Tag Archives: Good decisions

Jul8

A hop, skip, and a jump over to Rīgas radio un televīzijas tornis (The Riga TV and Radio tower)

Posted on by
Standard

Thursday, 13-June-2024


When I first caught sight of Riga from the bus, I saw the TV tower.

A massive three-legged down, stretching up into the sky from a wooded island in the river, it was a beacon for the city – I don’t know if it’s the tallest building in Riga, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was. The tower’s huge, solid, and visible from pretty much anywhere on the river.

Which clearly meant that I had to go stand near it. I mean… obviously. I’m only human.



On Thursday, I headed out.

I grabbed an electric scooter, pulled up a map on my phone, and made my way to the lovely wooded island where I planned on taking a nice day out of the city. Spend some time in nature, appreciate some trees, touch grass, and get different views of a huge TV tower… you know, the usual adventures.

As I got closer to the tower, though, my intuition started giving me some feedback about that plan.

Specifically, that this area wasn’t a nature preserve… and this was a bit closer to those parks in Portland where people connected to the grid probably shouldn’t go. It wasn’t any one specific thing that was tipping off my subconscious (and conscious) alarms, but the whole general feeling of the place. I pressed on a bit, but after maybe 15min on the island my mind hit a saturation point.

Discretion is the better part of valor, and caution never goes out of style. I turned around, and headed back to the safety of the city.


My scooter died on me a bit of the way into Riga proper. Not quite the old town, but a far bit closer into the city than I was before… and an area that wasn’t triggering any alarm bells in my mind. It was actually a quite interesting portion of the city – only two miles from my hotel, but much more residential of a feel, with small bodega-style shops and quite a few commuters going to and fro.

It was… a little sad, in some spots, seeing all the older buildings and boarded up windows. It seems like I’d found myself in a portion of Riga that wasn’t thriving as well as the city center was, with quite a few pensioners and grandparents shuffling along the sidewalks with their grocery carts. It didn’t feel bad, though, and I appreciated the opportunity to see this side of the city.

As part of seeing that side of the city, I was fortunate enough to witness something I’d really only ever read about, or seen in old TV shows – Babushka’s gossiping from their balconies!

Literally – As I was walking by, I heard the sound of quiet-yelling voices coming from one of the buildings… looked over, and saw a whole gaggle of people (all in their own apartments, of course) leaning out of windows and over balconies, talking what I assumed to be neighborhood gossip. Maybe a dozen over all, ranging from younger ladies with babies to full-on Latvian grandmas. It was fun to see a scene so straight out of a book… and I continued on with a slightly bigger smile on my face than before.

Oct29

Not backpacking in the Wallowas, and instead flying a drone in Wilsonville!

Posted on by
Standard

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday – 28, 29, 30, and 31-Sept-2023


Well dang.

My plan for this fall was to do a whole series of backpacking trips – starting with McNeil Point, and culminating in a four-day adventure out in the Wallowas.

I was going to drive out to Joseph, Oregon, on Wednesday after work and stay at a motel near the trailhead. Then, I’d grab as many pancakes as I could eat, then backpack in to Ice Lake! I’d use Ice Lake as a basecamp, summitting The Matterhorn (not the one in Switzerland, that would be too far) and Sacajawea Peak… then trek out and stay overnight again at the same motel before driving back home on Sunday.

It was going to be amazing and I was super psyched…

But then the rain happened.

See, if it was just rain then I’d have been okay. Heck, I’d have been fine if it was snow! But it wasn’t either – it was freezing rain, with the temperatures hovering right in the low to mid 30s. That’s what I call “hypothermia weather”. Or, more simply put, “dying in the backcountry weather”.

Not part of my plans, to say the least, and I ended up cancelling the trip once the weather was clearly not going to change.



Disappointing, to be sure, but that’s part of the adventure of the outdoors, right? “The mountain doesn’t care about you” is the refrain I keep in mind… it’s not that I’m challenging the mountains, or that I’m conquering them. I’m just experiencing them, and making decisions that will let me keep experiencing them for as long as possible.

So I stayed home.

I made delicious meals, went for long walks, and flew the drone around the Willamette river.

default
default
default
default

May1

Making good decisions with the snow

Posted on by
Standard

Saturday, 09-Apr-2022

I spent the beginning part of the day with the Mazamas, doing snow school and practicing some of the more technical aspects of traveling on a glacier.

The second half of the day was up in the air – I hadn’t been backpacking in the snow yet this year, so the frozen fields were calling my name.

I’d packed a bag, and had all my camping gear ready for an evening out – stove, food, fuel, all the good stuff.

But… I wasn’t sure.

My foot had been hurting me the week prior, to the point that I’d actually gone to a podiatrist to make sure it wasn’t broken or anything like that. And I was tired – I’d been burning out from work pretty intensely, so was running on a partial tank. But hey – adventures help refuel me, and the foot was feeling much better. I wasn’t sold either way, which is why I packed all the gear… but didn’t lock myself into any particular course.



As the weekend went on, though, the true path revealed itself. I had an amazing time, and was feeling happy and positive. But at the same time, I was still tired. My gear was a bit wet, my phone had died, and I felt a slight headache coming on. The weather was being concerningly inconsistant too, which always worries me when I’m heading into the back country… knowing one way or the other is always easier than uncertainty – I’m fine walking into a blizzard that I know about, but an unexpected blizzard is dangerous.

All of those things combined made the decision for me.

I wanted to go backpacking. I wanted to stay outside again, to sleep in a tent and let the wilderness recharge my batteries. I wanted the stillness and serenity that only a snowfield has, and I needed the calm of watching my stove boil water for dinner.

But more than any of that, I needed to be safe and sane. I needed to make good decisions. Because, as one of my favorite quotes goes, “The mountains don’t care about you”.

For this post, I tried to find a source to credit that quote to… and to even confirm the details of the quote. I found a few options, linked below, but it seems to be a simple old-timey generalized quote. A saying that’s so ubiquitous amount the peoples who live and travel the mountains that it’s self-evident. Which is partially why I love it so much, I think…

I made a good decision on Saturday. I stayed low-key, listened to my body and to the world around me, and headed home. I had an amazing dinner, sat by the fire, and enjoyed myself. I wasn’t quite as well recharged as I may have been from an evening in the snow, but I was also uncontestably alive and unharmed – which is quite important.




Note:
A second favorite quote of mine speaks to the opposite – while “The mountains don’t care about you” urges caution, this reminds us of the criticality of being bold, “A ship at harbor is safe… but that’s not what ships were made for”

Links:
https://twitter.com/nimsdai/status/1465967127144243202?lang=en

https://paulgerald.com/paul-gerald-writings/the-mountains-dont-care/

https://proactiveoutside.wordpress.com/2014/01/11/simply-put-the-mountains-dont-care-about-you/#:~:text=Along%20with%20the%20beauty%20of,something%20we%20should%20ever%20forget.

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/12/09/safe-harbor/#:~:text=attributed%20to%20her%3A-,A%20ship%20in%20harbor%20is%20safe%2C%20but%20that%20is%20not,Shedd.