Hayden Lake week

Without any further ado....

Day 17- Friday 1 July in Portland , OR

Great, sunny day. It’s the type of day that is so rare in Portland that I swear I heard a kid say, “Mommy how come the clouds stopped working?”. I head with my Father in Law to an Army surplus/camping supply/rafting and kayaking supply store called Mac and Jack’s(I think it’s called that, but it’s more likely I’m projecting the name of a beer to the store) and walk around the store awestruck by the realization that there is apparently a HUGE market for the clothing I only wore because I was required to by law. It’s even more surprising that a store like this can exist in Portland where, based off the letters to the editor in the local newspaper, I assume the locals cook and eat anyone they see in military clothing. My father-in-law lost three of his oars on a river trip he takes with his buddies every year and buys replacements for the price of a small African kingdom, technology may be wonderful but it does have a tendency to raise the costs of things. I look around at the kayaks thinking this might be a fun hobby to get started on now that I live in a state with lots of water. I then see the pricetags on the kayaks and think renting will work for the next, oh, twenty years. I get back to the house and start packing for the drive to Couer D’Alene.

Day 18- Saturday 2 July travel day from Portland, OR to Coeur D’alene, ID

Packing/Driving Day! These are always my least favorite days, but at least this time there’s less to pack as we’re coming back to Portland after the week at the lake house and I don’t have to fit in the dogs. I get assigned to ride with my father-in-law in his truck, presumably so Megan and her mom can drive together and plot out ways to add expensive stuff to the house in ways I won’t find out about until it’s too late(it is possible I’m being paranoid). Driving with my Father-in-law is fun, mainly because the Willie Lyles-Oregon story has broken and I got to talk sports while he’s awake, that’s right I now know where Megan gets her ability to instantly fall asleep in the car from as Charlie is asleep the moment he’s in the passenger seat. I turn on my ipod and enjoy the silence as the landscape changes from Portland’s green paradise to the brown of the Eastern Oregon/Washington high desert. We get to the Lake house that we’ll be living at for the Smith family reunion. It’s a five bedroom, five bath gigantic house on Lake Hayden in Idaho and it’s a great place to hang out at. It has a dock on the lakeshore that you can jump off of or dive off of to go swimming in the lake. There’s also a huge deck that’s fun to hang out on and drink lots of beer on. I do my part by drinking most of the case of Fat Tire within the first three days.

Day 19 Sunday 3 July at Hayden Lake

Nice relaxing day for the most part with most of it spent at the lake trying to get Logan to jump into the deep part of the lake instead of just playing in the shallows. Today’s attempts are unsuccessful, but I have a whole week to get him in the deep water and decide to play the long con with him. That night we have a great dinner and then head down to the lake again where the effects of drinking beer all day have made my brothers-in law and I playful/combative. Thankfully the grandparents are there to watch the kids as Erik, Shawen, and I come up with several different ways to throw, tackle, push each other into the lake. I lose most of these contests for a simple reason: I’m a big dude, but my brothers-in-law are both ex-collegiate athletes who make me look like Rob Treadwell with even less muscle tone(somewhat impossible to picture I know but let your imagination fly). The three of us sober up pretty quickly because the lake is COLD, but that doesn’t stop the bull-moose battle royale if anything being sober makes us more cunning. The battle continues for the rest of the week and most of us mitigate the threat by holding onto the docks shade structure whenever we can. My brother-in-law Shawen's 15 year old nephew comes to visit on Wednesday and notices that Shawen, Erik, and I have established deathgrips on the bars of the structure and asks why we're doing that as it looks weird. We demonstrate the purpose of our actions by throwing him in the lake. Logan thinks this is great fun and decides to get in on the action by going up to us and saying “I’m going to push you in!(with more glee than I thought appropriate when he decided to get me)” We humor him and it makes for a pretty fun game for the rest of the week, especially when we start pulling him in with us.

Day 20 Monday 4 July at Hayden Lake

Megan and I get Logan to walk down the stairs on the dock into the deep part of the lake and he does this adorable doggy paddle in a lifejacket to swim out to us and eventually swim all around the water. He’s really brave but I can’t get him to jump off the deck to us which may be asking a bit much of a three year old. Still seeing him love to swim this much is fun and makes for great times out in the water. Whenever a boat goes by and the wake causes waves we make a game of it going “Wheee!” really loudly to keep him from freaking out and Logan catches on and proves he’s from Michigan by saying “Oh, it’s a hayride!” As the waves cause him to go up and down in the water. We also get Logan to submit to being held by us while we jump in the water. As long as he’s not cold he is really good in the water and I’m obnoxiously proud of him.

