and the bride wore leopard
Sorry, ladies. I’m off the market as of today. That’s right. Lynn and I pre-loped to beautiful downtown Hillsboro, OR, to get married and become members of the Hon. Mark Gardner’s coffee club (really!). What a perfect way to go: surrounded by friends and family, with pizza and red wine waiting for us at home.
the cat who can trick-or-treat
Come, gather ‘round, dears, and hear the story about The Cat Who Came For… not that best-seller thing. No, something much cooler. This cat came for Hallowe’en.
sidekick man
My friends Louis and Carolyn throw legendary Hallowe’en parties. Legendary. Five hundred feet of black butcher paper painstakingly crumpled and then re-un-crumpled to transform their garage into the Batcave. An elaborate hidden revolving door mechanism to get into the cave. The interior of the house decorated like a hall of superheroes.
And costumed guests supplying short films of their superhero alter egos for the amusement of the crowd. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the “VH1: Behind the Cape” inside story on Sidekick Man, an assistant so competent that he surpassed super-boss after super-boss and finally struck out on his own.
sakura saxton
The other day, I went to hear Ron Saxton speak. For those of you living outside Oregon, he’s one of the many people who want to be our governor. I went in with a few tough but fair questions to ask him. I came out with my head full of cherry blossoms. Keep reading to find out why.
soon?!?
Okay, so my last entry promised an update on the Lance Armstrong ride “soon.” Did I remember to mention that it was going to be “soon” in Dees time? Whole other temporal animal.
But the wait is over. Keep reading for the full story.
$1500!
Thanks to you, my donors and supporters, for raising over $1500 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Yesterday’s ride was—well, it was quite engaging. More on that soon, I promise.
bikeout
Okay, the Lance Armstrong ride is just around the corner. The regular readers of this blog (both of you) haven’t seen too much here about my training for the big day. Spit out those fingernails, folks, and worry not: the good people over at Nike have been workin’ us riders over, big time.
training rides 3 and 4: 30 miles each
“What happened to training ride 2?” you ask? That was my Stone Mountain jaunt, though the writeup wasn’t all gussied up with stuff about training. Anyway, read on to find out more about the endurance-building exercises back here in Portland….
things from the south
‘Twas the final day of my mini-tornadic trip to Dixie. I hopped into my uninspiring sedan and slid southward through Tennessee’s lush, breathtaking hills, back to Georgia. When Atlanta’s funky midtown rose into view, I exited and stashed the Chrysler in a garage for one last visit.
Brandon and I have seen each other through a lot over the last fourteen years: manly, shoulder-punching Frisbee games; the creation and dissolution of relationships; endless honing of conversational art; and, of course, the playing of antique video games while employing silly accents.
So, what do two jet-lagged old friends talk about during a two-hour layover, anyway? Read on to find out.
three stars for a beer
The flag of Tennessee incorporates three stars into its design, representing the state’s western plains, central rivers, and eastern mountains. My Uncle Dave lives in star #3, within easy reach from Atlanta. Time to rent a generically inexpensive sedan and cruise-control my way into a brand new state.
burgeoning bike-opolis
Okay, so, day two of my trip east. I’d planned to wake up super-early and get cracking, but you know what they say about plans. (Actually, what do they say about plans? If you find out, please let me know.) I decided to sleep in until the luxuriously late hour of 8, at which point I ambled down to the hotel’s alleged “breakfast” area. Did you know that powdered sugar donuts, when taken straight from an ice cold fridge to a warm, humid Atlanta day, turn to slush? That’s okay—my stomach didn’t care about the texture, so long as there were carbs hiding in there somewhere.
Now it was 9:00 on what was shaping up to be a gorgeous Atlanta Saturday. Time to take the rented bike somewhere cool.
go east, young man!
I just got back from a briskly epic (or epically brisk) four-day weekend in the Eastern time zone. I’d been looking forward to this trip for months: after all, I was going to have the chance to reconnect with old college buddies, see some sights I’d never seen, and get in a good, solid visit with my Uncle Dave at his house on the lake.
And you don’t even have to wait for the first day’s installment. It’s here now! Read on.
multimode meander
Okay, I admit it. I’m a James Davis groupie. Dude leads incredible nature walks all over the Portland area. So when I found out that he would be leading a combined hike/float with the Tualatin Riverkeepers, I jumped at the chance. And hey—why not bicycle to the launch site and make it the bike/hike/boat trifecta of human-powered transport?
Read on to learn three new disgusting facts about the wild (well, okay, only two are disgusting).
if you could read this, you were invited
update: Thanks to everyone who helped make the party a success! We raised a couple hundred dollars for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and that put us just under the thousand-dollar mark (which has just been surpassed—thanks, MM!).
training ride 1: cookie monster cookie
As you know, it’s Lance Armstrong ride season again. The ol’ blog wouldn’t be complete without a couple of training maps to give you a taste of life in the saddle. Not that you want to taste a bike saddle after it’s been underneath a butt for 60-plus miles, but you know what I mean.
