Last update I was fresh off the heels of finishing the kayak building video course, looking forward to the new year. Videos were selling, I'd made a little sailboat, life was OK.
Then winter came, and with it the full terrifying force of the chronic illness I've been fighting for the last few years. My finances flatlined, and I got trapped in the dangerous spiral where illness and poverty reinforce each other. It got to a point where I was living in one location, my tools were in another, my shipping station was in another, and my workspace was in yet another location all in separate quadrants of a city with a perpetual traffic jam in the middle. There were days I burned more money in diesel fuel than I made from working. The whole thing was so frustrating that is was almost funny.
In January I had to admit to myself that I wasn't making videos or teaching classes any time soon, so I agreed to help my girlfriend remodel a derelict house she owns. Together we could do it cheaper than contractors would, at a pace my body could handle, and end up with a great place to live and work out of. So after building a couple commission kayaks and sending them off to Alaska, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
In January I had to admit to myself that I wasn't making videos or teaching classes any time soon, so I agreed to help my girlfriend remodel a derelict house she owns. Together we could do it cheaper than contractors would, at a pace my body could handle, and end up with a great place to live and work out of. So after building a couple commission kayaks and sending them off to Alaska, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.
Gardening has kept me sane since I left the farm, and I knew that a big beautiful garden would be a welcome sanctuary during the stress of a down-to-the-studs remodel, so I insisted that the first thing we do was dig up the back yard. We planted blueberry bushes, strawberries, kiwis, a row of raspberries, two kinds of figs, two asian pears, and three apples. (ProTip: After a lot of failed experiments I discovered that a sawzall with a metal blade is the easiest way to cut a whole roll of landscape fabric to a narrower size.)
With the garden dug, mulched, and ready for spring we set about restoring this 1908 Victorian house to it's former glory. Having undergone several very bad remodels there were quite a few shaking my head in disbelief moments including noticing that someone had cut the main structural beam holding up the entire second floor to make room for a cabinet. When we got down to the bones though, the original framing was still pretty solid, and for a seasoned wood rat like me, working with that gorgeous old fir was a real pleasure.
After a whole house re-wire and re-pipe and a battle with a squirrel that we affectionately dubbed Romex (we had to put a wiring run in STEEL PIPE to stop him) we headed down to Utah for a much needed break to float the Green River. It was a complicated trip, absolutely beautiful as the Green always is, but the combination of cold and altitude kicks my ass to a degree that it was actually pretty miserable. I didn't take any photos but did we did use the opportunity to test my new video gear, I'm hoping to edit it this winter! We did have a few smaller, easier adventures though, occasional trips to the beach and a stop by my friends farm to see the spring lambs. The van is a real blessing for getting to neat places with a little extra comfort. I did risk another short backpacking trip which flattened me for two weeks afterward, so backpacking is still off the table for the time being.
With summer approaching and the insulation, sheetrock, and floors refinished it was time to start building the house back up. Liz is a designer, I'm a builder, and we both have an unquenchable thirst for salvage, so bringing the house back to life together afforded a great opportunity to incorporate a lot of really cool reclaimed elements. I might not be salvaging whole logs by kayak anymore, but I'm still a fierce denizen of dumpsters, garage sales, craigslist, and The Rebuilding Center (which Liz says I can't go to unsupervised anymore due to the piles of reclaimed lumber growing in the driveway.) I even built real cabinets with minimal tools on the porch!
With a working kitchen and bathroom, we officially took up residence in the NE Portland Alberta neighborhood. Alberta is a bit of a throwback for me, I built my first kayak in a basement just a few blocks from here in 2001. The neighborhood was just starting to get hip at the time, a trend that continues with real estate prices to match, but somehow Alberta has kept it's charm, still a bit funky and a bit gritty, and the yards are often filled with big gardens and/or art. To shake off the stress of the remodel we bought a couple of single speed bicycles. Liz named hers Pony and I named mine Scott (sorry, I'm just not very creative) My range is limited to about a mile, but there is always an adventure to be had, some art to admire, or something we can load into tupperware and take home.
This year I actually got around to making a solar food dehydrator which works amazingly well and we have dried literally hundreds of pounds of neglected fruit that would have otherwise ended up on the sidewalks. Liz gets the one liner award for challenging my claim that I was helping the local church by picking figs that were starting to litter the sidewalk: "Whatever you need to tell yourself, you're stealing from God."
This year I actually got around to making a solar food dehydrator which works amazingly well and we have dried literally hundreds of pounds of neglected fruit that would have otherwise ended up on the sidewalks. Liz gets the one liner award for challenging my claim that I was helping the local church by picking figs that were starting to litter the sidewalk: "Whatever you need to tell yourself, you're stealing from God."
With all my tools and my home in one location for the first time in 4 years, I tested the kayak building class waters again to see if the increases in efficiency might let me run classes again without it being too hard on my health. I posted 4 spots and as usual those four spots disappeared in minutes, all to former students who knew how fast they would go! So it was a reunion of sorts, we built three F1's and an East Greenland kayak all under a massive horse chestnut tree and within picking distance of my garden. Unfortunately a backyard isn't a realistic class venue for a variety of reasons but it was a good time nonetheless. We launched at Cathedral Park beneath the huge gothic arches of the St Johns Bridge.
