It's been busy this past week or so. Last weekend was our annual "Resident Retreat" - which has been renamed to a "Resident Appreciation Trip" (codename: the RAT) this past year for semantic and administrative reasons. Readers may recall my previous post about last year's "retreat". Essentially its a 36 hour "steam let off" for over-worked, over-stressed residents. My first two years, we went up to Crystal Mountain. We'd get there on Saturday afternoon, taking a bus, start guzzling booze, then be up all night and have a complete drunk fest. The next day, those who survived their hangovers would trudge up the slopes and do some skiing and/or boarding.
Well this year we changed our gig a bit and decided to do some white water rafting. We drove down on a Saturday to the White Salmon River, roughly 3 hours away on the Oregon/Washington border. White Water rafting is a blast, but I'd never been in 39 degree water before, and was mildly apprehensive - it was about 50 degrees out and raining otherwise.
But we donned our wetsuits (complete with gloves and booties), broke up into 4 separate rafts, and hit the water. It was a blast. We hit about 4 or 5 class IV rapids which were sweet. Our guide intentionally flipped our boat on 1 of them, just for kicks. It was a pretty cool experience, going overboard and plunging into freezing water - I have vivid sequential memories of the whole thing.
I was in the front on the right side, which became the bottom side of the raft flip. The raft started to go up over. I looked up and saw the guy sitting opposite me start to come down - toward me. I put my hands up and then he collided down on me and we hit the water.
It was cold. I came up under the boat, the life vest more impedance than anything else as I tried to skirt out under the raft and get my head completely out of the water. I didn't have a good breath when we hit the water and I ran out of air quickly. I didn't panic, but I was a little hurried. Then coming up, I found it hard to breathe because of the freezing temperature, and ended up hyperventilating when I needed a big deep breath. I quickly calmed, and all resumed to normal. The adrenaline rush was pretty cool. The whole sequence replays in my head in slow motion when I think about it - full on movie style. Pretty fun.
Anyway, after the rafting, we hit up our campsite along the Columbia. The "camp site" was actually an RV site, and within view was a small town and even a gas station. Some people camped, but it was raining and so Gwen and I (and several other less intent campers) walked about a half mile away and got a hotel room. Back at the camp site, we started getting pretty toasted in classic fashion. Beer pong and the shot-ski were in full effect and it wasn't long before we were all ripped. Then we decided to descend on some poor townie bar hosting a karoake night. We took that place over and went nuts while the astounded townies looked on semi-speechless. Some had awkward smiles. All in all it was a good time. The next day we got up and drove home. I was pumped because I managed to moderate my alcohol intake pretty well and ended up only being tired and with barely a hangover the next day. (I'm learing!). Some pics below.
George (in ridiculous hat), Pete, and Me --- the big three
Preparing for the SHOT-SKI! (That's me, my chief resident, another resident (with sweet military eye wear), and George on the end)
Pete playing pool and me, uh, helping him... (guess who's drunk?)
Gwendolyn and I as the night winds down (note my sweet hat head)
Sonics Playoff
Last Tuesday, Pete, George, Cristin, and I went to the Sonics playoff game. It was game 2 against the Sacromento Kings. It was a fun time and the Sonics had a decisive win which was cool. The coolest thing however, was the Sonics Mascot, Squatch. He is by far the most entertaining mascot I've ever experienced. He's like a cross between Chewbacca, some generic Yetti, and Teenwolf. (How can that not be the sweetest? Answer: it can't) Anyway, Squatch was all pumped up, dancing around, dunking off trampolines at time outs, and basically going nuts. He also repelled in from the roof right before the introduction of the sonics line-up. That's right - a big yetti repelled in pumping his fists to start the game. The maneuver endeared me to him forever.
Before the 4th quarter, old Squatch rigged up some ridiculous stunt - a set up that would make Wile E. Coyote proud. He put himself in a massive slingshot under one basket, while wearing rollerblades, and then launched himself - he shot out across the court and finally off a ramp at about the top of the key on the other side. Then he threw the ball off the backboard dunk, flipped, and dunked it. Absolutely ridiculous. The crowd was going completely wild - led mostly by me. Check out his home page here.
I also have some pics from the game. Squatch is pretty much the coolest. Iwan - I'm looking in your direction on this.
Key Arena - Game on!
Ray Allen looking to drive
Squatch (blurry like those big foot photos) pumps up the crowd!
Squatch pulls on an official Teen Wolf move - fans are so pumped its madness (look at em!)
Finally, I'm typing this as I'm on the way to pick up one E. Roston for the weekend. His flight's been nice and delayed and he's coming in at midnight. Then we tear this town a new one. Late!
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