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People really liked these photo's on FB so I added them to my blog as well, enjoy!

Tarzans fracture

On Monday the 15th 6pm me Phillip and William went down to Lynden city park to test out Phil's grappling hook on some tree's. We threw the hook up to the nearest branch, about 20 ft up and climbed it. I decided that was pretty tame, so I threw the hook into a neighboring tree about 10 feet away an 8 feet higher. I swung over to that tree and it worked out beautifully. It was the return trip that spelled disaster for me, I followed the same procedure on the way back to the tree I started from, but while in mid-swing the rope above me caught a branch and swung me off onto the frozen ground 20 ft below. I was dazed for about 10 seconds, but was quickly startled back to conciseness when Phillip (above in the tree) threatened to give me the kiss of life!

I ended up dislocating 2 of my carpal bones in the left wrist and fracturing 1 of them in 4 places. I had a surgery done on it, which was performed by Dr. Whitney in St. Josephs Hospital. Thanks Doc! And now I'm recovering.

Also thanks to Dr. Neff & Wellingdon for the council and X-Ray pictures.

Raphaels Wedding Reception

Took me a while to get these online, but here they are at last. I had a good time at your reception Raph, and I wish both you and your bride the best!

My Family & Friends

More Deception Pass Pictures

William the Conqueror

Me posing with the bridge in the background

Cousin Jimo and Dad goofing around.

Progressive pictures of me "sliding down a cliff" as willerd calls it.

Victory.

The rock I'm going to climb

Me climbing the rock.

A little inlet on an Island

Cool Trees

Not the end of the world

Today mom and sis on their way to a ladies meeting had a small accident. What happened was, in the car they heard something sliding around in the back of the van, so they stopped the van to see what it was, they got out and opened the slider door, and out fell the ladies dessert. Well they were already late for their meeting, so what did they do? they left it on the side of the road, broken glass dish and all!!! Then they dialed me and William in to go and clean it up. So we hopped in my Rover and headed to the scene of the crime with a shovel and bucket, cracking jokes about how they would be standing there lamenting their dessert while we cleaned it up. We drove to the spot where they said they were but did not see them, so willerd put in a call to mom, she said, "oh well, can't you see the mess?" she ended up dumping her dessert then left us to clean it up! I tell you it sure smelled good shoveling it up, it was some kind of chocolate casserole.

Deception pass

My cousins came from Chicago Illinois for a visit to us in Washington, Jimo and Christina, with their adopted baby Malachi. Jimo was really excited about touring Washington. I've never seen anyone so excited to see an Harbor Seal or a Raccoon! We took them down to Deception Pass. Every time I've been there I have a blast! We took Chuckanut Dr, down to Deception Pass, that has to be one of the most beautiful drives in Washington.

Jimo on the far right, and Christina by the baby carrage.

View of Mt Baker on the way up. (driving 55 mph)

Views from the Bridge

Views of the Bridge

William made a blog!

Go check out Williams Blog! I guarantee you will have a near death experience on his blog... Or someone will!

Beautiful Mountains

Took this picture while at Shawn Langleys Fresh Breeze organic dairy plant, I was just told today by my cousins from Chicago, never to take for granted the beauty of of Washington State, and I confess that all to often I do take it for granted. Guess I need to go out and hike more, I love seeing raw country.

Old photos

I've been having some fun scanning some old pictures of me an my family. This is a picture of me when I was about 8 years old, my dad brought that Japanese getup back from his trip to Okinawa, he was born there and he's half Okinawan. I wore that old blue hat prolly 4 years straight. All of us kids got something good out of that trip, but the best thing was the tapes he brought back for us to watch. You would not believe how beautiful that Island is, in their climate they can grow anything from cactus to hibiscus & orchids! I want to go there someday.

My Childhood Dog

His name was Dallas, he was a pure bred Brittany Spaniel and started life as a farm dog. His first owner gave him away to us because when he was a puppy he chewed through the wires that controlled his electric gate! Technically he was my big brother Roy's dog, Roy trained Dallas the basic commands like sit, lie down, heel, and no one needed to teach him how to hunt, he was a natural at that! Of all us kids though me and Craig spent the most time with Dallas and we had some great fun with him. We used to go rollerblading with Dallas pulling us with a harness, that's what we did for his and our exercise, we think that's why he got so big, and that's definitely why he got those powerful chest muscles, he pretty much dwarfed my best friends Brittany, and he was a pure bred too! We had a neighbor kid clock us in his car at 21 MPH pulling me on my skates! One time we were blazing through the golf course cement paths on skates, and he saw a duck on the edge of a pond and took out after it (this was not the norm) like a bolt of lightning! And I went flying into the pond! Good times... Anyway this post is a tribute to Dallas.

