end of an era

my last day of work as an engineer at HP was May 15, 2000.

tomorrow (October 7, 2004), i return to the enginerding work force with the Xerox Corporation.

for the last four and a half years, i have travelled extensively, lived an obsession with ultimate frisbee, purchased and renovated a house, met a special little lady, adopted two cats, wasted more than a few hours playing computer games, plunged into whitewater kayaking, tried my hand at pollution source testing and finally settled down to re-discover permanent engineering employment.

this blog is just a quick and fun way to share with my friends and family what i did during those dreamy years of freedom.


-jtf

================= 2000 =================

Club Tabor
during the winter/spring of 1999-2000, i was spending my weekends with kama and danny, paying a bit of rent for full Friday eve to Monday morning use of their guest bedroom. once i left HP and committed fully to living in portland, i found a large rental house on the NE side of Mt.Tabor with some good friends from the ultimate community, Stacy "Daisy" Hubbard, Mary Thomas and Dave Geesler. Thus was born "Club Tabor", home to a number of late-night parties (and occasional police attention) much to the displeasure of the otherwise permanent, quiet (and quite tolerant) neighbors. this would be my home for my first year of hobo-ism.

Pigs In Space
the other major "family" change was my retirement from Skin&Bones, the co-ed ultimate team that i had helped co-captain for the previous two seasons. (the team founder was also the brains behind my being nicknamed "shiv", a name i still use with all of my post-college friends.) several of my closest friends in Portland were still with the team, but i needed a change to continue my development as a player. i contacted Pigs in Space about a tryout and was swept up in the storm of Pig-dom. The team consisted of a lot of old school (men's/women's) players who were looking to make a run in the new UPA co-ed series. adding in some youth (amber, shannon, pete and myself) and some strong talent from the powerhouse women's scene (shar and julie sams) made for a solid crew that was a lot of fun to play with. the season went really well, ending with a dominant sectionals win over the Corvallis super-star/veteran Army of Darkness crew and a regionals rally that resulted with our squeaking into nationals as the 5th seed from the NW region. however, a few key players couldn't make the trip to the nationals tournament, and our expectations and performance dropped off significantly. we ended up as an also-ran but had (and were) enough fun to win the Spirit of the Game award (and a pile of hats to prove it!) the Pigs family disbanded at the end of the season, but it was definitely a high point in an ultimate career that has been as intense and varied as any.

Pigs vs Army of Darkness

Spartacus
With the 2000 co-ed season ending in late summer, I helped rally a group of solid portland men's players under the Spartacus title. We took 2nd in Oregon and fell in quarterfinals at Regionals. The team was a great group of guys and went on to complete the next few season as a 2nd Portland squad.

SW trip & Ra
After halloween, the ultimate season in the NW dies pretty quickly, so i decided to go on a several-month voyage through the southwest. i made my way down through Cali, stopping to visit friends in Arcata and the Bay area. i had a few weeks to kill until hitting a pre-thanksgiving hat (random team draw) ultimate tournament in Albuquerque. i spent a fair amount of time puttering around Arizona, mostly camping near canyon rivers and hiking around the high country. after playing ultimate in NM (and meeting a heap of cool folks from NM, AZ, CO and TX), i joined my family in Denton for the too much food and football of turkeyday.

my next appointment was an(other) ultimate tournament in Austin the following weekend. i had found my way into a team consisting mostly of Austin players i had met at co-ed nationals in the summer. i was also meeting up with some ultimate friends i knew from Washington state who had moved to Austin, Lesley and Ben. i stayed with them Saturday night and met their roommate Raminta who was Lesley's close friend from high school. we had a blast that night, so i stayed over sunday night... and monday night... and a few more days until i had to go back to Dallas to meet with some friends. after spending the following weekend in Dallas, i planned to spend a week with my sister in San Antonio. i stayed 36 hours before deciding that i really wanted to go back to Austin. you get the idea. i spent most of December with the Austin kids before returning to Denton for xmas and a quick (and icy) drive back to Portland to meet up with friends for New Year's. Raminta and i "kept in touch."
Raminta in Alaska

================= 2001 =================

Keeping Busy
with no work to do and ultimate fixes only available on the weekends and evenings, i took a philosophy class at PSU during the spring of 2001. i also bought a road bike for $10 at salvation army and did a complete tear down and rebuild with the help of Sean Cushing.

raminta and i also traded some trips back and forth. i went out to Austin and she came out to Portland for a week. during the spring, Ra decided to move to P-town, and we started making arrangements for me to fly down and drive a U-Haul back with her and her stuff.

