Liz Woody has a story Simple Customs of Salmon Nation in the Pantagonia catalog.:

"Salmon were the first to teach us of wealth.

"In the Longhouse the host family offers gifts in honor of loved ones in birth, naming, achievement and, finally, in death. It is called a Giveaway. ..."

Maybe it's a problem of my age but I never can remember how things work. The cd player in my car has this bluescreen display which you can setup to play little animated things -- which is so useful to have in a car where you'd want something to watch while you drive. It came set up to show what track the cd is playing or what radio station is on or the time but one day I was trying to figure something out like how to stop a cassette on fast forward and I accidentally switched it so that it now shows bouncing notes flashing up and down. Brilliant. And I don't even know where the instruction book is but do I really have to plow through a 50 page booklet just so I can display the radio station? Everything comes with huge booklets now. You need devote a whole area of your house to collecting and storing these things for reference later. Our answering machine loses the time if there is the slightest power blip and I can never remember how to reset it. My alarm clock does some odd thing so that when I hit snooze -- sometimes it's for 3 minutes and sometimes 7. Can we just have a 10 minute standard? Otherwise, why bother? I can lock the dialpad on my cellphone except I have to remember how to unlock it. All these passwords and PIN numbers and user names and passwords. It's way too much.

This afternoon I went outside to see if I could chip the ice off the front porch and walkway. Surprise -- it worked. I got it all cleared when the roof groaned and then all the snow slid off with a mighty WHUMP! and covered it all up again. I would have been bummed except it was so nice to be outside. I tossed chunks of ice the size of encyclopedias from the walk and onto "the lawn." The sun even came out for a minute or two. All around ice slid off powerlines and tree branches and the roof icicles dripped steadily. It was a great time to be outside. We unburied Bob's car and left the rest of the driveway for tomorrow. It's still over 40 degrees so I think we'll be back in action by tomorrow.

On Monday I was ready to go to work but I noticed my front right tire looked low. I almost decided to ignore it but I knew the bad weather was coming in and I didn't want to get stuck anywhere with a flat tire. Going to Les Schwab during weather events is like going to see Santa Claus at the mall on the 23rd of December, but I sucked it up and went anyway. The parking lot was full, the waiting area was full and the line at least 8 people deep. The wait was about an hour but it turns out that the best looking guys work at Hazel Dell LS and they have a huge window in front of the service area so I could spend my hour watching these guys running around with tires and tools and dirty hands. It was awesome. I had a nail in my tire and got it fixed and I was off for work.

I spent 3 hours at work, filled two boxes with things to do at home and left. It's now Weds and the news says we're in for still more of this freezing rain crap. I've had enough. I've managed to do most of the work I brought home but any additional requires other files or things on my work computer or reference materials at the office.

Check Out The Ice Scene

Okay - final trip wrap up.

First of all: important Pam Travel Tip. When you and your travel companion are tired and cranky, stop for food and a large, adult beverage. This will improve your attitude immediately.

The 31st was our last day in GAP. On the first is a world famous ski jump competition and the 31st is a preliminary. We could see the jump from Lisa and Flori's house. Lisa and I brewed up some tea and pulled the couch to the window upstairs and watched the jumps while we crammed in some last minute visiting. Later, I walked down to the grounds and it was nutty -- zillions of fans and lots of fan merchandise, food stands and a big Milka purple balloon. Also in the morning they blast this incredibly bad pop music at the grounds. What is it with Germany and this generic, supremely crappy pop soundtrack that's pumped in the background of everywhere you go? They played the Macarena. There are so many great songs out there -- why blast that one? On the plane inflight TV they played a few music videos and some pretty boy band did a cover of Mandy. I'm at a loss for words to convey how tragically dreadful and unnecessary this was. There was also a video by a girl group which was a cover of Jump (the one by the Pointer Sisters, not the Van Halen one.) Also there was a Madonna video and turns out she does that song from the shampoo video they play at the theater before the movie starts. And the video even looks like the commercial. Who knew?

