INTERESTING TIMES

 

I have just acquired a packraft.  My first one.  I’ve been lurking, curious about packrafts for years now, watching my friends, listening.  I come at packrafting from a whitewater background.  I’ve run rivers in every kind of craft.  Kayaking and rowing remain my favorite ways to flow.

 

I see packrafting as a means to access rivers that require carrying my boat farther than I want to carry a hardshell.  These days whitewater kayaks can easily weigh 50 pounds before I put float bags, a water bottle, a throwbag, hand paddles, first aid kit, and lunch in there.  The packraft weighs 8 pounds, plus add in all that same stuff.  Carrying my backpacking kit plus 14 pounds of boating gear is still going to be a load, but I am excited to do it.  Nothing is more enticing than a new wilderness river.

 

I understand that lots of people come at packrafting from the opposite direction.  It’s a forgiving craft in which to learn to paddle whitewater.  More maneuverable than a raft, it gets you interacting with the river on that individual scale.  For these folks it could easily be their favorite boat out of their whole quiver, because it offers the most independence.

 

The trap I see is the one I face.  I have seen friends do it—transition to the packraft for self-support missions and then have a hard time getting back in the hardshell.  For people who aren’t confident in their roll, or who flip over too much in a kayak, the papckraft is an obvious choice.  You get to go on the river without such stress and worry.  

 

The problem with removing that stress and worry is that it blunts your edge.  Just as paddling a kayak with really good stability does.  You stop sitting up and engaging your lower core, instead relying on the boat to provide balance.  Eventually you merge with the blob that you are sitting on which might as well be a couch.  Pass the popcorn.

 

My plan is to maintain my edge as long as possible.  I paddle an edgy kayak that requires me to sit up and paddle actively.  It flips me over really fast if I get lazy or inattentive.  Thankfully my roll works, and this combat-roll practice is making it better.  I’m not young, so the downslope is in sight, but for now I’m still getting better at kayaking.

 

I don’t intend to roll my packraft.  I will try it, but not hard enough to hurt my shoulders.  If I find it easy then I’ll do it, but no straining.  I got a self bailer so I can just climb back in to self rescue.  I’m hoping that with my whitewater skills I won’t flip over too much.  We shall see if I fall into the packraft trap.

 I realize I don't post a lot.  I came to DW because I became convinced that LJ was going to have trouble....but it hasn't, and my people are still there.  I feel a little bit isolated here as I've not built the same community I have there so I think I'm going to go back to posting there instead of here then letting it crosspost.  It makes better sense for me because if I don't log in there,  I don't see what my friends are up to.

Maybe I'll do more journaling there.  I still keep a paper journal but life seems so overfull that I don't use it like I used to.

Life is overall fine.  The pandemic hasn't really changed my life much except for having to wear a mask at work, and shrinking my social circles.  I'm OK with the shrinkage.  Being an intravert the little bit of extra space I get from social distancing is a relief.

Summer is here and with it a long series of river trips.  Two trips to Idaho and one Grand Canyon trip launching 8/30.  I guess I'm a little despressed or jaded maybe, because none of it excites me very much.  But once I get out the door I always enjoy it.

My mom in TN has gotten rebellious and is at very high risk of dying from the virus.  She's started going out.  She's an extravert and staying at home with my sister all the time makes her mad.

That's it!  Come join me on LJ if you want to keep in touch.

Today I finally got my updated living will / medical power of attorney updated, witnessed, and notarized, and I also officialized my first last will and testament.  My friends asked me if I was planning on leaving.  It's a good question to ask a person who is settling their affairs at my age, but no, in spite of the depressing state of affairs in the world, my life is good enough that I'm planning to stick around and see what happens next.   In my living will today I specified what I want done if I lose my mind (travel to a country where euthanasia is allowed for dementia--Switzerland or Nederlands allow it as of now), and also where I want my brain to go (for research purposes, to the Oregon Brain Bank of OHSU).  I'm excited and glad to have this done.  I've been meaning to do it and rewriting it for a decade now.

The real reason I was motivated to complete these documents at the age of 50 is that I can tell that I am losing cognitive function.  It shows up in many ways, and people routinely fight me on this observation, saying that I'm fine, it's normal aging, blah blah blah.  Let me just say that I used to be very smart, and I'm not any more, and I know the difference.  A minor example is that I make more mistakes in typing, for example I switch "their" for "they're" and vice versa.  This is a mistake that I used to find utterly mystifying, and now I am doing it.

The other day I updated my lifetime river log with the rivers I have run this year.  I've done 20 new rivers around Oregon this year!  But the shocker finding was that one day in July when I went paddling on the Lower Wind, I could not remember what had happened when I logged the day.  All I remembered at the time (a few days after the actual day when I logged it), was that I had planned to go paddling with Todd.  I did not remember where we went or what happened.

What happened that day was that I hit my head, again, and had short term memory loss as a result.  I have had many traumatic brain injuries over the years, from biking, skiing, and kayaking.  This is the reason that I want to donate my brain for research.  I suspect that my brain will prove that recreational sports participants can also suffer from CTE = chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  It's not just for football players anymore.

