Jason Alan Griffin :: The Blog

I woke up this morning in Crystal Mountain Resort. At some point during the night River must’ve gotten cold because when I woke up, we were spooning. It’s the first time since I’ve known him that he hasn’t slept through the night in his crate, (the door is always open). We got up and I took a cold shower. I have a water heater, but it takes half an hour to get the water hot, and I didn’t want to wait. I went all through high school taking cold showers after wrestling practice, so I was no stranger to the experience.  Then I took River for his morning play. There really wasn’t much to this place, so we basically just revisited all of the places we liked from yesterday that were close by. I unhooked and put everything away. I never saw anyone around that looked like they were manning the place. I did see two other motor homes parked there, but never saw any people. The only people around were doing maintenance on the gondola and painting the chalet.  Chalk it up to...

We left the house at 8am this morning, and I had my first “oh shit” moment at 8:23 when I realized I had forgotten my rain jacket. I have my water proof shoes and a hat, and I have a thick cotton hoodie.  But I had intended to bring my Goretex jacket with the fleece inner lining. Oh well. I hope it’s not too uncomfortably cold and/or wet.  So now, it’s 10 am. I’m sitting at Camping World, waiting for delivery of my vehicle.  We’ve already done the paperwork and the walk-around inspection.  But as they were removing the bike rake from the back, they heard a hissing sound. Turns out there was a leak in one of the tires. SO glad they discovered that before sending me on my way. While I wait, I’ll mention something about the Chevy Malibu.  YUK.  There is something wrong with the head restraint. They are so far forward of the seats that it forces me to drive in an uncomfortable Forward Head Position.  This is a position that is epidemic in humans ...

If you need to catch on on this story before reading this chapter, here are the prior entries:  Chapter ONE: The Plan Chapter TWO: Planning stage complete Today is the first official day of our adventure; Chapter THREE: the day I pick up the rental car.  The lot where we pick up the motorhome is in Fife. That’s about an hour’s drive from Seattle. Not being sure how River would do in a taxicab, and having no other viable options to get from Seattle to Fife with dog and luggage, I decided that renting a car was the best option.  I'll use the car today and then when I pick up the motorhome tomorrow, I'll leave the car in the Camper Rental place's parking lot. It will sit there for the week while we're gone and be there when we get back. So then I’ll use the car again, to get back to Seattle.  The next day, I'm leaving for a flight to Houston so I'll use the car to get to the airport and return it then.  So this morning I headed out to the...

Bliss is a classic Nia routine created by Carlos Rosas.  It was discontinued many years ago and is no longer available through Nia. Only teachers who were licensed in the late 90s have had access to this routine.  It mostly features the music of Rae & Christian from an album called “Northern Sulphuric Soul” http://www.last.fm/music/Rae%2B%2526%2BChristian/Northern+Sulphuric+Soul and three songs by Shantel from the album “Higher Than the Funk” http://www.last.fm/music/Shantel/Higher+Than+the+Funk both from 1998.  The focus of the routine, as described by Carlos, is on tapping into a reverse gravitational force that lifts us up, as opposed to the gravity that we know of that pulls us down. Carlos describes traditional gravity as magnetic and this uplifting gravity as electric. Personally, I’m not sure about the validity of this theory and/or the existence of this upward force, but it is certainly fun and interesting to play around with ‘tapping into it.’ ...

In five days we take off on our first RV adventure; River and me, in a rented 27 foot motor home, experiencing life on the open road.  I have been struggling with how much to plan and how much to leave to adventure. And my latest big question was how to get us to the RV. With a dog and all of our luggage, public transportation was going to be a huge hassle. And renting a car even seemed ridiculous because of the amount of time it would be parked. I toyed with the idea of renting a car twice; one at the top of the trip and another at the tail end. But the logistics of arranging those two pick up and drop offs made me reconsider. It turns out to be worth the extra money just to know that that rented car is going to be waiting for me at the end, so that when I drop off the RV, we can just load into the car and drive home.  So, I’ve rented a car for nine days. I’ll pick it up from the airport the day before. I can spend that day re-acclimating River to the co...

Last month I posted a video of me doing my basic Energy Flow workout .  It was the exact same technique that I've taught many times in Energy Flow classes and to private training clients. This month, I'm posting the next phase. Once I've worked with the basic Energy Flow movements long enough to feel comfortable and strong with them, I graduate to the more sophisticated Phase Two movements. The four exercises you'll see are designed as offshoots from the four basic Energy Flow positions: The Squat, the Plank, the Bridge and the Side Plank.  By moving into, through and out of these positions, or moving back and forth between two of the movements, the energy really starts to flow. People who have taken my Energy Flow class, and were interested in moving to the "Next Level", well this is it. I am finally making this level available. As always, the video is me working out in my studio. I've recorded a voice-over to help make the workout accessible to b...

About a month ago I got the idea into my head that I wanted to make a lifestyle out of taking River on RV road trips. It all started when my uncle died and I was entitled to an inheritance. My first thought was that I wanted to buy a small home on the beach that I could escape to when the Seattle winter wetness got to be too much to handle.  That idea was quickly scrapped for many reasons. One being that I wasn’t going to inherit enough money to be able to afford anything decent on the beach. Another was that I didn’t want to feel tied to the same beach year after year. And finally, there was the issue of getting River to the beach house, since he can’t fly.  So the next logical step was to rent beach houses.  This solved the dilemma of repetition but not the transportation issue.  So my next leap of logic was to buy a car and stay in hotels. But finding dog-friendly hotels across the country seemed like a great big exercise in optimism. Not to men...