Bonzi
with pigs disbanding, the natural next step for me to take was to try out for the main men's team in Portland, Bonzi. they had just come off a strong season that concluded with a 9th place finish at nationals. i was really excited to play with some of the top ultimate folks in the nation and was thrilled to make the squad. i filled a role as a depth player on defensive lines, although i was excited about my development into a decent defensive 3rd handler. my role most of the time was to avoid major mistakes, but a few long connections during the season make me proud of what i was able to bring to the team. highlights of the year included an upset win at regionals over Vancouver powerhouse Furious George to take 2nd place. at nationals in Sarasota (FL), we dropped an important game against Boulder's Johnny Bravo and ended up finishing a disappointing 10th. However, playing against (and watching) some of the best amateur athletes in the world was amazing. (off-field highlights included a few all-star plays in the traditional Bonzi old-guys-vs-young guys ocean football game. age matters!) the only big bummer of the Bonzi experience was that i developed a tightness in my IT band that kept me from practicing the last few weeks before nationals and prevented me from trying out for another season.

Wonderland
in May, i started looking for a house. Dan Kelly suggested a realtor, and my Bonzi teammate, Mike Knapp, served as my mortgage broker. in a whirlwind two weeks, Val and i looked at dozens of houses and eventually found a great 1914 bungalo just south of Mt.Tabor. i closed on a wednesday, flew down to Austin on that Friday and drove back from Texas with Raminta while a friend of a friend refinished the wood floor. my first decorations in the house were copies of some really interesting "alice" images, thus giving the name to my first casa.
Wonderland!

Skylights
Duncan, a friend from Spartacus, and i lived in the house to start. raminta found an apartment a short distance away (although she didn't spend much time there.) Duncan did home renovation as a profession and helped me with a few projects around the house in exchange for rent credit. our first task was to put two skylights into what had been a dark and stuffy attic space. with light streaming in, i began to really consider the potential of this space.
Attic pre-skylights
Making roof holes
Attic with skylights

Travels with Ra
while ultimate kept me pretty busy most weekends, raminta had an odd work schedule that gave us some weekdays for travel. the first year she was in Portland, we hit Mt.Ranier on our way back from my cousin's wedding, took a 2-day trip up to the glacial lakes at the base of Mt.Jefferson, hiked a few thousand feet up Mt.Hood and camped on the Cooper Spur trail and hit piles and piles of waterfall dayhikes along the Columbia Gorge.

Pets Pets Pets
Raminta brought her malamute/shepard (Xander) with her from Austin. he was a growing pup of just a year and glad to move to a cooler climate. later that fall, Lesley moved up here as well and brought a cat she had adopted after Raminta left. staying with her sister, Lesley needed a place for the cat, Spider. Raminta volunteered me to keep him "for a while." i'm not sure any of us believed that, and Spider (despite one murder attempt by Duncan's dog Linda) was soon part of the family. Duncan moved out around Thanksgiving, and Raminta gave up the farce that was her "real" apartment. we decided Spider needed a friend and went to the animal shelter. the first cat we saw was a frisky lil kitten who immediately jumped on Ra's shoulder and started playing with her hair. we named her Temba (after the youngest person to climb Everest.) Temba and Spider soon fell in love. It's that kinda house methinks.
Pet Love!!!

DoD, [AoS] and BFE
during this year, i also started my least constructive obsession, online gaming. i discovered a WWII game called Day of Defeat and started playing. after a while of playing on public servers, i joined a clan called Ace of Spades and started participating in some league matches. because the leadership was young and fairly incompetent, i soon fell into a leadership role and started organizing strategies and managing membership. after a while, the endless headache of leading this group got tiresome, so i left [AoS] to play in a larger informal semi-public tournament for the same game called Battle for Europe. set up like a real military with officers and such, i again climbed up the leadership ladder and soon enjoyed a role as lead tactical planner. hey, it's nerdy, but it's fun.