On that day I flipped over at the top of a rapid known as the Flume, and was battered on my head and shoulders as I floated through the rapid upside down.  I was afraid to try to roll up because getting in position to roll puts you in a more open and vulnerable position, so I "went turtle" which in this case simply means to tuck tightly under the boat and get my elbows in so nothing gets broken.   I rolled up at the bottom of the rapid and was dazed but otherwise OK.  And yes, for you who do not know me, I was wearing a top notch helmet.  There is no helmet that can protect your brain from the knocking it takes when your whole head is getting walloped around.

This was the third time I'd floated through that particular rapid upside down.  It is a steep, fast, shallow and rocky rapid....brutal, really.  One of my three upside down runs I didn't hit a thing.  Twice I've been beaten silly.  I vowed after this day to not run that rapid at low water anymore.  It's much easier at higher flows and that is the only time I will attempt it.  Unfortunately the portage is difficult and dangerous too... so I may not go on the Lower Wind as much anymore.  Too bad because I do love the waterfalls.

Something else happened that day.  I've thought of it many times since my memory of the day returned.  At the end of the Lower Wind run there are four major drops, three falls and one slide, not in that order. We'd run the first 12 foot falls without incident and were running the tallest single waterfall, about 18 feet vertical.  It's so high that you can't see if the person ahead of you made it, so we just wait a few seconds between boats and then go.  Todd went ahead of me and I waited probably eight seconds, then committed to the drop.  When I crested the horizon line and could see my landing zone at the foot of the falls, he was swimming in it.

He had plunged too deep in the hole below the drop, gotten caught and held, and wet exited from his kayak in the hole.  It took him a while to surface and start floating downstream.  When I saw him I was already mid-air and headed straight for him.  I was afraid that the bow of my kayak would plunge into the water and hit him in the abdomen, rupturing his organs and killing him. That didn't happen.  Thankfully I'd hit a good enough boof from the top that my bow skipped off the surface of the water and I went right over his head.  But the trauma of believing that I was about to kill Todd has not left me.  I am going to require a better signalling system for running blind drops from now on.  I need to know that the landing zone is clear.  We have had trouble at this drop before and still we are too casual about it.

We went to the Mission last night to hear about Viruses from Hell, and it turns out the speaker was a PhD professor who is into viruses that come from acidic hotsprings. He looks a lot like my friend Gordon who is also a brilliant academic--something about that jutting forehead must allow for extra brains. Ken Stedman is a professor at Portland State University who has made a career of viruses. His research has mostly involved examining the genomes of extremophile viruses and comparing them. It was faintly interesting to me--genetics is interesting, and yet I am so homocentric. I really want to know about bacteriophage therapy for healing horrible infections. I want to hear about the evolution of the flu. But his research wasn't about this and his talk was about the questions that will ensure that he gets grants and funding in the future. I couldn't help but to think of the right wing perspective that academics are parasites on society and perform no useful function other than keeping themselves in priuses. There is truth it that, though it is also true that there is nothing more important for our future than to keep investigating our world and what is in it. Scientists have specialized training that makes it possible for them to think of things that I don't have words or concepts for. There is so much more of the world to know about. I am learning this narrow fraction that is medicine, and it is more than I can ever take in. Within that sea I must pick a drop.

Circling back to VIRUSES, I did bring home a few interesting factoids. I call things factoids until they've been demonstrated beyond the shade of MY doubt. He defines viruses in several ways but my favorite was "a capsid encoding organism", also known as a phage. He told us that the major reservoir of viruses on the planet is in seawater, though they infect everything else that lives. Some 5% of the oxygen in our atmosphere is produced by bacteria that are infected with viruses. The viruses increase the oxygen-production of these microbes. I learned that 10% of the human genome is viral---and this is just the ones that have been demonstrated beyond a shade of HIS doubt. Professor Stedman said that up to 43% of the human genome could be viral, and that many of the genes we got from viruses are important ones, without which we would not be here. Apparently all placental mammals share one particular viral gene so it got in there a long time ago.

One of the main points that Professor Stedman made was how much of the world is made up of viruses, and how small they are. He said that if you put all the Earth's viruses end to end the lineup would reach to the Andromeda Galaxy. And they'd weigh more than some huge number of whales, and so on.

One nice thing about going to science pubs is being around people for whom evolution just is, instead of having to debate about it. It makes me realize how much energy I put into defending a basic scientific mindset. Too many groovy spiritual people and homeopaths in my life. They stress me out.

For today my mantra is "it is OK to do nothing" and I have been enjoying it. I need to take breaks more often. And journal. Just for me.

Woke up at 4am eastern time (1am Pacific time) to fly back to the left coast. Due to a coffee mistake (didn't ask and was served caffeinated at 8pm) I slept only 2 hours. Wow does that make for a long day. Arrived in Portland at 10:30am local time, and was grouchy by noon and incoherent by 5pm. Went to bed at 7pm and slept 11 hours, and I feel almost normal this morning. Phew!