I was looking for an appropriate route for the first big test of Shiki, my vintage road bike, when news of the upcoming Monster Cookie ride fell into my lap. Life is like that sometimes, and thank goodness. The Monster Cookie ride, for the uninitiated, is a metric century (100 km, or 62 mi) that goes from Salem to Champoeg and back. That’s pronounced “sham-POO-ee,” by the way. Anyhoo, the money raised benefits the Salem Bike Club.
gorge rising, but in a good way
My, but damn, the Columbia Gorge is, er, gorge-ous. I saw it from I-84 on the drive from Texas when I first moved here, and it was even beautiful from the sterile cushion of the federal highway system. But that’s nothin’! Wait ‘til you see it up close!
For the last day of Dad’s visit, we knew we had to make it spectacular. And the Gorge fulfilled that promise with oodles of extra fulfillment left over! Read on, MacDuff.
muscle-powered saturday
Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blog. And back to my Dad’s visit a couple of weeks ago. After our coffee and wine excursions, we celebrated Earth Day with a muscle-powered Tualatin River trip. Audubon Society of Portland and the Tualatin Riverkeepers teamed up to host the combined bike ‘n’ boat outing. Read on for the details.
oh, it's so on!
Some of you may have heard it. Some of you may have guessed it. The Lance Armstrong ride is back in Portland this year, and I’m throwing my bike helmet into the ring again. The event, rechristened the LIVESTRONG Challenge (because it now includes both bike rides and foot races) has spread from Portland to four other locations. And since the Foundation has increased their efforts, I’m doubling mine.
wine and coffee
So, the old man came to town this past week. On his first two days here, we undertook a quest to track down the two elixirs Oregonians are best at making: wine and coffee.
On the way, we learned about chocolate, crazy traffic engineers, and urban parks.
the resurrection and the life
(of the bike tire)
Easter Sunday in Portland. Shhhpringtime in the air. And bunnies on bikes.
Okay. So, after church, it was time to brave the withering scowl of the train operator (don’t ask), slip a couple of bunny ears into my helmet, clip a puffy tail onto my keister, and join the group ride whose only price of admission is that you come dressed for the part.
Little did I know, I’d need my bunny costume for a two-mile hippity hop hop through the city first.
konichi-wa, shiki
Welcome to the newest member of the bike family! Big milestone today. First time I’ve ever owned more than one bike. First time I’ve had twice as many bike-related keys on my keyring as anything else (mountain bike, road bike, Willow Creek locker, work locker).
Lest you think I’m some random flashy a-hole with more money than tact (eh, what do I care? this is the Internet!), let me tell you that I spent less on this ride than most road bikers do on a single wheel. I got ‘er at the Community Cycling Center, which, as we’ve discussed before, sells refurbed bikes for cheap—and the money goes to outfit needy kids and commuters with bicycles.
Not that ‘Shiki isn’t beautiful. She’s just not a gold-digger, that’s all. She’s a gorgeous deep blue Nishiki road bike with a 62cm frame and components I’ve never heard of (that could be good, or it could be really bad—time will tell). She rides like a spaceship. Going up hills with her is like walking upstairs.
What better way to get to know her than to take her on a quick jog through the neighborhood?
happy belated worst day
... in which your humble narrator finally gets off his duff and clues you into what’s been happening in his life in the month and a half (!) since his last blog post. First, let’s clear the decks of old material and give you guys a taste of my last big group bike ride.
worst day of the year ride: 18 miles
February 9th is, historically speaking, not a great weather day for Oregonians. In 1933, the town of Ukiah clocked in at 54 degrees below zero. In 1996, 28 inches of rain fell over a four-day period. So, in typical contrarian fashion, Portlanders revel in this meterological crumminess by celebrating it with a bike ride!
video thrilled the podcaster
We’ve gone 3D, baby! Length, breadth, and time. Check, check, check out the first Half Fast Videocast, and see what happens when you put together duct tape, bungee cords, a cheap-ass digital camera, and a bicycle.
super roll xl
“Oh, is that today?”
Well, it was a beautiful day for outdoor football, as they say. So why not strap myself to a bike and enjoy the weather before settling down to watch the commercials?
dog bone meritocracy
The Rebooting Democracy conference is over, and my head is still all swimmy and eager and stuff. I’ve committed I-dunno-how-many volunteer hours to create jobs in Oregon, make your car exhaust smell like French fries, and make America a safer place, all by supporting the Apollo Alliance.
I had a friendly conference wrap-up chat with Nate Curry on the Bus ride home. We covered everything from the lofty topics of energy independence to more mundane matters like poker chips and an engine that runs on bullshit.
buscast two
Wow. Wow. Seriously.
Day Two of Rebooting Democracy, and my head is spinning. Maybe it’s the Macallan. Or maybe it’s the scent of progress in the air. Mmmm, single malt progress….
rebooting democracy podcast
I’m sitting here at one of the opening sessions of Rebooting Democracy, a fantastic conference where a bunch of us pissed-off voters are deciding how to take back our state.
Yesterday, I recorded a couple of mostly-serious discussions with my fellow attendees, including Bob Sallinger of Porland Audubon.
As informative as the day’s panel discussions were, they only tell part of the story. The hard facts of ballot measures were constantly seen through the lenses of humor, passion, and optimism.
So, here’s a little bit of the political stuff now, and I’ll probably follow it up with a sillier post tomorrow.