Buddy Trip 2008 - Off Roading and The Death Hike
October 6, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
3comments Categories: Family, Fitness, Friends, gnash-teeth
Tags: Buddy Trip, Built like the Hulk, Death Hike, Off Roading
For the first three days, each evening we ate pretty well, steak, potatoes, salad one night, asparagus, salmon, salad and French bread another night. We even made pizza on a pizza stone atop the fire, yeah that one didn’t turn out too well. In the mornings of those three days, bagels, eggs and sausage.
[Note: Jason who is on east coast time woke me up extra early. The bastard.]
We had great weather, every day we managed to go exploring, a good portion involved taking Jims Honda where only 4×4 vehicles should be going up the sides of mountains. In some places the “trails” where so overgrown the trees and branches were scraping the side of his car so hard he lost the passenger side mirror and made what he calls Mississippi racing strips on his car. Or was it Missouri racing stripes?
In many places we had to get out of the car to remove trees, large rocks, check the “road” ledge to see if it would support the cars weight instead of falling down a high cliff, and also remove branches that were stuck underneath the car, burning on the muffler.
On Monday I believe it was, Jim wanted to take us to a lake high up in the mountains that he’d been to years before. Nothing too hard for the soft bellied Jason and myself. Well we were out there for hours and hours and miles upon miles, scrambling up and down steep hills at higher and higher elevations. In what was referred to as the Death Hike for the remainder of the vacation, primarily because it was an excruciating hike, I was sweating so bad Jim was worried he’d have to hide my body somewhere.
Jim didn’t “remember” it being this bad, it was supposed to be an easy day hike, so Jason and I only brought one 16 ounce water bottle a piece and no food of any kind. I lost at least 5 lbs in sweat the first hour. Fortunately nature provided for us. Everywhere there was huckleberries and blueberries. I broke off branches full of berries and gnawed at them for the sugar and water. It’s important to note that I don’t like blueberries at all, but this was survival. It was the most brutal terrain and I’m surprised I made it. My brain kept pushing my body, and my body kept telling my brain it was an idiot. That it should lie down and let the scavengers enjoy a tasty Mexican dinner.
I knew we were headed to a body of water, and three times when we stopped for a break it was near a body of water. Yet each time that wasn’t the end of the trail. I was too scared to ask how much farther because it was all I could do to make each foot lift in front of the other. When we finally made it to the lake, which I’ll admit was beautiful I realized we’d have to make it back. I had secretly been hoping Jim would be taking us on a round about way back to where we left the car, that the way back would be easier or perhaps he’d already called for a helicopter, despite that we had no cell phone signal anywhere in this area despite being atop a mountain.
[Note: Most of you who read this know I've been hitting the gym, on the bike machine, tread mill, and crunching weights. Hiking this kind of terrain works muscles machines don't, the high altitude makes it worse and I can say without a doubt gyms are for sissies. Now when I walk down a street I feel like the incredible hulk. I'm consciously careful not to crack the sidewalk with my powerful strides. My legs are things of beauty, muscles rippling like a jungle cats and they're finally, today, not sore anymore.]
That was the worst of the excursions, the rest were certainly hard and at higher
altitudes (7000 or so feet), but we always brought a ton of water and food. When we went through a forest of burnt dead trees, I picked the highest point we could see and we just scrambled up the side of the mountain to reach it. My legs ached and burned, but once we reached the tops of these peaks the view was great.
I’ve got tons more pictures and I’ll upload them to Flickr once I finish going through them all.
Stay tuned for more about the rest of the trip.
Buddy Trip 2008 - Here To Freds Cabin
October 5, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
1 comment so far 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.
Winged Death
August 24, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
1 comment so far Categories: Izzy, Squirrels, gnash-teeth
Tags: bats, i love my cat, near death
Last night a flying rodent, batamus-flyingaroundamus was discovered fluttering about the dining room. WeeWee was on the table taking the high ground, Izzy poised on the ground to pick up where and when WeeWee would surely fail.
As I entered the melee, WeeWee bolted, the coward. Izzy and I girded our loins for the battle. A skirmish really, which would only last 10 minutes, but felt like an eternity.
Looking about for a method to capture the bastard in, I noticed an empty Tupperware container. The problem with this approach was that the creature flew at high speed in an erratic and unpredictable manner. The container was rather small which meant I would have to be quick and make sure to protect my face. Visions of it flying into my mouth or eating my eyeballs while I screamed had to be pushed down.
It took several attempts including a scary bit when the bat crawled under the china hutch and made angry chirping noises at me. Fortunately Sub-Commander Izzy had no qualms about reaching under there. (She received the medal of valor for this.)
I wanted to take a picture of the fangs, which despite the creature only being about 2
inches long with a 6 inch wing span, had fangs at least a foot long, that were stained with human blood and had bits of flesh stuck to them. (Shudder.) Alas, I only had my iPhone on me and due to safety precautions of me and my men I could only indulge in photography after the beast was contained.
