Friday, February 25, 2022
The birthday season begins with a wonderful dinner at H and T’s house. H made her famous Slovenian style Szegediner goulash. To give you an idea, here’s a recipe from the internet; we don’t guarantee that it’s as good as H’s. For dessert M contributed a birthday cake from the Konditorei in Salem. We were joined by H’s grandson N, a high school senior who is occasionally late to first morning class because it takes him a while to get home and shower after his weightlifting sessions that start at 5:00 AM. Other than that he is living a fairly quiet life–if you don’t count the motorcycle license classes, the job at Starbucks, the skydiving, the upcoming trip to a party island in the Mediterranean, and some other stuff that your correspondents have forgotten.
Saturday, February 26, 2022
Today the celebrations moved north to Portland. We met A for a walk at Mt. Tabor Park, and then descended the hill and stopped at the Portland Nursery. Here, the birthday girl got a chance to pick out her birthday presents. She didn’t get plants because it’s a little early for that. But PN has a wonderful selection of tools and E was excited to get, among other things, her very own personal shovel.
After that we checked into our hotel to rest a bit before our gala evening out. A and A took us to a sushi restaurant for dinner and then to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. The performance was a showing of the movie Coco with its musical score being played live by the Portland Symphony. Despite the hassle of needing to stay masked throughout, we had a wonderful time.
Sunday, February 27, 2022
In the morning we went to breakfast with one of the A’s–the other one had to work–and then visited C to see her new house. C was a close friend of Becca and we’re always pleased to see what she’s up to.
And then it was off to the mall for more birthday present shopping. We found several items that E had been wanting and then stopped for a coffee at Peet’s before heading back to Corvallis. It was a long drive home through heavy rain, but when we got there we were consoled by the realization that a considerable portion of birthday cake remained uneaten. We tried to eat a light deli supper before diving into it, but we ended up making ourselves a little sick anyway. (This is a cake called Barney’s Blackout. Not only does it have E’s favorite kind of frosting, it also has huge thick slabs of it.) Even E couldn‘t eat all the frosting, but she saved some in the fridge…and M is predicting that it won’t stay there long.
Monday, February 28, 2022
A plumber came and fixed our freeze damaged outdoor faucet. E had a FaceTime with The Plant, did her yoga class, took a walk, and did grocery shopping. M must have done something.
This was a day of very modest food intake at all three meals; nevertheless, yesterday’s leftover frosting has somehow disappeared.
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Rain again today. Warm temps and mostly just showers and drizzle, but still…dark and wet for the fourth straight day, with more on the way. E did a Zoom meet-up with S and Mrs H, during which they did embroidery. M went grocery shopping and also paid a visit to the new Corvallis branch of Coastal Farm Supply, which has opened up in a large space that used to be a K-Mart. Coastal is quite a place! M was looking for a pair of jeans, but soon got lost in endless racks of pants in all shapes, sizes and price points. Besides work clothes and work footwear, Coastal also has big selections of handguns, fishing stuff, and zip ties. Before he want to Coastal, M didn’t really understand the true scope of the zip tie experience. He knew that zip ties came in different sizes. But when you see a whole aisle of zip ties in many, many sizes and many, many colors, well, M says that’s when you finally understand what kind of world you’re living in. Coastal does have some bags of animal feed, but the selection seemed pretty slim. Compared to the selection of zip ties, downright pitiful.
Meanwhile, death is sweeping through Ukraine as the Russian invasion continues. The guns for sale at the farm store–dangerous as they are–looked like children’s toys. The real weapons are elsewhere. They are mostly in the hands of grown-ups, but sometimes grown-ups go mad.
Wednesday, March 2, 2022
More rain today, but it is time, sayeth E, to check up on the fawn lilies. So off we go into the OSU Forest on the 36 Loop Trail to one of places where we usually see them. Fawn lilies (Erythronium, also called trout lilies or dog tooth violets) aren’t really rare around here, but they are very picky about exactly where they will thrive. It turns out that we were too early to see flowers, but the leaves were well up and many of the plants had visible buds.
