Jan 2009:Studying for the MCAT. All I do is study. Trying to get back into med school. Now that I don't have to be a stay at home mom, I can go back to school...... Yeah, right. Well we will see. Also built Bob a computer. My first build in a cube box with a micro motherboard. It looks like a little juke box, is fast and furious, and stays super cool
Feb. 2009: Well Byron just turned 18 at the end of January. He bought himself a red jeep and went to Mardi Gras in New Orleans. March 2009: We built a cute greenhouse from an EZ Up kit. Lots of seedlings waiting to go out.
April 2009: Well I took the test on the 24th. Nerves were shot. 30 days till the results are out. CRAP!!!!!
May 2009: Went to California with Bob. We stayed with his father in Redding. We did a ton of Geocaching, biking, hiking, kayaking, all in the damn rain. The sun shone brightly the day we left. We took lots of photos and here they are.
Bob and I spent our weekend hiding our own geocaches and doing some seeking. One took us two hours and I am sick with a nasty cough. Got my computer back up and running, stupid Vista almost crashed everything. Now I must get my photos uploadesd
May 29: I scored a 33R on my MCAT. TERRIFIC!!! Even if I say so myself. Now I must get applications in to 25 schools so I have a better chance of getting accepted. Spent the weekend caching. See some caching photos here. Had a great time and BBQ'd on the Hoh River. The doggies had fun. Today I spent a lot of time getting torn to shreds by the huge thorns on the blackberry bushes that I was cutting back so I can finish putting up the electric fence. Got to keep the elk out of my veggie garden
June 4: OMG, OMG, OMG!!!!!!!!! We went kayaking today on the Hoh River. Now the Hoh is Glacier fed, so the hotter it gets the stronger it runs. However, It is still only a class two at best. Well, we took along a new friend from New York City. Big, strong ex marine. I give them a nice long lecture of does and don'ts, and we practice in the shallows a while. Total waste of time since it turns out Dude freezes really badly when he panics. We had about a 150 foot chute to run, no turbulence, but bad log piles down each side. So I say, "piece of cake, since it is dead straight inside the chute, all you have to do is make sure you are dead center in the river before it narrows and it will chase you straight down the middle. Follow my line to the center and then just enjoy the ride. Do not follow where you see me, since I will be too far down stream, follow where I was at each specific point so you follow my LINE." I went a little ahead to play safety officer.
So, does dude paddle my line to the middle of the river? OH NO!!!!! Bob had stayed back with him to watch my route. As soon as Bob paddled out, he starts screaming, too late of course, "BOB, DON'T LEAVE ME!" and then paddles straight down stream toward us. Then the fool stops paddling because he is heading straight for a huge log, and LEANS AWAY from the obstacle poking at it with his paddle. This after I explained that if he leaned away the current would catch the upstream side of his boat and flip him. So of course he is now upside down in the chute.
I run down stream along the bank below the chute and dive in, swim out into the current in time to catch his kayak, and tell him just to hang on as I start kicking toward the shore. Once I felt rocks under me I shouted to him to stand up, he just kept screaming, "I can't, I can't." and he let go of the boat. I dragged the boat onto the island and ran across it and dived back in.
Instead of heading the easy way toward the island, he is following line of sight across the current. He lets go of the paddle striking out for the far shore. I had him in a 5 millimeter wetsuit with a very good life jacket and helmet, so I knew he would bob like a cork. I took off after the paddle. There is no wiser saying than that you don't want to be up the creek without it. I had to swim hard with the current to catch the paddle and then swim hard for the left bank. I hiked up steam to the fella, where I found him shaking and blubbering. "I need to lay down, my body feels too heavy, I can't move." blah, blah, blah..... I told him to have a smoke and wait for us to get back to him.
I set off upstream for a way and then jumped in and swam across the slower branch of the river to the island where Bob was waiting. I asked him to wait until I had the other two kayaks on the left bank and then paddle down to join us. Bob only has one leg, and a prosthetic made for walking not swimming so I like to stay down stream of him in case he takes a dunk. He was in my really, really stable Sevylor whitewater inflatable. Anyway, now I needed to make it across the very swift current to the right bank. I walked up to the top of the island, waded until the current whipped me off my feet and then swam like a woman possessed.
I came out just below my kayak for the day, a horrid old creek runner, as unstable as all get up. I rested until I no longer wanted to puke and then paddled to the next island where I tied the 'dude's' kayak to mine and set off for the left bank. Once I came ashore, I had to drag the boats back up the shore to our shaky friend. He wanted to hike out. RIGHT! we were on the wrong bank, miles of dense forest, NOT HAPPENING!!!.
So I bullied him into the boat and babied him down the river holding his kayak against mine except where I really needed him to paddle. We had to stay in as shallow water possible which means we moved slowly and got hung up on rock a lot. Each time he got stuck on a rock he would start screaming and just sit. I kept telling him he could just get out and walk but he refused. I would have to shout at him and make him use his hands and paddle to 'walk' the kayak off the rock. For heavens sake if your hands can touch the rocks on the bottom, you are not in imminent danger of drowning. I had to scout each section along the bank, go back to the guys and float the scouted section. If there was any riffling (which is choppy, noisy white caps caused by shallow water, which he somehow did not believe he could stand up in if he fell out) or boulder garden, I would have to run the section with the two inflatables tied together, then hike up to fetch the creek boat and run it while poor, one legged Bob bushwhacked down stream with dude. (whose name by this time had morphed to Stupid F*@!&^ Pussy)
Once we were above the only real rapids on the whole stretch we put in to the left bank. (right too steep) I ran the 1/4 mile stretch with the inflatables and then the creek boat. Bob and SFP arrived below in time to take a few photos of the easy bottom end. See photos of Bob, SFP and me here. Now we are at the end right, across from my truck, I (stupid me) think it is over.
