#201

Hello, runners.
Here’s the art…


Our son just ran in the 30th annual Prefontaine Memorial Race down in Coos Bay. He said he felt like he was finishing last until he looked back and saw hundreds of people behind him. He came home, fell onto the couch, and took a postfontaine nap that ended up lasting until morning. So I guess technically it wasn’t a nap. He did get a cool shirt for running in the race. Here’s a picture of it…


Apparently they used Christopher Walken as a stand in for the shirt’s graphic. Every time I see it I think “more cowbell.”
I mentioned last week that I’ll be heading out of town soon with my daughter to check out some colleges. That trip is next week, so you might not hear from me until I get back. I don’t have a laptop to take with me, so I may end up scribbling next week’s newsletter on an air sickness bag. Or I may find a computer in a library somewhere and write from there. I’m really not one to take pictures and document events, but I have this idea for a video that shows our trip from start to finish. I want to edit together a string of one second video clips from each location of my daughter giving the double thumbs up and her best Fonzie “Aaay!” I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get her onboard with the idea, but it’s certainly dumb enough for me.

-Dylan

#200!!!

It’s my 200th newsletter!
I’m celebrating today by mowing the lawn and by paying my quarterly state taxes!
You can celebrate by following the link below to our art…and you can come help me rake the lawn if you want to.


Time is passing quickly. When I started these newsletters, our daughter was just a middle schooler. Now I find myself booking flights to go check out colleges with her. In less than two weeks, we’ll be in Minnesota looking at Carleton College, then it’s on to Massachusetts to visit Hampshire College. I’m hoping they have scholarships for children of hobos, because I plan on packing for the trip in my normal transient fashion…hard boiled eggs in a sock and plenty of cans of tuna fish. I grew up in the suburbs, so where I got these habits, I don’t know.
So Jo will soon be pulling the cart without the horse, since she won’t be coming on this trip. I wish she were coming with us though. She’s better at meetings and such. I’m better at driving, navigating, and carrying heavy luggage… but I usually let her do the talking. We’re a team… kind of like Master Blaster from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. If I could carry her on my shoulders everywhere to speak for me, I would.

-Dylan

“Master Blaster runs Bartertown.”

#199

Hiya.
Here’s what we made for you…


I never take pictures other than the ones of our art. I don’t even have batteries in my camera, just an AC adapter to plug it into the wall, which my daughter finds hilarious. It may as well be a steam powered camera in her eyes. So one of the nice things about our friend, Matt, living here in town now is that he takes pictures everywhere he goes like a tourist. Here’s one he took of me and my son on a hike up above the Salmon River.


It looks like we’re near a cliff’s edge, but it’s a gentle slope down in front of us. There are, however, plenty of places to fall to your death, if that’s your sort of thing. One of the things that I love about the Oregon coast is that all of the dangerous spots haven’t been gated off the way they have in the Orlando area where I grew up. I like it when it’s left up to me just how reckless I want to be.
Lately I’ve been pressing my luck as an invisible cyclist at night. I guess I didn’t realized that my bike’s headlight had grown quite dim, and was really of little use on these dark streets near the beach. I surprised some deer and a family of raccoons as I let loose down a hill in the pitch black at speeds that made my eyes dry up. But don’t worry on my account. I promise to be more careful…someday.

-Dylan