Well, I sucked at writing blog posts in 2016. I'm actually cheating now and back-dating this post by a day so there's an entry in 2016. I did think about writing a lot of posts since it was an interesting year. Here's a quick recap, as much for my future reference as anything else.

We started powerboating in earnest this year. Michelle and I were sailors before we had kids, but last year we tried cruising powerboats and really enjoyed it. We chartered again in February and decided we could even enjoy winter cruising, so in June we bit the bullet and bought a 47 foot Selene trawler. After some refitting and renaming her Tonic (her former name was Eric K), we cruised her up into Canada as far as Princess Louisa Inlet (really stunning). We spent most weekends aboard through the summer and fall and look forward to more cruising. Since we're only a few years from being empty nesters, we're also using this boat to see if we could realistically downsize and live aboard. Stay tuned on that front.

Tonic in Princess Louisa Inlet

Andrew (19) scouting ahead as we cruise in Canada.

 

I also continued to race sailboats with my buddies this year aboard the J-24 Rajun' Cajun. We moved from racing in the Lake Washington J-24 fleet to the much less competitive (and more fun) Duck Dodge races in Lake Union. We've been racing together for so many years that we've lost count, but this was the first year I drove the boat for a few races (since our skipper Rico was out cruising on his new boat). We didn't do as well as usual, but it was fun and a good learning experience (except the part where I hit another boat, causing a bunch of damage to their outboard...)

 

Aside from boating, we had a quick trip in June to Chicago for my cousin Eric's wedding. It was a fun occasion and great to see family from all over the country in one place.

Me photobombing Eric and Melodie while Andrew (19) looks on. Michael (16) is on his phone, as usual.

 

Three generations of Chor boys and Michelle

 

Michael turned 16 this summer and got his drivers license. I'm not sure who is more nervous, Michelle and I or Michael (although he is a good driver). Oddly (at least to me), Andrew (19) never got his license. He's gotten back into rock climbing in a big way when he's not playing PC video games with his friends online or telling me everything is my fault.

 

Andrew (19) finished his first year at Evergreen State College. He decided to take some time off, so he's working at a nearby ramen restaurant now. We also had our first drink together in Canada, where the drinking age is 19. It was fun to hang out in a pub near the marina we were in and shoot pool together.

 

I started going to JabX Kickboxing, a nearby gym, in November of last year. I was a mess when I started; I couldn't even get through the ten minute warm-up. Here's me lying the on the ground after my first warm-up.

Despite the inauspicious start, I kept it up all year, going most weekday mornings at 6:00am for the hour-long workout. I'm much stronger now. I also lost about twenty pounds and two inches off my pant size.

I got called to jury duty again, just a little over a year from my last time. This time I had a civil trial involving a slip-and-fall outside a local grocery store. Although the plaintiff was severely injured and was really sadly impacted by his injuries, we found in favor of the defendant. Despite the inconvenience of being on jury duty again, I thought it was interesting to see a civil case and contrast that with the criminal case from the year before.

 

On the work front, I completed my third year at Amazon. I continued to lead the Detail Page team (we make the shopping pages that have the information about each product like the picture, title, price, reviews, etc.) and added the Shopping Experience Platform team (we build the user interface framework and key API platform for Amazon's shopping experience as well as ensuring the site is great for customers with disabilities.) Despite whatever reputation Amazon has for being a bad place to work, I still really love it there. A big part of my team is in Bangalore, so I went there three times this year. On one trip, I ran into a bandh (protests), trapping us at the hotel for two days and forcing us to leave the office early one day. Fortunately, we had fun on other trips. I got to catch a performance at the Hard Rock Cafe by a local band, Agam, that two of my teammates were in. The Hard Rock staff apologized about the high cover price saying there was a "famous Indian band" playing; we told them we knew the band. They were skeptical until our friends came down to welcome us. It was cool to see the crowd all singing their songs. They're really good and worth checking out.

 

I also finally left the airport in Dubai and spent a little time exploring there with some of my colleagues. We checked out the Burj Khalifa, hung out with some friends from Beijing, shopped around the old areas of Dubai, and went dune bashing in the desert (where our 4x4 got stuck and had to be rescued). Here I am in the desert, waiting for help. The Facebook caption contest returned themes Dune, Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, lost golf balls, new Amazon offices, and how generally dumb I was to wear black into the desert.

