Totality

Today I experienced the most beautiful natural even I’ve ever seen.  The 2017 North American total eclipse passed directly through Salem and millions of tourists traveled to Oregon to see it.  Everyone chose Oregon because the chances of good weather without clouds is incredibly high during the summer months here.  Emily’s cousins Gary & Deb with their kids Lexi and Stephen even came out for it, but unfortunately we weren’t able to meet up.  With so many people coming to Oregon the news put us locals into panic mode about it.  Cities were telling residents to stock up on water and gas like it was going to be armageddon. Everyone was saying that travel would be impossible.  

Riggott Family Reunion

What a disaster of a travel situation for us!  Emily and I had chosen to fly out of Seattle for our trip home for the Riggott family reunion to make it easier for us to start our sea kayaking trip in Vancouver… wrong choice.  Despite the horrendous travel we endured the party thrown by Emily's father more than made up for it!  

Billy Chinook Wakeboarding

Emily put together the best birthday for me that I’ve had in a decade and it involved a sport that I hadn’t done for nearly just as long!  This year our friends Eric, Athena, Jen, Jason, Ian, and Colleen joined Emily and I on Lake Billy Chinook for an absolutely amazing day wake-boarding!  Eric found us a great spot in the Cove Palisades Deschutes Campground where we had two fun nights - one drinking and one recovering… read on…

Trask Trail ride over the Coast Range

This weekend against all common sense I decided to try to ride my mountain bike 67 miles over the Coast Range of Oregon from Hillsboro to Tillamook.  I left the house at 6am and was on the way by 7am after stopping for some snacks and breakfast.  It was a a fun ride that took me through the countryside of Hillsboro past alpacas, bison, and lots of cows to logging roads through Weyerhaeuser land through the mountains.  

Rachel Visiting

My longtime friend Rachel from my years at Bowdoin visited Emily and I this week before a conference was attending at Skamania Lodge.  We picked her up from the airport on Tuesday night and had a wonderful evening catching up with her in our backyard over dinner.  She seems to have a wonderful job on the Hawaiian island of Lanai and we were deleted to be invited to visit them whenever we’d like.  While chatting a big fat raccoon ran along the top of our fence delighting Rachel who doesn’t get to see mainland wildlife often and perking the interest of Leo who watched it intently

Leo's Washington Coast Trip

For the long Memorial Day weekend Emily and I decided to take Leo on a road trip.  This is a tough time of year as the snow is too deep for any serious mountain backpacking and anything else we could have decided up on we wouldn’t have been able to bring Leo.  So, on a whim we headed north towards Bellingham, WA with the intention of driving down through Whidbey Island and then around the Olympic Peninsula which Emily hadn’t seen yet.  We had no concrete places to sleep and no clear itinerary yet it turned out to be a blast!

Easter 2017

This year we had a pretty low key easter up in Portland.  When we didn’t hear of anything going on in Corvallis Emily and I decided to invite about 30 people to our place.  But, because it was a little last moment and most had plans we ended up with just Jason, Jen and Alder coming up to visit us for Zombie Jesus Day.  Scott and Danielle stopped by for a bit on Easter to snack on dinner with us as well on their back back from family in Seattle.  Jen and Emily died eggs, Alder sat on Leo’s head a few times and I enjoyed a lot of ham.  Nuff said :)

Sandy River Delta Park

Today we took Leo for a walk at Sandy River Delta Park.  This park is at the mouth of the Sandy River where it enters the Columbia River.  This spring was particularly wet in the Northwest so the Columbia was pretty high and much of the park was flooded.  This didn’t deter us from having a great time taking Leo for a walk.  In a few places we had to literally crawl across wooden fencing above the water to get by.  Leo of course had fun just wading through the water to the other side.  I took my 900mm lens along for some bird photography and came home with some great shots. 

Anna's Birthday Party

Tonight Emily and I walked over to Anderson’s house where Nate and John also live for a birthday party for our friend Anna Li!  It was a cheese and wine party and of course when we showed up Nate was dressed, well, like Nate and Anna was wearing a birthday crown made for her.  Porter and Rebecca were there and Tom also showed up.  It was nice to catch up with Erin and later in the night Brian S. showed up with Thomas as well.  It was a fun little party but I definitely regretted mixing stouts and hard cider 22’s later that evening!  Leo had a great time too as everyone love’s Leo at parties!

Snowpacalypse 2017

This past September marked 10 years I have been living in Oregon and never have I seen so much snow fall in the valley before.  I stuck a ruler on our table outback and it measured just under a foot of snow overnight!  What a great time to have a hot tub!  Read on…

Snowpacalypse

I’m not sure what is going on this year but Oregon is getting dumped on with snow.  Since mid November we’ve had an amazing year so far and this week the snow actually lowered down to the valley and Portland.  We got about 2 inches of snow on the ground and of course all the news outlets began calling it snowpacalypse!  Ha!  If only everyone had grown up on the East Coast driving threw blizzards they’d realize how sill it was.  Unfortunately, there are a lot of bad drivers out here and when combined with the fact that Oregon doesn’t salt the roads it ended up creating a 4 hour drive home for Emily who only works 20 minutes away now!  She left work at 5pm and didn’t get home till after 9pm!

The day after it snowed beautifully over the city the snow turned to freezing rain.  Emily somehow still drove to work but by the time Leo and I got up the whole neighborhood had turned into a skating rink!  I took him out for a walk and was able to run and slide down the entire icy sidewalk.  Our driveway was a sheet of ice except for where the Prius had been and our new backyard was completely covered in icicles!  Leo even had a hard time walking down the sidewalk on his morning walk.  Thankfully, a few days later everything was melted and back to normal but for those few days the whole city came to a stand still!

