We went up to Salem today, about forty miles away. We had a couple of things in mind, one them being that there is a good Hyundai dealer in Salem and we’ve been wanting to take a look at the Hyundai Ioniq 5. E loves her current Mazda CX-5, but she has been thinking a lot about getting either an EV or a hybrid for environmental reasons. Mazda has just started making a very good new CX hybrid, but it is only available in Europe and Asia.
So we decided to at least take a look at an all electric car. The Ioniq 5 has gotten rave reviews: for fast charging, for its 300 mile range, and for a lot of convenience and safety features. It’s about the size of a CX-5, which is exactly the size E likes. So. There we were taking a test drive in a brand new one, and guess what? It was awesome. Tons of interior space, more than sufficient power, great handling, nice styling. Lots of reviewers say that it is clearly superior to the comparably sized Tesla, not that we have any plans to ever drive a Tesla, cuz we don’t.
Anyway, the Ioniq 5 is wonderful, and not super expensive. So are we going to buy one? Hmm. Probably not. It is impressive, but we both find that it lacks personality. Maybe an EV is just too different, too much for us to get used to. We’ll have to keep thinking.
Another thing that has been on our minds lately is cake. We thought we might have a piece of cake to celebrate Becca’s birthday. Becca is amazing, still just 22 years old even though she was born 48 years ago. That’s a while back, but people still remember her and people still reach out to E at this time of year, for which we are very grateful. So our excuse for going to Salem was to look at a car, but our actual reason for going to Salem was to have a little ceremony at the Konditorei, one of E’s favorite places in the world. She had a piece of lemon cream cake; M had German chocolate. Neither of us could eat it all, had to take some home.
Tuesday, June 27
We went walking today on the Meadow Edge Loop near the top of Mary’s Peak. We started out just after noon and made our first stop at the Vietnamese Baguette to procure some sandwiches. Man they were busy! On the way out of town we stopped for a roadside picnic at Starker Arts Park. Then we went out Highway 34 and turned off onto the road that leads up the mountain. The weather at the top was sunny and pleasant; it was considerably cooler at 3,400 feet than it was in lowland Corvallis.
Down in the valley the wild iris have come and gone. Here they are still looking nice.
Here are a couple of late violets. Their leaves are the largish round ones. Also visible are oxalis–the shamrocky things–and a couple of fern fronds that appear to be lying down for some reason.
There were lots of Boloria butterflies flitting around. This generation will soon be laying eggs, which will hatch out in a few months. The caterpillars will dine exclusively on violet leaves.
A view to the north.
A view to the west. The ocean is just beyond the far mountains. Being the highest peak around, Mary’s Peak is home to a lot of telecommunication equipment. Many have suggested that the various sheds and antennas ruin the view and should be removed. It has been decided, though, that they are important and must remain. But that only applies to reality. For a digital photo, they can be erased.
We have also been talking a bit more about what we would like to have in the way of cars…
Wednesday, June 28
E had lunch with her THEPAJ group at Gathering Together Farms. She had a teensy cup of carrot soup, two small pieces of bread, and a glass of water with no ice. (Now some people might be of the opinion that her actual meal was not of sufficient quantity to justify the use of the word lunch. But we are casual about such things, so we’ll let it go. Especially since she did buy 2 GTF chocolate covered spud nuts to be eaten later.–Ed.)
Here is the GTF restaurant and farmstand. Don’t let its looks fool you, GTF is a big operation these days. And those chocolate covered spudnuts are to die for.
M, meanwhile, went back up to Salem. Hmm. What was he up to? Whatever it was, he was gone half the day.
Thursday, June 29
E had a Better Bones and Balance class today and it was not via Zoom. M dropped her off at at the community college at 11:00. It was her first in-person exercise class since the pandemic and she liked it a lot. The teacher was excellent, but alas, she was just a sub and E won’t meet the real teacher until next week.
M picked E up after class and they headed off to Salem. As planned, M had brought small sandwiches and juice so that they could have lunch along the way. The sandwiches had to be small because we planned to visit Baskin-Robbins. While the Baskin-Robbins in Corvallis closed down during the pandemic and was replaced by a COVID test center in the same location, Salem has not just one, but four(!) active B-R’s.
But before we could get the ice cream, we had a more onerous errand to perform. We had to pick up the Jaguar. And once that was done, we had to choose which of the Salem B-R’s we were going to, get its address into our respective phones, and drive to it separately. By time we got there, we were sure we deserved a reward.
Friday, June 30
2014 F-Type
Lots of chores today related to the car: bluetooth pairing to M’s phone, driving position memory settings for both of us, radio presets for both, and the most challenging problem, the process for teaching the car about the codes for the garage door opener. When that was done, we rolled up our Afghani wool runner and threw it in the trunk. M got the rug in Yemen thirty years ago and by now it really needed fringe end repair. E decided we needed to take it to the Atiyeh Brothers rug shop in Eugene. (What a nice place that turned out to be!) So off we went in the new car, first to the rug place and then to dinner at a Thai place called Blu Mist Restaurant & Bar that E had tried once but M never had. It was wonderful.
M drove the forty miles down to Eugene; E drove us back home, her first time behind the wheel of the F-Type. E had really liked riding in M’s previous car, the blue Porsche, but she hadn’t enjoyed driving it very much because it had a manual transmission. She is a lot happier with the F-Type’s automatic.
Saturday, July 1
Eve went to see our friend Jo, who is recovering from shoulder surgery and cannot yet drive. They did some errands and took a walk in Willamette Park. While they were out, E looked for a birthday card for our neighbor who is turning 90 tomorrow. She wanted a “Happy 90th” card but had to settle for one 40th and one 50th. These she has cleverly combined into one card and has added a plus sign and an equals sign. Since the recipient is a retired math teacher, she is fairly confident that he will figure it out.
Sunday, July 2
We walked a bit this morning, before the heat. We went to a place we hadn’t been to before in an obscure corner of the OSU Arboretum. We walked a quarter mile nature trail and also visited a memorial to nine Oregon firefighters who died fighting a wild fire in Colorado almost exactly twenty-nine years ago. Lately someone has pinned poems to some of the wooden beams of the structure. The poems all deal with nature in one way or another and include works by William Stafford and Mary Oliver. They were a treat.
