An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

Mon,7/14 On the flight down from Juneau I read a review in The Atlantic of a book called, "Twee: The Gentle Revolution in Music, Books, Television, Fashion and Film". This was either the best of worst possible thing to read on the way to a city that seems to revel in whimsy. Needless to say this book was also featured at a major Portland bookstore so the hipsters who rode there on their single gear "fixie" bikes could revel in irony as they browsed the books and twirled their whimsical 19th century mustaches. Perhaps I am being too harsh on Portlanders - they are more laid back in their quirkiness than New York hipsters, though in addition to fixie bikes I did see more 35mm film cameras than I had seen in years - carried slung over the shoulder to leave the hands free for iPhone use. Whether the hipster designation (condemnation?) is valid or not, other Portland stereotypes certainly ring true. For one thing, Portland people sure take their environmenta...

A few more things: Being a navigation dork I had brought along printouts of some appropriate pages from the NOAA booklet charts. Here's my daily markup of our location: Here's the initial planned track from the day 1 briefing (we deviated somewhat from this, but it's generally correct): And here we are, happy:

Thurs, 7/10: Red Bluffs Happy Ted's Birthday! Today is Ted's 21st birthday. We had the serendipitous event of briefly having cell phone service as we passed near the town of Cake and so we texted Ted to say Happy Birthday. He responded with a picture of a bottle of tequila which he said was his first legal liquor purchase. Then David sent us a Snapchat of the two of them doing shots in our kitchen. And then the cell phone service dropped off, leaving to our imagination any further details the mayhem going on back at home. The cell phone thing is kind of funny. I haven't bothered to even carry my phone around, since I don't use it much for non-connected apps such as reading or even music. I guess other people had theirs with them because all of a sudden you'd see a group of people assume the heads-down, phone-out position we've all gotten so used to at home. Whenever I'd see the telltale posture I'd get the urge to dash to my cabin to see i...