We had beautiful weather for our flight to Salt Lake City. As the plane started its descent, we had a great view of Ogden–M’s old home town–where it lies stretched out along the base of the Wasatch Mountain Range. On a bright day in winter, that long line of snow-covered peaks is quite a sight. The SLC airport is a big one these days. We got 3,000 steps just by walking from our arrival gate to baggage claim. But we were out of the airport quite quickly and the traffic in Salt Lake–even at 5:00 PM on a Friday–was running very fast and very smooth. We had enough time to check in to our room and relax for a few minutes before heading out to the rehearsal dinner.
Saturday, February 24th
The wedding was at the Millcreek Inn, which is located in just a few miles up Millcreek Canyon. There are no ski resorts or other developments there, just a narrow old road that leads up into the mountains. A much younger M often went hiking in that canyon while he was in college. It is still lovely.
There were lots of wedding things going on….
…and a lovely flower girl.
E with her cousins D and L, L being the mother of the bride.
Sunday, February 25th
On Sunday we met D and L at a place called Taggart’s Grill. Taggart’s is located in Weber Canyon just a few miles from the town of Morgan, Utah. Before lunch we walked for an hour or two along the river.
Here’s a view of the Weber River flowing down westward toward the Great Salt Lake.
Here are the cousins walking east toward the mountains from which the river rises.
After a longish stroll along the river, we were ready for lunch and Taggart’s is definitely a good place for that. We started off with some “creamy chicken mushroom artichoke, spicy black bean soup.” That’s a pretty long name for a soup, but it’s a pretty awesome soup. Wow. Then a couple of us had jalapeño burgers. Wow again. As you see, it has cream cheese and sliced jalapeños at the top. But there is also some goopity stuff at the bottom–house made apricot-jalapeño jelly.
Taggart’s has only been around since 1938, but Weber Canyon has been a national transportation route since the late 1860’s when it was chosen to be part of the route of the first transcontinental railway. As part of that project, the Union Pacific Railroad built 1,085 miles of track, starting at Council Bluffs, Iowa and ending at Promontory Point, Utah. There, they met up with the Central Pacific Railroad, who had built 690 miles of track from their starting point in Sacramento, California. For the Union Pacific, crossing the Wasatch Mountains and descending Weber Canyon was their most challenging stretch of track. The grade was steep, the canyon was narrow, and a number of tunnels had to be built. And in fact, on May 10, 1869, when Leland Stanford drove the golden spike at Promontory Point and the great cross-country route was officially opened, the tunnel at Taggart was only partially completed. Yes, the line was technically open, but only if you dared take your train onto a temporary curved wooden trestle perched next to the river. Ironically enough, several high Union Pacific officials on their way to attend the opening ceremony in Promontory were stranded in Taggart when this temporary trestle partially collapsed beneath their train, causing them a two day delay. E comments that it’s really too bad they were 150 years too soon to sample the current Taggart’s menu.
This photo of the Taggart area was taken in 1870. The tunnel was finished by then, but the route of the temporary trestle can still be seen. Sixty-eight years after, in 1938, the first incarnation of what has become the Taggart’s Inn appeared near the bend of the river in the upper right corner. For a larger version of this photo, click HERE.
In this photo, taken about 150 years later, there’s not much sign of a temporary trestle. And a freeway has been added to the scene. But the modern railroad tunnel is just a widened version of the original. The small red circle in the upper right marks the location of Taggart’s Grill.
This bit of Union Pacific track is part of one of the steepest railroad grades in the United States. From Ogden at 4,298 feet, the line runs 65 miles up to the town of Wahsatch, at 6,799 feet, a climb that averages 38.47 feet per mile. Pulling long freight trains up such a grade requires a lot of power and for many years the Union Pacific had to use a helper system, whereby extra locomotives were temporarily added to the trains just to get them up the hill. Then, in 1941, wanting a single locomotive powerful enough not to need a helper on this route, the Union Pacific commissioned the largest steam locomotives ever made. Built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO), these engines were originally meant to be named the Wasatch series. But after an unknown ALCO worker in Schenectady scrawled “Big Boy” in chalk on the front the first one, that was the name that stuck. Historical note: E’s father and her uncle were both working at that ALCO factory in 1941.
In 2024 the tracks shown here continue to be part of the Union Pacific main line connecting the West Coast to the Midwest. And that line is busy. During our walk, three long freights went by, climbing the grade with their diesel engines roaring. Since modern diesel electric locomotives produce only about one third the power of a Big Boy, modern trains typically have three to four engines.
Monday, February 26th
We had an uneventful flight back to Eugene. But by late afternoon M was sneezing.
Tuesday, February 27th
M tested positive in the morning and so we set up a COVID ward so he could isolate. The main concern was whether E would get it. Besides the issue of her own well-being, there was a family dinner planned for Friday and a major birthday party planned for Saturday, with many guests coming from far away. Today she tested negative.