On the trail we heard a Swainson’s Thrush
In the afternoon we went to the aforementioned birthday party for our 90 year old neighbor and had a piece of cake. Wonderful way to spend a Sunday.
When we hike, we always like to have a small piece of chocolate and a little nip of something to finish off our lunch. You can imagine how stressed we were to discover that one of our two drink cups was badly cracked. We couldn’t just replace it from where we got it (Taco Time) because that source has switched to environmentally sound paper cups. Much as we applaud that change, it left us high and dry when it came to wee dram sized cups. What were we to do? We checked online and found that we could get either 125 cups for $2.55 (just over two cents per cup) or 2,500 cups for 27.99 (just over one cent per cup). Clearly, the large order would be a better deal. But what would we do with the 2,499 extra cups? How often do we go hiking with that many friends? Hmm. Fortunately, one of our local supermarkets has saved the day. E noticed that the store was giving away tiny samples of super expensive cheese and that each sample came in its own 1-oz. translucent plastic Solo cup! Whoopee. Now we have three good cups, the oldest one being slightly yellowed but still in good working order.
Old set on the left; new on the right.
Saturday, May 6
Lots of yard work today. E replanted a succulent that hadn’t been doing well and also worked to keep her Russian sage from being smothered by the weird, super prolific blue flowered plants, the ones that go crazy this time of year. Here are some of them trying–hopefully in vain–to strangle our red rhododendron.
Sunday, May 7
M went out and tried again to drive between Harlan, just south of Highway 20, and the Falls Creek fish hatchery, just north of Highway 34. He had tried it from north to south last time but came out in the wrong place. This time he tried going from south to north, but didn’t get anywhere at all because Falls Creek Road was closed just three and a half miles in. He found some consolation by driving up into the Alsea Falls area and discovering a new way to get from there to Dawson.
Dawson, by the way, is home to the old Hull-Oakes lumber mill. For a long time, Hull-Oakes was the last steam powered sawmill in the country. It’s not primarily steam powered anymore, but the mill continues in operation and has an old-timey feeling. The steam power system is still in place ready to start up again at a moment’s notice. (Or maybe a day or two’s notice, but you get the idea.) There’s a nice video about Hull-Oakes here. You can follow the process from log truck to log pond, to cutting bed, to lumber yard. Incoming logs are hand measured and nothing is computerized.
E took a long walk in our little forest close to home and later worked on re-reading The Lincoln Highway, which is up for discussion in her book club this month.
Monday, May 8
We went on a tour of an area managed by Greenbelt Land Trust, our local land protection organization. The tour took place on a protected area of four hundred and four acres along the Willamette River about twenty miles south of Corvallis. It’s called Harkens Lake and is the result of conservation easements purchased by GLT from the owners, one portion in 2011 and another, smaller one in 2017. Both sections are former agricultural land that is being restored with the aim of re-creating a natural riverside forest that includes backwaters and seasonal wetlands. GLT estimates that this will not be fully achieved for another 150 to 200 years, but they’ve got a start.
In this satellite photo the conservation area shows up as a large, roughly triangular shape in the middle of the picture. Near the bottom of the photo, where two rows of trees come together to make one point of the triangle, there is a gate that now blocks the road. There were about two dozen of us on the tour and we all parked our vehicles in a wide space just in front of that gate. We had a brief introduction to the project from our GLT tour host, who then introduced Jim Cassidy, an OSU instructor, farm manager and soil scientist, who had agreed to come along and give us some information about soil: soil in general, local soils in particular, and the changes in soil that result from transitioning agricultural land back to natural forest.
Then we started off, walking around the gate and heading northeast paralleling the river. The small light colored area on our left was the most recently acquired easement area and had been replanted with native species just three or four years ago. Our road veered left, away from the river. Soon we came to a restored area from the oldest easement area. The horizontal line in the center of the photo marks the border between the old and new sections. The plants and trees in the older part are darker green in the photo.
At several points on the walk, we stopped to get mini lectures on various soil related topics. The basic nature of Willamette Valley soils is that they were deposited in the valley by gigantic floods that occurred at the end of the last ice age, from 13,000 to 15,000 years ago. These floods were caused by the collapse of ice dams that were up to two miles high. When one of these collapsed due to warming temperatures, a lake the size of Lake Superior would suddenly be released and go rushing westward toward the Pacific Ocean, carving out some incredible geologic features along the way. The floods eventually came down the Columbia Gorge–creating the Gorge as they did so–and most of the water and debris went west out to sea. The floods were strong enough to carry massive boulders along with them and it is now possible to find large pieces of stone from Montana and British Columbia on the ocean floor fifty miles west of the current mouth of the Columbia River.
On their way to the Pacific Ocean, the floods passed the mouth of the Willamette at what is now the city of Portland. At this point a small portion of the flood waters spread south down into the Willamette valley. This small portion was enough to carry so much silt and gravel that when the last flood receded, the original landscape was covered with a hundred or more feet of new soil and the formerly rugged terrain was dead flat. So the first thing to know about Willamette Valley soil is that it all comes from somewhere else. “See this?” asks Jim, holding up a rock he just picked up from a ditch bank. “This is metamorphic rock and the nearest natural metamorphic formations are in British Columbia.”
The small red pin in the photo marks the spot where we stopped and watched as Jim dug down about ten inches into the soil and brought up a shovelful for us to examine. To examine it properly requires running it through your hands to feel the size of the granules and get a sense of the relative proportions of the basic soil components of sand, silt and clay. To get a really good idea, you need to put some in your mouth and feel it with your lips and tongue, as he demonstrated.
Jim is a wonderful scientist and teacher, but he also has another gig. Before he went to college, he was a bass player and founding member of the band Information Society, which had a string of hits in the nineties and which has continued–in various incarnations, all including Jim–to make music unto the present day. That’s Jim in the middle of the photo below.
Tuesday, May 9
Partly cloudy today with highs in the 60’s–very different from yesterday’s cold and damp.
Wednesday, May 10
Lots of garden chores these days, much of it involving unwanted grass or removing unwanted length of grass.
Thursday, May 11
Tertulia, exercise class, gardening, all that stuff. But also, we took E’s wedding ring to the jeweler’s to have it rebuilt: new half shank, restored mill points, and restored flower design to the extent possible. It may not be done in time for our anniversary, but that’s okay. This has needed doing for a long time. The ring belonged to M’s grandmother, Hazel, so it has sentimental value in addition to its good looks.
