Well, I haven't had any travelling adventures for months now, and I'm overdue.
I'm starting to formulate a plan to ride my motorcycle through Idaho, Washington, Oregon and down to the upper northern parts of California, then back to Idaho.
I'm still working out the details and trying to get feedback/advice on various legs of the journey, but I am preparing by trying to find someone else to come along as well, and to start getting my body back in shape to handle a several days long ride.
I'm planning 5 to 10 days round trip.
I am gathering maps and weather and site to see information. I'll be posting updates in the extended text portion of this article.
...

I HAVE to stop at the following locations en route:
(POssibly Moscow, ID).
Cheney/Spokane, WA.
Bellingham, WA.
Eugene, OR.
Medford, OR.
(Maybe check out Klamath Falls).
Mendocino, CA.
Ukiah, CA.
Chico, CA.
Then some route back to south eastern Idaho.
SO far, the proposed route is:
Malad City, ID up I-15 to Pocatello.
Then I have to decide whether to take I-15 north through Montana,
I know the route through Arco towards Challis is rolling desert lava flows. I've no idea what takig i-15 straight north is like.
Asuming I take the northern route through Montana, it looks like I'm stuck in the Internstate all the way to  spokane.
If I take a different route, such as highway 93 via Arco, then I pass through some area I've not seen in years through Challis, and Salmon, then eventually end up back at I-90 in Montant again.
Or a more winding (more pleasant?) path by taking I-86 at pocatello heading west.
Then route 75 north at Twin Falls.
Then passing through Sun valley and Ketchum to stanley.
Then take 21 west thruogh Lowman to Banks.
Then north on 55 to new Meadows, then north on 95 through Grangeville, Lewiston, up to Moscow.
Then take 95 north to Cour d'Alene.
Then West on I-90 to Spokane.Then to Chaney.
Anyway ,after Cheney. it looks like.
I can take a number of routes to Bellingham.
here's the current one I'm considering:
Highway 2 west to Wilbur.
Then 174 northwest through electic city, continue west on 174 Bridgeport which changes to 173 continue west to Brewster, then to Pateros, then North on 153 to through Winthrop, continuing west on 20 through the Cascades to Burlington.
North on 9 to Deming.
Then west on 547 to I-5, then North to Bellingham.
For the Southern leg, I think I'll just stick to  I-5 following the coast for a while through Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia, Tumwater.
Then continue South on I-5 to make better time straight to Portland, OR.
Then Continuing a faster track for the rest of the trip (little less scenic) down I-5 to Eugene. then Medford.
Then I-5 double back a bit to 199 west to the coast to Crescent City.
Then down 101 following the coast to Eureka.
Then inland for a bit on 101
until hooking up with 1 back to the coast.
Down to Fort Bragg. Then to Mendocino.
Then 1 to 128.
then on 253 to Ukiah.
Then north on 101 to 20.
Then East on 20 north of Clearlake (I've already been on the south and west sides of it before).
At Williams hop onto I-5 north.
Then hop off at 32 east to Chico.
Then 99 north to Red Bluff, then get on I-5 (or is that 273 paralleling it a better ride?) north again until reaching Redding.
Then continue north on I-5 to Weed.
Northeast on 97 to Klamath Falls, OR.
Then east on 140 to Lakeview.
Then north on 385 through Valley Falls, up to 20 to Burns.
Follow 20 east to Payette.
Then 30/I-84 to Boise.
Then just take I-84 East to Snowville, UT.
Then take the back way (38) into Malad City, ID.
So, please comments and suggestions for making the most of this trip.
I'll be taking video and photos galore on the way.

I'm back in Malad for a few weeks to finish moving out the office.
Had a good trip in Arizona.
Planning the "gypsy trip" September 12th to the 15th with Phill. Doesn't sound like it'll be on motorcycles though since he is having trouble getting a bike out here all the way from Oklahoma. So we may just rent a convertible for this trip. Also it'll only be a short trip to Spokane, and then if we feel up to it, go to Seattle and up the coast to Belingham and then shoot back. But I'm not sure there will be enough time for that. We'll just wing it and have fun seeing the sites up there. I still want to get in one last long motorcycle ride before the weather gets lousy, so I may come back and do one on my own through there and the surrounding area for a few days too. Meanwhile...

Going through the admissions process back into college is being a huge pain in the rear. I have been trying now for 2 weeks, every day to get copies of my transcipts and just keep getting the run-around from the colleges I went to. It looks like they may finally get on the ball this week though. Then I can finish applying to EWU.

