Dinhternet

Went on my sec­ond white-water raft­ing trip on Sat­ur­day. This time, I went with Eddie C, Michow, James S, Joe M, Alice H, and Rachel Loh.

We were pre­pared for more near-death and lost shoe sto­ries like from our first trip, but it actu­ally went really well. No one was knocked out of the raft this time, no one lost any equip­ment or cloth­ing, we did not get embar­rass­ingly stuck at the photo spot for sev­eral min­utes, and we did not have to hitch­hike to get home.

After a rough start at the early Class IIIs where we got knocked around a bit, we all set­tled down and got a sys­tem going, thanks to a “guardian angel” kayaker who gave us some pro trips as he passed us. Here’s a video of us shortly after that on some smaller rapids:

(There was a bet­ter video later on the river when we hit another Class III, but I’m again hav­ing some prob­lems with my cam­era. I think the bat­tery may not be charg­ing properly.)

Over­all, we did so much bet­ter this time, I think every­one who went on both trips was a lit­tle shocked. I’m a lit­tle sad, since our first raft­ing trip will always have bet­ter sto­ries, but you can’t com­plain about a smooth trip. We were say­ing that it’s prob­a­bly a bit of expe­ri­ence on our part, but prob­a­bly has a lot to do with the river’s flow being a lot greater this time. More water means less rocks to give us trouble!

Oh, and the kayaker told us to think about send­ing some­one to guide school so that we can hit higher class rapids, and I’m giv­ing it some thought now. Maybe some­thing to do next summer.

The next ques­tion on Form­Spring is,

“WHEN IS YOUR GODDAMNED BIRTHDAY!?”

I think I know who this one is from.

I hon­estly haven’t been excited about my birth­day since I grew too big for the ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. (Hey, the two-story one in San Jose was amaz­ing!) Too bad I can’t be six for­ever like Calvin. My 21st might have been a slight excep­tion to this, but even then, I didn’t do much. I’m really not a “Super Sweet 16″ kinda guy. It’s just another day and I want to do the same thing I want to do every day… just chill with some good friends and fam­ily if pos­si­ble. No cake, no presents. Includ­ing “BERF-DAY PRE-SENT!!!”, Vince T.

Hon­estly, I feel like birth­days are just mark­ers to show I’m one step closer to the end. Weird Al states it best:

I usu­ally get more intro­spec­tive and moody about how much I still want to do. And now it’s start­ing all over again, Alice H. Thanks.

But to answer your ques­tion, I don’t think God ever damned my birth­day, so I don’t have a god-damned birthday.

So the other day, I was talk­ing with Alice H, and she was telling me about the life of Chuck Palah­niuk. After hear­ing about it, I kinda under­stand why his books are so nihilis­tic. But one story in par­tic­u­lar is very inter­est­ing to me.

Like Chuck, I con­sider myself a healthy skep­tic. I acknowl­edge that there are things in the world beyond my com­pre­hen­sion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to or try to under­stand. Or at least expe­ri­ence. That’s why I say I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’m always down for vis­it­ing “super­nat­ural” places. I guess I want to be proven wrong.

If you were to sud­denly die, who would your ghost go visit?

What does it mean at the end of the story, where Chuck’s father vis­its his mother and his sis­ter, but not him? Does the lack of words mean they lacked a bond? Or maybe it’s like in Ken­shin, when he doesn’t say good-bye to Kaoru because as the strongest bond, she was the only one could get him to not leave.

I ask because I’m going to be leav­ing in the next week to go to Min­nesota for a while to help out with a fam­ily emer­gency. Don’t worry, it’s not a mat­ter of life and death or any­thing. But yeah, I’ll be qui­etly mak­ing my rounds to say good-bye. If you have free time this week­end, I’d love to hang out with you. And if we don’t hang out, it’s not like I’m actu­ally dead. There’s always our dreams. Or IMs.