About Six Months

The lovely Katie posing over our dirt patch.

Coffee

Today I moved 20,000 pounds of coffee with Christian. www.camp4coffee.com. Interesting way to spend a few hours.

I will be working on a profile portrait of Katie soon. She told me there have been many requests. We just need to be in the same spot while not eating or sleeping and I will get it.

West Mystic

Going home is always bitter sweet. New England is where my peeps are. Family. Friends. Roots. It is a beautiful place filled with memories and experiences that shaped me. But it is also a place I left so that I might find happiness. I miss Katie, Cooper, cool nights, the mountains, the rivers, and the town of Crested Butte. But I am happy and content to be here.

Breakfast with my father at Kitchen Little. He knows everyone and they all know him. Days spent either cruising the Fisher's Island Sound - and a shot out to Block Island - spinniing around town on my bike, reading through the muggy afternoons, or hanging with family. Evenings full of family and friends. The lush forests are filled with deer, mosquitos, poison Ivy, and shades of green like a jungle. It is a walk down memory lane and a pleasant place to be in the moment. Driving the winding roads all covered by the forest canopy fills me with nostalgia and meloncholy. Some times its a laugh out loud memory and sometimes its just thinking that this is where I am from - where little Johnny was molded.

Less than 24 hours before I load my plane at T.F. Green in Providence. I fixed my Schwinn Homegrown so that it has flat pedals and the seat is low enough to accomodate my father. I hope he rides it, because it is a sweet bike and this is bike riding territory. The days at Haley Farm and Bluff Point have been sweet. Especially riding with my brother and sister. It is time to wrap it up, pack the bags, and wonder if I did everything I should have while I was here.

Maybe I should have made more of an effort to surf - there was swell. But it is too hard to ponder all that should have happened when you are busy living. When I get home I will have had a good week mixed with relaxing, exercise, quality time, and soaking in New England.

Time to start thinking about diaper changes, cradles, and circumcision or no.

Browns

I've driven along the Arkansas river a hundred-plus times, but never so much as dipped a toe. So it was a very exciting prospect to bring the boat over Cottonwood Pass with Katie, Bryan, Nina, Patrick, Kevin, and Justin to meet Brent and a few others for a trip down the infamous Browns Canyon. We met Brent, his girlfriend, Summer and her son Ethan, Billy and his wife Zetta, and her mom at the begining of the canyon. They had floated a mellow stretch of river before the canyon. We divvied up crews and ended up with Brent's boat carrying Katie as a passenger in the stern, Billy rowing, and Zetta and Nina with paddles on the bow. On the Super Puma, Bryan took the helm and had Patrick and I up front, Justin and Kevin in the back. This would be Justin's first real whitewater trip. With the river running at about 2000 cfs, we were bound for an exciting ride.

Katie's belly is getting big and the baby is doing a lot of knocking around. We sat on the couch the other night and actually watched her belly moving. We laughed and stared, wondering what was going on in there. Is baby trying to kick some ass, getting back at us for laughing about its arm buds? Katie would liked to have had more of a role on the boat, but was content to go along for the ride. Billy was a guide on the Ark for a couple years, so we felt good about having her on the bigger boat with the more experienced skipper.

The Super Puma, the boat Katie and I got for our wedding present, is a lot smaller than most of the boats we saw on the river. It was designed for smaller, more technical rivers. What we lost in bouancy, we made up in maneuverability. The river started out pretty mellow, but soon enough began its twisting descent into the canyon where the walls angled away from the river. The geology offered spheroidal weathering, sandstone, and shallow water. Small pines and Cottonwood spotted the canyon walls. Hot sun and a warm breezes set the stage for a perfect day of boating.

On the first rapid of the day we nearly went overboard. The raft was thrown up onto the left side. Kevin and I looked up as Justin and Patrick clung to the rail and Bryan yelled "high side." Fortunately, the boat slapped back down into the river bottom-down before anyone got pitched overboard. Immediately following that we caught an eddy line that sucked the right aft end of the boat into the river and had Bryan ribs-deep in the river before getting spit out safely. From that point on, we were all a little more vigilant. The Super Puma would require a higher degree of jockeying and dynamic motion to stay upright in the rapids.

Zoom Flume is the first major rapid. We watched as Billy guided Brent's boat over the edge and into the steep drop. Katie pivoted and then dropped out of view, popped up again amidst a spray of whitewater, then vanished. We saw their boat come out the bottom and all eyes look back up river to witness our fate. The photo above was taken by someone at whitewaterphotography.com who was posted up under an umbrella watching the action through their lense.

Patrick was all fired up and started whooping it up before we hit the whitewater. As we rolled into it I saw the meat line - a huge rolling tongue of chatoic water dropping down several steps before easing into mellower water. Bryan aimed us right for the middle and we hit the first wall of water likw a waterballoon hitting pavement. We plowed right into the wave and caught the water across our faces like an uppercut. We tried to keep our paddle strokes in rythm as Bryan navigated us through the madness. Each step down set huge hydraulic forces against us. The river exploded around us, but we kept digging for leverage. We were all hooting between dousings, loving every second of the chaos.

When we poured into the calmer water below, the other boat, as well as the crews clinging to the rocks below, cheered for us. Bryan has been refering to himself as "The Golden Boy" for cleaning as many treacherous sections as he has. I prefer the bravado waits until we are clear of the rapids, nobody needs the weight of cockiness hanging around their charmic necks. But it does feel good to be the underdog coming out on top.

We negotiated some sweet technical sections like "Big Drop," which was more like "Big Wall." It hit us so hard that I thought we were going to go over backwards, but we kept our heads down and punched through it. "Staircase" was a series of seven drops that got bigger as you progress through them. We hollared and clawed through each one. Adreneline and raw excitement surged through the crew like the river past the rock piles on the riverbank.

We crossed paths with a crew of kayakers and a boat filled with Crested Buttians celebrating Than's bachelorhood before marriage. The mayor, radio newsman, ex-editor of the paper, and a slough of local men paddling to celebrate life, manliness, and the future of one of the town's sons. A beautiful scene. There were a lot of smiles and high fives exchanged. The power and draw of running a river with friends is deep. I mean, there is the shallow need to for thrills, but on a deeper level there is a shared adventure, comradre, and communing with nature. Since high water only happens in the spring, it is fleeting and that much more exciting. You have to get it while the getting is good, or it is gone for the year.

Housing



On another note, Katie and I are slated to close on the new house next wednesday. It is a rewarding and frustrating experience. We have been moving in for more than six weeks - between storing our stuff there and then finally getting the certificate of occupancy. Anyhow, it will be very nice to have the building in our name. Our friend Jason just finished installing a desk he built for us. Very nice Hickory trim to match our trim and floors. We unpacked all our books and computers and have put the office together. There is still a bunch of details to iron out - pictures, blinds, and the big one - the yard.

Katie's mom and dad will be our first house guests, arriving on Sunday. It has been raining a bunch lately, but I hope it dries up enough for us to float the Gunnison. When are you coming to visit?