In Real Life

I encountered a friend out last night whom I rarely see/talk to. He asked me if I'd been skating lately or "just hiking." It was an odd question. It left me wondering. Of course I've been skating! But then I realized that those moments on 4 wheels haven't been making it onto Instagram. Who cares? Reality check: My Insta feed is the only way some people know me.

That's fine—but it's weird. Everyone uses Instagram (and all social medias) for different reasons. Me? I'm on there to see cool pictures and laugh. I don't ever post selfies, can't get behind them, will unfollow friends who post too many of ’em. I want to see your world, what you're doing, what you think! I don't follow certain friends that I adore in real life simply cuz they clog the feed with crap I'm not interested in. Likewise I follow total strangers who post dynamic pics that make me feel something. Long story short, Instagram isn't real life.

Obvious: we're crafting stories about our identities and lives with every picture we put up—and the ones we choose not to. Not so obvious: those stories probably aren't very true. Sure, hopefully everyone's living extraordinary lives full of natural beauty and wonder, full of humor, full of friends and happy things going down. Full of hiking! But you can sense just by looking that that's not totally the case. We're all just normal. Buncha normal people living normal lives!

And hey, normal is cool.

Favorites 5.17.16

The Witch: This movie's been on my mind. What was it even really about? When I think on the pilgrims—the way they were living alone out there in the savage wilderness of a savage land with nothing to warm them but a healthy fear of hellfire—well that's enough to be a real-life horror story right there. Anyway, hats off to the spookiest soundtrack ever, in my opinion.

Skylights in your bedroom: While in Tofino, I stayed in a cabin with two big skylights over the bed. During the day, 'twas the coziest sunny roost for reading and naps. And at night? The room became the dominion of starlight.

A possible love interest for Brienne Of Tarth in Game Of Thrones: Long have I loved Brienne—her bad-ass manner, and the way she's always regally professing her loyalty-unto-death to people. It's a good personality trait, no? But in the latest episode, did you catch that spark between her and the wildling chief? Girl deserves to get some action.

Beat pesto: Red wine vinegar and beats roasted into oblivion. Almonds and olive oil. Plenty of garlic. Through a process of alchemy, this stuff becomes so much more than the sum of its parts. Sweet, tangy and über rich. A song in your mouth—and shit, I'm not even a lover of beats. Happily, the job of making it paints your hands the brightest pink.

B.C. Or Bust

It's May and the sun is out. More than out—we've got big-boy summer here. Because adventure was calling, I drove (WAY, WAY) up north last weekend to Tofino, B.C.—a small, super laid-back surf town on the fingertip of a peninsula pointing nonchalantly out into the Pacific off Vancouver Island.

It's hard to articulate how beautiful this place is. I mean I live in a scenic river town in the shadow of a volcano—I'm no stranger to sweeping vistas. But Vancouver Island is something else. Like, from a fairy tale. Snow-tipped fjords diving into arctic waters. Mirror-smooth lakes awash in profound silence. Sunsets to the West. Foggy harbors to the East. Skateparks. Surf breaks. Sea planes buzzing in and out. I couldn't believe any of it.

But. But! Tofino is very hard to get to. While not that far as the crow flies, the journey involves boat rides and crazy roads. Hours stack onto hours as you drive 25 miles an hour around hairpin turns. And the ferries are impossibly scheduled, either leaving at the crack of dawn or timed to deposit you inconveniently straight into big-city traffic.

Ah, but that's okay. All is as it should be. You don't take the easy way to a place like this. Fairytale lands, well, they have to be earned—everyone knows this.

We were hours from Tofino still, but the sun was shining and there was a lake to our left. Pretty okay first swim of the season.

Mark surfed the cruisey longboard waves. Me? I just polar-beared it and dove straight in. Lefty tried to "save" me but only managed to half drown in the crashing whitewater.

Golden hour with an empty skatepark and islands shrouded in mist.

We saw a tree that was a sapling during Marco Polo's day. The Pacific Rim rainforest has stories to tell.

On a boat! Looking back at the Olympics and Port Angeles. Not ugly.

Work-Life Balance

Check it out. Mostly what I write about on here is life. I mean it's life, man! Work takes up half of life, tho—maybe even more on some weeks. So without any more ado, here are a few fun things I've been typing up lately.

The cool thing is, at least one of these projects came out of meeting rad strangers at the skatepark (this has happened to me more than once! which is why all my skate expenses are a legit write-offs ;).

My buds at Teva have me writing their Insta posts. I'm paid in dollar bills not double taps tho.

I love food. I love writing. By the transitive properties, I love writing about food. Been doing the summer Portland Mercury ads for Pine State Biscuits. Yay for biscuits!

I grew up a hopeless nerd, and ball sports bewilder me. Despite my obvious failings in this matter, my pal Scott let me help him and CDS with this bad-ass brand book for the Texas Tech University athletic department. It was hard and fun ultimately one of the coolest projects I've worked on in a while. Maybe there's a lesson here? I guess probably.

  

This Time Last Year

This April isn't last April. It's different in ways and better in ways. Last year, I was relentlessly listening to Houndstooth and befriending scruffy strangers. There was lots of sitting on porch stoops, and the nights often ran late. Life, if that's what you call all the moments between waking and sleeping, was tenuous—a little manic, even. There was a fever on the wind, and rain with the sun out. I mean that's just spring in Portland.

I bought a new, old car. I did not “bargain hard.” I’m civilized—I just paid what they asked. It’s possible that I got hosed. The plan was to have it always and forever, drive it into eternity—but now, I hear Volkswagen's gonna buy it back from me. The future is unwritten, see?

I played on an intramural softball team with a bunch of skateboarders. We lost our first game 28 to 2. In the outfield, Daniel kept complaining that he had to pee. Covering second base, Johnny was outrun by a lady in yoga pants. Up to bat, Kristina swung at fucking everything (and missed fucking everything!). I was unable to catch a single ball, even the pop fly that the gods sent straight to me like a beam of light. Hilarious, all of it!

I let some dudes I'd never met from New Jersey stay in my basement. As a rule, I love East Coasters. Salt of the earth, funny, hard boiled. I also love the rite of the traveler—how you can meet new people and feel like you already know them, bond over a couple days or a car ride, be instantly old friends. If you’ve never left your town or your life, if you’ve never stayed on someone’s couch or let them stay on yours, well then that’s one of the best things you’re missing.