Zublog

Indecision Can be Addictive!

Tim’s become quite addicted to indecision.  It seems lately that he defers an awful lot of decisions to the dice.  On our most recent trip, he allowed the dice to pick which route to take (evens it’s the 101, odds it’s Hwy 30), he let blue decide if we would stay another night or carry on, if we would hike or bike, if we would stop at the Blue Heron Winery or not and even which of the two campfire dinners we would have – odds and we ate pre-packaged curry.

Sometimes it’s just easier. And, I think there is less fear of the consequences if blue decides.  No blame.  Mind you, we did manage to make a few decisions on our own…like that we would splurge on a nice accommodation in Cannon Beach – funny how I never seem to have any problem deciding to spend money…

Use the Locals - in a good way…
When Zufalling you may find yourself in areas that you don’t know very well…infact that’s the point.  Often you arrive and think - well what are we suppose to do here?  One of the first things we do is hit up the Travel Information centre.  They always have brochures galore and you can get a sense of what the area is known for - white water rafting or wine touring?  Recently we discovered ourselves on the West Coast of Oregon.  We knew that there were beautiful beaches and great seafood restaurants but what we discovered at the info center was that the area is quite proud of it’s cheese production.  We ended up visiting the Tilamook Cheese Factory because the woman at the information centre guaranteed that we would not be dissappointed.  And the cheese curds proved her right!

If the area is not touristed enough for a full blown info centre, there may be a chamber of commerce that has information.  Failing that, talk to the locals.  Tim loves to ask people where they love to eat, what they do on the weekend, if there are an good hikes in the area or if there is anything historically interesting about an area.  A visit to the local museum often gives you a sense of what brought people to the area in the first place and that’s another great way to discover the intrigue of a town.

As Tim likes to say “meeting the locals can be an adventure in itself”.

Zufall vacation – a week at the will of the dice!
Tim and I had a week-long vacation and through a series of events found ourselves without any plans what-so-ever.  As the week approached, we figured why not Zufall for the whole week! People kept asking us what our plans were and when we explained that the dice would decide once we got in the car, they were floored.  Some people thought the idea was fun and exciting, while others just couldn’t handle the spontaneity…it’s not for everyone. 

One co-worker didn’t get it at all.  So I handed him the dice.  I explained that we planned that the base value would be 2 hours driving – meaning that a roll of 1 would mean 2 hours of driving in the set direction.  I said, “go ahead, see where we would be going if you rolled the dice for us.”  He rolled a S/6 – that would be 12 hours of driving south from Vancouver.  Immediately another co-worker got really excited – “That’s California, or Eugene Oregon – oh it’s beautiful there.  That would be an awesome vacation!”

And so, my co-worker finally got it…although he still said he couldn’t do it.  Baby steps.

Anyway, we didn’t end up rolling quite that far – in fact we ended up doing multiple rolls.  Our adventure took us to the forests of Mt. Baker, the Columbia River’s edge, the peak of Mt. Hood and the serene coast of Oregon. More details revealed on the main page shortly …and pics too!

Tim and I had a free Saturday and wanted to check out some open houses…we had just spawned the notion of perhaps moving sometime in the future and wanted to get educated about what was out there. We decided that a bike ride would be just the ticket. We rolled the dice and it sent us North 20 minutes. This was not a neighbourhood we were considering, but next to one we had. We figured we would follow the dice, maybe grab a coffee and then carry on into the neighbourhood we had identified as our choice location for house hunting. Well, wouldn’t you know it; the first neighbourhood was much nicer than we remembered. We happened along an open house, right on the bike path (a major bonus for avid cyclist like us). The house was an old character home (built in 1912) AND in our price range – something that we couldn’t get in our chosen neighbourhood. Well, to make a long story short, 24 hours later - our offer was accepted!So, I guess the moral of the story is…you never know what adventure Zufall will lead you to. It looks like ours is going to be one of home ownership and renovations!

 

P.S. This is also our excuse for not having blogged in so long…sorry.

I wanted to share an email we recently got from a new Zufaller because I think it reflects the one and only fiddly part about Zufalling. Hopefully the answer will help any others who are struggling with the same thing.

Well, Tim and I have spent the weekend furiously typing up all of the copy for the website, discovering that our little tins are too fat for the mail and will have to be sent as parcels (darn Canada Post!) and putting our Zufall tins together. Since this is our first run of Zufall tins, we are doing everything ourselves – so Friday night we sat in front of the TV listening to the BC Lions embarrass the Saskatchwan Rough Riders (sorry Tim, it had to be said) in an early season game of the CFL. I say listen because we were concentrating on getting every sticker on the tin, nice and square and making sure that each box had a blue and a green dice!

We had to take a break last night and do a bit of Zufalling and since we were hungry and too lazy to cook – we Zufalled for dinner. It was awesome but the funniest thing is that a fellow Zufaller ended up at the exact same place (with a totally different roll) just the night before.  Cassia’s adventure is posted on the main page. After dinner we went to a party at Brad and Sarah’s and gave them one of the first complete packages of Zufall. They’re going to Zufall on their motorcycles….COOL! They were very excited and I am happy to announce that Brad has agreed to sell Zufall at his On Premise Wine and Beer Store in North Vancouver, Valley Estates. He’s even thinking of giving them away to new customers! I’m so excited by the reaction we’ve been getting every time we introduce Zufall to people.

Our Soft Launch is just days away! yay!

Well it’s Canada Day here and that also marks the birth of Zufall – or at least the first time that Tim and I had an adventure by chance. What better way to mark the occasion than to roll the dice.

A TruZufall, we loaded up the car on Saturday morning and rolled the dice. Being a long weekend, I was hoping for a big roll and I got it – SW/5 with our base value being 1 hour driving. We hit the highway heading south.

We had lots of time to consult the map as we waited for 2 hours in the border line-up (thank goodness for the Duty Free shortcut or we might still be there!) We had hoped to make it to the Oregon border but the drive took longer than we thought and as we began to approach the 5 hour mark, we thought we’d better find a campsite as the border had pushed us until late in the day. Almost exactly 5 hours of driving later, we found ourselves at a Washington State Park called Rainbow Falls (although it was more like rapids than falls). It was a lovely wooded park and we scored a well-treed site.

We were happy to stay put for a day and spent the time hiking an old trade route, playing bocce in the park and lounging by the over stocked fire.

Check out these pictures of the insanity at the border, our fierce bocce tournament and our quaint campsite (note the daisies in a beer bottle – now that’s classy!)