But back to the trip. Bob and I packed and took the train back to Munich in the afternoon and checked into Pension Frank which is by the University and clean, moderately comfortable and cheap and otherwise not too special. We went back to the Marienplatz to get money and get a drink before hopping on the S-Bahn to Puchheim (?) to meet Lisa, Flori et al at their friends for a Silvester (New Years Eve) gathering. We ate dinner and met everyone and then bowed out early to return to Munich to see the party. We thought: when are we ever going to be in Munich for New Years again?

Foreshadowing: tons of people with bottles of champagne in their pockets and carrying giant backpacks stuffed with fireworks. Pure insanity. We returned to the Marienplatz which seemed to be the main gathering place. It's not an organized thing -- just tons of people standing around the public square and watching the fireworks go off. But not like a fireworks show -- like people shooting everything everywhere. And they have more powerful fireworks there than here -- incredibly loud things and screechers and the ones that pop in the sky. It was crazy. I'm having a tough time articulating just how wild it was -- just tons of noise and smoke so thick you couldn't even see the statue in the middle of the square and people aim these things at historic buildings hundreds of years old. We loved it.

After midnight we went home and near our hotel we found the News Bar which had a lively crowd and played techno-thumpy type music and had a huge poster of Akbar and Jeff on the wall. We had another drink and Bob had a snack and we enjoyed the celebratory scene.

On New Years Day we went to the Olympic Stadium area and found lots of other people walking in the brisk winter air. There's a snow park with a fake ski hill for skis and snowboards and little hills for the kids to sled on. We walked around there and walked through the actual stadium and went home at dark. Before that we found this restaurant Ayingers which was so super fantastic that we made a dinner reservation and went back. Bob had horseradish soup and a pork joint which was a fried pig drumstick the size of a soccer ball and I had some Bavarian festival soup with liver noodles, pancake strips and dumplings and who knows what else -- but very yummy. And also a special winter brew beer (see Pam's travel tip above). And also a grilled vegetable salad. For dinner Bob had some wursts and the festival soup and I had a festival salad with grilled seafood. FABULOUS.

On the way back to the U Bahn we ducked into the St. Michels church and mass was just starting so we stayed for that. At the end they played this big organ haunting church-y type song that sounded so cool. I don't know where the travel book is -- but I think this is the 2nd biggest church in Europe or something significant like that.

We had to be up by 6:30am to get to the airport and we didn't have an alarm (and Pension Frank doesn't have any services other than running water and a radiator that's just warm enough to keep frost from forming on the walls) so it was one of those wake up every half hour all night kinds of nights. As we headed out the door I said: I hope it didn't snow last night, because we had to drag our bags several blocks to the UBahn and I didn't have my boots on but it was snowing that very moment - and it turned out okay. We made it to the airport and all our travel went smoothly except that the Munich-Frankfurt leg was delayed because of the snow which made the connection to the Frankfurt-Portland flight tight -- which wouldn't have been so bad except we had to take a bus from the plane to the terminal, hike through the terminal to our gate, go through another security check with mean people that kept shouting at us -- like that's going to help me understand better. And then go to another gate, check our tickets and passports in time to board another bus that took about 15 more minutes to drive us to the plane.

But it all worked out and we got home and then found out about crazy weather and orange alerts and turned back planes and we thought we were lucky to have made it so easily.

Great trip. We're glad we went.

I'm not usually one for resolutions but this is my intention:
I will not use things I hate because it would be wasteful to throw them away. For example. I bought a couple of dish towels at Target and they are the biggest pieces of crap. It's like trying to dry your hands on a plastic bag. I put them in the drawer and then avoided using them, opting instead to use the raggedy, stained bar towels I bought at Walmart 100 years ago. Why not just chuck the yucky ones now?

We're home now. I have a bunch of stuff to write to wrap up but strangely haven't been in the mood for it. I spent about 3 hrs this morning catching up on email. Then I was done with computer time.

One of our neighbors made a snow penis (in the fully upright position) on their lawn. It was hilarious. It even had a vein and sticks on the 'nads (for pubes). By the time we went back to get a picture, someone had kicked it over.