Of course, I was most happy to find the "pork room" in the Burj Khalifa, a big deal in a Muslim country.

In the new year I'll be starting a new job in the same division, leading the new Shopping OS team. I'll keep the platform parts of my current team and add more platformy parts. We'll be building the next generation of Amazon's shopping application platform. It should be interesting, but I'll miss the detail page part of my team.

 

Personally, I learned to enjoy my life more. I stopped commenting on politics on Facebook. It was no fun and frankly kind of stressful to get into those kinds of discussions with friends, especially in such a contentious year. I was also reminded that our time on earth is precious. Two of my former teammates lost their spouses unexpectedly and a teammate on a partner team suddenly passed away. They were all younger than I am and were apparently healthy. We need to really enjoy every day.

Here's to enjoying every day of 2017!

After our amazingly fun rafting trip on the Deschutes River last year, Andrew (15) and I decided to go rafting with some friends again this year. Even better, Michael (12) decided to join us this time.

Our friend and trip planner Don chose the Grande Ronde River for this year's trip. This river is in the north-eastern part of Oregon. Like the previous trips, we used the awesome Oregon Whitewater Adventures guys. We drove down to La Grande the day before and enjoyed the comforts of the Rodeway Inn motel there (a little different from the resorts we normally frequent.) The next morning, we drove to Minam and set out on our three day, two night adventure.

The Grande Ronde River was a nice change from the Deschutes. It was a little less exciting from a rafting perspective; it had fewer big rapids (it's rated 2-3 vs. the Deschutes at 3-4) and dropped more consistently (vs. the pool-and-drop Deschutes). However, the scenery and camping were more picturesque -- more green than the high desert Deschutes valley. The additional moisture meant we could have fires in the evening too - a big advantage! Plus, there were no trains to interrupt our sleep and fewer other people on the river. We went around 50 miles over the three days -- pretty easy.

Like last year, we had two boats with our friends plus two gear boats. The staff did all of the work; we only had to set up our tents. We had great water fights and nice rafting, although we swam less since the water was more shallow this late in the season. On the Grande Ronde, there were no Bureau of Land Management campgrounds, so we camped in more primitive sites; in particular, there were no outhouses, so the staff set up a tent and porta-potty (really a seat on top of a big ammo can). Our guides were excellent again, with Colby and Jeff returning from last year and the crazy and wonderful Pamela plus the owner Dave joining us this year.

We all enjoyed the trip greatly and are already looking forward to next year.

The boys and I on the river.

The kids playing cards (BS) in camp. It got pretty hardcore!

Our camp site the second night.

One day at lunch, we hiked up the nearby hill for a better view. It was quite steep, actually, but well worth it.

The views along the river were lovely. The hill in the background is the one we climbed. We made it about 2/3 the way up.

Michael enjoying a swim.

Michael enjoying some quiet time in camp, reading by the river. One of the best parts of the trip was having no electronics and no cellular signal.

As I've written about previously, I crew on a racing sailboat in the summers. Maybe once a year, we skip our regular race on Lake Washington and do the Duck Dodge.

This race is a Seattle institution (apparently, it's listed as one of Fodor's Top 100 Things to Do in North America). It's held on Lake Union, just on the north edge of downtown Seattle with the Space Needle in the background. Each week there's a wacky theme (we went out on Egyptian Night); many crews dress up or even decorate their boats, although we didn't. There are typically a ton of boats out, so it can be quite lovely and fun.

It's a pretty casual race with loose rules, but the one special rule is that you can't make a duck change course; if you do, you have to do a penalty turn. The first three finishers in each class (there are three, roughly divided by how fast your boat is) get a gold, silver, or bronze duck sticker. These are highly coveted in the Seattle area; winners typically put the stickers on their boom.

We've won a sticker in each race we've entered, but we had never won a gold first place prize. Despite the shifty, tricky winds, this year we finally won our class, by quite a big margin actually.

