I'm Painting Kathy and Sue's house in Eugene this week. I've done a lot of painting before but never an entire exterior using a spray machine. The part that is quicker is the actual applying of paint once you've taken care of all the prep and have the machine going. But you have to meticulously mask off every window, light fixture, piece of trim, etc, and what can I say? It's a pain and a hell of a lot of butcher paper and plastic sheeting. And though the machine sprays a lot of paint at once, about 30% of it goes billowing away into the air. Breathe deep. But I'm glad to have the experience, if only to be able to definitively say that next time I paint a house I will gladly just brush and roll it.
Oh, the heat. I'm not really a hot weather person, but let's face it, we're super lucky the way it usually cools off overnight here. You can keep your house cool for most of the day by leaving the windows open overnight then closing them by 8:00 AM.
Saturday was this year's Iron Artist Scupt-Off benefit for SCRAP. I wasn't as invloved in the pre-planning this year (last year I did TONS including selecting and transporting most of the materials and coming up with the theme) but I was once again one of the "Rowdy Referees." Aside from my home-made ref shirt I wore checkered tights, shiny silver boxers, and painted my face black and white. We ran around blowing our whistles and handing out penalties and/or merit points for a variety of real or invented infractions. Bribes from the teams were encouraged, however since the actual judging was done by an independent panel of "celebrity" judges including Metro Councilmember David Bragdon, I'm sure it was purely coincidence that the team that bought the refs the most beers from the beer garden (Team Used, sponsored by Lensbabies) was the team that won. Frankly I didn't think their sculpture was nearly the best. It was gimmicky, I'll give them that. I thought it was a shame that team G.I.M.P. (the Goldberg Institute for Mindless Protocol) only won for Best Team Name, when they took the effort to be in-character as mad German scientists the entire time, and created a sculpture that while maybe not beautiful (but to be honest none of them were beautiful) was inventively in line with both the overall theme (Flow) and their team theme. And Team Midnight should have gotten the Best Dressed award. But anyway. March Fourth also played a REALLY fun set at which the refs danced like drunken maniacs, and Carye Bye hosted a kegger afterparty that culminated in a nerd-club Boggle battle-royale.
Now I'm in Eugene painting Kathy and Sue's house.
I just completed a 4 night/5 day clockwise hike around Mount Hood. Just for the heck of it I will bore you with a verbatim transcription of my journal. Here goes. Later additions in brackets like [xxo].
Monday 7.18.05
Camping tonight [about 6 trail miles from Timberline Lodge] on top of the world, in Paradise Park by a giant boulder that looks like a huge egg split open by a lightning bolt. The thought that it was flung off the mountain is even more impressive. From this spot Mount Hood is a massive panorama of sloping meadows, ridges, cliffs and ice. To the left is Mount Saint Helens, then more ridges then by god the Columbia River and the northern Williamatte Valley, Portland, where even now my housemates are having a meeting [that i forgot about until i was conveniently at the trailhead], then to the South is Mount Jefferson in rugged profile.
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Mount Saint Helens is erupting at this very second. How very cool! Not ten minutes ago I was looking at it thinking "I wish it would erupt for me with this perfect view."
An apparently strong southwind is blowing the plume [about half the size of the mountain itself] miles northward now.
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These mountains, even with our roads and ski-lifts and lodges and the ant-colony city just over there, retain their integrity, their absolute greatness. They are vivid manifestations of processes that are wholly other than us. Or more precisely: that we are also manifestations of, and dependent upon, but which do not depend upon us. We are of them, but they can and do go on without us. *We* cannot go on without them.
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Monday 7.19.05
Hood fully illuminated last night by the nearly full moon. Amazing. Long long descent this morning to Sandy River, views up the breathtaking ruggedness of the upper Sandy Gorge, waterfalls and the ice and spires of Hood's west face. Full on. The mountain in its fantastic vertical fullness, huge ridges and gorges rising and culminating in the forbidding upper pyramid. Forded Sandy River, briefly up to my knees. Resting now by Ramona Falls. First time here. Lovely. Rhodies were in full bloom on the way down. An unexpected surprise.
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Muddy Fork crossing, another stupendous cirque. The mountain in its amazing truth. So much more than just what you get just looking from Timberline Lodge. The true huge wildness of it.