Me and Dallas


I got those two black eyes in a scooter accident

I Got A Facebook ID

Check out my facebook page if you have nothing better to do. I don't spend much time at all on it but I guess a lot of people do it, and enjoy it.

Benchpress up to 240!!!

I'm officially lifting 105 lbs over my own body weight now! This is 5 lbs over my ultimate goal, which was to reach 100 lbs over my body weight. I guess now the sky is the limit.

Gym Rings

I bought a set of Gym Rings off eBay about a week ago, and it was a great investment of 25 bucks! All I used to do is weight lift and run, I thought I was in pretty darn good shape. If I was sticking to a good schedule, I could work out long and hard and not get sore. My first day on the rings and I got ripped... Literally, I was really sore the next day in all my deltoids and even my abs were sore (and I can crunch 300 on the bowflex). I mainly bought the rings for doing Dips, but now I'm doing several different exercises with them. I highly recommend them for supplementing your work out.

New Bench Record!

I have been weight lifting now for somewhere around a year, when I started I was a little over 19. When I started I weighed about 112 lbs. That's like paperweight... And man could I eat, I just couldn't gain weight. I remember when I was 18 me and my friend Jon went to Little Caesars Pizza and we each ordered a large hot and ready pizza and we both ate a large in 1 sitting, and probably drank 2 liters of pop too.

I was always skinny, but not wimpy, my 4 older brothers made sure of that for me... Anyway I bought a bench press about a year ago and started working out with my 2 friends Jon and Phil Criss. My first bench press max was 155 lbs I forget what Phil's was (if you read this Phil add your weight in the comment box) and Jon's was 230, he had already been lifting 1 year. Now 1 year later I've just pushed up 230 lbs, and I weigh 135! Our weight lifting consists of more than just bench pressing, but bench is the only thing we try to push up as much as we can. Phils max is 275 now and Jon's was 295 before his car accident.

My Istruments

When I turned 19 I became much more interested in music, and it all started with a car accident.
I was in a pretty serious crash with my friends Jon and Phil. Anyway after the crash I had some recoup time so I went out and bought a jaw harp for me and Jon (Jon got the short end of the rope, he was bad hurt) then I went over to his house and we tried for 2 hours to get it to make a sound, all the while driving the rest of the family crazy with laughter at our attempts. Now we both can pluck out any song we have ever heard.
From there I went on to buy Pan Pipes, In not as good with the Pipes, but I'm working on that. My most recent purchase was a Johnson banjo, I got it for $229 from Noisy Neighbor (my local music store, also where I bought the jaw harps). By the way they are opening their online store soon and I would really recommend them, they give lessons and really know their stuff. If you have questions, they can answer them, and they can set up beginning musicians better than any place I know.

And last comes my favorite instrument, my Winchester Model 94 in .44 Remington Magnum. Playing this instrument is much easier, more fun, and you get bigger kicks out of it! This Winchester 94 is the saddle model with the 16" barrel, a really sweet shooter!

Hand Held Touch Screen Chess Computer

The New York Times Deluxe touch chess computer my favorite hand held chess computer. It makes the most sense to me, the pieces are clear enough to play with, (which is hard to find in an LCD screen chess computer) the screen has a backlight so I can still play in bad lighting, (or in bed) and its a very portable chess computer.