================= 2002 =================

Kitchen Cabinets
the next big project i took on at the house was the installation of cabinetry around the stove. i did everything i could to make it match the existing woodwork, building a soffet and rounded shelves on the side. the end result looks great and gave me confidence that i could tackle the bigger projects waiting for me in the attic.
Lonely little stove
Happy stove with cabinets

utlimate "retirement"
with my IT band problems, i started taking it easy with ultimate. during the '99-'01 seasons, i was playing 3-4 days each week including ~20 tournaments each season plus weekend practices from april through september on weekends when i wasn't in a tournament. now i mostly played on pickup teams of various friends. it wasn't as cohesive, but having played on strong teams in the past meant i usually could join strong players and have great weekend showings. although i missed the process of developing a team, i still had enough opportunities to play high level ultimate.

Grand Canyon Thanksgiving
for turkey day week, Raminta and i joined her sister (Rasa), parents, cousin and Rasa's various friends from the Phoenix area. we hiked down the canyon on thanksgiving and had a full dinner blowout at the campgrounds. who knew turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy were standard camping food? we spent the weekend eating, dayhiking, eating, playing cards and eating a bit more. (better to hike it out in your belly than on your back!)
Biciunas hiking troop

Attic Master Suite Started
the process of drawing up plans and getting full permits for the attic master suite took much longer than expected, mostly because i had to get a structural engineer to verify that the house could support the added weight of the living space. evidently, the original partial finish work had not been permitted, so i had to pull a permit as if starting from an unfinished attic space. anyway, i eventually got the paperwork out of the way, hired a plumbing company to do the rough-in, knocked out the closet and tore up the floor to make way for pipes.
Plumbing rough-in
Bathroom framing

================= 2003 =================
Da NiNjA
after climbing to the highest ranks possible in BFE, i became bored with the constant turnover and team rebuilding of the tournament's format. i still enjoyed Day of Defeat, so i joined a clan led by a guy with whom i enjoyed playing in BFE. Da NiNjA was started by a group of highschool friends from Louisianna, but the leadership had been passed on to some twentysomething guys from southern California. Hans, duckdodgers and Onex were fun guys with whom i started playing leagues again. we recruited some good people and solid players, eventually adding a group from University of Minnesota at Duluth. we eventually grew enough to split into two squads. i played with the upper squad and rose to very high level play before everyone got tired of the grind and retired to other interests. it was a fun time, but the reality of how american teenage boys act online is really quite sad. such is life.

Finish Attic Master Suite
months and months later, the bathroom was completed. plumbing, framing, pocket doors, electrical, insulation, drywall, chimney removal (including a new furnace and waterheater that exhaust out the side of the house), flooring, fixture installation, painting, trim and all of the details that go along were finally complete. we moved the bed upstairs and enjoyed what is now one of the best spaces in the house.
Master bedroom
Master bath sink
Master bath "facilities"

Kayaking
during the previous winter, Raminta and a friend from work (Sara) took a whitewater kayaking class. they were hooked, and i was not allowed to rest until i signed up for the springtime class. ten pool sessions and three river trips later, i was a class II boater. i bought a kayak (dagger outlaw) and gear just before the last of the class's river trips and was fully excited about a new sport that could take the place of ultimate. three months later, i decided to get a more aggressive boat and bought a Dagger ID. aside from a case of bad judgement one day on a flood-swolen river, everything kayaking that summer and fall was excellent. in december, we ran our first full-on class III river sections (fish creek to bob's hole and the Middle White Salmon) and were officially solid intermediate boaters.
Rafting w/my mom and sister

More Travels with Ra
although kayaking has taken over as our primary outlet for travel, Raminta and i also found time for a few other adventures. for the annual Biciunas gathering, we met up with Ra's family in Port Townsend (WA) for the fourth of july weekend. mostly entertained by a few young neices and Xander's extreme fear of fireworks, we also managed to teach Ra's brother (Neris) how to roll a kayak and attempted unsuccessfully to do the same with her sister and a cousin.

in the winter, we try to get out to the mountains a few times to cross country ski. Xander goes nuts in the snow, and we also have a fun little game that we play wherein we run to the edge of a steep snow-covered hill and jump for a free-fall into the powder below. good times indeed.
snowjumping!

