Its been an incredible year. No wait, that hardly sums it up.  This year has been a constant onslaught of highs, very few (but necessary) lows, and an immeasurable amount of good times and personal discoveries.

If i could sum up the year with single words, hmmmm? Lucky for one. I feel so lucky to have my health to appreciate the most precious things that life has to offer and to take on the challenges that are thrown my way.   Thankful can hardly express my gratitude to so many individuals for the kindness that they have shown me in 2009 and leading up to it…thank you, you know who you are.  It was definitely a year of a ton of firsts, that’s for sure.  I tasted new things and explored so many new places! Lastly ive felt so much LOVE, and i feel like i have had so much to give back… its an amazing feeling that sends chills from the tips of my fingers, down my spine and back up through my follicles! Im not even kidding! I really started to experience this leading up to leaving  for Korea, while i was in Korea and even since returning.

• January – Vegas for SIA
• March/April: evoTrip to Bali & Japan! I was sent to film and shoot photos for the pilot trip for our newest addition to the evo family.
• April:  Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival & Whistler shenanigans.
• May: Move into NEW place w/ Angie, and all kinds of urban adventures.
• June:  June was, well, it was June. Nothing super crazy. I got on the water for some wakeboarding, played up in whistler, and just worked a lot.
• July: It got REALLY hot in Seattle and I tried to make the most of the heat! A couple lunch breaks were spent at the diving boards up at Green Lake.  I purchased my ticket to Korea and headed up to Whistler, yet again! Check it out.
• August:  Leavenworth & Wenatchee River Float. Zion National Park/ Shejumps retreat. Korea Prep! Check out August!
• September:  OFF to Korea! Check out the posts but basically i spent 5wks in Korea tracing down my roots and learning about the place where i came from.  I explored the countryside and urban zoo in search of my birth mom, identity and the meaning of life.  Where as i didn’t find my birth mom (yet), i did find the answers to the latter questions and so much more!
• October: final days in Korea & upon return i got dumped into the remainder of the crazy event season at work.
• November:  Hmmm, notables? Bike was stolen, mom and dad came home for Turkey Day, post Korea digestion.
• December:  Bike Returned!  I ran the farthest that ive ever run, 9miles with my friend Ryan! Almost bought a house! Trip to Mt Bachelor. NYE trip to tahoe, first time shredding Tahoe, playing (and winning) at the craps table for the first time!!!!

What next??? 2009 was pretty epic, its going to be hard to top it in 2010.  I guess that will be a challenge for 2010…and i love a good challenge!  Big things on the horizon and i can’t wait to share!!! Thank you to everyone who has touched my life in 2009! For those of you whom i LOVE and hardly get to see, 2010 is our year to rendezvous and i plan to see that through!

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Life hit me like a freight train and its already been a month and a half since i got back from Korea. Its hard to believe it sometimes. Its crazy to think that i was in this magical place where life as i know it all started for me…. but its even crazier because i discovered that life isn’t at all what i thought it was, and im talking about both how the Korean people live, as well the experience really opened my eyes to the way that I look at life, love, family and some of the values that i idealized prior to visiting Korea. There was so much that i experienced in a condensed trip and i hardly even got the opportunity to really internalize and digest all of the discoveries and emotions in the context of my “real life” back here in the US.

If i broke down the different chapters in a non-linear fashion i would break it down to a series of themes and discoveries:

• Tradition/History
• Family Units
• The Larger Community
• Technology and disconnectedness
• People as “seasons” in a larger cycle
• Contentment & Expectations

Those are some of the reoccurring themes and thoughts that i pondered while i wandered across the Korean countryside throughout the months of September and October.  Ill probably blog more specifically around some of these ideas before i lose it, but ive really been trying to nail some overarching theme.  Everything all traces back to this idea of connectedness or belonging that i feel i got a little bit of closure around while visiting Korea and i really think that its all thanks to the people who i met  and the people who helped me along the way. Whether i was gaining a new perspective on how others live their lives, or they were giving me tours around their city, or sharing their food and their family with me, it was such a gift that i can only dream of paying forward in this lifetime.