The funny thing was that we thought we were in second the whole race. It's a little difficult to tell which boats were in which class. We thought we were in the same class as a J/80 ahead of us (we had taken second to a J/80 last year - it's a much faster boat than our J/24), but when we finished, the committee boat staff told us we had won. The J/80 crew had apparently decided to join the faster class.

So, we looped around and picked up our sticker from the committee boat.

We promptly stuck our first gold sticker on the boom. (We have a bronze and a silver duck on the other side of the boom too.)

Our merry band then motored back to our dock, quite happy. (It didn't hurt that we had an amazing bottle of rum onboard: a Ron Zacapa Centenario 23 - perhaps the best rum I've ever had and one that many commenters on my "Best Rum in the World" post mentioned. Highly recommended.)

Andrew (14) and I spent the last three days rafting on the Deschutes River in northern Oregon, about two hours east of Portland. We went with our friend Selva and plus two of his friends; they had taken this trip a few years ago and decided it would be fun to bring their kids along. We were joined by another father/son pair (although the son was bit older than the other kids, entering his senior year of college).

We drove down from Seattle the day before and stayed at the Best Western in Madras (the Mexican restaurant next door has the biggest margaritas I've ever seen.) The next morning we started our adventure in Warm Springs and drifted almost fifty miles over the three days, getting out a little past Maupin. I didn't know whether the trip would be strenuous since I haven't really done much rafting before and have never done a multi-day trip. It turned out to be quite easy. The Deschutes is a "pool-and-drop" river. This meant we had long stretches of pretty calm water where we drifted along, paddling only to help correct our position in the river. Occasionally, we'd hit a short stretch of rapids which required a few seconds of hard paddling then more drifting. The guides steered the boat from the back and gave us instructions of when and how to paddle. Our group filled two boats plus we had two gear boats, packed with dry bags containing our camping gear and effects, the kitchen, food, camp chairs, etc. Raft camping is a lot like car camping in the sense you can live pretty comfortably since weight and space are less of an issue than in backpacking.

We generally left shore around 9:30-10:00am and rafted until 11:30-ish when we'd stop for lunch. We'd push off again around 1:00pm and raft until 3:00pm where we'd set up camp for the night. This left us a lot of time to chat, admire the high desert scenery, look for wildlife (including wild horses, bald eagles, turkey vultures, and dozens of ospreys), and engage in boat-to-boat water fights. There were a few exciting Class III rapids including "Buckskin Mary", which Andrew and I swam twice -- very fun. There were many camp sites along the river with pit or composting toilets so there wasn't too much trouble getting good sites with enough space for our group, both for lunch and overnight. We stayed at the Wingdam camp site the first night and Buckskin Mary the second. We ended our trip at Sandy Beach, which is the last pullout before Sherars Falls. We had good weather with only a few rain drops and alternating sunshine and slightly overcast skies. Our clothes dried very quickly each day. The evenings were warm so sleeping in the tents was not a problem. It was pretty different from camping in Western Washington where the nights are colder and more damp. The only downer of the camp sites were the trains that ran along the river; they came through a few times per night and were quite noisy.

We did our trip through the very excellent Oregon Whitewater Adventures; they did an excellent job making the trip comfortable, fun, and safe. I recommend them highly and would go again with them. They took care of pretty much everything -- loading and unloading, cooking, and cleanup. The food was pretty basic but good -- French toast/pancakes or eggs for breakfast, cold cut sandwiches or Costco oriental chicken salad for lunch, poached salmon or Spanish chicken and rice for dinner (although they forgot the rice so we had Spanish chicken and toast instead). The other rafters brought beer, wine, liquor, and soft drinks so we had plenty to drink in addition to what the company provided. Our guides Lauren, Colby, Jack, and Jeff were fantastic -- very friendly and great with the kids, safe and expert on the river, and full of stories and jokes.

Andrew and I had a really great time. I could easily have kept going on a few more days, and we're both eager to do more rafting trips.

 

The beautiful high desert landscape

 

Andrew and I scouting Whitehorse Rapids.

 

Camp life

 

Our camp site at Buckskin Mary.

 

Andrew playing "Paddle of Trust" where you stand up, hook paddles with another person, and lean back. Invariably, one or both players gets wet.

