Hello All and here we go again,
Day 7 – Tuesday in Sun River, OR(Resort community just outside of Bend)
For those of you who read my last post and wondered if I had forgotten I had a daughter as well, set your mind at ease, I only forgot about her for a little while. In my defense she’s such a calm, easy baby you forget she’s there. She’s also self-maintaining as I’ll illustrate with this little story. During the car trip Elizabeth would get hungry and cry for food, the way we would feed her would be to twist around in the passenger seat and feed her the bottle. As you can imagine this is less than comfortable, but we would be stuck in this position for at least ten minutes a feeding as she likes to take her time on the bottle. Then we discovered a wonderful, wonderful thing Elizabeth likes to hold up the bottle by herself and rarely drops it. So when she got hungry we would hand the bottle back, make sure it was positioned properly and then turn around and let our seven month old baby feed herself. That’s right we’re definitely up for parents of the year. For the most part Tuesday was pretty lazy and that’s just the way I like it.
Day 8-Wednesday in Sun River, OR
Logan’s back on his regular schedule and one would think this is a good thing. However, this now means that he no longer takes a nap and that his vial of goodness runs out around 5p.m. Today we take Logan to the little kids park and he spends most of his time as the weird little kid who sits on the spinny circle thing and sings to himself. As a nerd and sci/fi fantasy fan I’m torn between pride that he apparently hasn’t fallen far from my weirdness tree and worry that he’ll be a goth. The pool session is extremely productive as I get him to float on three of those Styrofoam noodle things and kick himself around the pool instead of screaming at the top of his lungs when I even shift my weight a little bit while holding him.
Day 9 Thursday in Sun River, OR
Again fairly low-key day, but Megan and I do take advantage of the free babysitting that masquerades as “spending time with the grandkids”. We go to see Super8, which is okay. I would have called it a new classic but they screwed up the ending big-time in my opinion and now I take less joy in the parts that did work. It’s worth seeing but wait for video/cable.
Day 10 Friday in Sun River, OR
Megan’s parents take off in the morning and we have the cabin to ourselves. Megan and I celebrate by moving up stairs to the cabin’s main bedroom with the king-size bed. I’m already plotting how to talk my way into getting the main room when we come back to the cabin in a little over two weeks. There’s a big race weekend in Sun River and Megan has friends coming in. She takes a look at the hippy hairstyles Logan and I have cultivated over the past few weeks and calls and makes a haircut appointment for us, note the lack of consulting me on this. We go into the main Sun River mall and Megan takes us to a Stylist. For one used to getting his haircut by crusty old barbers in shops filled with sports memorabilia, this is somewhat worrying but I swallow my pride and head in. The guy who cuts Logan’s and my hair is actually pretty nice and there are pictures of his wife and kids on the wall. I ask him if he’s there to do the men’s haircuts and he replies that he does women’s hair as well. My internal circuits fry at the thought of a straight man doing women’s hair and I decide I hear him wrong and press ahead. The whole mall area is completely remade for the race. Megan goes and registers for the half marathon and I watch Logan raise hell in the outdoor bouncy castle area they have set-up for the kids. Strangely enough waiting in line is not a concept three year olds deal well with. Some kid in an Ohio St. cap shoots his mouth off at me, I smile and say “Go Blue.” and then grin as I realize he’s doomed to the life of a crazed redneck.That night we go to a pre-run pasta feed with a live band and pay 8 bucks a person for crappy pasta, Caesar salad and the driest breadsticks known to man. Given that this is a pre-marathon/triathlon event I am surrounded by legions of in-shape people and all seem to be eyeing me wondering what I’m doing there. I finally retreat back to the cabin under the weight of their judging eyes and have a beer while grinning and basking in the fact I can drink it without doing any calorie/carb calculations. Haha take that you in-shape people.
Day 11 Saturday and still in Sun River
Megan wakes up early to go to the race with her friends that stayed with us the night before. I stay back with the kids and Megan calls me to come and meet her with sunscreen along the trail. I head out to meet her with the kids and watch the people run/walk by us. Logan announces he has to go pee-pee and asks to pee against a tree, bursting with pride I help him and Megan pulls up a couple minutes later. She’s pretty focused on the sunscreen and doesn’t notice Logan trying to show her where the tree was thirsty. I head back to the cabin with the kids and Megan gets back a couple hours later. I take Logan to the pool and Megan and I pop open some Champagne to celebrate finishing the half-marathon, I fall asleep after three glasses.
Day 12 Sunday in Sun River
Megan wakes up sore which is perfectly understandable and decides that she has earned a trip to the Alpenglow restaurant in Bend, which is famous for its breakfasts. I agree and we head in and I get to see what all the fuss is about. At first glance this is the kind of restaurant I hate with the burning passion of a thousand suns, lots of literature about localized food and “carbon footprints” along with hipster clientele. I sit down thinking but one thought. “This food better be fucking good.” And it is! Oh, it is! Thick cut bacon with very little fat on it, and looks like it was torn off the pig as it ran away, the little red powder on top of the hollandaise sauce on the Eggs Benedict and unbelievable and well-spiced home fries. After breakfast I head back to the surgery area so they can take out my kidney to pay for the meal and then we head out into Bend for a few hours. The rest of the day goes nicely and we retreat back to the cabin for more swimming.
Day 13 Monday travel day between Sun River and Portland
We plan on waking up at 6 and then leaving by 10. We end up leaving by 11:25, I still have no idea how we end up leaving late every time, but we’ve perfected the art. We drive out through the mountains and it is a gorgeous drive, full of twists and turns. I drive the three hours to Portland and Megan stays awake this time, I suspect it’s in order to say “No” every time I try to pass the truck in front of me on the two lane highway. This would be fine except the truck is going ten to fifteen mph below the speed limit and that triggers my inner caveman. There’s also a bunch of bicyclists on the road which on one level makes sense as it’s a nice, cool day, it’s all downhill, and the scenery is great. Here’s the problem the highway we’re on has absolutely no shoulder so these poor bastards have to hug close to the side of the road and freak out every time a car goes by. This is what happens every time I drive up behind a biker, I hit the brakes and mentally count off years of brake life every time I do so(the hill is really steep) until enough space opens up on the opposite side of the highway for me to get around the biker. Don’t get me wrong I’m all for biking but biking on a busy highway full of twists and turns with no shoulder for you to ride on seems completely crazy to me. We get into Portland and start on Megan’s friends and family tour.
Days 14-16 Tuesday-Thursday in Portland
Nothing really stands out except for Wednesdays events. For those of you who have seen the show Man vs. Food, you know of how it does a great job of showing locally-owned and operated joints with good/unique food. I decided that I wanted to go to a place called the Stepping Stone café which was featured on the show for having something called “Mancakes” these giant pancakes that are meals in and of themselves. So far the places I’ve been to that have been featured on Man v. Food have been good, but there have to be duds here and there. This place was a big-time dud, poor service and a on-purpose dive(the place looked seriously dirty and gross) and the pancakes weren’t that good. There was some truth in advertising as one pancake was enough to keep me from eating for the rest of the day, but not in a good way I felt like I had a giant rock in my gut. There will now be much skepticism about man v. food joints in the future. We then wentto the Oregon Zoo which has a very cool animatronic dinosaur exhibit and I torture Logan by holding him up to the T-Rex to try to take his picture. Later that night Megan and I take advantage of the whole “spending time with the grandkids” thing to go see X-Men First Class which was awesome. Seriously good movie and I was very impressed.
Stay tuned for updates from Hayden Lake, ID; Sun River, OR; All over Nevada; and the road trip home.
No comments:
Post a Comment