Im not a bum, i promise

Jordy really is my inspiration here. Replace his hookah with a view of seattle, (i'll put the picture below) and listen to the string cheese show he got to witness at red rocks and we're pretty similar dudes living 2000miles apart. I have no jungle adventures to report on, but i do have whales eating seals to talk about.

My parents were in town last weekend and we did everything, seriously everything. I'll list them below with quick notes so you all feel like you were here. If you do come, i'll probably do a similar abridged route with you as it went so smoothly.

-Breakfast with Catherine and Parents on cap hill
delightful restaurant opening half hour after arrival, great food good people but sad goodbyes as catherine departed for Steamboat and Boulder after eating. She made it home safely and without trouble, she's now back in MN till school starts

-Pike place market
Crazy tourist destination where you can buy fresh fish/vegetables/flowers and souviniers, I better get good at cooking fish cause this is the place to buy it cheap and fresh.

-Seattle Aquarium
Preschool and elementary school is still not in session, wouldnt recommend until fall when their back in school, but lots of fun fish to see and touch,(yup you can touch some of them)

-Downtown Overlook
Midway up Queen Anne sits a park overlooking the Space Needle and Downtown, a good place to stand for a few minutes and look at seattle. Also a fun place to stand in the background of awkward wedding photographs occuring in the foreground.

-My Apt
A quick stop by to show them my new pad, My patio overlooks lake union and downtown, no space needle though, see picture below


-Ballard Locks
Here ships move between Lake Union(freshwater) and Puget Sound(salty) by going up or down about 10' in elevation. Salmon also make this trek through the fish ladder. Neverbefore have I seen a live salmon, or a fish 3'long and 30lbs. Pretty cool place to watch salmon climb a fish ladder.

-RedDoor Brewery
It feels like new belgium inside, but its just a bar in Fremont that loves New Belgium beer more than its own. A little patio lunch and we were on our way, again

- Nap?
I think this is when we took a little rest

-Space Needle
Youve seen it on the Supersonics jerseys and in the background of Frasiers apt, we went up all 540' of it and viewed the city. Mt. Baker and Rainier in the distances, Puget Sound and Lake Union at foot, and the city to say the least. Pretty cool way to see seattle once again

-IKEA?
I needed a dresser, so this made the best use of our time before eating. We found a great dresser that only took me 4 hours to assemble

-Dinner at Salty's
Sitting at water level across an inlet of puget sound from downtown we watched the sunset reflect off the buildings and then watched seattle light up. Heres pictures from my patio of Seattle at night.



-Whale Watching
Off to the SanJuan islands we took a 6hour cruise on a yacht to where whales live. We made it out to Vancouver Island Canada to find some. We were the 2nd boat of the day to find whales, and it took us plenty long to find them. A brisk day on the ship I was bundled in my recently purchased Whale hat and a jacket, we braved the cold weather for some orcas. The whales had made a seal kill in the water and were eating/playing while moving around. The male had a 6' dorsal fin, and then 2 young orcas were near as well. Never having seen a whale in person this was very cool, and I'd like to see more of them

Large Male Orca

Little Orcas

-Sunday see where Andy works day
-Vashon Island
A little ride on a ferry followed by a factory tour of a building all but shutdown, I showed my parents where our equipment used to be, and what used to happen in each of the rooms. They got a good view of where I spend my days, and what it is I do at work.

-K2 Seattle
Here we toured what is to come, where K2 is moving. Am impressive facility in seattle, I showed them the equipment formerly missing on vashon, showed them a little about how skis are made and they got to see where I will be working in the coming 2 weeks. I'm sad to leave vashon, but excited to get back 3hours of my day currently eaten by my commute. Heres a picture I took leaving work a few weeks ago

Vashon ferry dock

-This about covers our weekend, A final dinner at Ivars Salmon House where we enjoyed a huge piece of salmon that capped off the weekend. I miss colorado and want to go back and visit often, If i didnt have this job here I would leave my orca friends behind and come home.

In store for next time....
Mt Hood again this weekend to visit mr. Paul Rozsypal (ski coach for CU) and the aspen ski team
Following weekend is Catherines 21st bday, back to boulder for a few adult beverages with some great friends
Following that is 4 days in LosAngeles visiting more great friends and hopefully a sister.
Leaving LA i head straight to HongKong China for 2 weeks, Working in the peoples republic. After that hopefully some downtime in Seattle. I apologize for the ginormous size of this blog, expect more shorter ones to follow.

My new favorite whale hat

Surf, Ski, kayak, Ski, Ski, Surf

This section written 8.7.07-- The subject of my blog... thats been my schedule for the past few weekends, Today I'm off to Mt Hood again for a follow up ski test. The goal of this test is to beat up a pair or prototype 08 skis. So with 3 pairs of them in hands I will proceed to hood and do my best to hit jumps rails and groomers with all I got, with the intent of breaking them or at least realizing what some of the public will be doing to them. It feels like tryouts for soccer or something, I have to perform at a high level to test these accurately, Im up to the task. My parents are coming the following weekend and we're going to tour Seattle like i've never toured it before. I have to come up with interesting things to do for us, stressful. I have no time in my life, between moving to my new place, work, and catherine and I hanging out there is little time to write in this blog, so i'm stopping for the day/week. As soon as I get some freetime i'll fill in my happenings, til then, Andresito

Surfing with the goonies

Maybe more like drinking goonies water, Last weekend I headed down to Canon Beach with some co-workers and Catherine for a weekend of surfing.