Well, it looks like I'll be on the road right after my bday.
Hitting the road the 12th (hopefully with Phill along).
Will be up in Spokane the first day.
If there's time we'll shoot out to Seatlle and maybe all the way up to WWU by the Canada border.
Be back by the 15th. It's likely I'll just spend the time in Spokane, and save the other trips for October.
I'll be in Washington most of October and if the weather doesn't get too gnarly I'll be exploring the heck out of it and Oregon.
Stay tuned...

The many faces of Hawke over the years.
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.hawkes-haven.com/images/topics/lifestories/HawkeBaldShirtlessOnLeifsJeep_sml.jpg"><br>On top of Leif's Jeep, shirtless and Bald (circa Summer 1994ish?)</a><br></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hawkes-haven.com/images/topics/lifestories/Hawke7thGradeBdaysml.jpg"><br>7th or 6th Grade birthday party. skinny as a rail, grew 9 inches that year!</a><br></li>
<li><br>Cast Photo from Vaudville play "????" I can't remember right now, I'll fill in the blank later when I recall. It was around 9th or 10th grade. i'm the one in the Cowboy hat in the lower right corner<br></li>
<li><br>Long shaggy black hair and Fu Manchu facial hair, with guitars (circa 1992ish?)<br></li>
</ul>

We finally had a bunch of rolls developed from the past 12 months or so of photos.
I'll be posting new pics and ne stories to go with the pics shortly, as well as posting some of the new pics with older stories as updates.
Stay tuned...

Well, we hosted Thanksgiving for the first time.
Karina invited a friend of hers to bring her family.
I made the turkey using a brine and honey overnight marinade, a tasty gravy and made my great mashed potatoes, Karina and her friend did the rest - Sweet potatoes, salad, pies galore, stuffing, orange-cranberry sauce, and more.
We pigged. William overdid it enough he was writhing in agony, saying "why did I eat so much!". Heh heh, hopefully he'll learn. ;-)
Karina did a gorgeous job setting the table.
The turkey was a hit, Karina said it was the best she'd ever tasted.
We've been eating turkey every day since until today (Tuesday), phew, gobble gobble, uh oh, maybe I'm turning into a turkey (you are what you eat). :-P

All in all, no disasters and such, so it was an ok t-day.
It would have been nice to have spent it with a little more family, but it was ok for a first hosting. ;-)

You have any thanksgiving day stories/adventures/mishaps to share? Please reply to this post. ;-)


Click the images to see them full size.

Yesterday William and the other boys were FREAKING OUT about horses in our yard. I was in the tub at the time, so wasn't able to go look, I asked if he thought it might be moose, since horses didn't seem likely to be roaming free, he had no idea, but said they (there were two) were HUGE!
Well, I missed out on it yesterday.
But today, as I was backing to try to make a run up the street with the Crown Vic with bald summer tires in an inch or two of snow on top of ice, to head to school, what should my surprised eyes happen to see? But two large moose (or is it mooses? moosea? moosae? moosies? :P ) walking through our front yard into the neighbors, and then crossing the street, I hurriedly pulled out my digital camera and took a picture as best I could wihle navigating the snow and ice, through the windshield. It's not a very good/clear picture, but enough to see that one seem to be a parent with a child, and they were definitely huge!
I wonder if crossing the path of dark moose is something like the path of a black cat, because not 2 minutes later on the street below, at 5 MPH I ended up in a ditch. See those pics in a separate post.

Click the pic to see full size version.

I've occasionally been teased about how long my email signature is for some of my email addresses. But, they're excerpts of some of my favorite quotes (though certainly not all of them).
I thought I'd post these here, maybe some others will find them as meaningful as I do. ;-)
Also, you'll see my Instant Messaging contact information as well (hopefully it doesn't trigger a rash of IM spammers). ;-)

Click the READ MORE link to see the rest of this article.