After capturing it in the Tupperware, I very carefully slid a paper plate underneath. Izzy was close at hand to shut down any escape attempts. We then proceeded outside and lifted the lid, as the bat took flight, Izzy managed to get a good smack in to remind the little bastard not to ever come back.
Evil Bastard Fathers Day Card
June 15, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
add a comment Categories: Castle, Family, Picture of the Day, Squirrels
Tags: darth vader, evil bastard, fathers day, star wars
reading frenzy
April 23, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Castle, Friends, Izzy, Reads
In the last few months I’ve been on a reading kick, reaching out into literature I wouldn’t normally devour. NY Times best sellers and those kinds of books that make you relate to the feeeeelinnngs, wants and desires of characters. Characters that at no point in the story are doing anything with political intrigue, nano tehcnology, super-viruses, secret societies, or variations of the space-time continuum. Lets just come out and say it. I’m reading chick books.
I’ve dabbled before in this area, always something lent to me, nothing I’d pick off a shelf and purchase willingly. Except now, with some suggestions from my friends, that’s exactly what I’m doing.
In fact, I’ve recently finished The Life of Pi. Boy was that a rough start. Slow, uninteresting dialog and only a few religious observations that made me chuckle. The middle of the book got more interesting. It was survival against a superior killing machine, granted not a Kzin, but a tiger nonetheless. This I can relate to. Since as most of you know I often battle Izzy in a fight to the play death. The last third of the novel was exciting, I had trouble putting it down, and with an ending that left me wondering.
In case you’ve stayed up late at night, staring into the blackness, fantasizing about what my book reports were like as a child. Well now you’ve seen one.
This month I think I’ve spent almost $200 on books. A few computer programming, a couple older Frank Herbert sci-fi genre I’ve been looking out for, and a few of these “others”.
Now I have this huge stack of books on my desk and frankly it’s a bit overwhelming. All of them call to be thumbed through and started. I think I should put them away on the bookshelf except for the one I’m actually going to read now. Yes. Yes, that would make things easier.
For my fellow book worms, regardless of genre preference, may I suggest setting up a free account on Shelfari. It’s really a great site from some local Seattlites. Perhaps my favorite feature is the ability to export your library in full to a spreadsheet. Unlike most sites, whether they are social media or not, the information you provide for your accounts/profiles isn’t generally exportable to take with you. In this case, you own your own information and I think that’s worth supporting.
Project LOL Izzy: Purrito Party
March 7, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Izzy, Picture of the Day, Squirrels, TimeWaster
Ugh. I’ve been sick for awhile, I’ve been sleepless and feeling worse. Izzy who’s been avoiding me for the most part during this last week of illness must be trying to cheer me up. She’s been feisty, biting my toes, nuzzling and trying to drink my juice.
So we decided it was time for another purrito party. I think she had even more fun this time.
Izzy doing her Keanu Reeves impersonation.
Izzy all snuggly
Izzy tries to do a little worm type slithering.
She looks upset, but she’s really not.
Izzy doing her, ‘keeping it real’ look.
Project LOL Izzy
February 19, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
7comments Categories: Friends, Izzy, Picture of the Day, Squirrels
I love this Eye-Fi SD card. While I took pictures it automatically uploaded them to my compooter via wifi. So sweet.
Anyways so my friend Pithy (aka The Bitter Bean) sent me this hilarious picture of a Purrito which has been sitting in the back of my brain for a few days.
As I come in from a smoke break, I drop my hoodie on the floor, directly onto my beloved Izzy. Well, it was bound to happen. I ended up unceremoniously stuffing her into the sleeve. The first few seconds before her confusion wore off it was perfect, but I couldn’t hold the camera still from crying and laughing so hard. By the time I was able to regain enough composure, she’d already managed to squirm onto her feet.
Aside from looking pissed, the results are far from being purrito-rific.
Maybe if I fashioned a tiny belt I could get her to look more like a Jawa from Star Wars.
I wanted to try again, but she ran off somewhere.
…a little while later, I came up with this…..
Stake Thru The Heart
January 22, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
1 comment so far Categories: Castle, Family, Picture of the Day, Squirrels, gnash-teeth
Tuesday my oldest cat, has always been a little…off. As a kitten he was bobble head-ish, a jet black furball from the other side where all evil stems from. He once ran into a marshy swamp probably chasing frogs or butterflies like kittens are want to do. He was too scared to come back though. And as I searched through the muck, late at night, trying to follow the meowing cries I could not find him. The next day another search party was organized and again we followed the cries.
Things like this would always happen to him. He used to get into cat fights a lot, would never back down from a dog and generally was always in a foul mood. Stubborn or stupid I could never quite decide. He’s been to the vet so many times, overdosed on catnip, and eventually began to drool and wet himself a lot. His attitude the last few years has become one of a senile, bitter, old man. Hissing at the walls and inanimate objects.
