Hata

Dear Sarcastic Family,


As the holiday season brings shorter days and longer, colder nights, it is time to reflect upon the past year and either brag about our achievements or kvetch about our shortcomings and disappointments. Since the latter is always more fun, I reckon it's time to let 'er rip.

We started by moving to a new town (Hood River, Oregon) with high hopes. It's a great place, but in retrospect I should have done more research. It turns out that the town more or less shuts down in the winter, meaning that the few remaining jobs are guarded fiercely by veteran locals. To make matters worse, we enjoyed a ridiculously harsh winter that alternated between freezing fog and catastrophic floods. Needless to say I ate a lot of porridge and told myself I would re-up the old job hunt once the storm blew over.

Since it didn't, we packed up the truck and drove approximately 29,000 miles to southwestern Texas to guide river trips on the Rio Grande. Turns out whoever named this river was either an ant or an idiot, because it was literally ankle deep. River flows are measured in cfs (cubic feet per second) and for reference, the Colorado River typically runs between 10,000 and 20,000 cfs, while the Rogue is usually around 1,000 cfs during the summer. When we got to Texas the mighty Rio Grande was running at 76 cfs. This is about enough water to drag a canoe upriver, which is what we did. It sucked, but we made enough gas money to drive 29,000 miles back home. (By the way, I excaggerated the miles but the cfs numbers are real.)

By the time we arrived back on the west coast, it was spring! Spring is the best time of year for river guides because the rivers are high and the season is just beginning. We ruined it by taking the worst job in the entire industry: manager. Managing is the worst because you trade fun for stress and make the exact same amount of money as a guide. But instead of rowing a raft downriver and pranking rival companies between trips, you fret about logistics and yell at your staff (formerly your friends) for taking such pranks too far.

We did manage (no pun) to have some fun though, and do some private river trips at the end of the summer. That's when I injured my shoulder while kayaking a Class I rapid; the golfing equivalent of tearing your ACL on the putting green.

The silver lining is that this is the year I asked Maggie to marry me…and she said "Yes" (sucker born every minute, eh?) So I suppose this means that she'll be writing the holiday letter next year. We've decided to celebrate x-mas by getting the hell out of Dodge: we fly south today to spend the next 5-6 weeks in Central America! Maybe the Christmas music won't be so bad there.

Happy Holidays and love to all.

Hata

P.S. We'll be sending out a "save the date" when we get back, but here it is just in case: 9/27/08!