Main Bath Rebuild
in the fall, i took on my last big house project, the complete teardown (to the studs) and rebuild of the main level bathroom. new fixtures (except a re-painted clawfoot tub), new paint and a new style resulted in a great new room that i think is my most attractive work yet. i just wish i had some digital images of what it looked like beforehand. grey tiling, ancient grimey fixtures and gray fading flooring were not something i would have wanted to keep around.
New bathroom goodness


================= 2004 =================

Jobhunt & Horizon
at the start of the year, i decided it was time to start looking to re-enter the working world. i spent the next 4 months applying online and trying to network my way into finding an engineering position. as the days went by, i started lowering my expectations and getting increasingly frustrated. in april, i finally decided to use the Portland kayaking forums to find help. i got a few bites from members of the community, including two promising leads. Tony worked at Xerox, and after meeting with me and getting a bit of info on my background, he offered to help try to fit me into something there. Paul worked as a field technician for a company that did pollution source testing. i went in and met with his boss and thought it could be something i would enjoy. if nothing else, it would be employment until i found a real engineering position (which could be a long long while.)

my work at Horizon Engineering involved measuring gas and particle emissions from smokestacks around the northwest. lumber yards, paper plants, paint factories, charcoal factories and other raw industrial sites were my workplace for the next few months. lots of heavy lifting and precarious high locations under sometimes ugly conditions were the norm. after a few months, i offered to go to "on-call" status. i would work whenever they had field work, but i would not come in on days when there was only paperwork and shop cleaning on the menu. i worked a total of 2 days during the subsequent 6 weeks. luckily, i had work putting a bathroom into a friend's attic to keep me busy and provide a paycheck.
Beautiful places, amazing smells

Arizona
a few weeks into my job at Horizon, i took an already planned vacation to Arizona. Ra and I crashed at her sister's place, and Rasa took us on some camping and other adventures on the weekend. i got a nice sunburn and scratched my eye with desert dust. evidently, Arizona doesn't like me much anymore.
Arizona stuffs

Friend For a Day!
i included this fun little picture because after 3 years of barking and hunting squirrels in the back yard, we came downstairs one day this spring to find Xander cuddling with a new friend. he tried to wake up his friend to say "hi" to us, but his pal was pretty tired. i put him to rest in the big plastic backyard can, despite Xander's interest in playing catch or fetch or whatever other games the three of us might have tried.
Xander & friend

Fiber
wanting to get back into the ultimate scene but without many great options, i took up a request to help coach and play a bit with a newer Portland co-ed team, Fiber. during their first season, they typically won 1-2 games during a weekend of tournament play and were looking to develop their play. they had a few really good weekends, including winning half of their games at Slugfest. in the fall, they had an outstanding first day of play at sectionals and finished 5th (of 11 teams) in the state, almost making the regional tournament. it was a great suprise for all involved.

Serious Kayaking
three months after buying "Bert" (my yellow Dagger ID), i decided to sell him and "Chuck" (my blue Dagger Outlaw) and buy a new playboat. i settled on a LiquidLogic Space Cadet because it was the hardest boat that i tried and saw the potential of the cool stuff i could do when (if?) i learned to master the boat. thus, my serious work at learning to playboat began.
Playboating on the McKenzie
we also kept pushing the difficulty of river sections we were running, culminating in springtime runs on Bruno Mountain and the "Waterfall Section" of the East Fork of the Lewis River (which includes two big waterfalls and some tricky class IV rapids.)
Horseshoe Falls on the E.F.Lewis
now that the fall rains are close to arriving, we will have a lot of new options for paddling. raminta and i plan to get creekboats (larger volume and friendly shapes) that will allow us to run tougher rivers more safely and easily. last season was our time to conquer class III, and this one will ease us into class IV goodness, including waterfalls, creeks and other fun and exciting stuffs. wheeeeeeeeee!
Dream shopping for creekboats

Xerox
finally, the stars aligned. recruitment services, online applications, help from Tony Crawford and even friends from the ultimate community who ended up on the interview committee all helped me get an interview at Xerox. after convincing them that it was boredom with Corvallis, not my job at HP, that drove me to leave in 2000, i gladly accepted a position as an r&d manufacturing process development engineer. i start in the morning and have a healthy mix of anxiety and excitement. i'm sure to have plenty of stories to tell in the coming weeks and months.

The End of an Era
it's been an outstanding "retirement" during these last 1618 days (give or take) have been a blast, but i'm not looking to do it again anytime soon. i like getting paid to be useful, and i'm good at it. at least that's how i remember it...