Of course it’s the fourth of July and no day like this is complete without being able to dress up your kids in outfits of Red, White, and Blue. I’m biased but I think Elizabeth wins the day as this picture demonstrates.

The fun continues that night with fireworks over the lake which Logan calls “The big party!” the city of Couer D’Alene puts on a really good show although since we’re so far away from it the fireworks don’t seem to fill up the sky like they do when you’re closer to them.

Day 21 Tuesday 5 July at Hayden Lake

So Imagine you wake up in the morning and have a choice of three ways to spend your day. You can A) drive two and a half hours to a place out in the middle of nowhere in Idaho in order to pay ten dollars for the privilege of doing back breaking work out in the sun during the hottest part of the day to look for worthless gemstones for five hours. B)Continue to hang out at the lake, go swimming during the hottest part of the day, relax, play games, read, and drink beer or C)Get punched in the nuts by Mike Tyson for an hour. If it were up to me I’d order my choices as B, C, A. One of the differences between growing up in a rural area and growing up in a city is that if you grow up in a rural area you’ve done all the boring, backbreaking work that masquerades as family fun and know it sucks instead of being the adventure the city-raised types imagine it to be. I could raise my objections and point out the folly of the whole enterprise seeing as how we only have a limited amount of days at the lake house and they’re choosing to waste one of them, but I recognize that the train has left the station and I would be accused of being lazy. This may be true but it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a point.

We drive out there on winding, twisting highways and while the landscape is pretty it’s not anything different from what we can see from, y’know, the back porch of the house. I think about the movie Cars and the holier-than-thou speech Bonnie Hunt’s character gives about the highway moving with the land and how people drove to have a great time and that the interstate has ruined everything. I decide that whoever wrote that script for Pixar hasn’t had to swerve for miles on end and listen to kids sitting in the back bitching about carsickness and can therefore kiss my ass, I say give me dynamite and straight lines any day. We get to the place and it’s everything I predicted it would be, hot, open to the sun, dusty, muddy by the water trough, and full of horseflies. The people at this place are an interesting mix of retired rockhounds, other families that got suckered into thinking this would be fun, and I’m assuming some truly desperate people hoping to find one or two of the actually valuable stones called star garnets. The digging and sifting goes on for a while and Logan quickly gets bored with each phase of the garnet hunting eventually preferring to just run his hands through the muddy water in the trough. While this lets me get away with not having do much digging or sifting(Yay!) it does mean I have to corral my three year old son in an area without many distractions until the rest of the family wises up and realizes how much fun they’re not having(Boo!). Finally everyone gets hot and bored and we get back in the car for the three hour trip home.

Days 22-24 Wednesday-Friday 6-8 July at Hayden Lake

Groundhog day, but in a good way.

Day 25 Saturday 9 July travel day Hayden Lake, ID to Portland, OR

We spend the morning packing and hit the road for the drive back to Portland. I drive with my father-in-law in his truck again while Megan and my mother-in-law take Logan, Elizabeth, and our three nieces who are going to spend the week with us in Sun River back. So basically while Megan has to drive back listening to the whining of the five kids in the car, I get to read, listen to music and practice beatboxing to my father-in-law’s snoring when he falls asleep. I am EPIC WIN!!!

And on that note I will leave off for now, next update will encompass Sun River, Reno, and Elko.

Thiel Family Roadtrip Adventure Part II

Hello All and here we go again,

Day 7 – Tuesday in Sun River, OR(Resort community just outside of Bend)
For those of you who read my last post and wondered if I had forgotten I had a daughter as well, set your mind at ease, I only forgot about her for a little while. In my defense she’s such a calm, easy baby you forget she’s there. She’s also self-maintaining as I’ll illustrate with this little story. During the car trip Elizabeth would get hungry and cry for food, the way we would feed her would be to twist around in the passenger seat and feed her the bottle. As you can imagine this is less than comfortable, but we would be stuck in this position for at least ten minutes a feeding as she likes to take her time on the bottle. Then we discovered a wonderful, wonderful thing Elizabeth likes to hold up the bottle by herself and rarely drops it. So when she got hungry we would hand the bottle back, make sure it was positioned properly and then turn around and let our seven month old baby feed herself. That’s right we’re definitely up for parents of the year. For the most part Tuesday was pretty lazy and that’s just the way I like it.