We got a take-out dinner from Kahlo Naser, the new Syrian restaurant. The food was delicious, plus we didn’t have to worry about their disorganized service and we could comfortably have a beer with dinner. Nice.
Friday, May 12
Ack, more gardening. The weather is getting much warmer. We work only in the mornings. It’s too hot in the afternoon. And the forecast for Sunday is 90. Yikes. Fortunately, we’re planning to be at the coast on Sunday; and the forecast there is for just the high seventies.
Saturday, May 13
With the continuing warm weather, we have to transition to summer mode. Part of that is getting the patio into shape. We took the cover off our big umbrella and raised it up to where it needs to be. The mechanism is stiff from injuries stemming from a fall last year, so it wasn’t all that easy, but we persevered, in spite of our resident hornet who makes her nest in the top of the umbrella post. E also uncovered and cleaned the patio table and chairs.
For lunch we went to visit our friend J, who recently suffered a broken shoulder from a fall of her own, which happened while she was dog walking. She’s having shoulder replacement surgery next Friday and is going to be one-armed for quite a while. We took her a deli lunch and sat with her in her back yard in the shade. She has two big old black locust trees that are just now leafing out. Beautiful to look up through. If we had some actual trees in our yard, we wouldn’t have to mess with our cranky umbrella.
Sunday, May 14, Mothers Day
In the morning we went off to meet A for a Mother’s Day brunch at Local Ocean over in Newport. As we neared the coast we realized that the weather was not getting any cooler. Au contraire, at 11:45 in the morning, it was 92! So much for forecasts. This is close to the all-time record high for Newport. It’s definitely warmer than either of us has ever experienced there.
But Local Ocean was comfortably cool. And the food was awesome as usual. E and A shared a big bowl of LO’s famous Brazilian seafood stew with the coconut milk base. M had ling cod fettuccine with andouille sausage slices and melted manchego. Ooof. We had fun talking about Ze Frank and his True Facts videos, which we had all just discovered. The videos are very funny and very informative, occasionally too informative, showing you more than you might want to know. If you are not familiar with Ze Frank’s work, you should become so immediately. But do NOT begin with his video about hippopotami. Try owls instead.
After lunch we went to Ona Beach and put our feet in the river to cool off a bit. Later in the day we met again for dinner at a brewpub in the town of Depot Bay. The bay itself covers only 6 acres and is said to be the smallest navigable bay in the world.
The boat docking scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was filmed in Depot Bay.
After dinner, we took a walk to watch the sunset.
By the time we got back to Newport, it was dark and we had some trouble finding our hotel. Was that because we are old and easily confused? Well…yeah. But you know…at a certain point we realized that it wasn’t just dark, it was really quite dark. Was that because we had somehow been blindfolded by evil spirit pranksters? Well…no, it wasn’t that dark. But there was a problem: the power was out all along the seaside part of the city. So, once back in our room, we had the annoyance of no air conditioning for a couple of hours…
Monday, May 15
When we woke this morning and looked out our window, we found a different world: fog over the sea and no sun anywhere. The local temperature was fifty-five degrees. Now that’s exactly what we would have expected in Newport at this time of year. It made the previous day seem unreal, as if it had been a dream. Or maybe just a brief vision of the future.
It’s rainy and cool these days, with nighttime temperatures in the low thirties and highs in the forties.
Tuesday, April 18
E went to her monthly book club meeting. They talked about The Fox and I: an uncommon friendship by Catherine Raven. E liked the book because of the fox, of course, but also because of the author’s knowledge of nature. For next month they’re reading The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles.
Wednesday, April 19
Today we went into the Cascades for some snowshoeing. It seems late in the year for it, but it’s been cold this year. We went to a place called Lava Lakes, which is just two hours from home and sometimes has hardly any snow at all. But there was plenty today, with quite a bit more falling as we went along. It was nice: fresh snow on the trail and no one else around.
We wandered off the main trail and sat down for lunch…
…which included dessert. Note the crack in one of our cups. They’re from Taco Time but TT doesn’t have them any more. Will we never be able to replace this one?
It was only snowing lightly during lunch; on the way back to the trailhead there was a lot more.
Just before the end, E made an angel.
Thursday, April 20
Back down in the real world, E went walking with N from her book club. They started at the fairgrounds, walked around the base of Bald Hill (which has not been bald for at least 50 years), and then headed east. They did a little of the trail toward Fitton Green before turning back. E says that she got 12,000 steps. Yo.
Friday, April 21
Rain in the morning, easing off at around 10:30. That was about when we started a walk in the OSU forest, our goal being to check on the progress of the fawn lilies. It turns out that progress is slow.
We saw lots that were just getting ready to open…
…but only one that was starting to unfold.
Saturday, April 22
Much warmer weather today, with partly sunny skies and a high near seventy. In our yard, bed #1 is putting on something of a show: the flowering currants are in full bloom, and the dwarf irises have just popped out. The raggedy purple tulips have been out for a while; other tulips are still unfolding.
Sunday, April 23
The warm weather pulls us out into the yard. M is replacing a dying blueberry and rehabbing the area around it. E is dealing with grass incursions in her succulent bed in the back yard just outside our window. In the front she is expanding the range of her thyme. She has also been stocking the squirrel feeder with peanuts, mostly because she wants to keep the squirrels away from the bird feeder.
The feeder works pretty well. When the squirrel steps down onto the lower board, it pushes the roof board up, allowing access to the cupboard. Birds don’t weigh enough to make it work. It drives the bluejays crazy. They can see the nuts through the glass, but it’s really hard for them to get the top to open.
Also this week, some very sad news from Spain. E’s dear friend Margie passed away on Thursday. She took a big chunk of E’s heart with her, but we are grateful to have had a last visit with her this winter.
On E’s birthday, we had one overriding objective: a visit to the Chocolatería San Ginés to have chocolate con churros. Here’s what that might look like:
The idea is to dip the long fried things into the thick chocolate.