Wednesday, February 28th
M still ill but slightly less dead. E still negative.
Thursday, February 29th
A lot like Wednesday. We started feeling a little optimistic that E might be fine for the party.
Friday, March 1st
M improving little by little. E still negative. Yay!
The dinner went on as planned–though some extra precautions were taken. The party was held in the garage, far away from M’s COVID ward in the house. Andy brought the food truck down and put together dinner and dessert for twenty. Amazing!
The siblings and…
…their offspring.
Saturday, March 2nd
E again tested negative, so that was a relief. M was feeling…not good exactly…but much better. He had to skip the big birthday party, though, as he was still positive and coughing a lot.
And what a party it was! The cake topper was made from a photo of E.
So E got to stand on top of a birthday cake, at least for a while.
But she later fell (or jumped) into a layer of frosting from which her daughter had to extract her.
E gets a hug from the party organizer
Sunday, March 3rd
Today E had a final brunch at Odd Bird’s with family members who were still in town. It was a wonderful weekend.
Lots of dull, damp days this week, neither cold nor warm. In the morning E went out and did a little garden work in the drizzle while M went to the eye doctor to discuss whether cataract surgery might make things brighter. Eye doc seems to think so.
In the evening we went up to Salem to have dinner with K and J. K made a great salad with fried chickpeas, kale and spinach. We brought a chocolate pie for dessert. And it turned out that chocolate pie is one of K’s favorites.
Wednesday, February 14th
E went down to Eugene today to meet S for coffee and to go shopping. She went to Nordstrom’s in the Oakway Mall and was pleasantly surprised to see that they carried quite a collection of shoes in her size.
For Valentine’s dinner we had Brazilian fish stew from a Local Ocean dock box. Out of this world delicious in E’s opinion. For dessert we had a bonbon or two. Also delicious.
We had 24 of these boxes lying around. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, 23 of them were empty. This year’s box is the white one in the front row.
Thursday, February 15th
Our friend P came to lunch. We had take-out sandwiches from the Vietnamese Baguette. We also finished off a bag of Kettle chips, but it was only one of the really small bags.
Friday, February 16th
We’ve been looking into getting some solar panels, which at first seemed pretty complicated. By now, though, we’ve gotten three estimates and narrowed it down to one. A technician came this morning to take final measurements and to inspect our roof and electrical panel. Everything seems fine, so it looks like the project will proceed.
Mostly cloudy today but not raining and the roads were dry. M took the Jaguar out for some exercise. What a noisy and bumpy car that is! Clearly, you must put it into Dynamic Mode and ride around in the foothills raising a ruckus. (In a suitably restrained sort of way.) Nice.
First he had to find the car. Is that it?
Oh yeah.
Saturday, February 17th
Another soggy day. The yard is like a wetland. It could really use some attention, but it won’t be getting it today.
Sunday, February 18th
E has been doing a lot of preparation for the upcoming birthday celebrations. For one thing, she’s planning a dinner for the extended family on the day before the main party. She’s looking forward to having as many family members as possible seated around her grandmother’s oak dining table. Complicating matters is the fact that we also need to prepare for a trip to Salt Lake City this upcoming weekend. We’ll be attending a wedding, so we should probably think about what we will wear…
We did manage to get in an afternoon walk on the Calloway Creek trail. It didn’t rain on us right then, but there was a coldish wind and the southern portion of the loop was a mucky mess.
Monday, February 19th
More rain early this morning. We passed that time doing our grocery shopping. As usual E went to the Co-op and M searched the vastness of Winco. Then, in late morning, the sun came out. Wow! That drew us both outside, where we accomplished quite a bit. The yard was soaked and the grass was squishy, but it made for easier weeding. M planted a new little blueberry bush, continuing his quixotic quest to replace an old one that mysteriously dwindled and died. Last’s year’s replacement plant did not thrive either. But hope springs eternal.
We finished one of the puzzles that E got from her puzzle exchange with her yoga teacher. Just 500 pieces and very entertaining.
Sunday, February 4th
We went up to the Washington Square mall today. E took this photo on the way. That’s Mt. Hood in the background.
No ice in the orchards these days.
Wednesday, February 7th
We packed a bunch of winter stuff and drove over to Bend today, planning on doing something in the snow, either snowshoeing or cross-country skiing, depending on conditions. We stayed at a hotel that was handy to the slopes but was also in the middle of redecorating. Some of the parking lot was stacked with dozens of old couches, partly covered by a tarp. Another corner held a couple of shipping containers from which people were unloading new couches and carrying them inside. We had dinner at Hola in the Old Mill District. Hola is still good and still kind of expensive. Later in the evening we were happy to see some snow falling. It was a lot nicer than watching ice rain falling.
