“Hood River, Oregon is not too shabby.”  I believe I was quoted as saying that earlier this week, and I still agree.

            After two days of van and computer repairs in Reno last week, Christian (brother along for the ride for 5 weeks this summer) and I sprinted up to Portland.

Leaving an area with friends is always sad, but it was nice to be moving toward something new.  I have not had a chance to spend much time in the northwest (even though I have always wanted to), so planning out the next few months of my life up here just seemed to make sense.

            I called up an old friend who lives in Portland and made arrangements to park in front of his apartment until we could get things sorted.  It was a great reunion, and his year and a half old daughter cracked me up the whole time.

Connecting with old friends like that is one of the true blessings of being on the road full time, but like always, it was far too short.

A late night text message confirmed some plans we had made earlier and by coffee and bagel time, we were on our way to Hood River, OR.

We relaxed and listened to music for the one-hour trip, motivated and did some grocery shopping, then met up with Andy Maser and Trip Jennings of the Epicocity Project (http://www.riversindemand.com/) for some shooting on the Little White Salmon.  They had both been out on the river the previous week setting up an intricate video pulley system to get their camera above the renowned Spirit Falls.  Andy had told me a thing or two about it and I was all about checking it out as well as scouting a bit for my own shooting.

We ended up spending two days on Spirit Falls and I’m pretty sure they got some great perspectives of the rapid.

The set up was awesome, but my favorite part of the two days was hearing Trip divulge some details about their trip down the Congo River last summer.  It was about as adventurous as I can imagine an expedition being.

The trip was isolated to an area of political unrest, they were held hostage, paddled the unknown and boofed from the edge of one 25-foot deep whirlpool to another in 1.3 million cfs of water, carried hi-tech sonar equipment built into one of their kayaks and sought out 6-8 foot long piranha style fish that swim up rapids and hunt in packs.  It was too good.  I wish I could have been there.

Since then, Christian and I have been taking care of a lot of things that have been building up over the last few weeks.  Not as fun, but necessary.

Shooting some kayaking in the next few days is looking promising and today might be my first day of kiteboarding.  When in Rome I guess.