How Quickly We Forget...

So the Northwest has had an active meteorological week, with snow, sleet, rain, wind, hail and more and lots of schools and roads being closed. The damp chill pervades everywhere and leaves us longing for open fireplaces, warm blankets, and steaming mugs of hot chocolate -- or, at the very least, has us lunging for the thermostat.

However whenever the whining gets too much or we start to feel too sorry for ourselves we stop and remind ourselves of where we just moved from. That's right: the frozen tundra of Minnesota. From this week's Star Tribune:

The bitter cold and dangerously low windchills between minus 35 and minus 50 degrees this morning caused scores of schools across Minnesota to call off school or start late. Windchill readings will remain in the teens and 20s below zero this afternoon across the Twin Cities. Even with the improvement in the windchill, exposed skin in today's conditions can still freeze in five to 10 minutes, the National Weather Service said.

Um. Yeah. Right....... what were we complaining about again??

Sorry to run, but I'm off to go for a walk in our envigorating cool wet weather and give thanks for living in Oregon again.

Becca

On the other hand, I'm not quite him:

With windchills well below zero, a Danish man who is known as only as Wimhof walked along the Universityof Minnesota campus on Wednesday while an ABC News crew shot film of him. The network brought the man, who says he’s impervious to cold, to the Twin Cities. (photo Elizabeth Flores)

Cleaning House # 3

Yet another photo essay from this fall:

(see the previous two entries for more)

Over the river and through the woods

(to Mt. Hood meadows we go)

Another of our field trips over Labor Day weekend was to take Dave and Heidi for a hike around Mt. Hood and a drive back through the Columbia River Gorge. They requested waterfalls, greenery, and mountain views. Two out of three ain't bad. :-)


And if you count rushing streams that you have to balance across as waterfalls, then we suceeded on all counts.

Wobble. Wobble. "Don't fall. Don't fall. Don't fall"

"Piece of cake."

Yet another cool view of Mt. Hood. It looks really strange to me because a) this is from the east side of the mountain and it's a very different shape than what we're used to seeing from Portland and b) the mountain looks so strange with no snow on it. However after the colder weather and rain we've had in early October I'm happy to report that Hood is snow-covered once more.

Full Sail Brewery, one of the major companies in Hood River. We felt it was our duty to stop by and test out their offerings.







Hood River is better known, however, as the windsurfing capital of the world due to the strong winds that are generated in the gorge. On this fall afternoon you could barely see the water for the windsurfers and kitesurfers. It was a riot of colors and a ballet of movement and very enjoyable to watch with a beer.

Again, we can't say enough how happy we are about the decision to move back to Oregon. Having all of this right out our back door is a wonderful thing and we hope to continue to take advantage of it.

Becca

Cleaning House #2

Another photo essay from our fall activities (see below for the first one):

Taking Time to Smell the Roses

One of the places Portland is known for is its International Test Rose Gardens. It's up on a hill overlooking the town and in addition to featuring acres of beautiful flowers, offers great views of the city and Mt. Hood. When we lived in Portland in 2000, I would take my books, cell phone and pager and spend hours in one of the garden areas studying electrophysiology. It sure beat working in a cube!



Over labor day weekend we played tour guide to Dave and Heidi and biked all around the city. The rose garden was one of our stops and we enjoyed playing amateur botanical photographer.

two unusual flowers of genus "tiredus bikerus"

Cleaning House....

Over here in bloggerville we are yet again ashamed of our laxness in posting. Mea Culpa x2! So in the interest of actually posting something I'm going to put up a couple of photo essays from some of our fall activities over the next few days since the full-blown entries on them seem to not be happening. So on that note:

Becca & Brian's Aerial Adventure

Caroline and I have been friends since I was 8 years old or so (and she was 11). When she was 18 she got her pilot's license and was able to fly the Cessna her Dad used for his business. Despite the fact that it's been 20 years I had never been up in the air with her. Hard to explain why. I guess when she first got it my Mom might have been nervous about letting me go up with her and then I've been living out of state pretty much the whole time since high school. Meanwhile her husband Luigi has gotten his license too and both of them have become instrument rated. When we moved back to Oregon I decided it was high time to get up there and experience flying with them.

So earlier this summer we jumped at the chance to do a little sightseeing flight on the coast. I think I'd written about this before, but C&L picked us up in Newport in their Cherokee and we did a leisurely flight down to Florence and back checking out the coastline and looking for whales. We had enough fun together that we started looking for a chance to do a longer trip. The perfect opportunity arose when we decided to go see some plays at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Ashland is about 285 miles and a 4.5 hour drive away. While the quality of theater makes it worth the trip, a one hour plane flight sounded even better. So in early September we were off:

Brian watches Caroline closely for tips on entrance technique.

Fully qualified pilot on the left, dilettante on the right.

"What's happens if I push this??"

On the way home, Luigi had Brian take the yoke. Instead of just having him "fly" while we were cruising, he handed control over as we were needing to descend to the airport. So Brian had to try and bring the plane down at a steady pace, while keeping us on the right trajectory for the landing vector, while adjusting the lift. Let's just say that this didn't fill his wife with tons of confidence. And is it a bad sign if the only time he felt motion sick was when he was doing the flying?

The weather was beautiful on our trip home so we took a detour to do some sightseeing over Crater Lake. Brian had somehow never seen this famous Oregon land mark (and national park!) so we did a flyby. It was purty.

It sure beat spending 9+ hours in the car and it was a great way to see the state's landscape from a new perspective. We'll definitely be going up with them again.


Becca

(thanks Steve for the airplane make/model correction! that's what i keep you around for)