Day 8-Wednesday in Sun River, OR
Logan’s back on his regular schedule and one would think this is a good thing. However, this now means that he no longer takes a nap and that his vial of goodness runs out around 5p.m. Today we take Logan to the little kids park and he spends most of his time as the weird little kid who sits on the spinny circle thing and sings to himself. As a nerd and sci/fi fantasy fan I’m torn between pride that he apparently hasn’t fallen far from my weirdness tree and worry that he’ll be a goth. The pool session is extremely productive as I get him to float on three of those Styrofoam noodle things and kick himself around the pool instead of screaming at the top of his lungs when I even shift my weight a little bit while holding him.

Day 9 Thursday in Sun River, OR
Again fairly low-key day, but Megan and I do take advantage of the free babysitting that masquerades as “spending time with the grandkids”. We go to see Super8, which is okay. I would have called it a new classic but they screwed up the ending big-time in my opinion and now I take less joy in the parts that did work. It’s worth seeing but wait for video/cable.

Day 10 Friday in Sun River, OR
Megan’s parents take off in the morning and we have the cabin to ourselves. Megan and I celebrate by moving up stairs to the cabin’s main bedroom with the king-size bed. I’m already plotting how to talk my way into getting the main room when we come back to the cabin in a little over two weeks. There’s a big race weekend in Sun River and Megan has friends coming in. She takes a look at the hippy hairstyles Logan and I have cultivated over the past few weeks and calls and makes a haircut appointment for us, note the lack of consulting me on this. We go into the main Sun River mall and Megan takes us to a Stylist. For one used to getting his haircut by crusty old barbers in shops filled with sports memorabilia, this is somewhat worrying but I swallow my pride and head in. The guy who cuts Logan’s and my hair is actually pretty nice and there are pictures of his wife and kids on the wall. I ask him if he’s there to do the men’s haircuts and he replies that he does women’s hair as well. My internal circuits fry at the thought of a straight man doing women’s hair and I decide I hear him wrong and press ahead. The whole mall area is completely remade for the race. Megan goes and registers for the half marathon and I watch Logan raise hell in the outdoor bouncy castle area they have set-up for the kids. Strangely enough waiting in line is not a concept three year olds deal well with. Some kid in an Ohio St. cap shoots his mouth off at me, I smile and say “Go Blue.” and then grin as I realize he’s doomed to the life of a crazed redneck.That night we go to a pre-run pasta feed with a live band and pay 8 bucks a person for crappy pasta, Caesar salad and the driest breadsticks known to man. Given that this is a pre-marathon/triathlon event I am surrounded by legions of in-shape people and all seem to be eyeing me wondering what I’m doing there. I finally retreat back to the cabin under the weight of their judging eyes and have a beer while grinning and basking in the fact I can drink it without doing any calorie/carb calculations. Haha take that you in-shape people.

Day 11 Saturday and still in Sun River
Megan wakes up early to go to the race with her friends that stayed with us the night before. I stay back with the kids and Megan calls me to come and meet her with sunscreen along the trail. I head out to meet her with the kids and watch the people run/walk by us. Logan announces he has to go pee-pee and asks to pee against a tree, bursting with pride I help him and Megan pulls up a couple minutes later. She’s pretty focused on the sunscreen and doesn’t notice Logan trying to show her where the tree was thirsty. I head back to the cabin with the kids and Megan gets back a couple hours later. I take Logan to the pool and Megan and I pop open some Champagne to celebrate finishing the half-marathon, I fall asleep after three glasses.

Day 12 Sunday in Sun River
Megan wakes up sore which is perfectly understandable and decides that she has earned a trip to the Alpenglow restaurant in Bend, which is famous for its breakfasts. I agree and we head in and I get to see what all the fuss is about. At first glance this is the kind of restaurant I hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns, lots of literature about localized food and “carbon footprints” along with hipster clientele. I sit down thinking but one thought. “This food better be fucking good.” And it is! Oh, it is! Thick cut bacon with very little fat on it, and looks like it was torn off the pig as it ran away, the little red powder on top of the hollandaise sauce on the Eggs Benedict and unbelievable and well-spiced home fries. After breakfast I head back to the surgery area so they can take out my kidney to pay for the meal and then we head out into Bend for a few hours. The rest of the day goes nicely and we retreat back to the cabin for more swimming.