First, though, we had to take care of a few other details, such as shopping for a birthday present. We took the Metro down to the heart of Madrid, where there are lots of stores, all quite convenient to the Chocolatería San Ginés. First we shopped for a purse. E is very particular about purses, so naturally we took a look at Hermes, Gucci, and Valentino. But E didn’t see anything she liked. For one thing, their purses didn’t have enough zipper pockets. So we went to the Corte Ingles, a well-known Spanish department store. And eventually she found the perfect thing. It didn’t cost $6,000, not even $600, more like $60. M was sort of disappointed, but he got over it. Then we went to the Apple Store and got E a new phone case. Here’s the loot:
Then it was time for lunch. We met our friends L and M as agreed, but the restaurant where we had planned on going had a huge line, so we set off for the Coffee Central de Jazz, which was more accessible.
No jazz going on in the afternoon, but a group called the Bobby Martínez Band were scheduled to play later that evening.
Finally it was time for the main event. We went to San Ginés Street, stood in line for 25 minutes or so, and finally were ushered down to a tiny table in the basement.
The San Ginés has a number of different serving rooms, which are all jammed with patrons, pretty much all the time. It’s insane.
Tuesday, February 28
(Before we continue, readers should be warned that another person whose name begins with M is about to appear. Which is ridiculous, but there you are and something must be done. We have been forced to amend our style book to allow the use of last name initials as well as first name initials. And Spanish women usually have two last names and hence three total initials, which is something to keep in mind. Ready? Okay, here we go.)
We’ve already mentioned one friend of Eve’s from her days in Chicago. She was the M who took us up to Leon for the day. In our new style, she will be referred to as MTC. Today we got to meet another old Chicago friend when MB drove over from Paris and stopped in to Madrid. MTC and MB have kept up their connection over the years, but E had not seen MB for 51 years. She was pleased to find that his sense of humor remained unchanged, and issued him an invitation to make a special appearance in the Laughter Yoga class in the future.
It was decided that the four of us would go together to the the town of Ávila for the day. We left at ten in the morning, traveling in MB’s hybrid SUV, a fine vehicle for such an expedition. The drive up took a little over an hour. Like most medieval cities, Ávila was a walled town. Unlike most similar cities, Ávila’s walls are intact and still surround the oldest part of the city. When we arrived, our first stop was the cathedral, which is of course inside the old city walls.
The sandstone from which the building was constructed has a lot of iron content, which creates a striking effect.
The cathedral also has its own line of yoyos.
We had our midday meal at a restaurant called Almacén, that had been recommended to MTC by a friend who has a house in Ávila. Almacén was a ways out of town on the highway leading to Salamanca and was barely noticeable if you were just driving by. But we found it.
At Almacén we had a view of the south walls of Ávila and also a long, slow, and very excellent meal. MB chose a rosé champagne to go with our starters and a twenty-one year old Tempranillo to go with our main course. Both were delicious.
On the way home from Ávila we stopped to see El Escorial, the largest renaissance building in the world. It was built by order of King Phillip the Second in the mid 16th Century, partly because he wanted a summer place where he could escape the intense heat of Madrid summers. Besides being a royal residence, the building also contains a monastery, a library, a museum, a basilica, a university, a school, and a hospital.
You can see a little bit of the Escorial behind these people…
….and here’s what distant Madrid looks like from there.
Wednesday, March 1
Among the presents that E got for her birthday were a couple of tickets to a special art exhibition at the Royal Palace of Madrid, and today was the day. Off we went, down into the Metro, emerging 40 minutes later at a stop just in front of the Madrid Opera House. The Royal Palace was just a short walk away. It’s a huge place and our first problem was to figure out where the heck the entrance was. Eventually we spied a large mass of people off in the distance and that, of course, was the place.
There were hundreds of people waiting to enter. Some were there for the art exhibition like us, but there were also many, many others who merely wished to tour the palace. Besides the building and the decor, visitors can see paintings by Caravaggio, Goya and Velasquez as well as frescos and museum collections of porcelain, watches, furniture, and weapons. Also on hand is a complete Stradivarius string quartet—two violins, cello and viola. Stradivarius gave the set to King Felipe V in 1702. E once took a tour of the Royal Palace and remembers that it was amazing.
As mentioned before, the Royal Palace is a big place, big enough to have its own cathedral at one end of the courtyard. Here’s a picture of that.
But we were there to see the art of Joaquin Sorolla, a Spanish painter who was born in Valencia in on 1863, on February 27, the same day as someone else we know. In addition to several dozen paintings, the special exhibit had three more parts: a detailed timeline of Sorolla’s life, a special projection room where his paintings were enhanced with animation and projected giant sized onto all four walls at once, and finally a virtual reality portion where we had to don a special headset with heavy binocular-like glasses. That part was unlike any experience we had had before. We were told that we could touch anything we saw except for green statues, because the green statues were actual people. E proceeded to try to grab several butterflies which eluded capture by turning into soap bubbles and floating away. Then she collided with a green statue which spoke with M’s voice. At that point we walked off a bridge and came back to reality. What would Sorolla have thought of all this?
A Walk on the Beach (1909) is perhaps Sorolla’s most famous painting and it was among the ones we saw. We also saw Sewing the Sail, 1896
Sorolla is especially noted for beautifully luminous colors. He liked to paint by the seaside and some of his most powerful works are of fishermen and their boats on the beach in Valencia. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Sorolla was extremely successful during his lifetime. One of Sorolla’s admirers was Archer Huntington of New York, who commissioned him to produce a series of large scale paintings to be installed at the Hispanic Society of America in New York. This series, called Visions of Spain, has become part of the permanent collection at the Society’s Library and Museum. To mark the 100th anniversary of Sorolla’s death, the Hispanic Society is just now collaborating with the National Arts Club to mount an exhibition about the creation of the Visions series. That exhibition will run until April 25th at the NAC.
Thursday, March 2
Were we ready for more high culture today? Nope. Had to do laundry and other household chores. Then at noon E went off to have a delicious lunch with MTC followed by a visit to MTC’s hairdresser. The results are quite attractive, but E needs to get used to the look before we publish a photo. M, meanwhile, took the subway four stops down to Mar de Cristal in search of allergy medicine. The stuff he likes is available in Spain under the brand name Alercina, but it seems that not every pharmacy stocks it. Mar de Cristal is a big shopping area and M was hoping to find it there. And even if he couldn’t find the medicine, he could have lunch at the kebab place.