Meanwhile, down on the flat land around Oak Avenue, the first narcissus blooms have appeared…
…and something is happening in the peony bed.
Friday, March 4, 2022
A little rain today, but also periods of sun. And a sunny weekend is forecast. M has space to fill in his newly expanded Hummock #1. He had meant to wait a few weeks, but in these conditions he cannot resist a trip to the nursery. He finds milkweed, tufted hair grass, a big Spirea douglasii and an 18” flowering currant. This last was outrageously priced, but it looked so healthy…Will it ever look this healthy again? Never mind. The two milkweed plants, on the other hand, didn’t look so good. In fact, they didn’t look like anything.
Saturday, March 5, 2022
Oregon Health Authority figures show that the rate of positive tests has fallen to under 5%, with the result that new case numbers are quite low. Hospitalizations are also down. Mask mandates are scheduled to be lifted on March 12th in Oregon, California and Washington.
It seems likely that the number of people dying from COVID is also down significantly, but there is still a long delay in the release of death counts. It appears that for any given month, it is taking OHA about two months to come up with anything like a complete report. In the most recent weeks, for example, OHA has reported few or no new December deaths. This leads us to hope, at least, that they’re done with that month. They don’t seem to be done with January, however. They’ve reported more than 20 ‘new’ January deaths in the last three days.
Sunday, March 6, 2022
We’re starting to think about our trip to Utah next week. The plan is to fly there, visit with L and J for a couple of days, and then take the California Zephyr to California. J and L live just outside of Heber City, northeast of Salt Lake City. We checked the weather forecast for Heber City. On the days immediately before and after our visit, it’s supposed to be pretty nice. But while we’re there the forecast is for highs around 30 and lows around 1. Yikes.
Monday, March 7, 2022
Grocery shopping day. We walked to and from the Co-op. That is, E walked to and drove from; M did the opposite. Beautiful day, cold in the morning, then sunny and warm most of the day. M went out weeding.
The COVID test positive rate in Oregon over the past seven days has fallen to around 3.5%. Nice.
Tuesday, March 8, 2022
We went again to the forest looking for fawn lilies. After two miles uphill what did we find? Well, the plants were up and budding but still no flowers. We went back down to the flats and consoled ourselves with lattes and Vietnamese baguettes.
Wednesday, March 9, 2022
Packing and other prep for tomorrow’s departure to Utah, where the weather forecast continues to be sunny and cold. E is wondering why we didn’t just get on a plane for Hawaii. M cannot answer this.
Thursday, March 10, 2022
A pleasant Delta flight from Eugene to Salt Lake City. The SLC airport has just expanded and it was a long, long walk to baggage claim. Good exercise. Our Turo host met us in the rental car area and took us to our car, which was in the parking garage right outside. We had decided to try Turo because regular car rental prices are way up these days, more than $100 a day for very basic cars. Our Turo car was $110 a day, but it was an all wheel drive Infiniti Q50 and everything about the process was easy. It was especially nice that with Turo you can pick up and drop off the car anywhere in town that suits you. For us that meant getting the car at the airport and dropping it off at the Amtrak station. In both cases the transfer took all of five minutes.
Once in the car, we headed out on I-80, through SLC and up Parleys Canyon. An hour later we were at J and L’s place on a mountainside above Heber City. As predicted, the weather was cold and clear. Here’s the view looking down the driveway from the front of their house.
Friday, March 11, 2022
The temperature that night was below zero, but J and L know what they are about, and we were very cozy. In the morning we had this view from our window. The tracks in the snow are probably from a rabbit, possibly the same rabbit that was taken by a gyrfalcon and partially eaten just outside J and L’s bedroom window.
We dawdled over breakfast, giving the world a chance to warm up a little. Then we bundled up and set out to see Provo Canyon.
We followed up on our walk with a Peruvian lunch at a place in Orem. Nice.
