This winter I am working on fitting out my Current Design Isle sea kayak to be more custom fitted.  I will be using this blog as a diary of the work and will be posting pictures as well as my write ups and research.

Haven’t been here in three months… I really need to change that. I’ve changed my work schedule to 4/10 so I can get out on some adventures on Fridays, hopefully that will lead to more kayaking but so far it has mostly been spent doing chores like getting the truck serviced and helping folks move.   I think that’s done for a while and am heading to the Coast this weekend. I’ll be taking the kayak and if the weather proves amicable will hit a couple large ocean bays.  I’ll try to take some pictures and post them here next week.

I came home Monday to find that my lovely wife had picked up a new sea kayak for me for my birthday.

It’s a beautiful Current Designs “Isle”, an 18 foot Greenland style touring boat. It a Kevlar layup and is light as a feather.

I’ve got a new sprayskirt on order and it should be here Monday.

I can’t wait to get out on the water!

I think the trip to the coast broke my brain a bit. I seem to be daydreaming about sea kayaks again. I miss my boat which I sold when we moved to New England about 5 years ago. It was a Necky Pinta, my first kayak and a boat I really loved despite it’s tendency to turn like a barge in the winds.

Picked up a copy of Sea Kayak Magazine with lunch on Monday and was dreamy eyed for the rest of the day. This was proceeded by a weekend viewing of “This is the Sea # 3” which is a wonderful documentary about the sport.

So, I have been researching possible new boats. My options are a bit limited as my size makes finding a boat rather challenging.

Right now I am looking at:

• Tiderace Xplore X
• Current Designs Solstice Titan
• Wilderness Systems Tempest 180

All are beautiful boats, but i am leaning toward the Tiderace as a starting place. The reviews are excellent and they have one at Alder Creek Kayaks here in Portland. Maybe I’ll schedule a test paddle!

We rented a house right on the beach and took a four day weekend to celebrate my youngest’s sixteenth birthday. The weather is typical winter Oregon, but that’s my favorite environment for PNW beaches. Almost no tourists at all and the long stretch of beach out our living room windows is people free for hours at a time.  There a a couple multi-day beach hikes up in Washington on the Olympic that seem to be calling to me now.

Well, it  has been a while!

Needless to say I made it to Oregon and back in November the girls joined me. We have a little rental in Gresham and the job is amazingly wonderful. We are very happy to be back in the PNW seeing favorite places and lots of old friends.

The New Year has brought us typical NW weather with ample rain and a few cold snaps just to keep us on our toes.

I am reading a lot about backpacking and am working on getting my legs under me so when the weather lifts a bit, I can hit the trail, maybe even with my favorite four legged buddy. Lots of good places to go and things to see. I plan on recording a lot of my adventures  here.

More updates, and photos and such as the adventure picks up again!

An overdue update;  I am heading North to Oregon Wednesday where I will be taking on the job of Technology Director for the City of Gresham. I did several interviews with them and was so very impressed by the commitment and professionalism at every level. The IT crew seems like a really good group of folks and I am really looking forward to getting my feet on the ground there and working with them.

I will be sad to leave the County behind. Its been a very good run. I have managed to make a difference here and make some friends too… the only thing constant in life is change I suppose…

Our house went on the market today. We have been working on it almost constantly for the last month to get it prepped. The girls will be staying her for a bit to show it and will hopefully be joining me in the next 30 days or so.

In the meantime, I have tuned up the Xterra and prepped it for a nice long road-trip. Since its just me I’ll be driving up through Northern Arizona, Utah’s canyon lands, and across Idaho and Eastern Oregon, down the Columbia to Portland.

I am excited about the trip and am making it into a nice three day excursion through the West. I’ll try to blog about the adventure along my own personal Oregon Trail.

Its amazing what you can do with some duct tape, an old 12volt fan from a power supply and 30 minutes of time. Felt like I got back to the basics today when our Unity Voice Mail server died.

The internal fan in the Proliant Server that runs the County voice mail system went bad and it started into a constant reboot cycle. I was the closest one to the data center so I popped in and took a look see. Those old Compaq Proliants are built like trucks so they cobble back together pretty well. We had no spare internal fan on the shelf but did have a room full of old systems. Tearing into a power supply for a surplus IBM, I yarded out its fan, rewired it and with a little duct tape and foam got the server back and operational.

Real parts should be here Monday, but it did feel good to McGyver a solution in the heat of the moment.

Driving by the local post office this afternoon…

Xterra Ooops!