Hooray for our broken health care system.

Moving states seems to mean you need new health insurance. So I apply for Oregon's blue cross blue shield after having blue cross back in Colorado for the last 4 years. Never missed a payment on my $300/month plan and I'm denied coverage here. I'm glad the giant corporate machine is allowed to break itself into different entities to increase profits, regulate and deny coverage. Hopefully all of the health care changes will actually do something over the next few years. Whether you like it or not the government does have an interest in keeping it's citizens healthy, productive, and able to contribute to the economy. Worrying about life crushing debt every time I step on a soccer field to take part in an activity that keeps me healthy and happy is ridiculous. Being denied coverage because I'm active and not sitting on the couch all day developing diabetes and smoking cigarettes is ridiculous. Maybe I should move back to Colorado take up meth, start watching 8 hours of TV, eating only McDonalds and get as many diseases as possible. I'd actually get to use my insurance if that were the case. Ugggggggggggg. Sorry for the rant but our system really is broken. Maybe the changes that were voted in will help soon. Moving to a new state to better my career and earning potential should not be met with this kind of stupidity. Free market capitalism paired with crappy governmental oversight and regulation has failed on this one.
Rant completed

Skate Journal Aug. 20th 2010

Well here's the first installment in my skate journal. I've been geekily reading my friend Glen's skate journal for the last year or two and like the idea of being able to look back and remember days skating or if nothing else see how I've progressed or over time.
Went to the Ed Benedict Skatepark today because it is amazingly fun. The only problem is that it is like 7 miles from my house. So I ride my bike there. Which is tiring. On the way to the park I was testing out my new clipless pedals which resulted in me almost falling over at an intersection and eventually eating shit on a crazy wavy and broken sidewalk about 5 blocks from the skatepark. I got to the skatepark with a bleeding elbow and a bruised ego. Started off trying to gauge where was the least busy part of the park to get warmed up at. Ended up skating one of the granite benches and a bank to ledge to get warmed up. Got some long 50s and a nollie tailslide before starting to move to other parts of the park. I spent most of my day skating the ridiculously slick 10" tall ledge up in the middle of the mess of people. Got first try front 5-0 and lipslide but struggled for a front nosegrind. Ended up getting a nosegrind 180 and nosegrind shove before moving to some backside tricks. I seem to be horrible at back lipping a whole ledge so I ended up getting on half way and landed it first try. Got me hyped. I ended up landing my first back lip back shove out and a decent back smith with speed. Had a fin time at the park even though I was sore from the bike wreck. Hopefully I can find a good ledge near my house soon so I can save myself the 13 mile round trip ride on my bike.

First trip to the Oregon Coast.

Before Willis left for Colorado we decided to venture out to the Pacific.

We left Portland on a clear and sunny day and drive through some beautiful countryside.

Once we hit the Pacific Coast Range the air became misty and the sun disappeared.

After a trip to a grocery store in the small tourist town of Cannon Beach to buy some beer and a futile trip to find somewhere that sold mussels we headed out to the beach.

Bet you can't guess whose feet are mine.

Anyways the beach was beautiful and Willis and I smoked our last cigars with each other for quite sometime and enjoyed a few Oregon beers. At the beach I couldn't keep myself from yelling "hey you guys!!!!!" after seeing the rock formations in the water. I think that scene from The Goonies was shot in Astoria, OR though. Guess I'll have to rewatch it to confirm it wasn't Cannon Beach. Oh Darn!!

After enjoying the lack of sunset we headed back towards Portland. On the way home a friendly drunken local must've noticed our Colorado license plate and felt he should give us a proper welcome. So for about 20 miles of our ride home they tailed us, fell back, tailed us, flashed their lights, turned off their lights and never passed us in the winding mountain roads even though there was numerous chances. Eventually this awesome person decided to speed up and attempt to either pass us on a double yellow line approaching an intersection or run us off the road. Not wanting to figure out which option they had in mind I sped up and then slammed on the brakes right near the intersection and took a squealing turn onto the intersecting street. Drunken a-hole ended up coming to a squealing stop somewhere on the road and zoomed off in the opposite direction as us. Luckily neither of us were hurt and luckily said a-hole didn't escalate the situation after we made the move to shake him off. After that Willis and I headed back towards my new home. Of which I will post about soon. 

Buy a truck and move two days later. The cheapest and funnest way to move.

 After an insane amount of help from Austin, Laura, Willis and Sara I was all packed up and ready to get going. So after a few hours of sleep Willis and I departed on yet again another road trip. Trucks, cigars and the open road. Doesn't get much more fun.

Road Essentials:

Of Course.

We didn't take any pictures of I-80. Been there driven that way too many times. Caught a wee bit of Idaho as the sun went down.

The sunset was bright.

Idaho was dark and formless, experienced to the sounds of The Knife and the feeling of too much sugar and caffeine. Our under filled radiator caused us some problems so we pulled off the road to sleep a little and let the engine cool. The exit we chose happened to be about 50 feet from two train tracks. Sleeping did not occur but car fixage did. About two hours later we hit the road again in the dark. Out of sheer luck the camera was pulled out and a speculative picture was taken of where we thought the welcome to Oregon sign was. We got very lucky and realized the flash on my camera ate it's Wheaties that morning. 3:00am and we're in Oregon finally.

Much of Oregon to our surprise looks like the rest of the West.

So I'm driving through a good chunk of Oregon...Willis is sleeping...I'm blasting music and drinking coffee...and out of nowhere I look back and see giant shards of glass streaming behind our truck. It seems as though the wind and rain were the proverbial straws that broke the not so proverbial side window of the truck shell a mere 250 miles from our destination. I guess a corner of a box was rattling against the glass the whole trip so our luck turned on us. I ran out in the rain and ghetto rigged a new window out of a plastic comforter bag and the plastic top to a giant Tupperware bin.

Best picture of the trip.

We scored some free sunglasses while fixing the window on the side of the road.

Well we finally made it the Columbia River Valley and it started looking more and more like the Oregon that we all think of.

The last 2 hours were so beautiful and green. We arrived in Portland at 11am PST. When we finally got into town we had driven 22 hours and over 1200 miles. As we were driving into the city I stated "this is crazy, I'm gonna be living here soon" to which Willis replied "ahhh!!! you are living here now, we have a truck full of you stuff and you are now living here." It honestly didn't sink in until Willis was gone and I was moved into my new place.Once we arrived at Kale's house the adrenaline of being here allowed me to stay awake and go show Willis around the city. I finally got to sleep around midnight after biking all over the place, kicking around a soccer ball, eating at some food carts, visiting Powell's and ending the day playing Ping Pong at a bar until late. I was here...in my  new world.