As i’ve told many of you, though i have yet to find my mother, i truly found so much more than i could have ever dreamed of out there in Korea.  And again, it wasn’t just Korea itself, it was so much more.  The timing, the people, my childhood connection, where im at in life, and the people and things in my life back home all played a huge role in my personal discoveries.  So the question remains, do i still feel alone in this world, are there still questions and voids looming? I mean, that is why i went out there, to answer some questions and to get closure around my adoption.  The funny thing though is that upon departure from the US to Korea, i still didn’t even know what the questions were.  Ok, ok, do i still feel alone in this world, are there still questions?  Fewer, and a little less every day, and with each day the world gets a little smaller and i find comfort in knowing that i am supposed to be exactly where i am at right now…and in this moment find comfort in knowing that i chose it. …something that not everyone has the luxury to say. Knowing that alone is like being wrapped in a big hug and a warm snuggy.

Im still waiting for my big day to get called up for a webcam appearance on the Korean TV Show to give a big shout out to the entire South Korean civilization, ill keep you posted when that happens, i think its supposed to be early December!  Until then, ill try to fire up some more long winded rants and emotional vomitting… it is actually pretty theraputic for me.

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So much to learn, so little time! 23 days and counting and all i know is “mae-k’in-t’o-shi“!

What else have i learned about:

• Im not alone in my quest for identity
• Korean naming conventions
• Population density in Korea – Estimate 48,379,392 (26th) – Density 493/km2 (21st)
• Organic Farm Stays in South Korea
• Some people do still eat dog meat in Korea

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I think his name is Milo.  He is old and just chills.  I believe his friend there rockin’ the lab coat is one of the owners whom i call the Mad Scientist.  There’s a good article on Fremont Coffee Co. in the Seattle Times.  They serve Lighthouse Coffee and is in my hand every morning by 930am.

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Oh yeah, im a complete nerd.  On Thursday, June 4, 2009 i got in the car with evo Snowboard Buyer Gorio Bustamante, Team Manager Chris Shalbot and friend Chris Dickerson and headed to PDX for a GroupY Panel Discussion on Social Web & Social Media, titled “Who Killed Social Media”.  Being from the area, i was excited to head to my stomping grounds, maybe make a pitstop at the Salomon/Bonfire offices and if we’re lucky run into Mae and George from US Outdoor.  In the end we managed to pull it all off… it was a nice Thursday.

We stopped by Cals Pharmacy and then made our way over to Bonfire’s Portland Office and hung out with Amy, Rian and Java. We talked shop a bit, looked at some new product, Java showed us some footage from their team trip to Japan, good times… thanks for letting us derail you from progress for a few minutes!  Did i mention that their offices are right next to one of Franz Bread’s factories… they really pump delicious “enriched white bread” smell into the air deliberately….after leaving Bonfire i really needed food in my mouth.

So we dined w/ George and Mae at a Thai restaurant in the Hawthorne district…it was okay, not quite like Fremont’s generous selection of thai restaurants however.  After din we were schooled by an interesting group of panelist. To further perpetuate my nerdiness i have included some links below and a few of the major takeaways that stuck out to me. Some of them are captain obvious but are good reminders, others might spark some new thoughts, enjoy:

Main takeaways:

• We can begin to think of investing in and engaging within the social web arena as an “insurance policy” and as “reputation management” – People are going to be out there (on the web) talking us, our services, the products that we carry…this all effects our search results
• SEO and SEM are changing drastically sooner than most people think (kind of tied in to above thought)
• We need to get better at “engaging” rather than just shouting AT our customers through our social web tools.
  