Saturday, March 12, 2022
Today J took us on a tour of the Park City area, where he has been a builder and site manager for many years. It was fun to see all the different homes that he has worked on. And Park City is an amazing place. The historic center of the city is fascinating, with steep hills and narrow streets. Lot sizes are tiny and preservation rules are strict, so houses are small, always in a traditional style, and all very expensive.
The historic section is a bargain, though, compared to the big ski in/out houses up on the mountain. Prices there range from seven million to forty-two million. Why so expensive? It’s not entirely location. Other factors are size (5k to 20k square feet), luxury features, sophisticated technology, and unusually high quality materials or construction techniques. J told us about the tile used for two bathrooms on one of his projects. The cost of the tile order was in the area of $170,000. At first that may sound high, but hey, it’s only $85,000 per room. Other added features, like a home movie theatre, can also run to six figures. Driveways and walkways can be heated to reduce or eliminate having to worry about snow removal. Eaves can also be heated to prevent icicles. The heating systems are computer controlled and have remote sensors to monitor surface moisture and temperature. They also have an internet connection so they can monitor local weather forecasts. Apparently the system is most effective if it turns the heat on before the snow starts falling.
M has poked around online and reports that there are other housing options in Park City. If–for some odd reason–you don’t need a vacation home in the historic district or a huge house next to a ski run, there are also lots of condos available. Amazingly, many of these are under a million dollars. When you think about it, though, that seems kinda cheap. Maybe those ones have bugs. You might be better off going for something else, like the 535 square foot condo that lists for $1,300,000.
After our tour we went and had pizza. Then it was back home to have a bit of a rest. And then, before we knew it, it was time to pack up and get back to town to catch a train. After we handed our Turo car back to the host, we masked up and went into the Salt Lake City Amtrak station. Utah, like Oregon, has lifted general mask mandates, but federal transportation related mandates remain in effect.
Saturday March 12, 10:30 PM to Sunday March 13, 1:30 AM
Our Amtrak station experience was….interesting. It was a small space, so whatever went on there was open for all to see. The first thing we couldn’t help overhearing was a fellow talking through the glass to the stationmaster about mask rules. He was wearing a blue blazer that made him look vaguely official, which we soon realized he was not. But he did seem to be a frequent traveler who knew a lot about the system. He wasn’t protesting the Amtrak mask mandate, but was talking about entry into some particular sports venue and wondering why he couldn’t just show his vaccination record. The station master was a cheerful fellow who listened politely and only occasionally made a remark of his own. Eventually the blue blazer guy went back to his seat and started talking to another passenger, who asked him what his job was. He said that he had to go to all of the games and take pictures and notes about what happened and then send them to the team social media coordinator. We had the distinct impression that while he may indeed do this, it was unlikely that it was any kind of job that a person would get paid for. But never mind that. Just then, a man came into the station without a mask. Our sports media person jumped up and said brightly “Didn’t you forget something?” The intruder was taken aback, but then, seeing that everyone else in the place was masked, decided that the best thing to do was apologize and go back outside.
Soon the station master came out from behind the counter and addressed the crowd, telling us that our train was delayed because of freight traffic on the line. It would likely be an hour and a half late. Hearing this did not cause anyone to get up and dance gleefully around the room. After a few moments, a young man went to the window and asked the station master “How did you get that information? I’ve been looking on the app and I can’t find it.” This caught M’s attention, for he too had downloaded the Amtrak app and had been confounded by how utterly useless it seemed to be. Unfortunately the stationmaster’s answer was inaudible. Next up to the window was a young woman checking a large suitcase. She wondered whether she would be able to get into it during the trip if she needed something. The station master advised her that this would not be possible and that she should make sure she had everything she needed. The woman said that maybe she should get out her prenatal vitamins, but she wasn’t sure. Soon after that several young hispanic men came in. They had limited English and when our blue blazer guy realized this, he started helping them out by telling them, in Spanish, about the train route and how it interfaced with various bus lines, which he seemed to know a lot about. His Spanish was rudimentary but effective, and pretty clearly he was of real help to them.
