Hello from Seoul

Trisha has made a special request that I blog while on my work trip to Seoul.

I hope others of you enjoy this also.

  I have now been in Seoul, South Korea for 3 full days and am already enjoying the friendliness of the people, cleanliness of the city and ease of getting around. This is a much different experience then what I had in China, not saying that the Chinese are not friendly...it's just different. For one, the city noise is so quite since drivers do not use their horns as often and people generally talk much quieter.

  After getting in on Sunday night I have been able to sleep almost on a normal schedule, when this happens I know that the return trip in a week will hit me hard with jet-lag.

Day 1:



Making Tammy, our QA Manger, pose with me in front of the Korean liaison office.

    It just happened to work out that the QA director and manager were in town to work with the Korea LO and the garment factory that I was here to visit.I joined the QA team for the day. Half of the day was spent in the office and the other half at the Factory headquarters. This was also the first day that I got to meet face to face with my Korean counterparts that I work with daily so that was very special to me. It is also nice to know more about the people you work with, even when most of your conversations are via email these days.

   For all you non hip people, sorry dad but I will call you out here. There is a HUGE korean-pop song that has made it big in The States. The artists name is Psy and his song is Gangnum Style (click this link to watch the video). Gangnum is a very affluent area in Seoul and Psy's song is making fun of the people that live there. Everyone that we meet has asked us if we are familiar with the song and every store/restaurant that we walk into has the song on repeat.



My first evening experience in Seoul:

Crazy Hyundai building

Streets of Seoul

Japanese Nabe (not the best by far)

   The first night it was just me and my designer walking around and we were on our own for dinner. We walked past so many restaurants looking for a menu with pictures that we felt comfortable choosing from. The problem was that since it was my fist time in Korea and I don't have too much experience with eating traditional Korean food I was uncertain how to eat some of the food that we were seeing. In the end we found a Japanese Izakaya to eat at. Ordering was pretty safe.

 Above left, a fried chicken dish with sweet mustard...didn't seem very Japanese. Above right, the Izakaya.

On the walk how we saw lots of these cards with scantily clad

women on them and phone #s to call for a good time.

Then we stopped at the Bongeunsa Buddhist Temple, one of 2 in the city limits. In order to enter into the temple you had to walk through the Gate of Truth that was watched over by 2 sets of Guardians seen above.

The ceiling is covered in paper lanterns.

 Finally it was getting late and I was actually getting tired so we made our way back to the hotel. The last cool thing we saw was an air pump that was permanently set up in the biking park area. How handy and awesome is that. I think Portland needs these!!

The cool airpumps, free to use.

Updates, + more camping

Hellooo!

It's been a fun couple of weeks, I hope that everyone out there has been enjoying themselves as much as we have.

First, and most important, Krista and I celebrated our 9th year together, and 5th of marriage yesterday.  It's truly been an amazing time, and we both feel so fortunate to be where we are, together, in our lives.  Thanks to everyone who's come along with us on our ride!

To help celebrate, we went on a fun hike yesterday with some folks who were in town for my work, checking out the factory and Portland in general.  Great group of dudes, I'd highly recommend checking out their blogs:
Well Spent
Secret Forts
Best Made Co
Cold Splinters
Wend Magazine
Gear Junkies

Speaking of Gear Junkies, they recently posted (or re-posted) a fun video that condenses down what looks like an amazing day in Portland to a couple of minutes.





Anyway, our hike was out by Multnomah Falls, which is a PDX tourist staple, though most people don't take the time to get out past the highway viewpoint.  There were some great views along the trail, with lots of smaller waterfalls to admire.

I just downloaded that instagram thing, which seems fun, but I think I need more practice with the filters and things

 


So, Camping!

For Memorial Day, we wanted to celebrate a friend's birthday by spending it outside.  We found a great campsite pretty close to Portland - close to the Columbia River, but on the Washington side - Panther Creek.  We arrived Saturday evening, right after a big downpour, and participated (shouted out suggestions) with the tarping process

Getting the corners up high

Adding supports to direct runoff

Success!