• authenticity is still key, and frequency and consistency is a must
• There is a way to utilize these tools such as twitter as a sales tool, but if you are going to do that, call it out.  Ex. evo_deals could be a twitter account
• “You MUST have an opinion and a voice. If you are going to even attempt to blog, you must stand for something”

Links:

• Review/Summary (Blog post) 
• Panel Discussion Webcast

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So yeah, my friend Tanya asked me the other day what i was doing around noon and if i had a camera available… and i was like, “sure”.  The next day i was hanging out with her and some friends and her adorable little girl down the street from my work in Ballard at one of Dale Chihuly’s buildings.  This spot was kind of a museum, office space, staging ground and fabrication shop… it was incredible to think a mere “glass worker” has such an incredible operation.  However, when you see his work its no surprise to hear that this guy is a legend.

Anyhow, im sure you all know more about this guy than i do but if not you gotta check out Dale Chihuly’s work.

Check out the full album below:

Catherine Shoot @ Chihuly

Holla,

mohawks

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“Oh em gee” is right!   I’ll be following the evoTrip crew around in March on a sweet trip to the the Orient…Asian, i mean Asia!  The task at hand; be asian and capture lots of incredible video footage!  Hmmmmmm, let’s see here…i think i remember the site saying “Hakuba, Japan -Take one step outside the rope line and feed on all you can eat pow“… gosh sounds terrible?! and oh yes, “Bali, Indonesia – Surf, relax, experience rich ocean culture and have such a good time you’ll pee your pants.“  I think i peed my pants when i found out i’m going!

I don’t mean to brag and certainly not trying to boast (Beastie Boys anyone?!) BUT im pretty excited.  MOST excited to possibly stop in Seoul, South Korea my hometown.  This isn’t K-town we’re talking about here…this is the real deal.  There is a layover from Bali on the way back home to the states and i need to figure out a way to get my baggage off that transfer flight, and to get my ass onto a 1 way ticket home after i find my mom.  This could be it?!!!

I will be stoked to have seen sumo wrestlers, snowboarded Hakuba and surfed Bali but the icing on the cake would be Korea… we’re talking about checking off a “To Do Before i Die” list item….probably the top and possibly close to the last required one on the list.

So you might be wondering what a KAD is? A Korean adoptee or KAD is a person who was adopted from Korea through the international adoption of South Korean children as a child and raised in another country, often by adoptive parents of another race, ethnic background, and culture. Now we both know!

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ooooh man, i know you don’t want me to go there! ill try to keep it short. aside from being completely unoriginal and having to copy someone else’s art there is a ton of spiritual connections for me to this piece in addition to its significance amongst Pablo Picasso’s collection of works and not to mention on the world stage… to the naked eye its certainly not a beautiful piece but as i find with most engagements, as you dig deeper there is so much to learn from it, and at the core, the message being something extremely beautiful, something i’ve found hard to sum up in words…until i ran into a poem years ago that was actually a response that a poet had to “Guernica” the first time he had seen it. basically it talked about the abundance of beauty in this world and yet throughout our lives we consume ourselves with trying to find it… fill our lives with more beauty…and so often we take so much of it for granted cause its sitting right in front of us… goes into talking about how war, and conflict in general are senseless…death, or rather the passing of things in your life – not to mention life – are inevitable and eminent so embrace it all, and how important it is to live with intention and passion so as to sum it all into something beautiful in the end, whenever that may be. That is basically how i interpreted it at least….

aside from that, the painting, related works and the concept has kind of touched my life sporadically over the years in a number of ways…while traveling in europe it had reappeared again, and thats when i decided to put it into ink. Honestly, finally doing it feels so good. i know A LOT of people wont get it but thats cool, its not for them but i will certainly look forward to sharing what excites me about it.

anyhow, if you’re still needing a few more minutes away from work, here is a good synapse on the actual conflict that led the Spanish Govertment to commission pablo picasso to paint this famous painting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernica_(painting)

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So I’m watching Fox News right now and just heard that homeless people are able to register to vote using landmarks such as park benches or other physical structures within a neighborhood as their permanent address, ha! Good for those homeless people who are interested in making their voice heard. I can’t imagine how distant any change could seem for someone in their position, and the thought of voting must seem like a waste of time but I think their efforts speak volumes to the need for change.

