In September (It's so incredibly sad I'm just getting to this) I had the amazing opportunity to go to the Oregon Coast for the (get ready for this) National Association of State Directors of Veterans Affairs conference. My boss was elected president of the association and as his public affairs officer, I will help plan the next two conferences; February in D.C. and September in PUERTO RICO. It's in all caps becuase I get to go as well so I'm pumped about P.R.
I took lots of pictures because it was my first visit to the beautiful state.
The pictures started on the plane as we flew over Salt Lake City.
This is Mount Hood as we flew into Portland. How gorgeous is that?
From Portland we drove a couple hours to Lincoln City on the coast. My hotel room overlooked the ocean.
The first day the weather was damp and foggy.
Here is a picture of the fog lifting.
This is not an alien creature as I was first convinced. Instead, it is some type of seaweed. They call it a bullwhip. I call it creepy.
The conference, itself, was great. The best part was getting to meet all the people. Most everyone there was former military and, of course, a male so I stuck out like a sore thumb.
Because everyone was representing their state, you learn people by their state and even refer to them by that state so I was effectionally called, "Arkansas". After a while, I felt like I was at the Miss America pageant so I began referring to the guys as "Miss Kentucky", "Miss Arizona", etc. Luckily, they appreciate humor so I managed to not offend them. Phew.
One night we got to have dinner in the Evergreen and Aviation Space Museum
This is a section of the Berlin Wall they had on display.
There are two seperate buildings of the musuem and the one we were not in houses Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. Unfortuanatly, there was another event going on in the building so we were not allowed to go in. However, since I was with a lot of former military guys, we found an open door and broke in. I snapped this picture before we got busted.
This is us getting kicked out.
We were banished to take photos outside through the glass.
I cannot express how large this plan was. You should really Google it to appreciate it's size and the fact that it was able to get off the ground (not very far, though.)
I took some video with my camera because I could not get a picture of the whole thing since it was so large.
Because a lot of wives come with their husbands, the hosting state plans outings for them while the men are in meetings. Becuase I have a great boss, he told me pick an outing to go on. The one I chose was whale watching. Having never been sea sick I thought it would be a great experience (note the foreshadowing).
My first clue that things were not going to be very smooth was that upon us getting to the dock, we saw the Coast Guard was performing multiple rescues for small fishing boats that had capsized. The captain giving the tour almost canceled our trip but went ahead since we were all pretty insistant on going.
On the boat I paired up with Alaska who was from Wasilla and could have been Sarah Palin's voice twin. She, like Ms. Palin, also hunts moose, ice fishes, etc. In short, she is my husband's dream wife.... She was a pro at boating excursions so not wanting to miss any excitment I verbally declared, "I'm with Alaska!" and followed her to the front of the boat like an idiot.
Before we made it out of the harbor, two women had their faces in a bucket to which I mentally responded with, "Amatuers! Can't hang with me and Alaska". I literally thought I was hardcore up front with Palin.
The above picture of us leaving the harbor is the only known photo taken by me the whole trip.... Once we got out to sea our boat looked strangely like the one from "The Perfect Storm" in the waves (so I embellish a little). But for the first 45 minutes I did well up front. However, with minute 46 came a strange feeling that prompted me to head to the back of the boat where more of the ladies were spending quality time with buckets. I kept telling myself that I was NOT going to get sick so I was not comforted when Montana said, "Sweetie, you don't look very well. Do you want an Altoid?" I never even made eyecontact with her but with eyes forward I nodded my head and held out of my hand. After the fourth Altoid she ended up giving me the whole can. Eventually my mint supply ran out and after I heard the woman loose her lunch behind me I was a goner. Because I have too much pride to let anyone see my vomit in the bottom of a bucket I flew to the back of the boat and began "feeding the fish" as the Navy retirees said.
Once I got started, I could not stop. If there is anything I hate it is throwing up so I was especially miserable being sea sick as there is no reprieve from the waves. There was a deck hand who couldn't move fast enough passing out buckets, dumping them and hosing them out only for them to be "used" again. For a few seconds I stopped throwing up and turned to him and said, "Sir, I'm not sure how much you get paid but I assure that it's not enough." The next time I spoke to him I begged him "PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!" His only response was to rub my back and say, "Ma'm, there is nothing I can do to make you feel better. You're just going to have to keep throwing up." I think that is the point when I started to cry.
This is the part of the story when people like to ask, "Well did you see any whales?" to which I respond with, "Yeah, but I didn't care." In fact, the whales we saw were fairly close to the shore but since the waters were so choppy the captain was afraid to go inland because we would be carried into the rocks so he kept his distance for us to see them from afar. So the irony is that had we walked up the shore instead of getting on the boat, we would have seen the whales closer and not have all gotten sea sick. I also would have a shorter blog post...
I should throw in that I was so miserable that at one point when I saw the Coast Guard overhead I literally had the following thought, "If I jump off this boat, they will rescue me and take me to dry land." But then I realized how insane the idea was and that I would get really tired of being referred to as "That Girl at the NASDAV conference who was rescued by the Coast Guard after going overboard."
Eventually the captain decided to head back early since out of the 35 of us on the boat, only 4 were not sick (Including Alaska).
Back at the conference I was harassed plently for my two hour bout of seasickness and given some made up award called "The Order of the Bucket" at the induction dinner.
Here is my boss (second one from left) being sworn in with the other association officers at that same dinner.
The conference was an amazing experience and needless to say, I learned that the only whale watching I plan on doing in the future is at Sea World.
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