A great time, with a fun group of people.  Sunday, we headed out of camp and played some disc golf at a course right on the Columbia.  Really fun views, though we did have to watch out for a stream that went through the course and almost grabbed a couple of errant throws.

I don't want to imply by those photos that Krista was the only one throwing at the river.  She was just the fastest rescuer.

After golf, we hit up the Walking Man Brewery in Stevenson, WA, and headed back to camp for another night around the campfire.  Happy Birthday, Trisha!

DIY Hop Trellis - 2012 Edition

Krista and I have been growing hops ever since we moved up to Oregon  (the PNW is the 3rd largest hop growing region in the world, behind Germany and Ethiopia - who knew?).   We love the look, the smell, and of course, the ability to put our harvest straight into a batch of homebrew in the fall.  We’ve also found that, while they seem to attract aphids like crazy, they also then provide a great nesting and feeding place for ladybugs, who then keep most of the rest of the garden pests in check.

Warning - Ladybugs in compromising positions next:

The thing about hops is that they’re evolved to grow great if they can climb vertically – at least 10 feet high.  If the season is good, and the plants are healthy, they can easily grow taller than that.  For ease of harvest, you want them climbing up something you can control and possibly cut – twine, etc.

A hop field in Germany I saw mid - summer last year.  I'd assume that the bottom of the sign in the foreground is at least 6 - 7 ft tall.  Sorry, I was in a moving bus, so it's a bit blurry.

We don’t have an obvious place to attach 10 vertical feet of twine in the garden, so some sort of contraption must be built.  Last year, I dusted off my old Scout lashing skills to build a tripod at one end of our 4 hop mounds, then run a cross beam at the top over to a tall pole I lashed to the fence.  It worked ok, but needed a lot more support in the middle, especially once the hop vines were heavy with leaves and flowers

2011 - Still Early season - the trellis is up, but starting to look weak in the middle

2011- Ok, so this is pretty bad.  One month after the last pic.

This year, I may have gone a bit lashing crazy, but I’m really happy with the very solid structure that we ended up with.

First, I built the new tripod for the middle area, got it up, and realized that our neighbor’s Butterfly Bush had to be trimmed back a bit from it’s fall growth.  Luckily, she was amenable to that.

If you're not familiar with the Butterfly Bush, they're pretty - nice flowers, nice smell, but they have been declared an invasive species - here's an article from the Oregonian.  We enjoy our neighbor's, but it is a prolific grower - check out on the ground what got cut out, compared to 2 photos up.

Anyway, I was a bit rusty on the lashing skills, but I think all of the joinings are fairly solid. This structure looks much more solid and stable than last year's.  There's the extra tripod in the middle, and each tripod, and the end pole, are attached to one other, and then the fence.

Krista, inspecting my work

After building the structure, I had to get the actual vines climbing up something - generally, I worked twine from the top pole to the bottom pole, then encouraged the vines to find those lines.

I'm really happy with the way the trellis turned out this year!  I guess we'll see if the structural improvements actually do work, but I'm optimistic for a great season and then harvest (and then beer!)

One quick postscript - for the top, I actually went over the top of the trellis, then back down to the fence, where I built in some slack - we've found that it's possible to feed slack in to the top of the line, let the hop vine go limp or coil, and allow the top to keep growing vertically.  Around the fence post, I did this sort of quick release clove hitch, with the slack behind it.  

Here's the knot - it goes around the fence, then a clove hitch, set up to pull loose with a tug, then the gathered slack hanging from the quick release loop.  Am I over- or under- thinking this?

Knowing of at least 3 other Eagle Scouts who should be reading this regularly - any other knot suggestions?  Adjustable tension isn't really a big deal, so I didn't bother going Taut Line - the need is to have a static knot with easy untie, slack feed, and easy re-tie around a pole, assuming that you'd have to do that 2 - 3 times over the course of the season, with easy management of excess that's the need.  I'm open to suggestions.

Here's the final trellis, with the hops training on to the lines

Happy Almost Summer!

d3