I’m done cooking!
For a while, anyways. Today I start down the path of being a marine engineer. I won’t miss the drama so much, it’s always interesting, but never really all that much fun to take part in. In a couple of hours, my mentor for the next couple of weeks will be on board. His name is Pedro, and he’s from Venezuela. Pedro is, in my mind, a pretty normal example of a middle class male from South America. There is a kind of air about him, very masculine like most Latin males, a little sexist, but most importantly, he knows this boat very well. I’m sure that he’ll be a good teacher.
We are done with our first trip up the Columbia and Snake rivers now. It’s really a diverse and interesting area, never mind the history of Lewis and Clark who followed the river. It starts at the mouth of the river with the “Bar” which is essentially a ship graveyard, up through Portland and Gresham with steep slopes and tons of trees, and then out to a southwest feel about half way through the trip. It’s pretty interesting to see the difference in climate as you travel inland like this. Then there are the dams. The locks are amazing feat’s of human intelligence. Words cannot describe how big of a project these things must have been, and how grand they really are. I haven’t had much time for picture taking, but I have 5 more trips to get that done, and I plan on it.
Not much has changed on the home front, I still really have no idea where I’ll end up. I really am not sure at this point what is best, so I’m just taking things day by day. I guess I’m ok with that.
