Oh Snap, my friend got me a number 4! Sick!

Chipper on his first ever Trad lead.

Just arrived home from Joshua Tree. The drive from Josh Tree to Seattle is epic. here are preliminary photos, I'm ready for bed.



Susan follows with Juniper in foreground.

Today we ran the South Fork of the Smith river, it's an inaccessible wilderness run. The run is 13 miles long with 4 or 5 class IV rapids. The approach was over and hour and a half drive through mountains.  These carnivorous Pitcher plants are native to the area and were prevalent in the lower section of the river.  

We ran the Middle Fork Smith River, here's us scouting some rapids from the bank. There's me going down it, hard to see whats going on, I'm trying not to bang my paddle on all the rocks!

Later on we came to a class IV section, we noticed some head to body size rocks sliding down the slope. Before we could discuss it we were in the rapid and a SUV sized boulder tumbled down the slope, bounced and landed in the middle of the river, right where we were headed. Ten seconds different and we'd been dead, no question. I scrambled for the bank and chipper got himself stuck on a rock. This was a near miss. We camped by the river and I heard more slides in the night.

We're on the way to Joshua Tree, we stopped in Nor Cal for some kayaking. It's been rainy, rainy, rainy. We resorted to desperate tarp-tent-car combination camping. Everything is soaked.

Faithful blog readers, I'm on the road. Kayaking and rock climbing with an ultimate destination of Joshua National Park. I'll have the computer and the camera, I hope to post from the field. (this is totally someone elses photo)

Sebastian from Seattle Coffee Works installs another grinder and another espresso blend at Empire Espresso in Columbia city.

Nothing lasts forever, not my car on a cold November rainy day. Slid out in a traffic calming circle and ran into a telephone pole. The worst part is that I wasn't even driving like a maniac.

Karmic indigestion?

Slayer group heads and their boilers. Pre-heat tanks in the background. That Pre-heat tank is really what makes this machine special... plush looking so cool.. and being a hand crafted piece of art. Timeless. Am I gushing?

The Roy Street Cafe, you can actually see Vivace back there.(althoug not very well in this crappy photo)

Also, it looks like this cafe is no longer inspired by sbux, because that guy is scraping it off. (inspired by schommer?)

Plus, how awesome is it that the "Roy Street" cafe has a Broadway East address?

Slayer brewing with Heart.

The Slayer in Indigo Blue.

The Muse on high addressing his underlings.

Smells like Slayer brewing with rockstar coffees. I'm getting spoiled by the depth of coffee quality hanging around me. Ethiopia is supposed to problematic, yet I'm surrounded by it's beautiful coffees.

Coffee House Five and the Red E.

The Annex treated us very well. Coffees included Mordecoffe Natural and Columbia Aguas Blancas.

The Albina Press on Hawthorne is one of my favorite spots.

Slayer visits Coffee House Northwest with Skip from the stump. We had a great talk with Adam.

Slayer and Heart. Wille and Eric. We had Mordecoffe Natural as an SOE.

Latte Art
I haven't posted any latte art recently, probably because I haven't been working on a bar. I had the chance to pour one at Slayer yesterday and it got flickred.

Meet the micro roasters.

"4th wave coffee"

Mistakes are real.

It's not a big deal.

I know I'm guilty of making mistakes. I'm also guilty of handling it poorly when people around me do. Recently, I was granted a serious credit by a friend after fucking it up for real.
It's difficult to learn from the actions of others. I constantly remind myself, like a kind of credo; "pay attention, learn from that". Still, it's tough. There's no more effective way to learn than by trial and error. Like so many cats around candles humans flail through life. And despite the severity of some life's most powerful lessons, we often burn our paws again and again.

Nikko, Japan, 9 October, 2006

I really liked Japan.

Porchlight

Goes to eleven

Gaming in the sun...

November in Seattle.
We drank the remaining keg after the Halloween party. We grilled meat. We played the board game. We live large. Life is good. I have no job.

Halloween Party!

A keg of Elysian Night Owl Pumpkin Ale and my roommate the Evil Robot.