On the water.

Our river adventures are on!

We booked the jet boat tour and the white water rafting. The final details are below. You can also find links to the companies conducting these two river expeditions on the Itinerary page on our web site. Please note the time change for the jet boat tour on Tuesday. We had to move it back from 1 p.m. to 10 a.m. to give us a little more breathing room for the wedding rehearsal that afternoon.

Jet Boat: Tuesday, June 24, from 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. Klamath River, north of the cabins. We need to be in Klamath about 30 minutes before departure, so we will coordinate leaving the cabins around 9 a.m. The company has a boat that will accommodate the 27 people we have going — so it should be a blast. The final cost is $28 per person. Map with directions from cabins.

River Rafting: Friday, June 27, from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Trinity River, south of the cabins. We need to be in Willow Creek at 10 a.m. It takes about 90 minutes from the cabins, so we need to leave around 8 a.m. I'm not sure how many rafts we will be in, but we all will be drifting downstream and crashing over waterfalls together. Also a blast. The final cost is $79 per person. Map with directions from the cabins.

We need to prepay for each of these events, much like the cabins, so please send us a check for the full amount for all your people by June 5. I sent an e-mail to everyone with details about payment. For those participating in the white water rafting, you need to download the attached forms (2) in the e-mail and fill one of each out for each member of your party and send it with your check.

We are definitely looking forward to hitting the rivers before and after the wedding. If you didn't sign up for either of these events but decide you want to go, there is room. The jet boat can hold 35 and we can always add rafts. Just let us know. If you signed up for either of these trips but change your mind, please let us know that, too.

57 days ...

Jason

27 days in a brightly-painted van.

We're so excited about spending four weeks together poking around New Zealand that we can barely concentrate on work and school. All we want to do is pick up our guidebooks and read about the phenomenal sights we will see.

Our original itinerary included Tahiti and Easter Island, but economy-bankrupt airlines-President Bush-something caused the prices for those stopovers to spike and made the cost obscene. However, the more we looked into our options over the past few days, the more we realized that a laid-back road trip through New Zealand is an ideal honeymoon that needs no add-ons. (Besides, dropping Easter Island frees up that destination for the Chile-Easter Island Spring Break 2010 — any takers?)

So, off we go December 17, 2008, not to return until January 14, 2009. And, we'll be traveling in style. Last night we reserved an intricate, brightly-painted van to tour about in. As we considered the typical, bland motor home options you might expect, Sarah discovered a brilliant little company, Escape, that hires out converted vans painted by local artists. The inside switches to a bed, the backside opens out a little cook area — and we'll camp and barbecue our way across the country (whenever we're not two days trekked out into the isolated, deep-green forested middle of nowhere, that is).

Well, I could end this post by telling you I've got to get back to grading or studying or something, but that would be a damn lie. I've got a Lonely Planet travel guide on my desk that reads New Zealand in big print across the top, and it's thick and mostly unread.

Jason

A note about a Monday.

We have decided to have our engagement photos taken in San Diego, rather than up in Eureka during the wedding week. Originally we had the first half of the day on Monday, June 23, set aside for this. However, Sarah is addicted to our wedding photographer's blog (see here), and on it we keep seeing the excellent work they do shooting couples in places around San Diego that are meaningful and unique to each engagement. So, we were swayed by the place we got engaged and by wanting to get a chance to work with and get to know Stan and Jeanette before they shoot our wedding up north.

We are also excited by this shift because it frees up a day before the wedding during which we can all get together and do something leisurely in the redwoods.

So, we have a few ideas (see below), and we are really interested in any ideas you might have.

Biking the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway. This is the road off of which the wedding ceremony will take place. It is about 10 miles long, paved, flat, with little traffic — and surrounded by massive redwoods. We would rent bikes at the cabins for around $30 each for the half day.

Hiking either the James Irvine-Miner's Ridge Loop or the West Ridge-Prairie Creek Loop. Both are about 6.5 miles and will take about 3-4 hours, or so. We'll pack in snacks and a lunch. The first traverses a "magnificent creekside forest, a haunting hillside of redwoods, and a historic mining trail." The second follows a "redwood-covered ridge line, the park's namesake Prairie Creek, and the wildly contorted Corkscrew Tree." Both trails have an equal rise in elevation (in other words, uphill parts). This event is free.

Horseback riding to a redwood grove. This can be done through the cabins as well, for $90 for a two-hour ride.

Let us know in the next week or so what interests you most by posting a comment here.

Jason

P.S.: "Guhn" has been up to his old communist regime tricks again, and posted a "See please here" virus link on this entry (since deleted). I might add that he was the first response to this post, and while he didn't indicate a preference for hiking, biking, or riding, he did demonstrate his commitment to the wedding by posting right away. (If this addendum strikes you as odd, see previous posts below.)

