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For the second year in a row Kim and I went to the Gorge to see a few days of bands at the Sasquatch Music Festival. It was only two days instead of three this year, and nobody went with us this time whereas Travis came last year.

The highlight of the weekend for me was definitely seeing Manu Chao play. I found his music while living in Spain thanks to my roommates. He played third to last on Saturday night, and played longer than most other bands. He played a few songs I haven’t heard before, but played a lot of the songs from his Clandestino album that I wanted to hear. Of course, nothing he played live sounded quite like the songs from the album. His band, the Radio Bemba Sound System, was very energetic and had the crowd jumping up and down and waving their hands pretty much the whole time. He wove a small bit of Bob Marley’s song “War” into his mix too. The rest of Saturday was fun, and the weather was gorgeous. I really don’t care that much about Bjork’s music, but she was interesting to see live.

Sunday was frickin windy and cold. Early in the day I mostly just tried to deal with the wind and rest. When it became apparent that our primo hillside seats were way too cold to sit in we started moving around to the other stages and had more fun. Smoosh was definitely one of the most novel bands I saw. It’s two barely teenaged girls who put on a pretty good music show, far beyond what you’d expect from girls their age. If I had a daughter I definitely would want her to see these girls rocking out as an example of what young girls can achieve. After their show the wind really picked up and they shut down the main stage for most of the afternoon. This had the side of effect of forcing the Beastie Boys and Spearhead to play at the same time on different stages. We decided to see Spearhead and were not disappointed. They played the longest of any band at the festival and included an awesome cover of Sublime’s “What I Got”. We tried to run over and catch the Beastie Boys before they finished, but their set was very short. We only caught the last little bit of Sabotage, which apparently was the encore.

I’m glad we’ve had the opportunity to see some music at the Gorge the last few years as it’s an amazing music venue, even if the unpredictable weather can be a little overwhelming.

I haven’t been writing as much lately, but I’ve definitely been reading more. This is mostly due to the fact that I’ve realized that I miss reading fiction. It seems like since I’ve graduated from college I’ve been drawn almost completely to nonfiction: biographies, educational, motivational, historical and scientific books. While I enjoy reading those books, it’s much more rare for them to suck me in and keep me up reading almost all night like I used to. In fact some of them help put me to sleep even when the subject matter does interest me.

Part of the reason I’ve been avoiding fictions is that I didn’t really like the fiction I was choosing. I was trying to read most of the books from a list of the top 100 best novels, but some of them, while great pieces of literature, bored the crap out of me. I recently found a book list that so far has really appealed to me: IBList. I was looking for the IMDB equivalent for books and it led me to IBList. While IBList isn’t nearly as expansive or useful as IMDB, it’s pointed me in the direction of some great reads. The top books on the site are really skewed toward science fiction, which is alright by me because I’ve been really into that lately.

I just finished reading Flowers for Algernon. I picked it up and couldn’t set it down until I was done. It kind of reminds me of the way Of Mice and Men made me feel. Anyway, very highly recommended. I just realized I ought to sign up for an account and contribute at least some ratings to IBList, if not reviews.

Here’s another post that I forgot to publish about the Iraq war from Les, my friend in the army.

What has happened to this nation’s ability to become angry? What has happened to our righteous indignation over the death of our Soldiers? Where is the public outcry when terrorists detonate a tank full of chlorine on a crowd of civilians, burning their lungs and subjecting them to a horrible death over next few days as they choke to death on their own mucous? How about when they hack the heads off of our citizens with a blade that is deliberately so dull it takes several swings before it comes off? How about when they lob mortars with a careless disregard and blow up a playground full of kids? Or how about the man who gives a ticking time bomb to a ten year old kid that detonates on him, blowing of his hands and peppering him with shrapnel? I have seen all of these events, and what makes the news, people crying that we should get out. Have we become so cowardly that when evil raises its head we run and hide? It didn’t used to be this way, there was once a time when any one of these would have had people lining up to get the enemy, when crimes like these would not stand before the righteous. The News and the public should be calling for blood and vengeance on the people who would act with such malevolence. Instead of calls for withdrawal, there should be accusations that we have not prosecuted this war aggressively enough. Instead of bemoaning the loss of our service members, we should be kicking down doors in pursuit of those behind their deaths. There should be no question that that those who would dare to harm our citizens will be hounded like the dogs they are. It does not matter why we have gone to war at this point, what matters is that there are evil men here that need to be stopped. If we can longer find righteous anger within ourselves than perhaps “land of the free, and home of the brave,” is the last lament of a dying nation.

