Californication meets Tranpacificism

(yet another entry written way after the fact and so pre-dated!)
Well, our story probably starts off during the 2005-2006 school year, when.. through luck of email? i decided that i needed to get in contact with the CRP (and also CCAT) webmaster. As always with my emails, there’s a lot of “unnecessary” or “extraneous” tidbits of information in there, so, in addition to what i intended to communicate, somehow, i ended up making my best email friend ever, KJ Coop! This isn’t quite a story of that, so I’ll make it brief by saying that, though KJ is way rad, we definitely don’t agree on all things (or see them the same), and since one of those points of difference is our opinion on school, I was sad to not see KJ continuing on at HSU this calendar year. Instead, now she’s up near Portland. Woa, that’s far! So, i think at some point she invited me to visit.Or at least, i had the aspiration to hang out and chill with KJ because she’s great, and so an idea came to me.. But First (another quick story first), this fall semester I once had occassion to call upon a “Senior LGA,” in their wisdom and foresight, to ask for advice about something or the other. I left a few voicemails when they weren’t at home, but only one replied, and that was Jessica Fox. This was the beginning of my first+best voicemail friendship, and my first phoneship in (~5 years?) .. a while. I am not the biggest fan of email, but I am enamored with being on the same phone system as others (the first time was when I had a cell phone, Nextel, then Verizon, fun!), since there are so many cool+neat things one can do. (From the Spring’07 semester, I still dearly remember voicemail (2) Jess left after attending the Ise Lyfe^[1] keynote, where she shared with me her demotivated state, something she hadn’t shared with anyone else, which resonated with me so much, making it clear to me how close+connected we really are)  So, we had many an interesting (and longer than they felt like) phone conversation subsequently, and many voicemails exchanged.  Back to the larger story.  At some point Ajay+KJ exchanged an email, and I guess the idea of visiting her near Portland came up.. hmm.. that’s far, and a lot of gas, but I do so miss KJ! Hmm..
Well, my friend Jessica lives in Oregon, maybe they’re nearby, and some crazy carpooling scheme could work out? so I call Jessica, and somehow, without having to overanalyze or ‘get back to me’ (unlike me!), she says yes, and thinks it’s going to work out great! Hot damn, that was amazing! So trusting, and thoughtful and kind and and and..!
It was funny to realize later we both wondered if we’d be sitting and have nothing to talk about in our 7-hour journey, it’d be like, ironic or something. But oh no, there was plenty of conversation to be had! It was unfortunately also one of those times when I was expecting to have more time to talk about things, but it just went way too fast! (Which yes, as Jessica said, is a good thing. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I really needed to decompress from the horrible ending that semester gave me, and nope, I didn’t journal either! Many lessons learned..)
Let’s not forget that that day wasn’t just the roadtrip, it was Jessica Fox’s b-day! (So here’s a pic of me+JFox, which links to the album for the night!)
And she hosted a party (which was _not_ a birthday party??) that night, which the facebook invite said others could be invited to, and so KJ and gang could come.. (then my best voicemail+email friends would be together!) yay! I love having my friends meet! And then I could head off to KJ’s with her. Neat! It was a really interesting party, for the people I met. (And really, people are all that are interesting/important to me in life anyways!) Some of the first people to show up were Dale+wife, both of whom were RAs at their school! Weird! So that started off the night, the Worst Fear Party, at which I was apparently slightly afraid of slight heights (and so I stood on a stool to demonstrate this??), fun. It was hit and miss for the conversation after that, with a lot of “girl time” to be seen, probably not surprisingly(?). There were two more conversations of note that night, one was with Brant, who was a big techie (trying to fix their wireless security and all) and way into a couple of softwares I had just setup that same year! Joomla (which I setup for Green Campus and Brandt had used to nicely build websites for some local businesses with, WordPress (powers this blog!) and Gallery2 (powers my Photo Album!) The Joomla demos were the coolest, because he was using that and making cash-money (bling! $!) off of it, which was a cool thing to see, all that taking initiative, having confidence and follow-through, and all that jazz. It again helped remind/inspire me that I could probably have my normal, likely low-paying job/career, and make some side-money doing cool+fun things on the side as well. (Like Lonny Grafman working as a “lecturer” (teaching Appropriate Technology at HSU) while doing the books for the Tofu Shop?)