After another half an hour, the station master came out and again addressed the room. “I don’t really understand it,” he said, “but now it’s telling me there’s another delay. I’ve never seen this before, all the lights on the board just went red and now it says that the train won’t arrive here till 3:00 AM. But I know the train is already in Provo, so it doesn’t make any sense.” He raised his arms in a gesture of exasperated surrender. “We’ll just have see what happens.” It was terrible news, but a masterful performance. Probably none of the waiting passengers had ever had the exact experience of having all the lights on their board turn red, but we could relate.
Ten minutes later, a middle-aged woman came in sobbing. She went up to the stationmaster’s window and told him a pitiful story about how her Uber driver hadn’t been able to find the station and had just dumped her off in the middle of nowhere with her luggage, which she couldn’t carry by herself because she was disabled and she didn’t know where she was and it was just awful. The station master took this in stride and made sympathetic noises to calm her. Once her baggage was checked–how it had actually got to the station was unclear–the woman a took a seat and cried fitfully for a while longer before finally settling down. She then made a phone call, presumably to a family member, and started crying again. We all got to hear her side of the conversation as whoever it was finally helped her calm down. Then, a middle-aged man, who was sitting in our part of the station, turned to us and began–apropos of nothing–telling us about incidents he had witnessed involving unruly or disturbed passengers. He spoke rapidly and seemed to be switching from one story to another rather quickly. The only part we can remember was something like “…he was a big burly guy and those two black women conductors went up there and tried to drag him away from the driver, but he pushed them down. They were brave women…”
Soon after that, E decided she would like to go out and get some air. The station entrance had a little glass walled anteroom. To enter or leave you had to go through one door, walk through the anteroom and then go through another door. It happened that the blue-blazered sports reporter had gone out to stand in the anteroom, between the two doors, where he had taken off his mask. As E tried to edge past him, he held out his vaccination card and started talking again about how they really should have let him in to that sports event. E continued on past, saying she wanted to get some air outside. Alas, he followed her out because his story wasn’t done. He then wanted to have a nice loud conversation outside where E felt like he was trying to blow as much air in her direction as he possibly could. Somehow she slipped away.
Another hour went by and then, around about 1:00 AM, lo and behold, there was the train. It was two hours behind schedule but also two hours earlier than the worst prediction.
Sunday, March 13, 2022
We had a comfortable night and woke up just in time to see Elko, Nevada at 6:30 in the morning. We had gone through two time changes, one from standard time to daylight time and one from Mountain time to Pacific time. That meant that we had lost an hour and gained an hour over the course of the same night. At least…that’s what we think we did. Anyway, by 7:00 we were having a good breakfast in the dining car. Good food and coffee, but one ominous note: they had run out of orange juice and croissants. From Elko we could look forward to about 230 more miles of Nevada plus about 130 miles of California before reaching Sacramento, where we planned to catch a plane back to Oregon.
We arrived at Sacramento at around 7:15 PM, four hours late, so late that we were nervous about possibly missing our flight. But as it happened, everything went smoothly and it took less than an hour for us to get to the airport and make our way to the gate. From there we had a short flight to the San Francisco, so short that the cabin crew announced that there would be no time for beverage service. This made E grumpy. “They could have done something!” From SFO we flew to Eugene, where we had left our car, and finally arrived home at about 2:30 AM.
What did we think of the train? Generally it was pretty nice. It was slow and it was late. We had kind of expected that, but the reality was a bit much. Our particular train averaged just 40 mph over the course of our trip. Crossing the western U.S. at that speed definitely takes a while. The scenery on the route was really beautiful. Our room was small but comfortable and had a private toilet and shower. Once the beds were folded up, we had a comfortable single seat and also nice bench seat long enough for a person to nap on. Complementary coffee and bottled water were available right in our sleeper car, just steps away. All of the Amtrak personnel that we dealt with were very good. The dining car food, which is included in the sleeper fare, was pretty good, except when it wasn’t. Lots of things on the menu were not actually available and the system for seating people in the dining car was not actually a system.