The Expedition Buzz

I got back from China right before Christmas. I flew into Oregon, where our 2008 Powder Road truck, The Red Baron, from 2008 was resting. Stacked inside the cab and bed was a few hundred pounds of gear that needed to be sorted, leaned down, and repacked into the new truck, a Toyota Tundra named Asadachi. On January 14th, Asadachi would get up and go to the Alaskan Marine Lines Ferry Terminal in Seattle, where it would subsequently be barged up to our Alaskan Hamlet along the fjords.

It was a torrential rainy December Saturday in Oregon. I pulled the Baron into a truck maintenance bay beside a local airport, and while sorting through all that ridiculous amount of gear, I had that great buzz and euphoria that comes when you know you are about to go somewhere cool.  Just holding climbing ropes, glacier gear, snowshoes, packs, sleeping bags, helmets, helmet cameras, body armor, skins, radios, survival blankets, racks, tools, and all that fun jazz gets me going. It's not as simple as surfing in tropical waters with a board and some trunks, but it's so worth it, and eventually managing the gear becomes second nature.