morning we woke up and left camp around 8am headed up towards the Elliot glacier. I had my GPS (and of course my great directional instinct) so we were able to find the trail easily up the moraine from the Crag Rats Hut and campground. We made it onto the glacier by about 11:00 and took our time climbing the glacier up past the beautiful seracs. It was a beautiful blue day and the views of Rainier, Mt. St. Helens, and Adams were fantastic. I tried to frame Mt. St. Helens between the seracs of the Elliot glacier in couple photos. Near the top James and I took Brian off our rope team and scaled a pretty sketchy and steep section on the way to the frozen waterfalls. Halfway up it and with some pretty scary exposure we both realized that the rope between us was longer than the fall and neither of us would be able to hold the other if one of us fell... sketchy but we made it. When we finally got up to the frozen waterfalls at the head of the glacier we didn't really have time to climb so James and put in a few ice screws he borrowed from Logan for practice and we headed back down to make it out by dark. Demi, Kalin and Denise were able to do a little rapelling from the ice they had climbed as well. On the way down James and I jumped into a pretty big crevasse that had a snowbridge over it and tunnel. Check the photo. We ended up walking out in the dark for about half an hour but all safe. Great day and I think I definitely found a couple more serious partners for mountaineering out here. Click the title for a great slide show as usual.