Moving

[deepmud]

Been in Alaska most of my life, 29 years in the current house. Packing/Selling/Dumping/Giving everything away is a huge pain, and physically I'm never going to be able to do this ever again. All the good things SUP does for me have been put on hold.  Good news is I'm 100% working from home  and have lots of options.  Mom's yard is stage 1 for now, in Gray's Harbor area of Washington,  near Olympia.  I had a tantrum and insisted I needed one more paddle up here and got 3 hours in on Friday. Super pretty our, and the salmon were in the creeks to make it fun .

[deepmud]

Couple more

[supthecreek]

That would certainly be hard to leave Mudman... you should discover more amazing places in Washington.

I am sure the move will lead to a very cool new chapter!
Keep us posted

[Dusk Patrol]

Hey,  I'll miss those 'super natural' posts that really transported us to Alaska.  Here's to your warmer future.     

[deepmud]

I'm going to miss the challenge of subzero paddling I think. I survived the Alaska Highway, arriving 2:30am 8/27. My V10 Touareg is a beast. I overloaded the rv a bit but had upgraded the tires and  suspension and added bumpstops. Since it ended up sitting on the bumpstops,  they were critical to surviving the severe frost heaves of the first 1500 miles or so. The Touareg was smooth and handles a 9k+ trailer easy, a 150mph tug boat with Brembo calipers.

[Badger]

That must be an awesome trip. Keep us updated. I've always enjoyed your posts.   

[blackeye]

Time for an update! Where did you end up?

[deepmud]

Well - arrived in Montesano, a few weeks later cross-country to NY, near Oneida/Syracuse. Paddled an old bit of Erie Canal for fun Back across the US - stopped and visited John Knippers, first SUP to finish the Alabama 650 (please vote for John for SUP Best Male Performance of the Year - he went and did Last Paddler Standing a few weeks later too! No big support or team, he did get Speedboard to sponsor him a board after 2nd place in Last Paddler Standing last year https://www.totalsup.com/news/totalsup-awards-2023/?j=78574&sfmc_sub=191134&l=882_HTML&u=1241592&mid=546000330&jb=1003  only a hundred votes behind the leader ) Then back across the US (travel a couple days, work 3-5, drive again) to California - Oceano, caught covid and after a week hit the highway north to park in Washington again. Busy with work, mooch-docking off my mom and looking at what my long term options are. At this point, I'm still Alaskan, just traveling. Some land on Puget Sound is possible if I can make the numbers work. Paddled a few times here on the Chehalis River - had to dodge a couple huge Sea Lions who were diving for salmon - that was surprising so many miles from the ocean. Also quite a few harbor seals - much less scary   I also saw a couple Eagles last time out - which was not surprising until I thought about where I am vs where I used to be Winter paddling here is like fall/spring in Alaska - my dry suit is too hot at 44f air temps. I'm out of shape but I am slowly getting over the moving/traveling/sitting on my butt all day.

[deepmud]

I forgot - I had to weld up my "new" trailer in NY - the tongue was "up" about 3 or 4 inches and starting to buckle the walls and fail hard. I think it was starting to bend after the AlCan - but these newer trailers have lot of failed tongues on them - lucky for me it held till I was parked at my in-laws for several weeks and could deal with it. I have a wire-feed emergency type trail welder - turns out it will work on a couple of 200AH Lithium-Iron batteries as well as it does (maybe better) than traditional lead-acid. Ugly welds but deep penetration and I paid the $$ for cold-rolled plate to rebuild with. Oh - and a spring broke That was no surprise. Swapped springs too. Too much time fixing to paddle as much as I had hoped. Working on the EST zone with Alaskans is weird - plenty of time in the mornings but I am online to 8-9pm at night. Next time I take more PTO and hopefully break fewer things

EDIT: For my wife - bringing a clean bathroom along is worth the 11mpg For me being able to pull into a rest stop and grab 3 hours of sleep in a real bed is amazing - I don't drive 24 hours without sleep anymore but 3 here and 3 there and 6 there.... I can rack up some miles. BTW - the highways are STUFFED with long haul trucks. The economy is on fire - there just cannot be that much crap rolling on the highways and not be selling a ton of EVERYTHING. The truck drivers can barely get a place to pull over for mandatory stops - all the truck stops, all the rest stops and a ton of off-ramps and on-ramps are full of trucks every night, 7 days a week. SO MANY TRUCKS. No wonder I was paying 5 to 6 bucks a gallon for diesel - there is HUGE demand - so many many many many trucks. We need Tesla trucks just to cut into the demand for fuel - they won't be replacing that many trucks for a long long time but it would help a little. Speaking of electricity - the wind farms  -  holy moly - at night, the red indicator lights are in sync - it's a little spooky to see that much flashing red simultaneously horizon to horizon.

[deepmud]

Moved. Got a house and paying taxes so that makes me Washintonian I guess. We started looking at houses all over - Ocean Shores has 15 miles of canals, Shelton/Olympia looks really nice - I really wanted waterfront - but - we also wanted to be near my mom as she is in her late 70s. Sort of found a house I didn't really think I could afford here in Montesano - but it's so nice, up on a hill, really great view, lots of windows, 2-car garage space and an unfinished basement where I could move mom in if things go that way someday. So far she's just happy I'm close - like 2 minutes up the hill. She went out and bought an e-bike and rides up now with her dog on her back . Pretty fun. So I paddle the Chehalis and a local lake for exercise. I need to get out on Puget Sound still. As an Alaskan - it feels like winter never quite happened. There was couple days of snow but it melted. It mostly felt like August to October . I paddled in temps down to the 30's - my drysuit is super comfy here. I'm not quite balanced in work/life since going remote - I tend to work a bit long and miss out on the frequent paddles I used to do back home despite the river being about as close as the lakes I used to paddle. I'm trying to get my wife to deal with the $1000 plus I want to blow on an Immersed Visor for VR for work - she hates when I spend my own money for work stuff too much like my days as a mechanic? I had an $8k toolbox and about $25k in tools back then.  Anyway - I'm still paddling the Joe Bark a lot - it's still the favorite. I've beat the crap out of the basalt/innegra bottom paddling the rivers - that turned out to be great stuff.

[Dusk Patrol]

Cool situation. Looks like your preserving your quality of life... And welcome to Washington. If you ever want an urban Lake Union paddle field trip let me know.   

[deepmud]

awesome! I love lake union. My uncle has a place in Seattle and while visiting a few years back I was able to take my inflatable down by where the freeway goes over the lake - it was beautiful. Getting to meet and paddle with people will be a big plus for moving from Alaska I hope. I'm learning this local river - there are some surprisingly wilderness areas here that totally accessible - I just need to understand the tides to make it "easy" I did a run down a slough that put me out on the river to paddle up against the current - it was rough even with wind at my back!.... but when I catch the tides right I can go waaaaaay upstream with little to no current - or even reversed current. I'd love to share this area with anyone interested as well. The town is pretty tiny, everything closes at 6 lol but there is a BnB and a nice nearby campground or two (besides the usual campground "gravel lots" people "camp" in - those too ugh).

[surfcowboy]

Dude, looks like you landed really well. Older parents are part of life. That's part of what kept me out of the water a bit myself. But things always work out it seems.

Your place is beautiful man.

[surfcowboy]

Looked the area up on the map. Go surf this summer. For real, get out there and have some fun!

[Dusk Patrol]

Yeah, Deep is 30-40 minutes from one of WA's better surf spots (Westport). And a good place for getting time on water, to transition from river runner to surfer