OH NO!!! think again. SFP refuses point blank to get back in a kayak and paddle across the current to the far side. Flat water, totally flat water with a few hundred yards to the next rocky section which happened to be wide and relatively shallow. No not a shot. All he can see in his tiny little mind is all the churning of the rapids he just passed and hear the roar. Ding a ling says he is going to hike up to some campers we passed. SFP city boy would not have made it 400 yards before heading for Mexico.
Bob headed across to show him how easy it is. Still no. So then he wants the Coast Guard, are you kidding. I tell silly SFP that the Coast Guard will charge him a whole bunch for a non-emergent rescue. I tried to explain what would happen if he got lost in the wood, ie scare him shitless, and convinced him to sit and wait while I went back to town, and got a rope long enough to drag him back across the river. I headed back over to Bob, who called his brothers to bring us what we needed. While we were waiting some otters went and scolded SFP. They were so cute popping up in front of him chattering away. We found out after the rescue that he was scared stiff, he thought the were baby seals coming to attack him. He wanted to run but was afraid of the bears in the woods. Thank god for my little chat before I left him there and went for help. I wished a bear had come out of the woods behind him. I recon he'd have walked on water. Saved all the fuss.
Bob's brothers Rich and John arrived with a couple of hundred yards of rope and a pontoon raft. Brother John took the rope across, put Silly SFP, in the raft and Brother Rich, Bob, and I towed him across. John then brought the kayak back. Needless to say a 1.5 hour trip turned into a 7.25 hour PAIN IN THE ASS!!! Boy will I will sleep well tonight because I am soooooo tired. PS. Bob is taking him out fishing Friday. I can't wait to hear about that. I hope he pukes the WHOLE time.
Jason Comments 6/5/2009: Hehe, sounds like he is not a good candidate to take to any other rivers around here. With reactions happening like that I wonder what would have happend had he been with us on the Snake River or was it the Columbia all those years ago. Ex marine you say?? Damn,
got to wonder what type of kindergarden training they do nowdays. :)
That said, panic is a killer, anyone wanting to try kayaing for the
first time should maby take a raft trip first and always go with a
experienced person .... at least untill they feel good about it.
June 5: We are already eating a lot of veggies from my garden. Here are the first photos of my garden. Bob made me an 8x2 bed today for more square foot gardening. Planted two types of beets, round carrots, leeks, corn, and more lettuce. I will get more photos of the new bed so I can have before and after photos. If you look at the bed in front of the greenhouse you will see it empty and hollow. Now filled with plants and feeding us. Inside the greenhouse in the photo of the bed full of plants you can catch a glimpse of the new planter. This squarefoot gardening technique is working really well. Ding-a-ling from yesterday never went fishing today because the sea looked too rough.
June 6: My dearly departed Granny's birthday. Happy birthday in heaven Granny. Watch over my medical school apps please. I know it is what you wanted. Sent off 13 medical school applications, three left to do. Now the wait for invites to complete secondary applications. Wish me luck!
June 18: Last weekend, Hope and I hiked from Rialto Beach to Lake Ozette, via Cape Alava. It was 24 miles of mostly slippery rocks. We will not be doing that hike again. We love the Oil City to 3rd Beach coastal hike but this northern section was just plain tedious. See the photos here.
June 19: Just got back from a 13 mile hike. It was very misty as you will see in the photos. Hope and I took Lucy, Indy, Lilbit, and her dog Kadi. My tiny dog and her old dog had to skip this one. We did some geocaching on the way and Hope found all three caches. She is good at the cache hunting thing. I will be taking her to try locate the one Bob and I could not find at the twisted tree. See the misty hike photos here. Yesterday I broke my back removing the old rotten flower beds and replacing them with nice new ones that Bob built for me. I will take some photos so you can see the vast improvement. today after the hike I transplanted about 60 seedlings.
July 23: I have had a few hikes since my last update. Last week Hope and I went to the Enchanted Valley. It was a brutal hike due to a closed road and the fact that the hike goes up and down steeply all the way. I think we climbed at least 6000 feet on a 2000 foot grade. 18 miles each way in less than 2 days. We messed up our feet so we missed this week's hike to Mount Olympus. See photos and video clips here This week Bob and I went geocaching in Sequim instead. See photos and video clips here
August: Hiked to Mt. Olympus with my nephew, Dean. I went up the mountain alone because he had run out of steam. We camped and fished, caught one, at Elk Lake. It was so beautiful up there. A wonderful end to my summer. Did you know that Glaciers are very noisy. They roar. Weird! Now I must back off and let my foot heal. Sorry, no photos because I drowned my expensive new camera. Still filling in secondary applications for med. school.
September: Applied to more schools because my friend, Mark Palit, MD freaked out at the few schools I had applied to. So I compromised at 20. He wanted 50. I have a few interviews lined up already.
December 2009: Sorry, I have been too busy to update. Went through thousands of dollars on my credit cards applying to medical schools, and attending interviews all over the country. I have been accepted to some so now I have to decide which one I want to attend. Feel free to send donations through PayPal to penern@yahoo.com . Oliver, aka Byron, is now a Petty Officer, and assigned to a squadron. I am supremely proud of his achievements since he is not yet nineteen. He was home for a week over the holidays. So tall and strong.
For all previous year's news follow the links below. This is the first year that I am adding the news to the archive monthly so that it reads in chronological order. The previous years all have to be read from the bottom up.
| 1998
| 1999
| 2000
| 2001
| 2002
| 2003
| 2004
| 2005
| 2006
| 2007&8
|