--
--Hawke
http://www.hawkes-haven.com
Recreational Therapist in training.
Music Therapist in training.
Martial Arts instructor in training.
"Holistic medicine treats the person rather than the disease,
it's concern lies with the 'whole person' and with permitting
individuals to assume self-responsibility for their own health.
Whereas illness is the sole convern of 'traditional medicine',
holistic 'well medicine' deals with wells and health promotion"
Internet Radio Broadcaster.
Computer Scientist (retired)
AS/CS, SANS GIAC GCIH, MCSE, MCP+I, SCSA, CNA, ASE, PT5SC,
PMI, IEEE, Java Developer, Linux Instructor (Redhat & Suse),
Systems Engineer, Software Developer, & Information Security Specialist.
Electronic Frontier Foundation activist (www.eff.org).
Open-source advocate/Open-thought advocate.
ICQ: 3218959
Yahoo: syntheticpotato
MSN: msverbsthenoun
AIM: hawkerobinson
"Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." -Brook's Law
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." -Mahatma Gandhi
"All truth passes through 3 stages. 1st it is ridiculed. 2nd it is violently opposed. 3rd it is accepted as being self evident." -Arthur Schopenhauer
"If a man does his best, what else is there?" -General George S. Patton, US Army
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." -Aristotle
"Rather fail with honor than succeed with fraud." -Sophocles
"The only thing I know is that I know nothing" -Socrates
"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." -Plato
"Flexibility masters hardness." -The Tao (aka. Dao)
"Though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been associated with long delays." -Sun Tzu (The Art of War)
"May you live in interesting times." -Ancient Chinese Curse
"A monk asked Chao-chou, 'Has the dog Buddha nature or not?' Chao-chou said, 'Mu.' "-Wu-Men Kuan "The Gateless Barrier" (Zen koan)
"An oppressive government is more to be feared than a tiger." -Kung Fu Tzu (aka Confucius)
"Those who know, do not say. Those who say, do not know." -Lao Tzu ("Father of Taoism")
"...I remember every little thing as if it happened only yesterday...that's no way to treat an expensive musical instrument!" --Meat Loaf
"Yes, of course. Who has time? Who has time? But then if we never TAKE time, how can we ever HAVE time? -The Merovingian (The Matrix Reloaded)
"The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." -Thomas Jefferson
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases." --Thomas Jefferson
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --Benjamin Franklin (or was it Thomas Jefferson?)
I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination
encircles the world." -Albert Einstein
All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own." - Goethe

Now to catch up on the backlog...

This past two weeks has had sooo many things happen, but I really don't have any time to write about it (yet).
Just returned from Priest Lake, Idaho at the Grand View Resort and Lodge with my boys and wife, and even though there was very little time for me to actually get to relax, it turned out to be "okay" for the family for our first attempt at such an endeavor.
But my back is killing me, and I'm exhausted, and my backlog has hugely piled up, so I feel completely overwhelmed with school starting tomorrow.
But, I'll chug away through the week, and hope that by this weekend I'm a bit more caught up.
I have to get a client wrapped up and hopefully handed off to someone else.
School books bought.
Crown Vic snow tires swapped.
Both Bronco's repaired.
Registration and Emissions renewal.
Motorcycle repaired.
School, school, school.
Tax returns.
RAID array on broadcast system drives replaced (Warranty).
Laptop repaired (running on back up right now).
Find a new chiropractor to help fix my back ASAP.
Gack!

Well, there's still SO much more of the family I want to post, Drake riding his new bike, Brennan (and I) skateboarding, Brennan's Birthday (which is on Saint Patrick's day), my Ropes Course photos, and so much more, but alas, I need to get cranking on the days and days of backlogged homework.
When I need a mental break, I'll try to post a little more at a time.

The Tolkien Google logo petition is an attempt which hopes to convince Google that a J.R.R. Tolkien-themed logo should be present on January 3rd, his birthday.

Read more and sign up here: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Tolkien_Google_logo_petition

I have NO time left.

"Who has time, of course if we don't TAKE time, how can we ever HAVE time?"
- The Merovingian (The Matrix Reloaded).

I'm completely behind on school, home front, bills, health, technology maintenance, family, civic duties, personal time and work.

And it looks like only a deeper abyss looms.

Ah well.
SIGH.
Nothing to do but roll up the sleeves even further, sleep even less, and dig through the muck.

Though I'm already so exhausted, I don't know how much reserve, if any, is left to dig into.

It might be many weeks before I have time to post again, if ever.

I apologize to everyone calling and emailing, I'm now delayed several days to weeks in getting back to everyone, and I'm sincerely sorry for that, I'll get to you as soon as I can.

It's not going to lighten up until at the soonest, June 9th, and then only for about a week to try to catch up on the back log.

Until then...

I'm currently deeply immersed in school.
I have two classes in a compressed quarter.
The classes are:

If a Chinese curse is: " May you live in interesting times."
Implying that such times are usually historic but terrible times, and thus an implied curse.
Then the antithesis of this would be "May you live in boring times."???
Geez, Not much of a choice either way now is it. ;-P