My brother got married today!

• My photos on Flickr
• Schönecken on the map

• Finding the penguins
• Talking with strangers
• Shrieking from the back of a scooter
• Holding on tight
• Making plans
• Making mistakes
• Making up
• Growing up
• Doing a 1080º on the 101

Lake Sonoma for a second weekend, but this time at canoe pace. We swam to submerged trees, cooked smores on a fire we lit with no matches and slept under shooting stars, keeping guard for the wild boars!

• My photos on Flickr

• How it’s difficult not to get nostalgic when doing something for  the very last time, and how it’s difficult not to regret doing something for the last time without realizing that it would be the last time you do it.
• Not noticing that I’m listening to an amazing album for the first time in mono because of a wonky headphone socket. Jiggling the socket and getting to listen to it for a second time in beautiful glorious stereo.
• Wishing that I had a pair of glasses that somehow showed me the world in mirror image, so everything was familiar yet novel all at once.
• Driving across the Bay Bridge with friends, watching the main suspension cable fall and rise again, with the foggy SF skyline behind.
• That whenever I flick my camera to movie mode, magic seems to happen: swans, whitewater, ropeswings, tubes
• Realizing that just because I put it on a to do list doesn’t mean it’s done (‘star-and-forget)
• Writing a best-man’s speech in German (I got a D in German language in school)
• Thinking way too hard about how to organize bookmarks
• Listening to the radio really carefully, hearing the edits
• Planning a shopping trip to Amsterdam with my sister
• Getting a mowhawk from Dave Young
• Not getting too comfortable
• The Google androids
• Internalizing the cosmos
• All the pretty girls
• Reconnecting

Photos on Flickr

Ropeswing video on Flickr

Tubing video on Vimeo

(Video also here) A bunch of nerds on South Fork American River for a company off-site, one with a digital camera. Charles and I fell out out of the raft at Satan’s Cesspool, a grade three rapid. Under the water I felt like I was in a giant washing machine, spinning around surrounded by bubbles. I kept waiting to bob to the surface but I couldn’t even tell which way was up. I managed to stay under for a whole eight seconds, which is really quite impressive given that I had a huge lifejacket on. It seemed like forever. When I did surface I was so panicked I couldn’t decide whether to swim for the shore or wait for a raft, or notice that my team mates were reaching out to me, trying to pull me onto their raft. Thanks everyone!

From Ye, on the raft that rescued me: This is awesome! You did pop-out pretty far from the place you went in. We heard you fall, and after a long log times saw an itty bitty paddle handle stick out of the water way further down, and you popped out right after. You must have fallen into a reversal, but was able to catch the wash-out rapid towards the bottom of the river, which carried you pretty far down stream of your boat… I thought you were shouting “where’s my paddle” when you were really saying “where should I go?” ;) Our guide commanded us to row forward to go get you but our whole crew were busy looking at you sloshing around and Charles being pulled back into his boat to really start rowing. Our guide had to shout  out “guys! Row FORWARD! We need to go rescue that guy!”. That snapped us into action :) …I always wondered what it felt like going into one of those holes/reversals/spin cycles. :) Thanks for providing us with the extra excitement!

And Laura: The best part was hauling you aboard and hearing you say,  “My camera was running the whole time!” Guess he’s OK then.

My photos on Flickr

GPS Track (from Charles)

View Larger Map

(if it gives an error hit reload or watch here)

My photos (group pool)

]]> http://dmountain.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/hausboat-two/feed/ 0 dmountain http://dmountain.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/snippets-to-continue/ http://dmountain.wordpress.com/2009/07/14/snippets-to-continue/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 01:04:57 +0000 dmountain http://dmountain.wordpress.com/?p=452 ]]>

Some things making me happy:

• Kayaking to Doe Island in the San Juan Islands
• Looking up flights to the kayaking trip… on kayak.com, without noticing the concordance.
• Seeing a motorcyclist on the highway whose white wind stopper was all puffed up in the wind like the Michelin Man
• Looking up at El Capitan and Sentinel Rock from Yosemite floor with Joonas, feeling like ants
• Looking down on the Boeing Factory floor, one of the most intricate scenes I’ve ever seen
• Every time I see Sutro Tower busting out through the SF fog bank
• Discovering the random old trees that are around the office where I work, the ones that date back to before Google and the internet to a time when Silicon Valley was all orchards.
• Noticing that in the picture above Little Sucia Island looks like a speech bubble

Some thoughts occupying my mind recently:

• That about the nicest thing you can wish someone is happiness.
• That the Google President who was beside me at the breakfast pancake line had shaving cream in his ear. Should I have told him?
• That if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, and that confronting decisions is better than dodging them and that living deliberately is almost always better than just floating.
• How it’s interesting to look back at big and great things and remember the innocuous ways in which they began. And how, while sometimes I think it would be cool to be able to go back and whisper in my own ear “this bit coming up is  important; pay attention, you’ll like it!” (as though I’m beside myself in a movie), how really I’m very happy not to be able to do that as it would spoil the adventure.
• And that “There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
• Or, as Regina puts it: “This is how it works / You’re young until you’re not / You love until you don’t / You try until you can’t // You laugh until you cry / You cry until you laugh / And everyone must breathe / Until their dying breath // No, this is how it works / You peer inside yourself / You take the things you like / And try to love the things you took // And then you take that love you made / And stick it into some / Someone else’s heart / Pumping someone else’s blood // And walking arm in arm / You hope it don’t get harmed / But even if it does / You’ll just do it all again.” (Regina Spektor)

GPS Track