The trip begins

Packed and not ready to go. Pops sure is photogenic! ha ha hah
A person could NOT ask for better friends! This is a good picture! Thanks for dropping by to see me off Dave! Chad, get in touch my man!
Wyoming! Beautiful, mellow Wyoming! Of course this wasn't the first state that we crossed! We didn't take many pictures of Oregon as our start was late in the day and it was raining. Idaho was awesome the next day, but pictures where on the back burner as the weather was our main concern. It snowed mostly. And it snowed hard! Visibility at times slowed traffic to 25 MPH. The roads were fine as there wasn't much on them, but it sure was fun!

Utah, well, I'd just rather forget Utah along with Ohio. We'll get to that later, but Utah was commercial, high stressed, and just this really weird vibe, especially in Salt Lake (Which was no longer visible from the road). The word "gross" may be used to describe the vibe there. Of course once on the road from Salt Lake city the Geology is awesome! But if you are traveling at rush hour the Mormons like to flip the bird more than a NYC cabbie! So, no pics. They aren't worthy!

Wyoming!
What the landscape lacked in beauty (which wasn't much in Wyoming) the sky made up for! There were scenes like this stretched all across this whole state, some with Black Angus, some with horses and most without. At one point on a bluff along side the road my Pop and I viewed a lone rider on his horse trotting down to a little stream about 2 foot wide. We waved, he did not. Perhaps his land was divided by the highway that we traveled. Maybe we just interrupted his meditative stroll. Maybe he just didn't see us. Or maybe he was awestruck as many are by my beautiful truck! :-)
It's a shame that I had the trip map on the dashboard when this picture was taken as it really captures that "big sky" feeling that you get when you are 10000 feet above sea level. Pops and I were both totally taken aback by the enormity of the sky and clouds! I swear you could have touched them! What a beautiful day that was! It made the whole trip worth it!
A lone Wyoming "watchtower" as Tolkien may have called it. There's a house and stables at it's base. I'd be in awe of mother nature everyday looking out my bedroom window at such a sight! I might be wary of a little rockslide here and there as well!
Some of Wyoming's beautiful stratified Geology! What an awesome spectacle! Those different color layers were set down on the bottom of a body of water millions of years ago. The different colors come from different rocks eroded from some far off mountain top, then buried over time and compacted into rock ultimately to be later uplifted like this! This spire must have had a more durable layer of caprock on top to help it maintain the castle-like shape. How majestic!
This is just one of the best pics Pop took! Imagine if only that were a steam locomotive! I live in a wrong era! I suppose I should be dreaming that that locomotive were powered by Biodiesel. Still, it's just a classic photo from inside the cab of Moby through the window.
Pops and I had a little joke running once we got into Wyoming that we would only see a house every 75 miles or so. Usually a fellas' property was bisected by the road as the house and stables would be on one side of the road and the prairie on the other. We surmised that there was once an angry landowner. Anyway, the joke backfired on us as we were going to send my Uncle Rich "one of the only houses in Wyoming" as there were no more houses left but this utility shed before we got to Nebraska.
It was difficult to capture the feeling of the sky and clouds being so low and perhaps this isn't the best picture of that, but the landscape...
One of the last sights from Wyoming. I bet this is breathtaking with more snow on it!

Some trip pics and stuff.

Just had to post this picture of said unnamed spot. Right Slim?
Mark refused to be seen with the human slug for fear of incrimination.
A beautiful North coast view. Not much of a swell at this spot today. A cove just up the road called Shorties is a popular spot for good reason.
This is the view from Tom and Lavelle's place in Lil' Utopia aka Netarts Bay.
This is my Pop and I in front of Moby the white whale at Tom and Lavelle's in Netarts, OR.

These pics are from a little diversion that I took my Pop on at the Oregon coast. It was his first time out there. Not the last. I'm gonna pull a trailer out in a year or two and let him tag along. We hiked Cape lookout and checked out a lighthouse at Cape Meares. Then traveled north after a nice night with Lavelle who made us a great lunch and dinner.

We stopped in Cannon Beach at one of the best surf shops in the US. Free beer, need I say more? Well if that ain't enough for ya, he's got teenage girls at the register.