At another point in the night I started to talk to Alan Stokke (like everyone else mentioned, also on facebook, weird!)  It was kind of an amazing conversation, it seemed like  it moved from the point of small talk to passionate amazement just like that, it was so.. fabulous!  Alan is totally working in water, which at first I thought “Oh, that’s a lot different from what I’m interested in,” plus he’s an engineering major (what I possibly should have been) and maybe it was Alan who helped me with the perspective directly, or just the conversation generally, but it was pretty rad!  And it was interesting to see someone interested in working in environmentally-related areas but also making muchos dinero!  So this conversation provided another interesting career idea, of being able to live it up and make the world a better place.  Fascinating!  I’d love to write more about this, to really impact the coolness, but this entry is long enough already!  :(  It was cool that Abbey Stockwell had given a presentation on stormwater in my Wastewater Reuse/Reutilization class a few weeks earlier, which helped enable this great convo.  (Later, in the Spring’07 semester Alan went out of his way to email (and facebook) Ajay with a career opportunity in that same firm.  TOO Nice!)

And the roadtrip continued.  So I headed over to KJ’s place, and so got to hang out with her for a long while of not having seen her.  I don’t think that I was the best company, since I was still in that aforementioned weird state from the way the semester ended poorly, but it was rad.  It was cool, even from early in our drive from Jess’s place, to talk to KJ again.  Really frank, honest, kind and sweet.  Knowing some of my opinions, and with me continuing to share others of mine, she showed interest in knowing why I believe what I believe.  It’s hard to explain, but it was interesting because she could have  just assumed that I would judge her poorly for some actions/behaviors, but rather than being caught up in such a concern, she just sought to understand me, which required her to be honest and open with herself.  I really appreciate that, as I’m not so open+free with myself, at least, as much as I would like to be.  I don’t know if that was impactful enough either, but basically KJ’s got such an amazing heart.  And.. just so cool!  It’s for sure that few people have the patience/interest/curiosity/etc/etc that allowed her to .. maybe not even deal with, maybe even love?? my rediculous emails.  Crazy!  But I should start wrapping this up, I don’t know how you could still be reading this, you’ve got some patience, reader.  :)
The Portland part of the roadtrip wasn’t too hot.  I am a pretty poor planner, and only slightly better at time management, so a lot of the time I could have spent seeing things was lost, for many reasons.  Me and KJ went in my car first to some park, and then tried to hit up that Pittock Mansion, unfortunately it was closed and we were less lucky in sneaking in there but it did have an amazing view of Mt. Hood(?).  Unfortunately I soon started to realize that, even though the weather was supposedly similar to Arcata, the Portland area is FREAKIN cold!  (Brr!)  It was a sweet view though! For sure! So that made up for it. I was getting ready to leave Portland, and called up Zach Mermel to see if he needed a ride from Arcata (hence semi-dictating my next plan), and he didn’t, but also convinced me to spend more time in Portland, taking the train (light rail/Tri-Met/whateveryouwannacallit) into the city, and checking out the City Repair Project, all of which I wanted to do anyways, dunno why I needed the kick in the but from him, but it helped!
So the next day that is what I did, I found the address and directions, took some rail+bus to get there, and had an amazing conversation with their new intern, Steve (Lamaire?), who’s way interested in water too! We were coming from slightly different perspectives, mine more academic, his more hands-on, and it was cool to see. Again, could write more about all this, but! (Too long already. Again, rad.
The rest of my winter break was pretty boring, so this is as good a place as any to stop. My mom was going to try to fly into the Intel facility there and we could drive home together, but she couldn’t get a flight on their little plane, so it was a solo roadtrip home.  I sometimes forget how much I enjoy+appreciate my alone time (And how I never take it), so that was pretty chill.  Got back to Arcata, packed a little, hung out a little (oh so great to have a building to myself, or nearly so!  :)  So, in wrapping it up, here’s a pic of me+KJ, (which was entertaining to get taken) at the beginning of our Portland time, and it links to the pics from that short trip.  AKA, We end this entry with KJ, the start and inspiration for the fabulous part of my Winter Break’06!  Lotsa love!

I might want to blog about my spring break, but I think that’ll be it to get me caught up.
(Did I really want to blog about the Time person of the year too?  Hmm, months later.. Guess not!)  I’m sure there’s more I wanted to say about my roadtrip, sorry roadtrip!  (Maybe I’ll edit this later?  (He always says that!))

(No Ratings Yet)

 Loading ...