 

Not that Andrew minded getting wet. He jumped into the cold water as often as possible

 

All-in-all, it was a great mini-vacation.

Last week we rented a house in Holmes Harbor on Whidbey Island with our friends Barbi and Kellie for a few days of crabbing, sunshine, and general laziness. Our friends Nori, Stacy, and Jarrett (and Stacy's dad) from Beijing came out too for a bit since the were in Seattle as well.

The house was part of an eighteen acre holly farm (yes, Christmas holly needs farms too), appropriately named Holly Hills Farm. It was really a lovely place on a quiet harbor. They have three houses for rent there - a larger, modern place (which we had), a mid-sized farm house, and a smaller farm house. Our place was well outfitted with everything you could want -- great kitchen with every manner of tool/pot/pan, grill, propane boiler (for all those crabs!), washer/dryer, fluffy towels, etc.

Here's the house from the water side:

Here's the view down from the house toward their dock:

Barbi brought her 19' speedboat and crab traps along. We soon found a good spot and were hauling in tons of crabs. We probably pulled up 200 over the course of four days, keeping about fifty (there are size/gender restrictions plus daily limits -- fortunately, we had several licenses so we could get a lot of crabs. The beach was also full of lovely, easily-dug clams as well as mussels, although we bought mussels since the store-bought ones are cleaner and not stuck together.

Michael (10) driving out to check out traps:

A pot full of yummy crabs -- turkey legs are awesome bait! They are cheap, last all day, and crabs can't resist.

A blazing pot full of crabby goodness:

The day's bounty (actually, just part of it...) We wound up eating crab a million ways -- boiled crab, crab fried rice, black bean crab, crab roll, crab omelets, crab cocktail, cold cracked crab, and more. We also had oysters (with whisky and one of this year's Oyster Wine Content winners), hyper fresh and ripe berries of all descriptions, black cod kasuzuke, fresh corn, and mussels and clams. It was absolutely incredible. By the second or third day, though, Michael declared a crab moratorium for himself.

In addition to crabbing and being lazy, the kids fished a bit. Stacy's dad is an avid fisherman and taught the kids how to bottom fish for dogfish -- little sharks:

Andrew (13) hooked into two of the dogfish, but since we weren't using steel leaders, both cut the line as they approached the dock. I can't say that I'm disappointed that we didn't land it. I wasn't sure I wanted to mess with unhooking the things.

We also just played in the water a bunch (OK, the kids did -- it was pretty cold...)

It was really a perfect way to spend a few days. We highly recommend Holly Hills Farm and hope to go there again next summer.

Our friend Barbi took the whole family and our mutual friend Kellie out crabbing this weekend on her little speed boat. We put the boat in at Camano Island State Park and motored up the west side of the island on a lovely afternoon. We picked (somewhat arbitrarily) a spot to test our luck. We assembled the two traps, baited them with chicken legs, and then tossed them into the water, hoping to lure a few of the yummy Dungeness crabs in.

After an hour or so of waiting (which we filled with a great picnic lunch Michelle prepared, some fishing, and some lazy conversation), we went back to our buoys and pulled up the traps.

We had a pretty lucky day -- crabs in each trap! We pulled out the keepers (at least 6.25 inches across and male) and reset the traps. We did this a few times (with the intervals between checking going down over time...) We wound up taking nine crabs and a bucket of seawater back to the beach with us.

Here's Andrew helping tie down the traps on the foredeck.

We pulled the boat out, cleaned the crabs on the beach, and then cooked them right there at the park in the seawater. Seven minutes later, they came out of the water perfectly done.

We scarfed down crab after crab, pausing only long enough to wash them down with cold beer. It was gluttonous and luxurious is a way that no five-star meal could ever be. I've never tasted a sweeter, more delicious crab (or three) in my entire life. Here's Barbi happily slurping her crab down as she chucks the shells into the tall grass.

The boys ate a little crab too, but they were happiest building driftwood shelters on the beach and enjoying their ice cream bars. Something for everyone I guess.

It was really one of the most memorable meals of my life (and I've had a lot of fantastic meals as you probably know...) I love Washington and our generous friends!

