Into... It begins.

SO this is a new thing for me, but seeing as my better half and I are getting to go out more and more I thought I just might start keeping a record of all of she and I's adventures. Well I also got the idea from a web compatriot of mine Dave and Yoshi of Adventureduo fame.

So a little bit about me.

My name is Dave King, I'm from portland OR, where I work in a local ER as an ER tech and hope to be heading to Nursing school here in the near future. My passion is emergency medecine and wilderness medecine. I'm an Oregon EMT-B, I have several other Emergency responce certs including High-angle rescue and Swiftwater, as well as an Oregon Fire Fighter 1 Cert (but no affilliate org. as of now). I got my initial EMS (EMT-I... Yeah In was pretty pissed when I lost the Intermediate in resciprocity coming back to Oregon!!!!!!!) cert through Wilderness Medecines Institute (Best Wilderness EMS training in the world IMO) I originaly wanted to be a firefighter but I've found that the political hurdles are a bit much to swallow so for the time being I'm enjoying all of the learning I'm doing working in the ER. I really have learned more in 3 years here then I would going on to Medic school. There's definatly somethig to be said for experience being the best teacher... On average, I perform CPR on patients at least 3-4 times a month. All in all that's more then ost CPR instructors witch is why I plan on starting to teach EMS/CPR in the near future.

I'm a very avid outdoorsman and more specificaly I'm a rafter at the core of it all. Once a year my best friends and I take off to some far away river and spend at least a week or so rafting then if we're lucky we take off fromt hat river for soem mroe exploring of whatever are we happen to be in. To date I've run a good number of rivers in the Lower 48 including but not limited to:

-The White Salmon (WA) (day trips on this local Gem are a summer ritual)
-The Deschutes(OR) (not really much to barg about but I've run it a bunch)
-The Clackamas (OR) (this one's in our back yard and is a fun day run if you just need to get on the water... Course spring of 08 we ran it at a record 11,000 CFS and I took the swim of my life. I was still gun-shy a few months later when we ran the Owyhee)
-The Lochsa (ID) (This is Big Idaho Whitewater at it's finest... God I love this river)
-The Middle Fork Salmon (ID) (just did 7 days on this river at flood stages - 7+ft on the guage- wow, what a ride...)
- The Payette (ID) (yet another of Idaho's gems)
- The Toulmne (CA) (got lucky and ran this one while attending
- The Merced (CA) (again, I ran this one while in Cali. at W-EMT school)
- The Snake (OR WA ID) This was our first big overnighter about 15 years ago and it was a real eye opener)
- The John Day (OR) not much to write home about... this ones pretty mellow)
- The Green (UT)
- The Yampa (UT)
- The Clearwater (ID) (the Selway and the Lochsa combine to form the Clearwater, but the clearwater itself is alot mroe tame then any of those)
- The Yuba (CA)
- The Owyhee (OR) (ran this one in 08 and it was a fun one. talk about REMOTE)
- The Cal Salmon (CA) (WHat an amazing area this one is in and waht a great river... SO beautiful)
- The Trinity (CA) (SCARRY RUN!!!!!!!)
- The Smith (CA) (well we ran a small bit of this but there wasn't much water)
- The Illinois (OR) (This one was great but I ehar it can get pretty gnarly, guess it all matter what time of year you hit it like any river)

... Phew, there are more but I'm frazzled to think of them all right now.

SO anyway, I'm also VERY into overland touring using the best 4wd's there are: Toyotas... I was fortuate enough to live in Australia for about 8 months a few years back and while there I was introduced to the Toyota Hillux and the Toyota HZJ75 Land Cruiser... Let me just say that while there may be Jeep guys and there may be ROver guy's, nothign compares to a Toyota when it comes to getting out AND GETTING BACK... THey truly are amazing machines.

My current exploration rig is a 1989 Toyota 4Runner: Currently I have replaced the old tired 22RE with a brand new long block (the old one went 238K of hard life under the PO) that now has about 6500 miles on it. Additions include a Marlin Crawler Rear DOM bumper, 33x10.50 BFG AT's on 15" Alu. rims. A new Centerforce HP clutch. Soon it will also have F/R LSD's and 4.88 Gears to match the new tires... I also run a Yak Basket rack and have a full kit of recovery and emergency tools/supplies.

PHEW... THat was alot, more pics and updates to follow...

Oh and thanks to Dave (adventureduo) for giving me the idea and inspitation to do this...

Cheers

Dave King