| 2002 Year In Review |
| How I spent 2002. |
 FeedbackBy Preston Hunt, 14 January 2003 |
- Waterfall ice climbing for the first time ever in Leavenworth, Washington, under the careful tutelage of Mark.
- Road biking in the spring through the California coastal mountains and vineyards with Eric.
- Hiking up and snowboarding down Mt. St. Helens three times in the spring and summer; during one of the trips, we literally snowboarded from the summit right to the car.
- Traveling to Japan and Taiwan in April (one week each) for business (with a little pleasure jammed in during the off hours).
- Rock climbing and mountain biking in Moab with the annual Fettkether expedition.
- Making several "real" rock climbing trips to Smith Rock (as opposed to indoor climbing at the rock gym, which I do about 90% of the time).
- Biking through downtown San Francisco and then across the Golden Gate Bridge, fighting the Bay winds the entire time (another California biking first compliments of Eric).
- Getting spanked trying to do a 1-day summit of Mt. Shasta (we didn't even get above 10,000 feet due to a blizzard). Carnes, Hoenig, and I had an outstanding roadtrip down and back nonetheless.
- Cruising up to the top of Mt. Adams (6700 feet elevation gain total) in 4 hours and 20 minutes (thanks to Hoenig for being my 1-day peak bagging buddy on this and every other summit attempt on this page, and thanks to Zack for providing the motivation to beat his time :-).
- Going on a 1700-mile, 7-day summer road trip with Aimee starting in Portland, through the Canadian Rockies to Banff and back again.
- Shaving my way through many facial hair variations, from full beard, to just a goatee, and finally down to the current mustache and soul patch combination (ending ultimately in a fully shorn face sometime in 2003).
- Getting promoted to green belt in Isshinryu karate, the result of attending classes two mornings a week before work for almost a year. (Unfortunately, I also broke my toe in karate class one day while I was kicking somebody. Amazingly, you can get by quite well with a broken toe, although I was out of rock climbing commission for several months.)
- After nearly 18 months of haggling with the developer over warranty issues, finally getting my air conditioner fixed at my condo. I learned that persistence will pay off eventually. That said, contact me for advice if you are considering buying a new house :-)
- Another bicycle trip: Bicycle touring the San Juan Islands (including Victoria, Canada) with Aimee in the late fall. This was our first time doing a major multiday trip by bike, and we did great - 7 days, 200 miles, and 70 pound bikes.
- Planning and throwing the best Halloween party ever with a bunch of friends at Mike & Sue's house.
- Heading back to Japan again (this time with Aimee) for a short business trip followed by a long vacation in which we sampled most of western Japan (bringing my total time spent in Asia this year to 3.5 weeks).
- Enjoying Thanksgiving with friends in Portland, namely Ben and his family for Thanksgiving dinner and then touring Oregon wine country with Brenda & Co.
- Spending Christmas with Aimee and her relatives in Tacoma.
I only hope that 2003 will be as good! Always looking to expand my horizons, I'm taking up playing the electric guitar, folding origami, playing Dance Dance Revolution, and teaching myself Korean this year. Alas, all of these activities have their price, and I am officially giving up kayaking (I haven't done it in forever anyway) and eschewing all other sports in favor of the following only:
- Biking (road and mountain)
- Snowboarding (resort and backcountry descents)
- Cross country skiing
- Mountaineering
- Rock climbing
- Karate
After reading about all the job cuts in the news, people always ask me if I still work at Intel, and the answer is yes. For the past three years, I have been working on a technology called UPnP, whose purpose is to simplify home networking (for more information check out Intel's UPnP section). Because I work in Intel R&D, our goal is always to stay "ahead of the curve", and our work with UPnP is done. So I will be moving onto something new (still at Intel) for 2003, most likely in the area of making computing more secure.
On the dating front, Aimee and I are still going strong, and have taken our relationship to "stage 2" by moving in together. The BOOM! Condo is feeling a little cramped right now with all of her stuff in addition to mine, but it's nice to finally have a real dining room table and an extra sofa!
That pretty much covers 2002. My big news in 2003 is that I am going on my 2-3 month Intel sabbatical, probably sometime in spring or summer. Take a look at what I'm thinking about doing and add your own 2 cents if you like.
The end.
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