Friday, March 3
Our first order of business today was to make train and hotel arrangements for a trip to Cordoba and Granada. That took three excruciating hours. Our first mistake was to try to buy train tickets online using the RENFE website. Aargh! So much data entry, so many choices among unfamiliar options. So many mysterious roadblocks. We could have rented a car! We could have flown! Why are we doing this at all? But we got there in the end, mostly because we abandoned the Renfe website and used Trainline instead. The train is considerably faster than driving and considerably cheaper than flying. The only flaw in our reservations is that we ended up with one leg of the journey where we won’t be sitting together—close, but not together. And what was our reward for all this work? We got to go grocery shopping.
Later in the day, around 4:30, we went down to our little shopping area on Añastra Street. E was in search of a pedicure. She had her eye on a nail shop that we had passed before and now she was ready to walk in and ask for an appointment. Such things can be really daunting in a foreign country, whether you speak the language or not. So in she went, while M loitered outside. She was able to get an appointment for 5:30 that very day. So we sat down to wait at a cafe, outside in the sun, and had tea. In the end all was well with the toenails.
Saturday, March 4
Today we went to look at more pictures, this time at the Reina Sofia Museum. The Reina Sofia specializes in 20th century art and has a large number of Surrealist and Cubist paintings and sculpture. They have a number of Picasso paintings and sculptures, quite a few Dalis, and bunch of other things including photos by Man Ray and this nice Yves Tanguy.
Belomancie 1, 1927
The most famous painting at the Reina Sofia is Picasso’s Guernica. It’s amazing. For one thing, it’s huge—12 feet high and 25 and half feet long. The subject is grim—the bombing of a Spanish town by German bombers during the Spanish Civil War—and execution is pure Picasso. People just stand there and stare at it till their feet get tired.
When our feet got tired we went into a small theater that was playing Luis Buñuel’s film The Golden Age. It’s a silent film in black and white and it’s really odd. The two of us were laughing, but everyone else in the room was meh. Guess you have to be old.
Of course there was more in the Reina Sofia than we had the strength to see, so at 2:00 we decided to head home and get some lunch at a place in our neighborhood. That sounded easy enough. We got onto the Metro, our trusty Line 1, which should have taken us almost all the way home. But instead, our journey came to a stop when the train reached a place called Cuatro Caminos. As the doors opened, we heard an announcement. Our train would not be going further and all passengers had to get off. No mention was made of what passengers might do once they got off. We decided to part ways with the Metro and headed for the surface. Once there, we were glad we did. Cuatro Caminos is an area of Madrid that Eve used to frequent and even after 40 years she recognized the area well enough. Though much had changed, it was nice to relive some memories. After a short stroll down a boulevard called Raimundo Fernandez Villaverde, we got a taxi, which took us to the restaurant that we had intended to go to in our own neighborhood.
It was 2:45 by then and El Rincón de Carlos was really hopping. The atmosphere was lively with lots of banter between the waiter/manager and the customers. One older woman told the waiter—in a voice loud enough to be heard by most of the customers—that she wanted the eggs stuffed with tuna for her first course and to make sure she got lots of tuna. The waiter replied, quick as a flash, that the stuffed eggs were already made and she would get them the way they were. This got a laugh from the crowd. After a moment, the waiter continued, saying “This is not a gas station, you can’t just fill it up as far as you want.” This got another laugh and throughout the exchange the old woman was grinning as if that was exactly the response she had hoped to get. And then of course E had to join in the banter. So it was a fun time, and the meal, though slowish, was very good. It seems to us that this would be a great neighborhood to live in for a year or two. We could get a real apartment and little car of some kind…
It was a beautiful springlike day at that point and walking home was a pleasure. One the way M finally got some pictures of our resident parrots. They are quite beautifully green, but they are also an invasive species whose numbers are growing rapidly all over Madrid.
The city government has a plan to deal with the problem, a plan which does not involve trapping them all and relocating them to some parrot paradise outside of town. No.
Sunday, March 5
Went out for Sunday breakfast to a bakery restaurant that we hadn’t tried before. They had tons of tempting stuff, more than we’ll ever get around to trying. E did fulfill her wish to have a palmera de mermelada de melocotón, a palm tree shaped pastry with peach jam. It lived up to her fond memory of it.
We can see that the weather is turning. Warmer and wetter, says the forecast. We felt a few drops on our way home from the bakery. Tomorrow we head south.
Today’s excursions were all on foot. We needed a few things to make our lives more complete and it was time to see if we could find them. In the morning we walked to a little shopping area about a half mile west of us. The weather was coldish, 40 degrees and windy, but the area we walked through was nice. Much of our route was along the street shown below, with its park-like center and widely separated lanes of traffic.
When we arrived, we found a pharmacy, a tobacconist, a couple of boutiques, three different bakeries, a nail shop, an herbalist, and an interesting looking little book store, which we did not go into for fear of losing our focus for the day. Instead, we went into the pharmacy and got some allergy medicine and sundry other things.
In the same area, there are also three different cafe/bar/restaurants. We decided that we should try one of them for lunch. At this point, however, it was only 11:45, which is way too early for lunch around these parts. So we took our purchases back home, rested a bit, and then went out again.
Of the three, we decided to try El Rincón de Carlos (Carlos’s Corner) for our first attempt at a local restaurant. We got there at 1:45, just in time to get a table before the rush. That was good because we saw as we entered that the place was quite small, with space for just six or seven tables. The daily lunch special, called the Menu del Día, consisted of two main courses, dessert and a drink: plato primero, plato segundo, postre, y bebida. There were four choices for the first course, four choices for the second and four choices for dessert. For us, just ordering was a laborious process. One difficulty was that the day’s options were written on a chalkboard in some kind of crazy all caps script that we found almost impossible to read. There was only one waiter, Carlos himself, and he was patient with us. The food was very good and was accompanied by a couple of crusty bread rolls and a bowl of awesome green olives. We had flan for dessert and that was awesome too. Besides the fact that the food was delicious and reasonably priced, E was super impressed that there was a table cloth, something hard to find in USA these days.
From outside, El Rincón de Carlos wasn’t all that attractive…
…but the lunch was good. E’s second course is in the foreground; M’s is behind.