We got into Yosemite Park around 6 and setup camp at Camp 4. It was still early in the season but there wasn’t really any snow in the valley. There were even some people I could see climbing El Capitan. There were also some people bouldering right in our camp. Maybe one day I’ll go back to climb. It was suprisingly chilly at night considering how warm it was when we got there. Brendan’s sleeping bag wasn’t up to the temperature as well as it should have been.

The next day we went to the ranger station to get a hike recommendation. The ranger said he couldn’t recommend an overnight hike, but he could describe what was available. We chose to hike the Yosemite Falls trail and he seemed to hint that was a good choice. It turned out that it definitely was.

It took us 3-4 hours to go 3.2 miles. It was pretty steep and we stopped often for views of the valley and the waterfall and to eat. Once we got to a trail split we dropped our packs behind some trees and hiked to the falls overlook. I’m always impressed with the trails that people manage to build into cliffs and rock. From the waterfall lookout we could see the Yosemite point lookout and it was higher and better looking than where we were, so we headed for it. We had to hike through a little snow, but the view was well worth the short hike.

We went back to our packs and hiked up the other trail a little way before Brendan’s sixth sense led him to the most awesome backcountry campsite. It was a few hundred feet off the trail, wasn’t covered in snow and had a primitive firepit built with plenty of dry fuel nearby in the form of pinecones, needles and a fallen tree that had dry rotting wood that you could simply pull out from the underside of it. I was able to get the fire started on the first light with nothing but a lighter and what I found near camp. We setup camp and Kim lay in the hammock while Brendan and I played frisbee amongst the boulders. We ate all the rest of our Backpacker Pantry food plus cheese and chocolate. Yum.

After another chilly night we headed back down since we had to be back to Sacramento for our 6PM flight. About half way down I decided to run ahead and return our bear canister to save time. People thought I was crazy running down a steep trail with a full pack on. I thought it was fun, but my legs hurt a bit the next few days. Before leaving the valley we took a dip in the river running through it. Refreshing.

We met Brendan’s parents briefly at their house before heading to the airport with some lilacs that Brendan’s mom gave Kim. Apparently nobody tries to stop you from taking plants out of California, but I suspect it would be different going in. That was a busy spring break week.

After a few days around Lake Tahoe, we drove to Sacramento to see Chito (nickname for Horacio) and Brendan. We slept at Chito’s since he had a house and Brendan was just moving into a new shared housing situation. Chito also had lots of pets: 3 cats, 2 dogs, 2 birds, and lots of aquatic animals (lungfish, turtles, goldfish, coy and more).

During the day Chito took us to work with him at the California Museum and showed us around behind the scenes. A LOT of the museum exhibits seem to be motivated by Maria Schriver, California’s first lady and wife of the governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Money and power sure do give you a lot of opportunity to change what people focus on.

The rest of the day we’d mostly lay around in parks and rest. Kim was still recovering from a nasty cold, so she’d sleep and I’d take photos of squirrels with my snazzy 12X zoom. Squirrels are incredibly funny to me for some reason. The park behind the Captiol building was a nice one.

One night there Brendan picked us up after work and we spent the whole evening cooking, eating and talking in his new house with his new roommate. We made soup with lots of veggies and artichokes. Californians are lucky for their long seasons of fresh produce.

The next day we saw Sacramento’s old town area which is kind of touristed up to look very old and has a lot of shops. I think it’s odd with the two major rivers that go through Sacramento that very little of the city seems to make use of them by being built close. Anyway, after that we laid down in another park until Brendan was off work and ready to leave for Yosemite.

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To start off spring break Kim and I flew into Reno, where we immediately got in a rental car and left. We got into Tahoe at about 2 in the morning, and unfortunately the free camping sites Kim remembered were covered in snow and not open. We just setup camp in some KOA style place which we found out in the morning cost $30. Robbery. Cheaper than the $85 motels though.

