Our visit to Boise, ID

This past Sunday Meesh and I joined my brother and sister-in-law in driving back to their home in Boise, ID from Whidbey for vacation. Drive took all day and evening and took us through eastern parts of Washington and Whitney's "favourite" state, Oregon. Once we all got home and Meesh met their three dogs (Jetta, Kola, and Wylan), we all crashed.

Monday both Todd and Whitney had to work, so Meesh and I sat around the house relaxing. Was nice to not have anything to worry about. I got to spend some time on python-dev stuff and browse the web. We also took Wylan for a walk and played with all three dogs. When Todd got home we went and met Whitney at work and had dinner at the Mexican restaurant Tood once worked at.

Tuesday was a day off for Whitney, so Meesh and I helped her in the backyard. Meesh laid down weed cover on the garden while I emptied their pond. Initially we used the pump for the fountain in the pond to empty it, but eventually it just kept clogging with leaves, so I switched over to using a bucket. That took a while (and soaked their weed-infested yard, which was infested because of their two months in Canada) and I got very muddy (photos were taken, but I have not offloaded my camera from the trip yet).

Wednesday was a day off for both Todd and Whitney. That meant working on their fence. They live in a housing development that has building specifications for fencing. They could only use a very specific kind of fence that is white plastic vinyl. That means that it is kind of like playing with a construction set in terms of not having to build the fence from scratch. But it also means that you need to build it based on the fence's exact specifications or bad things happen.

So Todd and I went and got a bunch of concrete and an auger for the fence posts. Unfortunately the auger we got was not powerful enough. Apparently the town they live in is known for its hard dirt. That auger could only go down a foot on one side of their house and less than two inches on the other. So we returned it and went to another place where we rented an auger that had to be towed from behind their truck. Quite the device.

Initially Todd bore out the fence post holes on one side of the fence as deeply as he could. I then went through the holes and dug out the loose dirt by hand with a small Gladware container (fit perfectly in the holes). For the other side, my brother and his neighbour (who split the cost for the fence between their properties) dug the holes while I continued to clear out the loose dirt. We then went back through and made sure the holes were as deep as possible, or at least as close as we could get them.

With the holes dug and the auger returned, it was time to put in the posts. We went hole by hole, filling the hole with water, putting in the post, adding concrete, and then adding more water and concrete. We also poured water and concrete into the posts (which lead to some concrete in my hair from helping to cover the post rail holes so the concrete would not fall out). We also put in the bottom fence rails as we went along.

Thursday we when Todd and I, along with Whitney, put in the fence sections. That was interesting. Some of the spacing between the posts was too much and thus led to some gaps. Some of them were too close and required a lot of elbow grease (especially on my brother's part) to wedge the last section in. One was so close we had to saw the last section to make it fit. By the end of Thursday we had the fence up everywhere but the posts at the extreme ends of both fences and where the fence turned into the house on one because the posts had to be put close together and thus were going to require sawing of the last fence section.

Friday was another lazy day at home with the dogs. This time we took Jetta for a walk. Meesh was amazed at how well-trained she is. My brother is currently a dog trainer, but even before then he made sure his dogs behaved. And for the most part they are, except for Jetta when she is inside the hosue with Kola. For some reason she attacks Kola; and we saw it first hand while we were there. Hopefully they can get Jetta to not do it (since she is fine around Kola in all other situations).

After Meesh and I said goodbye to Whitney at work, Todd dropped us off at the airport (the airport in Boise is not exactly busy at 20:00 on a Friday). We took our prop plane to SEATAC where my dad and Richard picked us up. We dropped Meesh off at her friend's place and we then hopped on the midnight ferry and crashed at home.

So, what is Boise like? People are nice; reminded me of Vancouver folk. People still use cheques there. And the gun shops advertise on the radio with jingles. Visiting a red state was interesting and put some things in perspective in terms of how other people in America view things. You can forget how much of a bubble the west coast of America can be compared to the rest of the country.