Since it is Black Friday and raining outside I figured
I would write a blog post. In this post I will highlight
some of the things that I have been up to since my last
post at the end of
September.
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| View of Mt. Hood one crisp fall morning from my office in downtown Portland, OR |
The
first thing I have been up to is getting used to the change from summer to fall.
As we hit October the temperatures started to cool somewhat. In addition to cooler temperatures,
the rainy season began. This will last until June from what I hear from the locals. It
may not have been good for plants, trees, and anything else depending on water
but we went nearly 90 days without any significant rain. According to one story
I saw, we had no measurable rain from July 21
st to September 9
th.
Starting in mid-October we started to
make up for it. I enjoyed the period without rain from a bicycling perspective.
It was nice to have to not worry about rain on my daily commute. I am prepared
for the rain though and have experienced a few days of getting soaked. I have a cycling jacket, a pair of water proof warm weather pants, a water proof helmet cover, and water proof shoes.
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| Alethea in warm weather bike gear retrieving a free pizza for dinner |
Speaking
of cycling I am still riding to work on most days. It has to be raining pretty hard
or I have to be experiencing a mechanical issue for me to miss a day. On some
mornings it has been down in the 30’s but I am plenty warm with all my gear.
When it gets below about 45 degrees I switch to my ski mask. Only problem with the ski mask
is that my cycling glasses fog up due to
respiration being trapped and pushed up through the eye opening. Lately, I have been riding without the glasses which are only used to keep debris from getting
into my eyes which has happened a few times.
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| My bike - the only set of wheels I own :-) |
I have experienced a few mechanical issues over the last couple months. I suffered a flat
during my work commute one morning. I ran over a large industrial
sized staple. It punctured my rear tire. Luckily, I was only half mile from work
and it was not raining. The bad news was that I was going in early for a biometric health screening. I got there just a little late and my pulse and
heart rate were elevated due to the excitement. My other mechanical issue had
to do with my front tube which was leaking at a fast rate. I decided to replace
it and when I did I over inflated it causing it to explode. I then put on
another tube and punctured it when putting the tire back on the rim with my bike levers
so in went tube number three. This time I took the advice of my wife and did
some online research looking for some new techniques and watched some YouTube
videos. I had changed flats before and attended some fix a flat classes but the new
techniques allow me to change a flat much quicker with better technique. I should be much
better at this going forward. I did exchange our pump for another one at
REI
since the pressure gauge was off by quite a bit. It was still my fault for over
inflating my tires though.
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| This staple resulted in a flat tire on the way to work one morning |
I would say the highlight of the last couple months was when
my mom and dad decided to pay us a visit. They were in town for week in the
second half of October. We did our best to show them around. Alethea did a great
job as our tour guide and navigator!
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| Alethea & mom @ Hopworks Urban Brewery - Portland, OR |
We kept mom and dad busy each day. We wanted to make sure
they slept well each night. The next paragraph is a synopsis of what we did
while they were here.
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| Mom & Dad at Pier 39 in Astoria, OR |
On the day they arrived Dad and I went to a
Portland Trail Blazers
pre-season game while Alethea and mom went to a modern dance performance
downtown. On day two I had to work while Alethea took mom and dad around town.
They took the
Portland Streetcar around town, visited the
Japanese Gardens,
Pittock Mansion, and picked me up after work. We then went out to eat at one of
our favorite pubs
Hopworks Urban Brewery. I took Friday off and we made a day of it
completing the ocean loop as I like to call it. We drove to Astoria, Seaside,
and Cannon Beach where we saw Haystack Rock. The weather was not great but we
had a good time. The next day we went to the
Portland Farmer’s Market (where
mom & dad got a $45 parking ticket – sorry about that),
David Hill Winery ,
Montinore Estate (winery) and then went to
McMenamins Grand Lodge
to watch Tennessee get whipped by Alabama. The next day we drove up a couple
hours to the north to Mt. St. Helens where we spent the day. Visibility was not great but there was still plenty to see including some snow! The next day was a
rest day for mom and dad. They did drive in for Alethea to prepare a healthy
salmon dinner. The following day mom, dad, & Alethea visited the Columbia
Gorge area and drove to
Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood where they encountered
some more snow. We finished the day with some pizza at
Apizza Scholls before
calling it a night.
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| Mom & Dad on top of the Astoria Column |
I believe mom and dad had a good time. The weather did not always cooperate and it was a lot of driving at times. I enjoyed spending time
with them and getting to show them the greater Portland area that we enjoy so
much.
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| Dad needed a pre-trip nap one day :-) |
Let’s see what else has been going on. I had an enjoyable
time on my birthday. I will not go into too much detail since Alethea wrote a
blog post about it that can be found by clicking here. We spent the day taking
advantage of free things you can do on your birthday here in Portland.
