Cayly is one of my most favorite people on this planet.

To me she will be forever synonymous with late-night study sessions and poetry assignments, answering machine recordings boasting German names and accents, strolling 23rd Street in Portland, laughing until my side hurts, banter about dysfunctional relationships, Sandra Cisneros, and conversations in and around and while drinking Peet’s Coffee. She is one of the most unique and amazing women I have ever been priveleged to know, and on top of that she is beautiful and fiesty and hilarious.

Hans has her own ring-tone and speed dial number on my phone, and no doubt I would talk to her every day if I had something interesting to say every day. But even when I’m as boring as watching asphalt being laid (on every major roadway in this city ) in the summer, she listens to me, and laughs (at and) with me, and sounds genuinely excited that I’m calling. She also has seemingly signed a secret pledge to make me laugh every time we talk.

Our calls to each other are often fraught with the overly random, like the time she called to tell me that she spent New Year’s Eve Day completing a 500 mile hike (ok, so it might not have been 500 miles, but it was upward of 10 if I remember correctly, and if I don’t remember correctly than I’m just saying it was upward of 10, because it was a looong hike, so THERE.). Or the time I called her to tell her that I realized that Peet’s Coffee was spelled with two e’s, and not with an e and an a, as in peat moss, like I initially imagined.

One of our conversations last week fast became one of my favorite of these oh so random phone calls.

She called, four martinis into her Friday evening, to let me know she would be flinging her body out of a moving airplane the next day, and to tell me that she loved me, in case she went splat. I laughed and told her that if she died sky-diving I was personally traipsing to Lake Tahoe to kick her in the face, because that’s how much I love her, and how upset I would be if she did something silly like forget to open her parachute, or have a heart attack from the sheer excitement or something.

The alcohol began to settle as we were chatting about drop zones and the fact that she was going to be strapped to some stranger while she fell through the sky, and before both of us knew it she was full-on tipsy, all giggles and making wonderfully nonsensical comments. While I always find her particular brand of the uncanny quite delightful, the overall hilarity of her comments was enhanced by the fact that I myself was a bit high on paint fumes (having been painting ALL EVENING LONG) at the time of our conversating.

My favorite part of all the giggling and nonsensical nonsense was when she told me she was considering making out with their boat driver. And that she had already made it clear to her family that she and she alone had dibs on having the most attractive of all the sky-divers strapped to her backside.

It is conversations like these that make me always look forward to hearing her voice on the other end of the line, and make me proud to be the Frans to her Hans.