Wednesday, February 8
Today we visited M and M, more of Eve’s dear friends whom she has known since the era when she lived in Spain during the seventies. The trip involved another train ride into the area northwest of the city. We’re getting better at this train business and this trip was a little more relaxed. M and M met us at the station and we immediately set off on a walk around the little town where they live. The Guardarrama River runs through the town and the site has a long history of settlement. We crossed the river on a modern foot bridge that was built immediately above the crumbling stone arches of a much older bridge.
The desire to see M and M was one of the main reasons we came to Spain at this time. It was quite wonderful to see them again.
Thursday, February 9
Today we went down to the oldest part of Madrid. There we met up with our friend M, who took us on a lunchtime tour of the area. We walked around through the narrow streets, sometimes treading on pavement first laid down centuries ago. Madrid was occupied by the Romans at one time, and later by the Arabs. We saw a section of wall dating from the twelfth century and passed through a place once known as La Puerta Cerrada, the main entrance to the city during the Muslim times that was shut tight each evening and not opened till morning. We also passed by an eatery called El Botín, which first opened in 1725 and which holds the Guinness world record as the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the world.
Our peregrinations were punctuated, of course, by stops at four different cafes featuring different sorts of treats. The first was a place called Alabardero; we don’t remember the rest exactly. This was partly due to the fact that each of the first three stops included a drink of some kind: first a small vermouth, then a small beer, and then a glass of wine.
Here’s the front part of Alabardero. If you go there, ask for the Vermut de Grifo, Vermouth on tap.The food was all good, but by the third stop we were getting full, so we decided to share just one serving of this over the top Spanish tortilla.
Friday, February 10
We went downtown again to day and had lunch with E’s friend Marga, who took us to a place called LasTortillas de Gabino. This was a definitely a higher class of food that we got from El Rincón. And they were pretty serious about tablecloths. Whenever a table was reset with a clean one, a waiter had to come out with an hot iron and smooth it down. Nice big iron, too. Anyway, our long, relaxed meal was amazing.
On a much more serious note, our walk from the Metro to the restaurant took us past the Turkish Embassy, where relief supplies were being collected to be sent to the areas affected by the earthquake.
That’s the Turkish flag in the upper left.
M took this picture the second time we passed by. At this point the boxes and bags were being loaded into a van, which presumably would deliver them to the airport.
Teams from Spain are in Turkey helping with rescue efforts. Spanish TV has some heartrending video.
Saturday, February 11
Lots of activity today, maybe too much. E has been on a quest for slippers and warmer pajamas. Spain has gone into energy conservation mode due to the effects of the Ukraine war and our building is heated no higher than 67 or 68. So off we went to a shopping center in the Mar de Cristal neighborhood, which is just four Metro stops away. It turned out to be just what we needed. There was a huge Carrefour hipermercado and a bunch of smaller stores. And of course there was a cafe where we could stop for a snack. This being Saturday, the Carrefour was jammed with shoppers. But the lines moved pretty quickly—we were in one of the quick checkout lanes—and it was amazing to see such a huge operation going full throttle.
Later on we did some food shopping closer to home and tried to rest up for our big evening adventure, which was going out to a movie in the downtown area. We met our friend M (there are lots of M’s in this story) who lives downtown and who had already gotten the tickets. We went to a large movie theatre called Verdi and saw The Fablemans. It was in English with Spanish subtitles and we all liked it a lot.
When we came out of the theatre at 9:30 pm, Madrid Saturday night was in full swing. There were lots of people on the streets and the cafes were crowded—both inside and outside, where people young and old were drinking, eating and talking all bundled up against the cold. We finally found a cafe with a free table indoors and did our share of the appropriate activities. M really wanted to take a video of the place, to catch the noise level, the very Spanish faces, all of the animation and the gesturing, the clothes and the hats, the serious expressions of the hardworking waiters. But that would have been a little too weird, even for M.
Sunday, February 12
We got home at 11:30 Saturday night, at which point our health apps had recorded more than 15,000 steps for the day. Sunday needed to involve a little less walking! Our biggest accomplishment for the day was doing a load of laundry, which is an all day affair. Although our apartment has a washing machine, drying is another story. It involves hanging things in the living room on a rack in front of the radiator, and then rotating them from time to time to hasten the process.
Aside from that, we ate three meals in and did our packing for our next outing. The plan is to pick up a rental car in the morning and drive north to the Pais Vasco, the Basque part of Spain. More on that next week, assuming we actually manage to do it.
Until then, we have this report on the canine situation, which has improved vastly since E’s times here in the 1970s. According to one of our local sources, there are more dogs than children in Madrid.
E found joy in the company of Buddy, a rescue dog adopted by friend L.
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.
The plants are quite small, but they’re easy to spot due to the distinctive color pattern on their leaves.
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.
Potential is what we’ve got here. Lots of potential.
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.
On the way we passed the lower part of Deer Creek Reservoir with Mt. Timpanogos in the background.
Bridal Veil Falls
Another view from our walk along the Provo River.
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.
We took this picture as we were walking out to board. It was a cold clear night with a mostly full moon.
The beds were all prepared…
…and the passengers were glad to be there.
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 made good time across Nevada, traveling at 60-70 miles per hour much of the way.
Winnemucca, Nevada is one of our favorite towns. (In a way.) It was nice to pass through on the train for a change.
East of Reno, the rail line follows along the Truckee River for a while.
Farther east, the line heads up toward Emigrant Gap and Donner Pass…
…and then begins a long descent into Central California. Those two cars at the back of the train are coach class. Coach fare from Salt Lake City to San Francisco is $86.
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.
Oregon’s first COVID diagnosis was made on March 1, 2020. The Pandemic Diary database began tracking deaths on March 27. As can be seen below, the death toll for the first four months was relatively low in Oregon, averaging around two deaths per day. In July, things got a little worse; in late November they got a lot worse. These days, during the most recent ten-day period, the death rate has fallen to early November levels. New case numbers and test positive percentages have also been low. So…lot’s of good signs.
In our town today we had warm spring weather. E busied herself with plant care, garage organizing, Zoom yoga, and grocery ordering; then she relaxed with a long and joyful phone talk with an old friend. The only dark spot was that it was her night to cook. She got through it somehow.
