MorseBlog

After a hassled week of packing and moving I found myself at Portland Airport ready to depart to my new home in the UK. Here is my plane on the morning of Feb 17th. I felt surprising calm and not a little bit of excitement. When I started on my moving plans the excitement was mixed with good doses of fear as I began to cut my ties with home. Eventually though the excitement of being with Vicki and near Redington outweighed the uncertainty of a new job and home in a different part of the world. But it was still with great sadness as I leave my dad behind along with my old life. The plans leading up to the move were complex as I had 5 weeks to prepare an international move, secure a work permit from the British government, get a work visa from the British consulate, and finish up my responsibilities at work. In the end everything happened exactly to schedule. Bath is about 2 hours west of London along the M4. It is about 16 miles east of Bristol. Vicki and I live in her house on the west...

This past week Vicki came out for a week long visit. This would no doubt be her last visit to Oregon for some time. We visited with some friends from Lattice the Kendricks and our previous boss Clement Lee and his wife Mary. Both evenings were really nice. They are all such great people. This past sunday Vicki and I were invited by Keith Westrum, a friend at work who had arranged the Mt Adams climb last summer, to go snowshoeing on Mt Hood. We have had a lot of snow in the Cascades this year and it had been some time since I had been snowshoeing. Vicki had barely heard of snowshoeing. So we drive out with some friends of Keith's (Glen and Christi and Brian). Hire some snowshoes and drive up to Timberline Lodge on Mt Hood. The parking lot is at 6000ft. It was 25 degrees F and there was a 20 mph wind blowing. Fortunately Vicki and I brought warm enough clothes. In the parking lot the snow depth was apparent as seen below. The snow was really deep! We then strapped on the snowshoes an...

> This Christmas I decided to go to the UK. I came to this decision for a number of reasons. I would be able to spend more time with Redington due to the way visitation schedule requires a full 3 days of recovery for him before his school resumes. I would be able to spend time with Vicki and meet her parents. And I had little surprise for Vicki. I flew to Heathrow via Chicago on the 23rd of December and arrived on the 24th at about 7:00AM. Vicki drove out from Bath (red star on the left) to pick me up. She then drove us up to Bedford to pick up Redington. (The star on the map just north of London.) We then proceeded to Vicki's parents house in North Yorkshire. They live in a small town called Kirkbymoorside. Kirk is the Viking word for church so the town is the church by the side of the moor. (Kirkbymoorside is the red star at the top of the map.) We had a long drive to catch up with news of each other. Redington had amazingly gotten bigger (5'9") since I saw him in Oct...

While in the UK over Christmas Redington , Vicki, and I took a day trip to Portsmouth home of the Royal Navy Museum. The object of the visit was to see the HMS Victory dry docked there. The Victory was Admiral Horatio Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Redington and I had read the Horatio Hornblower series together and so were big fans of this fictional series based on the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic wars. This is the Royal Navy dockyard where the Victory is dry-docked as seen from Google Earth. Here we are posing outside the Victory. It has 104 guns of 12, 16 and 32 pounds. It carries 6000 sq yard of sail and sailed as fast as 12 knots one of the fastest ships of its day. The Victory was built using the wood of 8000 oak trees of a size and age unavailable in the UK today. The ballast consisted of pig iron and shingle (gravel). The powder magazine stored 3 tons of gun powder. The magazine is lined with copper sheeting to fight static electricity and plaster...

Last Saturday the weather was so nice that after skeet shooting with Bob and Randy I decided to pack up and go hiking on the coast. I hadn't been out in a while and we don't often get this kind of clear (though cold) weather this time of year. An hour later I was on the road heading west on highway 26 to highway 6 toward Tillamook. I was heading for Neahkahnie mountain on a rugged stretch of the coast between Tillamook and Cannon Beach. I had read some time ago about this hike and recall it was described as strenuous. It took about an hour of driving to reach Tillamook and Tillamook bay. Here several major coastal rivers run to the sea including the Wilson, Trask, and Tillamook rivers. Tillamook is a dairy community famous for the cheese factory there. The bay was calm this afternoon and the weather shockingly warm. In Hillsboro it was probably about 45 degrees but here it was at least 65 degrees. Calm on Tillamook Bay Closer to the mouth of the bay where it opens to the Pacifi...

I went back out to the Columbia River Gorge for another hike. Not having any particular place in mind I took the first exit to old highway 30 and looked for a hike I hadn't done before. Immediately I came upon Angel's Rest and favorite of my friend Shyam at work. He and his family hike extensively and Redington and I met them in the gorge once a few years ago. This Google Earth shows you where the hike takes you on top of the gorge. (Click photo to enlarge) Angel's Rest from Google Earth The drive out was one of the windiest in memory. You can see in the next photo the whitecaps in the Columbia river. The wind was whipping water off the wave tops where they would drift as gossamer rainbows in the afternoon sun. The hike is about 2 1/2 miles and winds up through the trees. At first the wind wasn't too apparent. Near the top though the gusts were reaching 40 miles per hour. Dead trees were swaying from side to side leaving me wondering if they would snap. The wind create...