Oregon Coast Facts
-Goonies was filmed here, sweet
-It rains in Oregon more than seattle, sweeter
-The water is really freakin cold
-Cloudy rainy surfing is still fun

So we rented surfboards/wet suits and battled the oregon coast, surfing sure is tiring. That being said I should be ready to join the pro-surf circuit soon, i'm pretty good (note sarcasm in voice). I've been workin like crazy all week getting ready for this ski test this weekend at hood, we'll ski Sat and Sun to test some new skis. Not a bad way to work if you have to on the weekend. So next week i'll fill you in on the other haps. I better eat my chicken caesar salad i got for lunch today, I'm attempting a more nutritious lunch than burritos every day, so mark this as day 1 where I will not be eating mexican food, for lunch.

where we were link....

exhaustion

Well our busiest time of the year is upon me, and in addition to my traveling to weddings, bachelor parties, the beach and camping, I have managed to work about 60hrs a week. While this really is awesome, sleeping in the factory twice this week has been less than sweet. I've still got busy written all over for the coming weeks though. Ski test next week, move out of apt and into new one by end of july, and Im going back to china at the end of Aug for a few weeks. Also our factory is leaving its island location this month so Im involved somehow in that i'm sure. I've got about a million things to do right now, none of them involve writing in this blog, so i'm going now, for a few days not months like last time, i'll update with pictures of fun things i've been doing.

Quick post - Crazy sights of China

I call this first picture "East Meets West", for obvious reasons

And this second one, "Huskies in a Tank", I assume they all live in a big field and only when brought to market for sale are they crammed into a small tank

Shenzhen

On our 1 day off while here Eben and I headed into Shenzhen, a city not far from Hong Kong for some shopping and possible indoor skiing. Well the indoor skiing didnt work out but the shopping was insane. Never in my life have I had to bargain for something and never have I purchased a purse. (Catherine, neglect the last sentence) Anyways we got a driver from the factory to drive us the 1.5hrs to Shenzhen and we brought along our factory assistant Ivyna for translation and guidance. None of us had ever been to Shenzhen but the driver quickly found the walking mall and we began. The retailers are attracting you to their booths with loud noises and promises of a deal, or I assume thats what their saying in mandarin. Once you start looking your in trouble, they wont let you go and they do everything they can to sell you something you dont kneed. My watch for example, bargained from 270 Yuen down to about 70, with 8-1 ratio I paid a little under 10$ for a ripoff of a major brand electronic watch. Not sure if I even should have purchased a watch, In fact i regret it now, but the bargaining was fun. It's also fun to see the styles of another part of the world. While I wasnt able to find any Engrish.com worthy clothing I found styles not seen in America. I walked away with a pretty awesome shirt with wolves on it and another with a pheasant. I told my engrish speaking salesman I like shirts with animals and this is what he found me, I had to purchase after his dedication. Our main item we didnt get is a remote control mini helicopter. A sweet toy these miniature RC toys can fly indoors and cost at most 20$ on the street, eben and I being cheap wouldnt pay this despite their 40$ ebay price and hence have no mini helicpoters. The rain began during our shopping adventure stopping us early but not until a quick lunch at Pizza Hut and more mini-helicpoter bargaining. I'm getting sick of chinese food, I cant wait for a hamburger or steak, even plate of spaghetti sound great. But mostly I miss my burritos, this will be my first stop upon arrival in Seattle this friday.

We finished shopping and had no desire to go indoor skiing on shaved ice. Ivyna will have to go another day. For being our translator/ assistant for k2 she has never seen ski bindings or boots, nor seen how people ski, but she does really well with it all and understanding us.

Today being Memorial day and us being in China, we worked. Last night Eben and I went out to dinner on our own and hit a huge language barrier, I will write more about that in my next blog, until then adios, I dont know how to say goodbye in mandarin.

G to the Z

(picture is in front of our factory, taken from the balcony outside the offices) After a long day of working on Saturday I met up with other co-workers, two from Seattle and 5 from China, and we went to dinner on the companies tab. We chose a hunan restaurant I think partially to watch us funny americans eat with chop sticks and eat really spicy things. Tony (chinese guy from factory) did most the ordering and acted as our tour guide, i'm not sure i'm happy with his choices yet or not. We went out to dinner in downtown Guangzhou and saw a whole part of the city I didnt know existed. First of all GZ is huge, people are everywhere and all of them are crazy. I cant count how many times I have seen cars in oncoming traffic lanes, people standing between lanes on a highway while cars race by, and overloaded bicycles moving slowly through fast traffic. Our dinner started with some type of egg prepared local style that tasted terrible. Kind of like a hard boiled egg mixed with what I would imagine a snakes egg tasting like, leathery slimey and full of life. The rest of our hot and spicy hunan meal was delicious and provided lots of laughs to the locals watching me eat.

On our way home we stopped at a DVD store where I bought my favorite tv show Prison break seasons 1 and 2 on dvd, 3 discs in all for $3.50. Now eben and I are back at the factory ready for some rest before a drive to Shenzhen tomorrow to ski indoors and shop for more good deals, I just may get a suit if the price is right. I will post a few pictures here and take more tomorrow for posting in the future.