We wrapped up our sail racing season this week with a perfect evening: sunny, warm, and breezy. To top it off, we sailed really well, taking a 5th and a 7th out of 28 or so boats (and beating some of the top boats in the fleet).

Not sure what I'm going to do to scratch my sailing itch now that we're moving to Beijing. Hopefully, I'll be able to squeeze some in somehow.

The fleet on a downwind leg

Rico, the skipper/owner, smiling since most of the fleet is behind us.

Warren taking it easy after a race.

We had another windy night for our regular Tuesday night sail race. The wind was probably 20 knots/hour+, so all of the boats were carrying their jibs instead of the larger genoas. The deck of our J/24 and all of us were pretty wet, even before the first race, just from the spray splashing up.

We sailed pretty well all night, managing to avoid the collisions, round-ups, and sail handling mistakes (with accompanying penalty turns) we saw on the other boats, but I did have one scary moment.

The boat was heeled over quite a bit when the skipper called for us to tack. When we tack, I duck under the boom over to the other side of the boat. I started moving a little too quickly and started sliding feet first across the wet deck toward the water. My feet and legs went under the lifeline and into the water. I caught myself on the lifeline with my arms and dragged in the water for a second. I managed to kick my legs up onto the boat, but now I was wrapped around the stanchion (one of the posts that hold the lifelines up), with my torso on one side and legs on the other. I was stuck for a bit until some of the other guys helped me back on board, and we continued the race.

Through all this I didn't even get wet (since I had my foulie pants and sailing boots on), but it was definitely a spooky moment. I never want to see the boat from outside the lifelines again. I promptly put my inflatable life jacket on after that (which, like most idiots, I wasn't wearing at the time.) Apparently, someone else on another boat wasn't so lucky and went overboard. Fortunately, another boat picked up the wayward crew member.

I managed to finish the evening without any other incidents aside from bruises on my hips and knees from scurrying around plus another briefly scary moment as I pitched into the cockpit spinnaker bag (just barely catching myself before dropping headfirst into the bag). It was perversely a very fun evening, exactly the kind of evening I love sail racing.

I'll just be sure to wear my life jacket from now on.

I've been itching to start sailing again for quite a while, so this year I signed up to be regular crew on Rajun' Cajun, a J/24 I've raced on before occasionally. Last Tuesday was the first week I was out racing (I missed the week before.)

It was a pretty big night (meaning windy) with a front going through. Fortunately, we had a full crew of five people, so we were able to keep the boat pretty flat (good). For the first time with a full crew, we sailed well with no major gaffs in sail handling. We sailed three races that night and placed 11th, 6th, and 12th out of 26 boats -- not bad.

Anyway, it was super fun to be out on the water. I'm looking forward to racing tomorrow night too. It's good to have this regular event on my schedule so I can get out a lot this summer.

(If you look at the results, you'll see we're in the bottom half of the fleet despite some good sailing because we missed the first two weeks. You get the worse possible score if you miss races, which once again is a good reminder that the biggest part of any competition is just showing up.)

I just got some horrible news. In the big windstorm we had yesterday, a kiteboarder died on Lake Washington; the victim was Dan Bergin, skipper of Papa, the boat I sailed on last September. Apparently, it was a freak accident, but I don't have more details. I'm in a bit of shock. I just saw Dan a few weeks ago at the Seattle Boats Afloat Show. He told me about his new boat, and we were trying to find a good time to go see it.

I really respect Dan and the way he lived his life. He was an Annapolis graduate who served our country flying EA-6B Prowlers off of carriers, flew for Delta Airlines, and then left all of that to pursue his passions of skiing and sailing. He really enjoyed life and people; he was fun and irreverent most of the time, serious and professional when needed. It's fitting that was doing something he truly loved until the very end. In the talk he gave about long distance cruising at the Boats Afloat Show he reminded everyone to actively pursue their dreams. He did. It was a good reminder for us all.

I'm glad we met and am sad I didn't know him better. I will try to live a little more like Dan every day. Rest easy, Captain Dan.

[Update: Here's a link to Dan's obituary in the Seattle PI.]