We spent the day driving around the lake and doing a few small hikes. It was gorgeously sunny, something Seattle has been lacking. Surprise surprise. I think Emerald Bay is the prettiest area of the lake. We hiked down to the cool house on the edge of the bay, Vikingsholm. Rich people definitely have the coolest houses. We also hiked to a waterfall above Vikingsholm. Kim was fighting a cold so we checked into a time share rental that her boss had been nice enough to set us up with. We checked in and by 8 or so Kim had zonked and slept for about 12 hours.

The next day we had planned to ski but got up a little late. We drove up toward Heavenly ski resort, but didn’t want to spend $75 for a day of skiing since we were starting late and the half day price was still $60 something. Outrageous. We went to a local ski shop and they suggested we do a half day at another resort a little farther away and ski Heavenly tomorrow since a snow storm was predicted for the evening. This turned out to be great advice.

We went down to Sierra ski resort for a half day, which was a good amount of time for us to get back into the swing of skiing and snowboarding. Kim hadn’t been up on the slopes and years and it I’ve out very infrequently the last few years. The snow was a little slushy, but we still had a lot of fun and even found a few fun routes in the trees.

That night it absolutely DUMPED snow. We had two feet of fresh powder to ski in at one of the premier ski resorts in the country. It really was some of the best skiing I’ve ever seen. The mountain is huge with runs in California and Nevada. We skied almost all day on the California side since the snow stayed fluffy there longer being on the less exposed west slope. I introduced Kim to the joys of tree skiing, that is ignoring the groomed runs and making your own run between the trees in the powder. At first she had a really hard time with it. I think she just wasn’t used to moving through powder, but by the end of the day I practically had to drag her off the mountain. There were a lot of sections that had been closed the day before that were now wonderlands of amazing snow. Sometimes the new snow hid rocks and stumps that scraped up my skis and Kim’s board a little, but they were rentals so it wasn’t too big a deal :-). The morning was sunny, it blizzarded a bit in the afternoon.

By the time we were done skiing it was back to sunny, but we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get out of the Lake Tahoe area without chains. Unfortunately nobody else seemed to know if chains were required, so I bought some. They weren’t required. Oh well. I figured we’d have them in case it snowed while we were with Brendan in Yosemite later…

I didn’t volunteer this year at VegFest, but Kim did. VegFest is a vegetarian food festival in Seattle. It was nice for me to be able to just walk around and try food without working. Kim likes the volunteering more than I would since she gets to meet chefs that are big names in the vegetarian culinary world and work with them. I ended up helping at the Lucky Palate booth to give Ray and Bonnie a break. Kim works there making the desserts. There was a lot of good food to try as always, even if I was completely soyed and sugared out by the end of the day. Quorn is still my favorite VegFest discovery. I hope next year they do a different T-Shirt.

Some more posts from my friend Les Ratcliff in Iraq. I asked before I put his name on these since I didn’t want to get him in trouble. He said

Again these are my personal opinions so I hope they do not offend. Being here has changed my outlook and perceptions. Despite the Jingoist slant on many I must reinforce that I hate it here, I hate being away from my wife, and I hate seeing good men die. However, I would do it again, being here has reinforced for me the feeling that ethics, honor, and duty are more important than any sacrifice I must give. I long to go home, but not at the cost of those who depend upon me, and not at the cost of my honor.

Here’s a post he’s entitled Tigers. Grrr!

There are constant calls at home for a political solution to this conflict, and cries from protestors that violence is not the answer. I would dispute these claims. In an insurgency it is true that military force is not enough to win, however, it is required in conjunction with other efforts. There can be no peace without security, and whomever can provide that security will be able to dictate the terms of the political sentiment. Economic aid, and political pressure will not sway a public under threat, it takes Soldiers on the ground and willing to fight to provide the security that will enable people to concentrate on something other than making it to the next day. To those crying that violence is not the answer, I would answer that in this world there are tigers, and the only thing keeping that tiger from their throats is the Soldier who is willing to fight. Despite all of the rhetoric, there are still those out there with the means and will to take what they want, and no diplomatic or economic package will prevent them from that. Unless you are willing to fight for your beliefs, someone will change them for you. In a world where tigers prowl it takes those willing to go into dark places to keep them out of your backyard.