After that we headed to P-Town for dinner at the Horsebrass Pub for a little swaree' with good freinds, fine dining and the best beer selection in the World!!!!!!!!!!!! I don't know if I have any pics of that event. Maybe some of the readers do?

UV Varnish Alert.

I just got the low-down from an epoxy manufacturer NOT to use Minwax spars on top of epoxy. I suppose the wax part has repelling properties to it and makes "fisheyes" in the finish as I had seen a lot of in my coats.

Sanding Techniques

I've recently delved into Swaylocks and have been reading up on sanding techniques and OH MY GAWD there are a ton of tidbits to remember! I need to make like a diary of stuff! One of the most important ideas that struck home was NOT TO USE DULL SANDPAPER because it will burn your resin. I've been doing this as I am broke as no joke and noticed that this has been the case. So no more. I'm looking into the best ways of doing so.

If anyone has any tips on sandpaper quality and costs, please feel free to help me out here.

I've been rebuilding (when a board has two broken fins and 20 plus dings, that's what I'm calling it) two boards. I did the first one (a 7'8" "longboard" ((as my bro calls it)) ) quickly and sloppily using.....ahem...........bondo auto resin and the second one, well is pretty much the same. On the second one (7'2" thruster fun board...........7"2"x 21 1/8 x 2 7/8) I employed Q Cell for the first time to fill holes and actually took a little more time sanding. I took on these projects just to get my ears wet with the whole sanding thing again. I didn't make them pretty, or polish them up (as the rubbing compounds and paper is too expensive for me know), but I did go out of my way to strengthen the rails as these boards are from the 1980's and made extra thin to begin with but on top of that, the res has browned and turned brittle. K Man should be able to get a few more years out of them now and hopefully the tail rails (a real bitch to repair) will be a bit stronger than they were.

I've got a couple of pics from the garage for your entertainment.

The last pic is a pic of the bridge to NYC on the way up to Mystic Conn. My pop has better pics. I'll try and share them.

The first pic should be labeled "stuff"...........the second pic as well!

I'm a blog bum

I didn't realize that I had some readers.

It's like my college radio show that was run through the town's cable TV system. I used to just go in on Friday nights and lay out some mellow jams, some party toons, and some psychedelia. Some friends would join me and we'd light some incense (until the fire marshal intervened) and go in the elevator to stop in between floors and blow cigarette smoke into the elevator fan.

It was a good time. We were just there to have a party and maybe spread the word about and eco event or a cool class trip that was coming up, maybe play a "McGruff the Crime Dog" short about the dangers of narcotics (the name of the show was Peyote Radio). We had this theory that if we said the word enough, some may someday magically show up in our laps and we'd be puking happy monkeys! It never happened. We gave up on it too soon or something, because where there's a will there's a way.

What I'm getting at, is that with all of our desperate pleas to have someone call in and make a request, it never happened. I thought that I had no listeners. The other DJ's would listen out of respect for their fellow DJ I knew, but otherwise nada.

One night at the end of a 4 hour show that I'd been laying out a mood mix (bring the audience up and down and up and down gradually) I got a call at the end of the show praising the show. It seems that there was a huge houseparty where the entire crowd was trippin and I had been effing with their heads the whole time, making them laugh, then making them ponder what is soul (P-Funk Allstars will do that to you). They loved my show! Weird, I thought. I was made aware that evening that I had an audience all along. My show was one of their favorites because I didn't play any commercials (to the deep annoyance of my producer who constantly threatened me with termination) except for "taking a bite out of crime' sound bites. I landed the time slot because no one wanted to work Friday 8 to midnight, but I wound up having a pretty groovy show and even did my own weather and interview slots. The band Primus was having a tour of the east coast with their Sailing the SEas of Cheese promo that they were deluging the college campuses with and I had those lads in for a laugh or two. It was pretty dang cool! But the most rewarding thing about it all, was finding out that I had listeners. I did that for three years. It was a good run.

To all those who read this blog: I know I've strayed for woodcraft on this thread and some others, but I wanted to say "Hey". "Can I crash on your couch?"

Funny how things haven't changed much since college for me! Hee hee hee hee hee

Take it light! Enjoy your summer! Go to bonfires in Crescent City, California and to ones in Pacific City, Oregon. Those are some real people.