A journey of a thousand miles starts with one step

But hopefully it will end up being more than a thousand miles...

We left Port Angeles last night, after what felt like the thousandth day of cleaning the house. July was truly a blur - the first half of it dedicated to the high act of getting married (why does something so elevated take so much work?) and the last half of it dedicated to packing, storing and cleaning. We had planned to drive away at noon, which didn't happen, but we did get the right day, pulling away from the house in our overloaded van at 5:30 PM. After a few final stops at a few places (including an obligatory stop at P.A. instituation Frugals) we made it out of town.

Leaving was hard. Far harder than I had anticipated. We've been so blessed in Port Angeles, with good work, a stunning and stimulating environment, a community we care about, and a great group of friends. It felt funny to leave all of that goodness, even if it is just for a year. And then we had to leave Biggie and Marmalade standing alone in our big empty house. They were definitely anxious, wondering what was happening...

But then, even just minutes after we had taken the first step, I could feel the layers of sadness start to dissipate. We've got a whole year ahead of us to journey, and that is a very exciting thing. We are in Portland now for a few days before flying to Detroit on Wednesday. Our first leg includes visits with family and friends. We each have planned a few days in places that were special to us as youth. For Christine it is Ludington, Michigan, where her family went often. For me, it is Slaughter Beach Delaware. We also hope to visit Sargent Camp, where we met. We are also planning on starting our bike trip on September 5th from somewhere on the Oregon Coast...

- Ian

and yet more lasts in Port Angeles

While the days are consumed with cleaning, packing, small house repairs, yet more packing and then more cleaning, the evenings of late have been all about squeezing the last bit of delight out of P.A. friends and this place we've called home for the last 5+ years. We kicked this evening off with our final (well, not in our lives, but for a while) pick-up soccer game up at the Port Angeles High School, where the devoted gather every Thursday at 5:30 to experience The Game. Tonight was especially fun for some reason, even though Christine and I only had an hour to play. Who knows why...

After that we met up with Adrian, Suzanne and Ross and piled into a car for the trip up to Hurricane Ridge. Adrian had spent the day making pizzas and we found ourselves just before sunset on the south side of the ridge, watching the sun set, looking down at Port Angeles and across the Strait to Canada, drinking wine, eating pizza and fresh picked organic greens from Salt Creek Farm. Another one of those, "can you believe we live here?" moments, again made poignant by the fact that soon we won't. It was an absolutely beautiful night, only spoiled by watching the resident deer dining on anti-freeze in the parking lot. Fortunately we had Ross with us, who leapt from the car screaming to frighten the deer into an understanding of the ways in which anti-freeze is decidedly not good for them. I think it worked, too.

And, as an aside, we got our wedding photos in the mail today from David Bostock. I've thrown another one up here. We are planning on posting them as a gallery, but probably won't have time to do it until next week...

The Lonely H, and the video on-line

Just a quick one. We've had a number of people ask us, "who was that band that played at the reception?". It was the Lonely H from Port Angeles, and we love supporting them. Find them at www.thelonelyh.com.

We also had Vince and Eliza (www.vincebrownmusic.com) who made the big trip up from Olympia and DJ Stanselector (www.djstanselector.com) coming from Sequim.

Also, we uploaded the full, hi-res version of "If You Were Team Captain Would You Picke Me?" to the web. Find it at www.christineandian.com/videos/TeamCaptain.wmv. It is a huge file (150 mb) and will take a while to download. Don't even try it with dial-up. We will get a lo-res version up on the updated web site in a bit...

Last Dash to Lake Crescent...and the first wedding photos

We are coming down to our last week in our house, packing up, cleaning, moving stuff...We held a yard sale this weekend, filling our yard with year's of accumulation. But the question on everybody's mind was, "What if you put on a yard sale and nobody comes?". It sorta happened to us. It was pushing 90 both weekend days here in Port Angeles, which is about as hot as it ever gets here. People just didn't come out in the way that we might have expected them to. So the yard sale was sort of a flop, but we did pull in about $100 and between those people that did come and a van run to the Goodwill we've gotten rid of most of the items that we didn't want to store. We were also able to make connections this weekend for the likely sale of our boat and our car later this week, both for close to our asking price. Very cool!