I’ve mentioned his evilness before and joked that only a stake through the heart could actually kill the beast.
This last vet visit they informed us of his terminal disease. His evil has been eating him from the inside out, he had to be put down. The staff were all quite somber and gave me time alone with the demon.
So as I sat there with him in the small examine room, I petted him and told him that I forgave him for being such an evil little shit the last 12 years. He looked at me in the eyes with that same look he’s always saved for me. Part contempt and part wanting to give in an enjoy my pets. As I held him, the doctor came in and administered the shot, just as Tuesday began to enjoy my gentle caresses and actually purr for me. I watched the fiery glow ebb slowly away and his eyes became dull.
Tuesday Castle was born from a half-wild cat out in the county some 12 years ago and has been with me ever since. He is survived by at least two sisters my mother-in-law has and his step-siblings WeeWee (Wednesday-Elmo) and Izzy (Inspector Schmores). Our relationship has always been strained, but had a few good moments every now and then.
He died at 4:02 PM PST.
He’s now buried in my backyard, far away from the dogs and deep enough that he should rest peacefully. I may plant a tree over him as his marker.
Currently Feeling: Relieved and a lil sad.
Currently Anticipating: Some Taco Time Mexi Fries.
Currently Loving: Izzy.
My Dreams Will Be With Me
January 11, 2008 Posted by Al Castle
2comments Categories: Castle, Family
My daughter just finished up some homework (she’s in first grade). The assignment was to practice writing any sentences using the words of the day. This is what she wrote.
I wish I could wish on a real star.
And I wish for all of my dreams to come true.
And if they don’t, my dreams will be with me.
The way she thinks is so positive, she just makes me melt.
So Thankful It Hurts
November 23, 2007 Posted by Al Castle
5comments Categories: Castle, Family, Friends, Insider, Must Listen, Squirrels, TimeKillers, TimeWaster
I’m immobile. Perhaps permanently confined to my lazy-boy and a soon to be 60 Minutes or Oprah special on obesity. A gluttonous mountain of hot Latino, stuffed with such tastiness I fear the police may come knocking to question the legality.
My mom really outdid herself this year, every dish was superb. The turkey wasn’t dry, the mashed potatoes weren’t lumpy and the gravy… oh the gravy! Such delectable roasted flightless fowl juice! It challenges my refreshing Sprite for the tile of ‘Sweet Nectar of the Gods’. I find myself drooling at the memory of it. Too many trips back for more, I lose count and just keep calling them “seconds”, I might have blacked out from the pain and joy. The bottles of wine might have played a part as well.
Slowly I recover from the feeding frenzy as the gravy lust subsides. My body finally forces me to stop, the laws of physics call. The new jeans I wear, which were too big, are now much too tight. I fear the lining of my stomach may tear apart if I move too suddenly. Internal organs bathed in masticated flesh and vegetables…no I must not think that. The horror of all that wasted gravy….
Sitting here, unable to reach the remote - I think of what I’m thankful for. My old co-worker Sue would call them blessings, my dear friend Jason would call it luck - the good fortune I’ve been allotted has taken many forms and shapes, sometimes not so obvious and other times so delightful I feel wrapped in joyx.
The engineers who designed this chair to hold my massive girth come to mind. As do the engineers from Nissan who designed the crumple zone of that Nissan Sentra which kept me alive many years ago. Of the emergency room witchdoctors which may have saved my life when I had chest pains. Pam the nurse who assisted when my daughter was born.
I think of the true friends I have in my life - old and new. David McInnis who’s taught me many things about business, management and generosity. Willybob for always being true and understanding. The Bonz for mentoring and forgiving me. Travis for being the poster child for a life-long boyhood friend and McGerr for not making me listen to his music. Carl I can’t imagine my life without you in it. My dear talented Penguins whom I judge all others against. Cari & Terry who let me vent, make me laugh and think my “quirks” are adorable.
And of course shout outs: Paolo you’ve shown me there’s hope yet for mankind. Jiyan, Robin, and Ryan - for showing me that creative and intelligent people do exist on the East coast. Bob & Mark of Vocus, I learned a few things about surviving in a large, public company. Mike & Joe who claim that not every gay man wants me. Chris for entertaining me by being a closet Mexican and Matt for not being a Latino.
My family, well most of them - you guys aren’t all that bad. I’m thankful for my animals - as Izzy and WeeWee play fight at my feet. The only thing that would make that scene better is if the Star Trek fight music was playing as they circle one another… Izzy becomes distracted and attacks a wall outlet. I love that damn cat.
It’s been a long time since I’ve reflected on what I’m thankful for. I also skimmed over a few people, but my greasy sausage like fingers are tired of typing. The gravy is taking its final hold on me, time to sleep.