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View of Hood now from the open upper slope of Bald Mountain. Maybe one of the most stupendous full-mountain shots on the whole PCT. [the PCT and Timberline Trail share routes for a dozen miles or so.]
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[Okay, that's enough of the daily journal. You get the picture. The hike was awesome. I spent 3 more nights: McNeil Point, Elk Cove, and Newton Creek. Newton Creek was the most difficult of 6 or so unbridged glacial torrents. I did a side-hike/slog to the top of Cooper Spur, elev. about 8800 feet. Beyond that is a technical climb to the summit. The trail thru that section traverses miles of treeless tundra. Little alpine Lyall Lupine. Flowers in full display the whole way around. Weather was mostly great, Thursday was blazing hot then darkened over with thunderheads but did not rain and thunder until that night and the next morning. Timberline Lodge is worth touring. Make sure to check out all 3 lobby levels. Fantastic piece of architecture and craft. All built by the WPA. And the Timberline Trail was built by the CCC. In the 1930's. Under the leadership of a president who understood the concept of the public good. How novel, that things of lasting value could be created thru the intelligent use of resources and people.]
We had the big Ice Cream Social yesterday. There are still gallons left over (Eli made about 40 gallons) of various flavors. Good stuff.
It was a great party. Fun for all ages. Plus I was informally conducting my "Everything Must Go" art sale (to clear space and raise money, two laudable goals) and I sold 2 paintings and a decorative ceramic. the sale's still going on. Hurry! These deals won't last long!
Tomorrow I'm heading for Mount Hood to hike the Timberline Trail around it. A little over 40 miles.
Back from the Oregon Country Fair. It's a good event, i'm happy to be a small part of it. I think there is a bit less tie-die than in the past. People there are learning more and more about how fun it is to dress creatively in a non-tie-die way. Maybe I played a small role over these past few fairs in influencing them. It's a general trend though. Countercultures have to reinvent themselves or they become stale caricatures. Luckily the Fair is an ongoing excercise in expression and culture-change, so to a certain extent it protects itself against "liberal conservatism."
Bruce did his puppet show twice each day at the Mighty Tiny Puppet stage. The folks who invited him (puppeteers from Vashon Island) liked his stuff a lot. He'll probably return next year.
Bruce is no hippie, but... he did bring some south Philly bucket-drum style to the "Drum Tower" drum circle, where in fact he drummed literally until the break of dawn Sunday morning.
A brief respite between excursions. Just got back last night, amid a war-zone cacophany of continuously exploding fireworks in all directions, from a splendid weekend campout at Walupt Lake, deep in the heart of the southern Washington Cascades. Took two beautiful day-hikes, had all kinds of shared campfire-food, sang songs, swam in the lake, met cool new people. It was good to get a little bit outside my usual Portland circles (not that I don't love them!) since this trip was organized from an angle (by Amy, Tasha, and Sandy) that included different peripherally related groupings, only one or 1.5 of which are part of my usual "posses" (the "Habitat"/PPC/etc crew) and the others of which intersected (thru Sandy and Tasha) from various angles, none of them directly related to, say, SHIFT and all that.
It fascinates me, the various social groupings and posses in Portland and how they relate and intersect. It would be an interesting project to somehow map it all out. But it continually shifts and evolves. That would be part of the challenge in mapping it. Like weather.
I sometimes (often) wonder which "group" I belong to the most in this town. I have several fairly distinct circles of friends, all of which nevertheless overlap. Bicycles are a common denominator, but biking is so integral to the community here anymore that it can't really be said to be a distinction of one specific group. "Those bikey people." That's kind of everyone I know, the further distinction being the folks who actively organize and attend bike events, i.e. the "SHIFT" crowd, but of course SHIFT is not a membership organization. And yet... yes, there is a "SHIFT" crowd. You know it when you see it I guess. But its members are also all "members" of other social groupings as well. Like me. But do I have a "main" posse that is my closest "home" crowd? I dunno. There is so much intersection and overlap. Which, again, is why it is good to participate in outings that include people from distinctly other circles but who are still part of the wider inner-Portland "community."
Thursday I head down to the Oregon Country Fair to volunteer as a greeter again with Kathy and Sue. I'm riding down with Bruce Orr who will be performing twice a day as the Mudeye Puppet Company. Hopefully the hippie kids will dig him. I'm sure they will. The question is, how will Bruce hold up under a 3-day onslaught of tie-die, bad hair, and suspicious aromas?