With the class over it was back to the house and it's hungry appetite for both money and sweat, some of which was initiated in a fit of frustration rather than according to any sort of schedule. Liz came out one morning to find me ripping the railings off of what the neighbor kid calls our "zombie porch". Two weeks later, a few hundred bucks of reclaimed fir, three sets of planer knives, some Timber Pro natural coating, welded wire, and some rusted schedule 80 pipe, we went from the being the least respectable house on the block to a strong showing. I can't wait to train kiwis up one side and grapes up the other.
I'm really proud of just how much food we've managed to grow on a partially shaded city lot. In addition to our perennial vines and trees, this year we grew peas, kale, beans, leeks, carrots, broccoli, cucumbers, melons, seven types of hot peppers, basil, corn, sunflowers, various herbs, cherry and russian tomatoes, (my tomatoes have no contact with the Trump campaign, I promise), tomatillos, zuchinni, and bunches of various flowers that Liz brought home. It's been really great to interact with all of that life every day AND end up with pesto, tabouleh, salsa verde, zuchinni muffins, and a handful of berries every morning. I'm a bit of a pie fanatic, so there have been some epic pies made as well.
So what comes next for me and Cape Falcon Kayak? That's the big question. I'm sure this update makes things look really great, and in some ways they are, I'm living my life with more presence, gratitude, and positivity than I ever have, but I'm also still living inside of a body wracked with pain and exhaustion that dictates my choices on a day to day basis with little stability or predictability. If you were to put on your dirtiest pair of sunglasses, turn up the stereo to an ear splitting song you hate, stub your toe as hard as you can, and then not sleep for 3 days: that's what my life is like 24/7. The variability makes it extremely hard to plan anything, so I think I'm going to start talking about what I hope to do and we'll see where things actually end up. Liz's shirt here says it pretty well:
After the house my next iron in the fire is to continue with what sometimes seems like a hopeless effort to get an appointment with a metabolic doctor. The simplest description of my medical problem is that I have severe chest pain, heart palpitations, difficulty breathing, exhaustion, difficulty keeping warm, loss of coordination, confusion, depression, sleep difficulty, and other symptoms triggered by heavy exertion, cold, altitude, and fever illness; and improved by keeping fats to an absolute minimum and eating lots of regular complex carbohydrates and maintaining ambient temperatures. Basically if I increase my overall metabolic load past a certain point or I dip even slightly into hypoglycemia my system crashes dramatically. Seems like the kind of thing you'd want to discuss with a metabolic expert right? The problem is that there is a serious shortage of doctors who are truly qualified to diagnose complex metabolic illness and most have stopped seeing adults altogether to keep up with their pediatric caseloads. It's a difficult problem I haven't found a way around yet, hopefully I will soon.
In better news, kayak building videos have been really popular with lots of people building Cape Falcon Kayaks here in America and overseas. It makes me happy to see boats getting built even when I can't teach. Here are a few unedited photos from F1's built as close as 2 miles away and as far as Northern Sweden!
I'm hoping to start next year where I left off last year, making instructional videos and improving my online store. Right now I have a beautiful well lit space to work in, a small but well organized shop, and I've assembled a lean, mean, video rig that appeals to my minimalist sensibilities while still delivering excellent quality sound and images. I'm really excited to see if it all works the way I think it will. I'm still hoping to make on the water videos for all of my kayaks, a kayak rolling video, a guideboat construction video, and then start chasing my longtime obsession, the skin-on-frame sailboat. Check out this video I made to showcase the bending oak we have for sale now, and a short steam bending demonstration!
My health still needs to improve quite a bit before I can start teaching again, so I am very interested in exploring the idea of a partnership with someone who might want to run the teaching and custom kayak building side of the business on a more permanent basis. If you are a self-starter and have excellent teaching and woodworking skills and a passion for kayaking feel free to get in touch. Hopefully there will be classes sometime in the future, in the meantime, expect the online stuff to get a whole lot better next spring. There should be lots to follow, and as usual, I plan to release about half of it for free.
I'll finish this update with the time honored tradition of sharing my favorite photos from the year. Notice the glowing Tomatillo plant I made with Christmas lights and an Xacto knife! If you like these photos I'm capefalconkayak on instagram. I'm incredibly fortunate to have so many good places, people, and things in my life right now. Thank you to all the people who have reached out to me, and apologies to anyone I haven't responded to, things get rough sometimes and a lot slips through the cracks. I wish all of you the very best in 2017-2018.
-Brian
I'll finish this update with the time honored tradition of sharing my favorite photos from the year. Notice the glowing Tomatillo plant I made with Christmas lights and an Xacto knife! If you like these photos I'm capefalconkayak on instagram. I'm incredibly fortunate to have so many good places, people, and things in my life right now. Thank you to all the people who have reached out to me, and apologies to anyone I haven't responded to, things get rough sometimes and a lot slips through the cracks. I wish all of you the very best in 2017-2018.
-Brian
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