Restoring Gun Stocks

I just recently bought an old 12 Ga SXS Spanish shotgun from Daves Sports Shop in Lynden WA. I got it for a killer deal, it was $200! I took that gun out to shoot it the next day, and it shot like a dream. The stock was a little bit dinged up though so I decided to sand out the nicks, and put a new finish on it. I've restored several guns before this one so I have it down to a system. I have done stocks with several different kinds of wood, and I can tell you that if you are thinking about restoring a birch wood stock, don't even bother! The only wood that is worth working on is wood you don't have to stain.
My side by side stock is made out of maple, first I took 80 grit sandpaper and got all the old finish off the stock and all the dings (always sand with the grain). You have to be careful not to over sand on the nicks you could end up with a weird looking stock. After I got all the old finish off I took 140 grit sandpaper to smooth up what the rough paper went over. It's very important to get the stock perfectly smooth and remove any cross grain sanding you may have done. When I think i'm done sanding I use an air compressor and blow off all the wood dust and look carefully over the stock, if you have one use a magnifying glass. What I am looking for is rough places in the wood, or cross grain scratches. Sand it smooth and then blow it off again, and repeat the process. Then I take some 00 Steel Wool to it to sort of polish the wood and make it even smoother. Once again I take the air compressor and spray off the wood dust.
That ends the sanding stage, and now comes the finishing stage. I take the stock into a dust free room (in my case the bathroom) and hang the stock from the ceiling to make it easier to put the finish on. I use Formby's Danish Tung Oil which acts as a sealer and a gloss. On this stock I’m using low gloss oil, you can usually find it at a hardware store. I then take a rag with NO lint on it, I put some on the rag and proceed to apply the oil to the stock using the rag (don't completely soak the rag in oil). Avoid getting any oil in the checkering, otherwise it will look nasty. You can do this process as many times as you want, the more you do it the better it will look (I've put as many as 30 coats on a gun) after you are completely done coating the gun, then take the finest grain steel wool you can get and lightly go over the finish with that. And your Done!

If you have any of your own tips or suggestions for me I'd like to hear them! Please use the comment box.

Custer Gun Club

I'm a member of Custer Gun Club, me and a few of my friends went their last Saterday and brought a new friend along to shoot with us and maybe give gim a few pointers on shooting. Me and Mat ended up shooting my my M4 assault rifle together. First we shot at the 50 yard line and we worked up to the 300 meters. Overall we had a great time and Jon got to sight in his Tikka T3 lightweight 30-06 too.

Cool Chess Set

I saw this really cool cowboy chess set the other day, they call it the "High Noon - Old West Chess Set". it looks like a great living room chess set. That site has all kinds of cool looking chess sets, from theme chess sets, giant chess sets, to plain tournament chess sets. Great range of chess stuff.

Land Rover Discovery SD

I just bought a 1996 Land Rover Discovery for a really good deal! It's a great rig, has a V8 4.0 litre engine, that's quite a switch over from my Toyota Pickup (which by the way is on craigslist) that has a little 22R-E four popper. I like manual transmission though and this my Discovery is an automatic. Guess I will have to get used to it.
Yeah but that Land Rover is an incredible rig, it's good for anything, it can seat 7 and the rear seats can fold down for maximum space, cool thing about that, is you can partially fold down the rear seats so you can put like snowboards inside, and still seat 6-5 people. It has 2 electric sunroofs. People that know me say that the Discovery is not the rig for me, they say it's just not you man, your Toyota is totally you! I have to admit it's really a luxury rig, on the inside. but this thing as almost everyone knows can take off road like a fish takes to water! I got a great price for it, 3,700 but it has high miles, 195k. but here is the positive side of the high miles. It was owned by a business man who owns a lube station and he did all maintenance and fluid changes even before necessary! And It's been on synthetic Castrol oil for years. Drives like a dream, and it has power, I'm happy.

Excalibur Equinox Crossbow

I bought an Excalibur Equinox Crossbow about 4 months ago, and Ive shot it on 3 occasions about 20 shots per occasion. It's claimed by Excalibur to be the worlds most powerful recurve crossbow. And I believe it! I have to use a cocking device to use it. Now I'm not a muscle maniac, or even a deadlifter, but I can deadlift 295 but I cant cock this crossbow without a cocking aid. The draw weight is 225 lbs and it shoots bolts at 350+ FPS!!! Oh and the guys who make this bow took it to Africa and killed an adult bull elephant with one shot from this very same crossbow! I myself have tested out the range abilities of this crossbow and i was able to hit a 3x3 foot shooting block at about 120 yards on my 3rd try! of course I had the crossbow angled at about 20 degrees.I've had my fun with it now and I'm thinking about selling it. It will come with 17 crossbow bolts (6 of them unfired) 12 of them are the recommended Excalibur crossbow bolts that were made for this bow, the other 5 are lighter than recommended but they are my distance arrows, and man they FLY! It will also come with a cocking device, a Flemish fast flight crossbow string, the owners manual and if you want to pick it up at my house then you can even take the shooting block! If I put this thing on Craigslist or Ebay I will update the post to provide you with a link to the auction/listing.

I'll give it up for $580 shipping included. if you come to pick it up I will include a shooting
block. I'll accept a postal money order.

you can contact me at this email address:

vcadam@gmail.com