In other news, Kim Jong Il is very ill with a life threatening infliction…speaking of change, I wonder what lies ahead for North Korea, the North and South conflict. I wonder if ill see a peaceful resolution in Korea in my lifetime? I really believe that change is upon us… not just here in the states, global tides are turning.

Politics aside, they are reporting 19” inches of snow in upstate New York and even some snow on the ground in New Jersey. Can’t wait to see some of those numbers on the West Coast soon! Being here in Costa Rica has brought a sense of calm and introduced a needed balance to my life at this time… something that somewhat mirrors the sense of euphoria that overcomes me when I’m in the mountains, around mountain people, more specifically Whistler. I look around at people who live and breathe high tide and have situated their lives around being near the surf and this lazy or rather less is more way of life. Though duly needed at this time in my life- it opened my eyes to what will hopefully become my balance – I however know that this life isn’t my life. I thrive on change and upward movement, knowledge, discovery and adventures. I can’t wait to strip down to almost nothing and to surf again but more than that, I can’t wait to be back in the NW with about 4 layers of breathable, water resistant materials on my back with a 149cm piece of wood under my feet…. As these kids love surfing, I love snowboarding and I can’t wait to get back home to drown myself in what I love…the industry, the people and the pure exhilarating that nothing, absolutely nothing else in this world can give to me as snowboarding can.

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High tide isn’t till 2:45 today so there’s a lot of time to be productive before we head out to the water today… in an effort to save a couple bucks I headed out to do some grocery shopping, mail some postcards and maybe do some souvenir shopping.  I hopped on andrew’s bike and dropped into a few spots to see if they could mail my postcards and ran into a ton of dead ends, meh, ill do it later.  The street vendors and local shops weren’t quite open, the streets were just barely waking up at a lazy 10:00am.  Some street vendors were opening their shutters, but most were still closed.  I peddled on and ended up at Mas X Menos, the local grocery store.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon I chilled out, made some great Costa Rican coffee, had some breakfast and read for a bit until it was time to go surfing!

Sooooooo, not sure if I have yet to mention it but my friend Andrew Hansen is a Saint.  Those of you who know Andrew, aka Hammer, you already know this.  For those of you who have yet to be graced by his presence, ill have you know that I could spend the rest of my life in an aggressive pursuit for someone kinder and more considerate than this man, and I would be hard pressed to find someone who rivals his spirit.  Anyhow, why am I kissing this guys ass you might be wondering?  Please don’t mistake my praise for ass kissing.  Every day that my foot stepped in the water (with a 1 day exception), Andrew had biked with both of our boards down to Playa Hidalgo where the beaches were a bit sandier and waves a bit more forgiving than the beach right out front of his house.  I tried to carry my own board today and I would’ve lost my ass in damage fees on the board if I were to try.  The problem was that my arms were just way to short and the board was way to long for me to carry it on the bike…and the beach was just a little too far for a walk.  Thank you Hammer, I love you!

So today was my 2nd best day of surfing, ever!  Right about when we got to the beach it started its usual afternoon monsoon!  It was an incredible downpour and it was so much fun being out in the water when it was pouring.  It was like being in the shower, but with a swimsuit, a rashgaurd, a surfboard under your arm and about a dozen other people sharing it with you.   I spent the couple hours paddling out farther than I had before, I’m getting better at reading the sets sand paddling which makes things a lot more enjoyable.  I stood up and rode some larger’ish waves (large for me!) and felt myself being swept up and was able to really get comfortable with the water underneath me, I even attempted to turn the board a bit… I really wish I had some warm waters and decent waves to go home to, I’m going to miss this but I am looking forward to home.

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