After the yard sale we went with adrian and suzanne and towed the boat for a last hoorah out to Lake Crescent for an afternoon swim. It was a fantastic trip, filled with, "Can you believe that we live here?", which was somewhat poignant for us, since soon we won't.

The first photos from the wedding came to us from David Bostock today and I've put a small sample here. We are going to start getting photos up as soon as we can, hopefully within a week or two. We will get the website re-built as well, with links to photos galleries and videos and stuff - I am looking forward to doing it.

and we've also finalized the first leg of our trip - the east coast swing. We fly out of Portland on the 3rd of August into Detroit, where we spend about a week before renting a car and driving to the northeast and then down the east coast to my family in Virginia. We plan on visiting as many people as we can fit in along the way, and will also stop in at Sargent Camp where we met, Ludington, Michigan (where Christine spent her childhood vacations) and Slaughter Beach, Delaware. (where Ian spent many childhood vacations and special family times).

A bunch of video clips from the wedding

Don't know if anyone else took video at the wedding. If you did, we would love to know. We shot just a tiny bit and have strung the clips together to create this 10 minute overview of the weekend. Click on the link below and enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PE0oMGmnfHQ

We are fully into move out mode, cleaning the house, going through years of accumulation, sneezing a lot from old dust. Its quite fun!

"If You Were Team Captain Would You Pick Me?"

So for those of you that were at the wedding you may have seen this video that we put together (but you may not have heard it b/c the sound system wasn't up to the job). "If You Were Team Captain Would You Pick Me?" premiered on Saturday and we generated some real buzz across the media spectrum - from People all the way to the NY Times. Really special. Now we've posted it to youtube.com, so you can check it there. Its pretty low-res, and you can't download it, but its a start. We had to divide it into two parts because it was too long.

Just follow the link for each part.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ7ish85wL4
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNztINBozjA

we are going to check into posting the entire huge originial file to our website, but give us some time on that...

Sunday Night Thoughts on Our Wedding Weekend...

Wow...

Its Sunday night following the wedding. We've just returned from a meal at Bella Italia in Port Angeles with our parents to thank them for supporting our wedding and for supporting us throughout our lives. We've opened the pile of cards and gifts that were left for us, nearly overcome by the weight of kind thoughts and the passage of love implied in the act of gifting. We find ourselves now in the fascinating area between exhaustion and pure exhileration. The weekend was truly fantastic for us, more than we had ever hoped. In our eyes, it had it all - all of our people there in one place, a few tears, a FUN party, a great game of World Cup Soccer, plenty of good food. We planned the event as a way to say thank you to all of our friends and family for their love and support and now I find myself at a loss for words except to continue the mantra, "thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you...".

Already the wedding is passing into the realm of memory, and I find myself reliving moments in my head, rolling them over and relishing them. At the same time we are already looking forward to the huge transition of the coming weeks. Tomorrow we swing fully into getting the house ready to pass on to our renters, packing up, planning, selling belongings...

We have further vows for you. We heard from numerous people that we weren't doing an adequate job at updating our blog. Looking back, I see that the last post was in the beginning of May, which means that those people were dead on right. Since the blog was really intended for our trip and since, at least in my head, the trip really starts tomorrow, our diligence in updating will increase dramatically. We will get the website up to speed (and hopefully add photos from the weekend) and post the movie, premiered on Saturday to rave reviews, "If You Were Team Captain Would You Pick Me?".

Finally, I am going to start working on Christine to join me in the fun of posting to this thing. All of you should encourage her as well. In fact, just email her right now with a little note... christineloewe@yahoo.com.

Thank you all so much for giving us this weekend!