Forest Park with Leo & Escape the Room

Today Emily and I headed to Forest Park in Portland for a hike with Leo.  It was super short at just a couple miles but was enough to put a big smile on Mr. Lee.  In the evening we met up with Chris Harmon, Ian and Colleen and Sesha at Gastro Mania for a truly amazing Greek dinner before heading over to Escapism Portland to try to “escape a room” in 60 minutes.  Our room was a difficult one called the Wizard’s Lair and despite our best efforts we only made it about 50% through all the puzzles before we ran out of time.  One of the actors who played a hunchback apprentice showed us all the puzzles we hadn’t gotten to yet and said we actually did fairly well for the first time.  

It was an absolute blast and Emily and I look forward to trying to escape a different room with friends in the future.  Apparently, it is becoming really popular.  I also can’t wait to head back to Gastro Mania for another Chef’s special!  After the room we all came back to our place for a few more drinks and hot tub before calling it a night.  Ian and Colleen ended up staying over with us for the night.

Thanksgiving 2016

This year Emily and I decided to host Thanksgiving.  We had a new backyard and hot tub and nobody had made any secure plans yet so we invited the usual crew up to Portland to spend the  day with us.  Everyone arrived on Wednesday evening, bottles of booze in hand to start the festivities.  We didn’t have dinner plans so we just ordered some Thai food and snacked on what was around.  We had a full house of dogs for sure!  Jason and Jen brought Alder, Scott and Danielle brought Fawn (they got Fawn after Arrow passed away this fall), Pos and Oliver, and we had Leo.  

Holm Bachelor Party

With Chris and Paris getting engaged over the summer and their wedding on January 7th we weren’t left with an ideal time of year for a bachelor party.  It was the shoulder season when there might not be enough snow for skiing and possibly just too much for mountain biking.  Many national parks and attractions we may have gone to were also beginning to close in early November and his brother didn’t have a passport to get into Canada.  This left very few options for us.  We were stuck between heading out to Anthony Lakes to ski in December or mountain bike in Bend in November.  Upon getting hold of all his friends and brother the consensus looked like November was the best time for everyone so Bend was the best option.  Read on…

Halloween 2016

Once again this year Danielle and Scott hosted a Halloween party in Corvallis and as usual the decorations, costumes, and food were fantastic!  We were super excited to visit Alder again whom we hadn’t seen in a very long time since he was a puppy over the summer.  We ended up staying with Jen and Jason this year instead of Danielle and Scott’s as we didn’t want to add any stress for them and they have a new pup named Fawn who is a bit skittish.  Read on.

Goodbye Cardno

Well, that was quick.  After just over a year with Cardno and through a useless lawsuit against us (see previous post) Cardno was shutting us down.  Layne gave us a heads up something was coming and it was pretty rough for all of us knowing that all of our efforts were for nothing.  I had literally just organized all of our gear and was finalizing acquisition and project planning protocols for us.  Oh well.  When they came the current head of America's at the time did say that it was a failure at the upper management level and not any fault of ours but that didn't make it any easier.  

AREMA Conference

Honestly, I’m not sure why I was sent to this conference.  It was the American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association (AREMA) yearly conference in Orlando and I had no idea how to market our aerial services to the rail industry but Layne and Jason had wanted me to go to meet a guy named Carlo who was a Cardno Manager in the region.  A woman named Sheri was also at the conference whom I hadn’t met before.

IRWA Conference in Nashville

I was home for literally 12 hours before I was on another flight for work, this time headed to Nashville, TN for the International Right of Way conference with fellow co-workers Corinna, and Gary from Texas, Tennessee Tommy, and Matt from Michigan.  It was my first time meeting everyone and they all turned out to be amazing people.    Read on...

Pulse Vapor Training

This week I headed to Golden, CO with Josh and Rob for our Pulse Vapor 55 flight training with Juniper Unmanned.  Cardno finally came through with the purchase order as we were flying out of Portland.  The Vapor is one of the top commercial drone platforms in the US and is capable of carrying a large sensor payload such as the Riegl VUX-1UAS that we also purchased with it.  I tried to connect with Roger, Catherine, and Cherie but they were all busy with other plans and we couldn't find time to get together.

The training for Rob was pretty easy as he is a pilot already and knew most of the aeronautical information that was being taught to us but it was all new to Josh and I.  Our Juniper Unmanned trainers were Steve and Miguel whom we had met in Arizona previously with Tim.  Both were new to Juniper but one of the founders of the company, Tyler popped his head in now and again to check on things and was the lead instructor for when we conducted actual flights and proficiency testing.  

It was a great trip and I look forward to learning more about being a pilot as I was recently told I will be the 2nd pilot on our team.  I've been told that I will actually be put through real pilot training but I'm not getting my hopes up about that.  The three of us ate very well and got to spend some quality time with our Juniper friends and even got to visit with Jon from Pulse who lives nearby.  The Vapor 55 and 35 that we flew for testing was a training unit.  I enjoyed flying but I think I'll be a bit more nervous when it is our actual $300k bird with a LiDAR sensor attached to it!

Christom and St. Innocent Wineries Bike Ride & Sandra’s 40th

The original plan this weekend was to go for a road ride on Saturday and then climb Mt. St. Helens for Mothers Day on Sunday.  Unfortunately, the weather had other plans for us.  Instead, we were fortunate to get a call from our friend Nicole from Shedd, OR who was interested in coming up for a visit Friday night.  That led to us connecting with Chris, Marissa and Colleen who we rarely get to see.  Read on..