Barbara's Birthday and the FFFFFF

August 18-21, 2015

 

Front: Jules, 2nd Row: Barbara, Jane, Raven, Marybeth, Debbie, 3rd Row: (Terri's daughter), Terri, C.J.

Debbie was going, and Jules, Terri, Raven, Marybeth, and maybe Christina if she was back from the Bay Area. I could come along as the token male. There was some concern about the smoke from all the summer fires, not to mention the heat, but we were definitely going to attend come fire or low water.

18 Aug, Tues - Although C.J. was really busy trying to write two articles for the October magazine, we got off fairly early with a load of food, flying and floating gear. After all it was at the beginning, the FFF gathering. The intention being to do a Float on the Rogue, eat Food on the deck of the Galice Store café and then Fly the glassoff. After the usual slowdowns to get gas at Covington and Roseburg, we got to the yurt sometime after 1700. We figured we'd be the last to arrive for dinner at 1800 but no one was there but Barbara. Debbie, the dinner organizer, had gone directly to Woodrat to get in a flight and didn't get back until 1830. So I got some dry cornhusks and twigs and managed to get the Weber charcoal grill fired up. We threw on the unhusked corn and some zucchini slices as soon as Debbie arrived, which was shortly after Raven and Forrest and Jane, a pilot from Bend got there. We moved the veggies aside and added the salmon filets and soon dinner was ready. Throw in a loaf of C.J's bread and it was a feast. Raven had brought a tres leches cake for dessert. By the time dinner was over the temperature had cooled off nicely and the fan was hardly needed in the yurt.

The pirate raft

19 Aug, Wed - Right up to an hour before we were leaving, we weren't sure if C.J. and I were going to join the rafters to make six, or if we were going to try our untested skill in the Sevylor Tahiti. When Terri and her daughter Meghan opted in, the raft was full. I pumped up the rubber duckie and tied it on the roof rack. We all met at the Applegate Store and carpooled from there. Marybeth rode with us and kept us entertained with her tales of traveling  in Australia. I had to stop and add a tie to the
front of the kayak to keep it from folding up - it was definitely

That's us in the rubber duckie

not as rigid as our fiberglass boat. It was almost an hour to our put-in point downstream from Indian Mary CG (Josephine County) at Ennis Riffle even taking the shortest route. We stopped at an overlook above Hellsgate to see a swarm of yellow inflatables rafted up waiting to go through a rapid. At Ennis, we put the seats in our boat and Jules helped get the two hardshell river kayaks ready for her and Debbie. Everyone else loaded the blue raft from outfitter Ferron's Fun Trips - more F's to add to the FFF. Apparently no one in our group had ever run this section of rapids above Galice. All we knew was that they were Class I-II. It wasn't until we were most of the way down to Almeda that we found out that Ferron had provided the raft with a basic guide to the rapids in the form of a simple map. [If  I had had access to the internet the previous night I would have tried to find description of the rapids online, but that wasn't going to happen way up Humbug Creek at the yurt where even cell phones have no service.] Anyway, C.J. and I knew enough to avoid the big rocks and holes and to look for the V. Jules, who is a very experienced river runner also pointed out that we should aim for the white peaks rather
 than the

Jules

Wet Debbie below the rapids

Debbie getting everybody else wet

hollows. Debbie was not as lucky as us and flipped in the first big set of waves and lost her GoPro which she was wearing on her head. There were maybe a half-dozen sets of rapids interspersed with nice, flowing water - good for splashing and supersoakers. We stopped for a break and a swim on a beach in an eddy below Galice after avoiding a particularly big hole, and then we reached Almeda, another Josephine County campground and boat launch. Ferron met us there with a van and a flatbed trailer to shuttle us back to Ennis. By then it was after 1500 and definitely time for some lunch. We ate on the deck overlooking the river at the Galice Store. The food wasn't memorable but the company was lively. Hoping for a glassoff flight at Woodrat, we returned to the yurt to get our wings and then to meet the rest of the pilots, and Marybeth who was going to drive, at Longsword. As we passed Hunter's LZ on the way to mid-launch we could see the windsock showing N and so it was no surprise to find Rick packing up and heading off to chase Norm and Nathan who had gotten to 8500 a bit earlier and had flown to Applegate Lake (Norm to the far end). Debbie launched to the NW but she got worked so hard that no one else showed any interest in taking off. Paul Murdoch showed up as well. [C.J. returned a call to Rich Hass and found out that the article she had been working so hard on for the past several days couldn't be used for reasons of liability.]  After hanging out with other pilots at Longsword with wine and beer, we went back to the yurt and enjoyed some more of Raven's cake.  It had been a pretty long day.

20 Aug, Thu - After breakfast with Barbara and Debbie, we headed in to Longsword to try to get a flight before it got too thermally. Barbara had a dermatology appointment in Medford at 1400 so she wanted to fly before 1130. Jane and Marybeth drove everyone up and we all got to fly, even Jules who hadn't flown for several months. I flew for only 12 minutes landing in the bailout LZ where I was joined by Dan Wells and Jules. Barbara came over and shuttled me back to Longsword so I could get my car and return to pick up Jules and Dan (but Dan got a ride with Marybeth). C.J. and Debbie got good, long flights. So did Norm, Nathan, Rick, and Jane who got to fly to Longsword for her second time. Most of us ended up going to the Honeysuckle Café in Ruch for a tasty lunch; I had a 3-tortilla tostada and C.J. had a banh mi Vietnamese sandwich, but we shared. C.J. and I went back to the yurt but around 1700 we thought we ought to go to Longsword in case Barbara wanted to fly (we had her gear). She showed up but didn't have any interest in flying. We called Kevin Lee on my phone (C.J.'s phone had no service for some reason) and arranged to drop off her non-transmitting PTT at Christina's Air B'n'B. We visited with Christina and Jane for a while and then decided to see if we could get hold of Consumer Cellular before we got out of cell range back at the yurt. After a 30 min. wait on hold we started back along Rte 238 and halfway there we finally got through. It turned out that C.J.'s new iPhone5S was not on the AT&T system but had a T-Mobile sim card. Apparently there's no T-Mobile service around Ruch. Consumer Cellular mailed a new ATT sim card to us. Back at the yurt C.J. whipped up a stir fry with a few eggs for dinner with Barbara. Then we finished up the last of the cake. I did some packing so we could leave in the morning.

21 Aug, Fri - We had breakfast with Barbara and Debbie, packed up and cleaned the yurt and hit the road between 9 and 10. We didn't have enough gas to be sure to make it to Roseburg so we got $20 worth at Arco in Grants Pass. We had contacted Mark F about C.J.'s intermittent transmitting problem and he said to come by his workplace and he'd take a look at the radio and give us a tour. His tests seemed to indicate that it was a blown front end (whatever that means) and he could get a part and fix it. Then he showed us around Korvis which was pretty interesting especially the 3D printers and the DNA genome mapper. We continued north up Rte 99 then east to Salem where we wound around to the Costco gas station on fumes. There was the expected traffic slowdown going through Portland so it took 45 minutes. Then we stopped for dinner in Chehalis at Quiznos. We were home around 2100 (sundown is now at 2015...summer is winding down).