Day 13 Monday travel day between Sun River and Portland
We plan on waking up at 6 and then leaving by 10. We end up leaving by 11:25, I still have no idea how we end up leaving late every time, but we’ve perfected the art. We drive out through the mountains and it is a gorgeous drive, full of twists and turns. I drive the three hours to Portland and Megan stays awake this time, I suspect it’s in order to say “No” every time I try to pass the truck in front of me on the two lane highway. This would be fine except the truck is going ten to fifteen mph below the speed limit and that triggers my inner caveman. There’s also a bunch of bicyclists on the road which on one level makes sense as it’s a nice, cool day, it’s all downhill, and the scenery is great. Here’s the problem the highway we’re on has absolutely no shoulder so these poor bastards have to hug close to the side of the road and freak out every time a car goes by. This is what happens every time I drive up behind a biker, I hit the brakes and mentally count off years of brake life every time I do so(the hill is really steep) until enough space opens up on the opposite side of the highway for me to get around the biker. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for biking but biking on a busy highway full of twists and turns with no shoulder for you to ride on seems completely crazy to me. We get into Portland and start on Megan’s friends and family tour.

Days 14-16 Tuesday-Thursday in Portland
Nothing really stands out except for Wednesdays events. For those of you who have seen the show Man vs. Food, you know of how it does a great job of showing locally-owned and operated joints with good/unique food. I decided that I wanted to go to a place called the Stepping Stone café which was featured on the show for having something called “Mancakes” these giant pancakes that are meals in and of themselves. So far the places I’ve been to that have been featured on Man v. Food have been good, but there have to be duds here and there. This place was a big-time dud, poor service and a on-purpose dive(the place looked seriously dirty and gross) and the pancakes weren’t that good. There was some truth in advertising as one pancake was enough to keep me from eating for the rest of the day, but not in a good way I felt like I had a giant rock in my gut. There will now be much skepticism about man v. food joints in the future. We then wentto the Oregon Zoo which has a very cool animatronic dinosaur exhibit and I torture Logan by holding him up to the T-Rex to try to take his picture. Later that night Megan and I take advantage of the whole “spending time with the grandkids” thing to go see X-Men First Class which was awesome. Seriously good movie and I was very impressed.

Stay tuned for updates from Hayden Lake, ID; Sun River, OR; All over Nevada; and the road trip home.

Thiel Family Roadtrip Adventure Stage I complete!

Hello All, First the disclaimer, for everyone who's thinking "Matt's stealing Sunidh's Idea!" You are absolutely right!, but I will point out that as a consultant "adapting" other peoples' ideas is how I make my living. So on to the show.

Day 1 Ann Arbor to Madison, WI-
We finally get moved out of the house and I begin the first of many "discussions" about the deposit and damages with my landlord. My personal favorite moment is when he threatens to go to the JAG(military lawyer) over my plan to withhold rent until we come to an agreement about damages as he was not on hand to do a walkthrough with me. He's set to lose a ton of money on the house when he finally does sell it, which I would feel bad about if he wasn't such a flaming asshole about it. Those of you still in Michigan if you hear about a fire at my old house I want you to know two things:
1. We have no possessions or any interest remaining at the house and 2. My landlord totally caused it to get the insurance money.

I first pack the car without putting the Dogs in a soft sided crate as I figure they'd appreciate not being cramped for the whole drive. Sierra immediately teaches me the error of my ways by climbing to the top of the baggage pile within the first fifteen minutes of the drive. We try leashing her up which only works to ensure she pulls the whole baggage structure down when she jumps down after climbing to the top of it. Finally I decide that I would rather be evil than have my car get destroyed by an insane lab and put both dogs into one crate. This works to keep them (mostly) in the same place and after three days we finally settle on a packing system that works. The rest of the day passes without incident either good or bad(although if Chicago traffic is that bad at noon on a Wednesday I believe the city is now beyond hope) and we arrive in Madison and stay at the home of a family friend.

Day 2 Madison, WI to Alexandria, MN

Wearing a Michigan shirt in Wisconsin is really fun! although it does damage my image of the state being filled with genial giants whose diets consist only of beer and cheese. Unfortunately it's hard to respond to any crap-talking as the damn Badgers tend to do this annoying winning thing when they play Michigan. We get to Megan's cousins house in Minnesota and discover that it's on a lake. Logan is course in love with it and heads immediately down to the house dock and will not go back up to the house no matter what. For those of you without kids remember that Logan has been in the car for about eight hours and talking him into doing anything is closer to a pitched battle than a reasoned discussion. Eventually you just get tired of fighting them and let them do what they want as long as it's not harming anything. I take a beer down with me and realize there are worse things in the world than drinking a beer on the lake while watching your son. Megan's relatives come over for a barbecue and suddenly there's a group of people who are more than happy to watch Logan, this makes me happy as it allows me to go back to the house and get more beer. Eventually fishing rods get broken out and I try to teach Logan how to fish, but amazingly he doesn't have the patience for it and I have to have a big fight with him when I get tired of it and put the pole back. Before bed we make s'mores over an open fire and I'm now tempted to get a genetic test to make sure Logan really is Megans and my son as he doesn't like them.