No penguins in the forest.

Several people have inquired about attire for the wedding — none having ever attended a wedding ceremony in the middle of a forest — so we thought we would drop everyone a line about what the wedding party is wearing to give everyone a benchmark.

Sarah and her bridesmaids are wearing what you might expect: traditional formal attire. Myself and my groomsmen will be wearing black suits with open-collar shirts — with the exception of Anna, who will be wearing a black dress. No tuxes, no penguin tails, no ties for the groomsmen.

We suggest that women considering high heels think twice about that option since you will be walking down a dirt trail in the forest and then over a lawn at the reception — neither of which is really conducive to high heels. One other thing to keep in mind is that it will be cooler up there than it normally is in San Diego in late June. The days are likely to be mild to warm, but not in the shade of the forest or on the windy sea bluffs where the reception will be.

In writing this e-mail we came across the term "dress casual" — we think it sums it up:

Think of dress casual as being the social variant of business casual. For men and women, the main rule of thumb is no jeans, and something slightly more conservative and "dressier" than your standard business casual attire. For example, men should choose slacks and button up shirts over khakis and pullovers, while women should choose a nice pantsuit or a dress over
separates.

We hope this helps. For the rest of the week just keep in mind the activities you plan to participate in and the fact that it can always rain in the redwoods. The tallest trees in the world don't grow there by accident.

Jason

P.S.: Contact us with any questions by posting a comment here or by e-mailing us at junetwentyfifth@gmail.com.

Kim Jong Il reads our blog.

Um ... I think North Korea just attacked our blog.

I logged on to see if anyone had commented on my Korea post, and I saw that two people had, so I clicked on the link to read them. One was from my sister, some nonsense about her being the hotter Williams.

The second post was from someone named "guhn" with a message that read "click please here" and the "here" was a link. I have a program on my computer that allows me to view a link without really opening it, so I thought I might be safe to click without clicking — a stupid behavior, but so few viruses target Mac's that I have become ... overconfident. Anyway, I used that function, and as soon as I moved my cursor over the link, it shut my Firefox browser down and a message popped up at the bottom of my screen that tried to entice me to click another link that would "scan" my computer for viruses. I force-quit my browser and reopened it, and as far as I can tell nothing is amiss with my computer. I have deleted the post from "guhn" — but not before checking out "his" profile, which indicates that his Blogger account was activated in April 2008, and so far this month he has viewed 248 blogs. Also, according to some very cursory research I just did, Guhn is a Korean surname.

This was totally some North Korean information processor scanning the web for talk about the north. And he totally dropped some virus bomb on our wedding blog as punishment for my characterization of North Korea in my last post.

Do not click on any links posted on this blog by anyone you don't know.

Jason

PS: This entry itself was hit by two similar attempts to transfer a virus through a link on April 6 and April 9. Again, the links were posted by users with accounts that had been created in April 2008 and that had viewed 156 and 207 blogs, respectively. While the posts' broken English mimicked the original, they had shed the Korean user-names for gibberish. As with the first post, I have removed the entries.

Korea, Korea.

March 13 - March 24, Paul (officiant) and I (groom) traveled to Korea to hang with Chris (best man). Good trip, good times. We traveled extensively throughout the country, from the DMZ in the north, to Seoul and the fortress city of Suwon, to Cheongju where Chris teaches and the Sogni-san National Park in the center of the country, to the green tea fields and mountains in the south, and ultimately out into Korea's western-most extremity where the country breaks into 2,000 islands.

Chris arranged the tour of the DMZ for us through the U.S.O. Probably one of the most interesting and damn tense destinations I have ever traveled to. Our military escort took us into the Joint Security Area, which straddles the Line of Demarcation (the place where all military action ceased and from which the north and south retreated 2.5 kilometers to create the DMZ). Both the north and south have installations hugging the line on their respective sides within the JSA. Two buildings overlap the line, with conference tables in each that are bisected by the line so that the north and south can hold talks without either side leaving their country. We were able to enter one of the buildings and cross the line, standing for a short time in North Korea. Wild. The whole time we were there a North Korean soldier watched us with binoculars from about 60 feet away on the steps of a North Korean building. The situation is no joke. The South Korean soldiers are solid, intimidating, and focussed on the northern side of the line. They face the line with half of their bodies obscured behind the buildings so that they make for a smaller target. There have been many provocations by the north since the establishment of the DMZ, and many people have died.

The rest of the trip was travel-intensive, but far more relaxed with fewer land mines. I'll let the pictures below speak for themselves.

Jason