So I woke up in the upstairs room here at Will's, which is to be my new home. The room that was the bedroom in this house will become my office. It is a pleasant room and will be even nicer once I can clear the old juju from it. From this day forward any time I use something from my old apartment it is moving to Will's house.

My old apartment smells like cat shit, has no toilet paper or paper towels on the roll, has vines growing into the stairway, has compost rotting in the kitchen, and is generally covered in cat hair and disgusting to me. It quickly becomes apparent how much energy I put into keeping the place clean, and how quickly things will decline in my absence. Emily's new boyfriend, the unemployed smoker from Jersey, is still hanging around. He avoids my eye. He may be the housemate she is thinking of having move in....a disaster in the making. The downstairs neighbors are very upset at her for making noise all night long every night, walking with heavy feet and moving furniture around at 4am. I don't know what she has been up to but I know that she is neurotic and the new boy is likely to aggravate that. I was a moderating presence.

So I have 9 days in PDX before I leave town for another adventure. In that time I am supposed to relocate my possessions from the apartment and clean it. I am leaving Kitten there until we return from Idaho. I hope she doesn't freak too much when the bed etc are removed. I will relocate her to Will's in June.

More later, hope you guys are well. I haven't read anything on LJ in a month or so, so if there has been some major happening in your life please let me know.

I have to leave in a few minutes. This doc specializes in children with autism. I'm told she is quite excellent at working with parents. I am very curious and have an assortment of ideas and theories that I'd like to test against the real thing. Hello autists!

Of course my favorite river is always whichever one I'm on. Or was just on. Or am about to go on. Today was my third time down the Lower Wind in Washington, and it is quickly working its way into the list of all time favorites. It's not especially hard. Mostly class III with some IVish low volume rocky stuff, one hard class IV (V-?) called the Flume, and then the series of four drops at the end that most call class IV. The four large drops are 1) vertical 10 footer with an autoboof on the left 2) vertical 20 footer that I like to boof right 3) long bony slide, stupid, dangerous, but kinda fun, 4) the final 10 footer that is a clean (boof right) part of the otherwise rock-infested weir.


This is the autoboof at the first of the final series of falls.

( The level was )

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/652/965/447/?z00m=19981889

This is a petition asking for student loan debt to be forgiven so that we can go about the business of opening new businesses, instead of getting low paying stupid jobs just to be able to make monthly payments on our student loans. I've been saying for a while now that the student loan debt is the next bubble. Last year student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in the US. It's evident to me that I will probably not live long enough to repay my entire debt--I'm just not that young, and the economy is not looking great. I'm not saying I deserve a bailout: I own my foolishness taking on this debt. I'm willing to work hard for the rest of my productive life, and I'd like to give back. I always wanted to be a doctor. I've never had a debt before, and it was and is an uncomfortable decision. If there were prisons for debtors in the US then I wouldn't be too surprised to end up there. But we don't imprison debtors, we just harass them. It is that harassment and the suffering involved in mindless work that I would like to avoid, in favor of being able to concentrate on the business I would like to open, and the people that I would like to help. If the fed were to excuse my debt, I would be able to do more for public health than I otherwise could do.

As far as I can tell, life isn't worth living without love. For a long time I've lived without love, but only barely. I've wanted many times to jump off of something tall for a lack of love. I've fallen in love. I have a great capacity for love. There are many people that I love, have loved, still love. But to be loved back. Ah. This is what life is for, to love and be loved. It is like having two people adding fuel to a fire, instead of just one. One person loving is like building a fire with damp wood and no gas. Tending the flame is much work, and the fire dies when you have to leave to gather more fuel. You have to start over with just a match, and because you love, you work so hard to coax that flame to life. Two people can take turns, blow on the coals, bring light tinder and then small wood, medium then large logs. Two can build a blazing white man fire, or a discrete orb in privacy. Two can bank the coals and rest in the warmth. Yes, more wood will need gathering, cutting, splitting, and the ashes build up. Everything gets that smoky smell. The house can burn down, or the pot of chili get burnt. Nothing is for free. There is risk. There is loss. Still, it is the natural way. Life wants to keep living. Fire wants to keep burning. Love wants to keep loving.

So far this Apex seminar is awesome. It is answering so many of my questions! Perhaps it is lighting me up because I have been actively studying this material for some time now. Lots is familiar, but then when something new is explained it has a structure to fit into, and builds my body of knowledge....feels so good. I finally have a good idea what my protocol will be for getting people off benzos while also treating their anxiety. I finally understand the mechanisms behind gluten's impact on the brains of some people, and which people are more likely to experience this. It's all fascinating. My energy level is high. I seem to finally be kicking my nasty disease. Thank goodness.

School: it is quickly becoming apparent that I have way too many classes this term. I wish I could put some of them off. I'm going to look into the possibility of splitting this load in half and staying another term. I want to study this material thoroughly, not push through it for a grade and remember nothing! I have genetics, oncology, urology, proctology, neurology, endocrinology and ground rounds in addition to my 3 shifts. Most these subjects would fill an entire term (or many) if done properly. Attempting to cover all of them in one term is insane. Madness. Who needs it.

QotD:
When you love, you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.
--Ernest Hemingway