Day 3 Alexandria, MN to Bismarck, ND

I wake up screaming as I realize that I will be setting foot once again in North Dakota. After taking approximately fifty horse tranquilizers I am calm enough to contemplate setting foot in this worst of all states again. The journey starts without incident and continues until I discover a fun fact, when the range display on the Honda Odyssey says fifty miles it really means around 10. Somehow we find a small gas station about three miles off the highway and coast into it on fumes. Even better is the fact that we're in a huge thunderstorm and there is no cover over the pumps. Basically this means I get to pump gas while getting completely soaked and I get back in the van looking like I'd decided to jump in a lake with my clothes on. Megan asks if I'm okay, but my teeth are chattering too hard to reply.

A few hours later the sun is shining and Logan announces he has to go to the bathroom, a quick look around shows approximately fuck-all for bathrooms nearby and so we pull off to the side of the road and I teach Logan the manly art of the roadside pee. This is now tied with teaching him how to operate a keg as my proudest moment as a father. Logan is so impressed by his new ability that he does it everyday for the rest of the trip. We get into Bismarck and I discover that, based off their reactions to a Michigan hat, people in North Dakota are still not over the loss in the Frozen Four. We take Logan to the hotel pool to get him some time to swim and get some exercise and there is a black tie party in the nearby ballroom for a shriners/masons/grand order of fraternal douchebags gathering. The bartender doesn't buy my story about being in town for the convention and I am unable to score any free drinks, this may be because I was wearing a swimsuit at the time.

Day 4 Bismarck, ND to Billings, MT
Apparently there is a statue of a giant cow in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota, I know this because it is a tradition in Megan's family to stop and take a picture in front of it. We find said Giant Cow and go up to get our picture taken. This is something of a tourist hotspot as three other cars are there, said cars are also filled with parents desperate to distract their kids and get them some exercise. Learn a lesson here, if you want to make money build a giant thing in North Dakota and charge a buck a car to visit it. It's a money machine, I tell you, a money machine. We get to Megan's cousins place in Billings and the effects of long days in the car on Logan are getting more and more obvious. In an attempt to burn off some of his energy Megan's cousin and I take him kite flying, which like fishing is another thing that sounded better in theory than in practice, Logan has more fun chasing the jackrabbits in the field.

Day 5 Billings, MT to Coeur D'Alene, ID
Long day(515 miles) and Montana is COLD for this day of driving. Luckily I now live in Michigan and refer to 40' as "shorts weather". About an hour out of Billings we start to hit the mountains and the scenery is beautiful. It really makes for a great day of driving, except for one litte thing. Megan has a tendency to fall asleep the moment she gets in the passenger seat and then becomes startled awake by lane changes, speed changes, rough bits of road, swerving a little too much, temperature changes in the car, etc.
This leads to the following conversation every damn time:
Megan: Ahhh!!! Ahhh!!! Are you okay?!
Me: Yes, honey
Megan: Okay, let me know if you want to swiiiiiiiii...........
Me: Yes, honey.
Since we're I-90 through the mountains we have this conversation approx. 50,000 times. We get to our hotel, meet with Megan's brother, sister-in-law and three nieces. We take the kids to the pool and have a great time until the greater Montana meth dealers association decides to come join us. Normally, I count White Trash as my people but I do require they have teeth and wear something besides ratty street clothes while swimming. Fearing a driveby we retreat back to our room and call it a night.

Day 6 Billings, MT to Bend, OR

Nice pleasant day on the road with nothing really interesting happening. I'm here in Bend until Monday and it's really pleasant to wake up in the same place two days in a row. We've been walking the dogs twice a day and generally settling in to relax as much as possible. I've started running again after a two-week hiatus and as embarassing as this is for a son of the high desert Elko, NV(elevation 5,066 ft) and graduate of the Air Force Academy(elevation 7,258 ft.) running at 4000 ft is really f'ing hard and I'm ending every run thinking one though and one thought only "Oxygen!". Hope everyone is having a great sumer I've enjoyed seeing updates and reading/hearing about your adventures. I wish I could send out a more personal message, but this is a lot to type and frankly Logan wants to go to the pool, so duty calls.