Buddy Trip 2008 - Here To Freds Cabin
October 5, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
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Categories: Family, Fitness, Friends, Squirrels, Travel, gnash-teeth
Tags: Buddy Trip, Death Cab, Freds Cabin
It used to be that the five of us would manage to get together at least for a few hours around Xmas, but we’re now scattered across the U.S. with families and careers so getting together even for those of us still in Washington is hard. Last Xmas we thought it would be a grand idea to try and do a yearly “Buddy Trip”. To get together for a week on some sort of outdoor excursion. This year marked the first of such a gathering and the planning of the trip, scheduling, arrangements, despite having a year to plan came down to a crunch of only four of us with the final arrangements made only a few weeks ahead of time.
Travis lives in Fall City, Wash. and we’ve been friends and neighbors since kindergarten. I started out by leaving work a little early on Friday to drive down to finally see his house (that he’s had for years), and have dinner with his family.
[Note: On the drive down, I was for the first time in about 8 years pulled over. The overly eager young state trooper gave me a citation for following too closely to the vehicle in front of me. How he 's able to judge this from right behind me I do not know, but he wished me safe driving as I tried to re-enter freeway traffic from a dead stop. Perhaps one of the more dangerous of driving maneuvers. I'm of course going to contest the frivolous $124 ticket.]
His eldest son, a 5 yr old named Tate who referred to me as “Mr. Al” thought I was the cats meow and we had fun playing XBox Lego Star Wars. A giant steak dinner complete with home made apple pie and a whiskey night cap put me right to sleep.
Saturday morning Travis and I left the Benz at his house and drove his Subaru to SeaTac to pick up Jason who had flown the red eye in from Raleigh, North Carolina. I’ve known Jason since high school were we were mostly mischievous youngsters. I’ve been fortunate enough to manage more excursions to see Jason on the east coast than I have the rest of my friends. Go figure.
Next the three man crew headed into Seattle to meet up with the one member who wasn’t going to be able to make it. He had an excellent excuse though. Famed drummer for Death Cab for Cutie had just had his first born, a son, only days before. McGerr and I also have known each other since high school, but we haven’t seen each other in about five years. His recording studio business, band touring and album making has kept him busy, but we managed to sneak in a visit to check out his home that he’s been remodeling and see how the new family was doing. After visiting for an hour or so his mom stopped by and we managed to get a group photo which we haven’t seen yet, but it will be the first group photo in probably 10 years. [Updated: Just added the picture] I’ll post it once I receive a copy (and photoshop my second chin off). He sent us off with his GPS that he knew we’d need and of course copies of all his albums.
We then traveled north and met at a grocery store in Sedro-Woolley the last member of the team. Jim transfered into our elementary school in 3rd grade and we’ve been friends since. He’s also the person I live closest to, but see even less than the others. We did some group shopping for food and headed to the first encampment of the trip. A friend of Jims owns a cabin, Freds Cabin, located right on if not practically in the Sauk River.
[Note: It was decided to keep this initial trip low cost, local and outdoors. It is this last point that had me worried. Jim and Travis are hard core mountain climbing, scuba diving, rugged terrain traveling bushmen. The kind that spend more on the latest, lightest, gear and travel the world with it than they do on techie toys. Travis was in the military and now does something technical, requiring security clearance with nuclear power plants around the globe. Jim owns his own flooring business, a contractor who when not working hard lifting heavy objects is in the Ski-to-Sea, hiking distant forbidding mountains, mountain biking and generally the most active outdoors man of the bunch. Jason and I are techies in the extreme. Although even Jason manages to get off his butt more than I do.]
I’d never been to Freds Cabin, and despite knowing Jim most of my life have never met this Fred fellow. Honestly, after so many years of hearing about both, I kind of assumed Fred was a split personality of Jims and this cabin that Fred 
owned was probably a dumpster behind the Black Cat in Fairhaven. I still haven’t met Fred, but I can attest to having lived in a “cabin” for three days right on the river. A hunting shelter, or perhaps a dilapidated rustic cabin, should bring a better picture to mind. It did have a gas kitchen stove, fridge, what once was a bathroom, a bedroom, loft, deck and a wood burning stove for heat. It was packed with a life time of stuff.
Numerous antlers and fishing thingies hanged on the walls both inside and out. This first part of the trip was about “roughing it”, well compared to sleeping outside and taking our advanced age into account it was roughing it. In any case it definitely made the second cabin that much more appealing and we thank Fred for his kindness in letting us use the place for a few days.
And this brings us to the end of the first leg of the trip. I’ll post more soon.
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Tears are streaming from my eyes. I didn’t know you could write more than 200 words at a time.