M saw an eye doctor today, a process that required two separate visits to the office. On the first visit the receptionist refused to allow him to see the doctor! This on the flimsiest of pretexts, something about how he had arrived an hour early. Incredible. Of course M persevered. He went to AutoZone and got some windshield washer fluid and filled up the tank on the Mazda, which made the yellow warning light go off. Ha! Then he went back to the eye doctor. In the afternoon he went out and worked on his paving project.
Tuesday, March 2 Deaths 2,225 (+13) New cases 269
More beautiful weather. M went shopping early at Mother of Markets. Except for the usual wincing at the check-out counter when the total was announced, it was a pleasant experience. E went to see her friend S and came back with Pepper, who requested a visit to the Chambeck day spa. In response to an overwhelming number of requests (one), we are posting another photo of this charismatic canine.
M worked outside until completely exhausted–which didn’t take all that long–and then had lunch. After a repast of chips, salsa and leftover steelhead, he went into the study to install our new cable modem. That process was fraught with peril, as it requires surviving for a certain amount of time WITH NO INTERNET WHATSOEVER. And what if the new modem didn’t work? And then what if the old modem–understandably bitter over being cast aside–refused to work either? Land sakes alive! Fortunately the process was not as terrible as it might have been. Whew.
Wednesday, March 3 Deaths 2,252 (+27) New cases 276
We woke up to thick fog this morning. M went out to do an errand and reports that traffic was slow and conditions eerie. By 11:00 or so the fog had mostly burned off, after which it was another fine day. E did Zoom yoga and later went to fetch her grocery order from the Co-op. There have been some communication issues and E is thinking it’s time to go back to doing her Co-op shopping the old fashioned way. M worked on his paver project and did some lawn mowing. In late afternoon E went to the plant nursery and bought some native tufted grasses. We plan to put a couple in the front and a couple in the back.
Thursday, March 4 Deaths 2,284 (+32) New cases 392
Quite a high number of Oregon COVID deaths in the last three days, averaging over twenty per day. But the daily tolls have always varied a lot, so we can’t make too much of this yet.
FaceTime tertulia with J and R. They have found out that their grandkids will be going back to school soon, one of them as soon as Monday, others by the beginning of April. The district plan is for each child to have just two days a week of in-class instruction, presumably for the rest of this school year. Also on the education front, the Univ. of Oregon in Eugene has announced that they will be returning to normal course delivery starting Fall term. Also on the virus front, M has a vaccine appointment for next Monday.
Another pretty nice day, cloudy and warm in the morning, some light rain coming on around 3:00 in the afternoon. We were both laboring for hours in the garden, planting the new tuft grass and ornamental thyme that E got yesterday, as well as taking two roses out of their big pots and placing them into big holes. We are slowly gaining ground in the effort to fill all the bare space that we created by last year’s various lawn removals.
In the back yard it’s crocus time.
Also in the back, these are native camas shoots. E planted the bulbs last fall.
And finally, here’s a spy photo of E tending her butterfly.
Friday, February 5 Deaths 2,293 (+9) New cases 251
We did more garden work today, despite the fact that it was raining. M, being a complete fool, has ordered himself nine cubic feet of gravel, which was delivered at noon. He was tired of never having enough. Now he’s got way too much. Despite his work today, a lot of it is still sitting in the driveway. Much progress has been made on the paving project, but it is fiendishly complex and still far from finished. Like many infrastructure projects, it has suffered from ongoing design changes and cost overruns. There is also dissension among the project staff. The designer has maligned the competence of the entire crew, while the construction supervisor claims that the initial design was “incoherent.” Fewer difficulties have occurred in the front yard where E today planted two new primroses and an aster.
In the afternoon, E had another meeting of her HEPAJ group. They all met outside at H’s place to share tea, coffee, and snacks. We suppose there was also some conversation. It was E’s turn to provide the snacks. The weather was rainy and cool but H does have a covered back patio. E came home dry but chilled. It took her a couple of hours and a hot shower to warm up. All of the HEPAJ members are getting vaccinations now, so it won’t be long–we hope–till the group can meet indoors.
Saturday, March 6 Deaths 2,296 (+3) New cases 202
A nice Spring day with lots of sun and lots of showers, each type of weather very politely taking it’s turn throughout the day. E brought Pepper for another visit and M worked on the great paving project. Thankfully, this project has at last been abandoned! completed!
In other news, E’s amaryllis has bloomed. She is especially pleased because this is the second year that it has flowered for her, thus rewarding the care she gave it over the last twelve months.
It was a big TV night for us. First we watched another episode of 20 Minutes (20 Dakika), a Turkish series about a woman imprisoned for a grisly murder that she–probably–did not commit. It stars Tuba Büyüküştün, whom we are very fond of, despite or maybe because of her crooked front tooth. She also starred in Black Money Love, where her character was also imprisoned for a grisly murder that she did not commit. She’s good at this sort of role, though we expect that after doing it a couple of times, she might be getting tired of it. Anyway, we basically hate this show–it is so sappy–and yet we are inexorably drawn to it–probably due to mental deficiency.
After that, we watched the first episode of 45 RPM (45 Revoluciones), a Spanish drama series set in Madrid in the early to mid 1960s. It’s all about the recording industry and advent of the rock and roll era. E first went to Spain the 1968, so it’s fun for her to see how the series tries to recreate the sights and sounds of that era. Episode 1 of the series features a recreation of a performance by a group called Los Pekenikes. This is a real group whose name E thinks she recalls. Apparently the group was formed in Spain in 1959 and once opened for the Beatles when they came to Madrid. So far the series seems to have interesting characters and plenty of drama. Has anyone else seen this show? Is it worth following?
Sunday, March 7 Deaths 2,296 (+0) New cases 211
Bad news for E in the front garden. Someone, either a gentle deer or a feral human, has pulled out one of her newly planted primroses and eaten all its flowers. She put the plant back in the ground and thinks it will probably be okay.
One part of the front yard that we haven’t messed with is the daffodil and rhodie section created by the previous owners.
The daffs are out; the rhododendron buds still have a couple of months to go.
Pandemi Günlüğü — 1-7 Mart, 2021
Pazartesi, 1 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,212 (+4) Yeni vakalar: 197
Oregon’da ilk COVID teşhisi 1 Mart 2020’de geldi. Aşağıdaki grafikte görebileceğiniz gibi ilk dört ay çok kötü geçmedi. Temmuz ayında pandemik daha da kötüleşti. Kasım sonunda durum çok daha kötüye gitti. Bu günler içinde ölüm oranı Kasım ayı başlarındaki seviyelere düştü. Yani bu oldukça iyi bir haber.
Bugün kasabamızda ılk bahar havası yaşadık. E biraz bitki bakımı yaptı. Sonra Zoom yoga dersi aldı ve Kooperatif’ten yemek siparişi etti. Sonra eski bir arkadaşıyla uzun ve neşeli bir telefon konuşması yaptı. M’nin sabah bir göz doktoru randevusu vardı. Öğleden sonra finişer projesi üzerinde çalıştı.
Sali, 2 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,225 (+13) Yeni vakalar: 269
Daha güzel hava. M, Pazar Ana’ya erken alışverişe gitti. Sonunda toplamı görmesi dışında hoştu. E Pepper’ı kısa bir ziyaret için evimize getirdi. İstek üzerine, işte bu karizmatik köpeğin bir fotoğrafı.
M, öğle yemeğinden önce dışarıda çalıştı. Öğle yemeğinden sonra yeni bir kablo modem bağladı. Yeni modem ile indirme hızı 275’ten 465 Mbs’ye yükseldi. Harika!
Çarşamba, 3 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,252 (+27) Yeni vakalar: 276
Bu sabah uyandığımızda yoğun bir sis bulduk. 11: 00’de sis yandı ve çok güzel bir gündü. E, Zoom yoga yaptı ve Kooperatif’ten yiyecek almaya gitti. Bu süreçte sorunlar var. E, bunu durduracağını düşünüyor. Öğleden sonra bahçe merkezine gitti ve daha fazla bitki satın aldı.
Perşembe, 4 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,225 (+13) Yeni vakalar: 269
FaceTime’da J ve R ile konuştuk. Torunları yakında okula dönüyor. Ama haftada sadece iki gün gidecekler. Oregon’un en büyük üniversiteleri, sonbaharda normal olarak açılacağını söylüyor.
Güzel bir gün daha. Bahçede saatlerce çalıştık. Yeni bitkileri toprağa koyduk ve bazı eski bitkileri de taşıdık.
Çiğdem zamanı!
Bu camas lily. E tohumları geçen sonbaharda ekti. Camas, güzel mavi çiçekleri olan yerli bir bitkidir. Avrupalılar gelmeden önce burada yaşayanlar için önemli bir yemekti.
Son olarak, işte E ve kelebeğinin casus fotoğrafı.
Cuma, 5 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,296 (+3) Yeni vakalar: 202
Bugün yağmura rağmen bahçede çalıştık. M’ın çakıl yükü öğlen teslim edildi. İlk önce hiç yetmedi. Şimdi çok fazla şeye sahip. Aptalca ama normal. Çok ilerleme sağlandı. Ancak çok daha fazla iş kaldı. Ayrıca işçiler arasında anlaşmazlık var. Tasarımcı, işçilerin tembel ve vasıfsız olduğunu söylüyor. İşçiler ilk tasarımın “tutarsız” olduğunu söylüyor.
Evin önünde daha az sorun var. Bugün E iki çuha çiçeği dikti ve bir aster dikti. Öğleden sonra HEPAJ grubuyla ziyarete gitti. E çok hoşuna gitti, ama toplantı dışarıdaydı ve oldukça soğuktu. İyi haber şu ki, grubun tüm üyeleri aşı oluyor. Yakında içeride olabilecekler.
Cumartesi, 6 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,225 (+13) Yeni vakalar: 269
Bol güneş ve bol yağmurlu güzel bir bahar günü. E, başka bir ziyaret için Pepper’ı ele geçirdi. M, Büyük Proje’de çalıştı. Neyse ki bu proje artık terk edildi tamamlandı.
Diğer haber ise E’nin nergis zambağı çiçek açmış. E mutlu çünkü bu çiçek açtığı ikinci yıl.
Bu gece çok televizyon izledik. Önce 20 Dakika‘nın bir bölüm izledik. Bu dizide bir kadın cinayetle suçlanarak hapse giriyor. Oyuncu Tuba Büyüküstün’dır. Çarpık dişi olmasına rağmen biz onu çok seviyoruz. Onu başka bir dizide gördük–Kara Para Aşk. O dizide o da hapishanede masum bir kadındı. Bu oyuncu hapishanede çok zaman geçiriyor. Aslında bu yeni diziden nefret ediyoruz. Ama uzak kalamayız. Bu bizim kaderimiz.
Sonra 45 RPM’in ilk bölümü izledik. Bu dizi 1960’larda Madrid’de geçiyor. E okumak için ilk olarak 1968’de Madrid’e gitti. Dizinin o dönemi nasıl gösterdiğini görmek istiyor. Hikaye pop müzik hakkındadır. İlginç görünüyor.
Pazar, 7 Mart Oregon’daki ölümler: 2,225 (+13) Yeni vakalar: 269
Bahçedeki Eve için kötü haber. Bir hayvan, belki bir geyik, yeni çuha çiçeği bitkilerinden birini çekip çiçekleri yedi. E onu yere geri koydu. Sorun olmayacağını düşünüyor. Bahçenin nergis ve ormangülü bölümleri iyi gidiyor.
Şimdi nergis zamanı. Ormangülü çiçeği birkaç ay içinde gelecek.
A few days ago I learned of the death of a friend from my teenage years, a girl who was my first love. I left Ogden when I was seventeen and never saw her again, but I always remembered her and my feelings of affection remained. In 1980, about a dozen years after I last saw her, I had a vivid dream about her and the next day wrote a description of it as if I were telling her about it in a letter, which of course I did not send. Then, sometime around 2015–at an age when we start to think a little more about the past–I wrote again about my feelings for her. I described her then as “the luminous Mormon girl” and that’s what she was to me–luminous, sensitive and kind. When I try to tell anyone about her, I always feel like I have to explain that we were never boyfriend and girlfriend–not at all. So what was it? I still don’t know. Since I learned of her passing, she has been on my mind quite a lot. I never knew anything about her adult life. From her obituary I learn some salient details, which are all as I might have expected. Several times over the years I thought about what it would be like to talk to her as an adult. That was not to be. My love was always love from afar. It’s from a little farther now, but it’s still there.