Thursday, February 8th
We woke to a dusting of snow covering the world. Very pretty and not very serious, so the roads were fine. In Bend it was overcast, but as we drove south up the Mt. Bachelor highway, we saw more and more blue sky. It turned out that conditions were nearly perfect at Swampy Lakes sno-park: soft new snow, little wind, and lots of sunshine. Such a contrast to our last visit, when the snow was icy, the sky was dark, and the wind never stopped. We did the main loop and had a great time, especially on the way down.
We took this picture during our luncheon at a spot just a few yards off the trail.
Friday, February 9th
We got up early and were on the road in time to pick up some donuts and scones at Sisters Bakery as we passed by. We arrived in Corvallis around 12:00, early enough for E to get prepared for her Smart Reading at Lincoln School in the afternoon. We put the scones in the freezer.
Saturday, February 10th
February, such a beautiful time of year in the garden:
Sunday, February 11th
For Sunday breakfast, we had marionberry scones from Sisters Bakery! Awesome.
Monday, February 12th
Mostly cloudy today, just a little damp. Nighttime temperatures are in the thirties, but daytimes are more fiftyish. For some of the early plants that’s quite acceptable.
Indian plum is one of the earliest flowering NW trees.
These snowdrops were planted just a couple years ago. So far they are quite well behaved…
…unlike this colony of volunteers who have invaded a neighboring territory.
These sarcococca confusa, aka Himalayan Sweet Box, have been blooming for a couple of weeks now. Ours won’t win any beauty contests, but their smell is amazing.
We were happy to see that our house and grounds had remained undamaged after the onslaught of ice. There was only one casualty.
E’s Halloween pumpkin lost any semblance of structural integrity.
Sunday, January 21st
Despite a few patches of ice and a bit of rain, we took a walk in the forest today. It was kind of a long walk. Too long, in fact. What were we thinking? But we made it up to highest shoulder of Mt. Peavy. Back when we lived part way up the hill, we used to scamper to the very top before breakfast. But the effort was worth it today as it was a lovely scene and not too cold.
We had light rain most of the time and it was as if the clouds came right down to the ground.
We remember the day we first saw that this maple had been cut down as part of a thinning operation. It was just a tall stump then, but we knew it would be back. That was about seven years ago.
Monday, January 22nd
Lots more rain today. We took another walk, but a short one, just once around the boardwalk at the Jackson-Frazier wetland.
The wetland was really wet…
…with water almost high enough to swamp the walkway.
Tuesday, January 23rd
E called Alaska Airlines today to see if we could get a refund for our cancelled flight from San Diego to Eugene. Altogether, she spent more than two hours on hold, finally getting someone to talk to just at dinnertime. Happily enough, it took only about seven minutes for the representative to agree that a refund was due and to set it in motion. Hoo-definitely-ray! And kudos to Alaska for stepping up.
Thursday, January 25th
Tertulia with R and J this morning. J maintains a rain gauge and reports that she’s been seeing daily totals of a half inch or more for several days now. She notes that a good portion of it comes during the night.
Sunday, January 28th
Well! Finally we had a mostly rainless day. We took a good walk in the forest around noontime, and it didn’t rain on us at all. What a concept.
Here’s an understory tree that seems to be expecting spring.
Monday, January 29th
Today is the 43rd anniversary of the opening of a Gustav Klimt exhibition at the Isetan Museum of Art in Tokyo. The exhibition ran from January 29 to February 24, 1981 and sometime in that period M managed to attend, purchasing a copy of the exhibition poster as a souvenir. The poster painting, Lady with a Fan, was one of Klimt’s last works. It was still mounted on his easel, they say, when he died in 1918. M’s poster is sadly faded and in fact hardly resembles the original that he saw forty-three years ago. (M can’t really complain; his own appearance also differs from what it was forty-three years ago.)
E was busy today, with a medical appointment and a Better Bones class in the morning and then a puzzle exchange meeting and a dog walk assignment in the afternoon. She’s also been busy trying to get some estimates for installing solar panels on our roof. What a process that is! She also found a crocus or two next to the driveway.
M has been dealing with water drainage issues in the garage, writing, and making pickles.
Today marked the start of our trip to San Diego, where we’ll be doing a four day Road Scholar tour. When that ends, we’ll stay over a couple of extra days so M can pick up a ridiculous rental car and drive us around a little.
The whole thing started with a drive to the Eugene airport, just 40 miles away. We took the truck, of course, because E couldn’t bear the thought of her Ioniq 5 sitting outside in the economy lot where who knows what might happen to it. We had a direct flight to San Diego that took about two and a half hours. We flew on Alaska Airlines, but our plane was not a Boeing 737 Max and we didn’t notice any doors flying off. From the airport we caught a shuttle to downtown. That trip was a big surprise. It was so short! We didn’t realize that the San Diego airport is right next to downtown. In a pinch, we could have walked to our hotel. How often does that happen in a big city?
The tour hotel was a Marriott on the bay front. We checked in and had our first meeting of the tour group in a hotel meeting room. We had an orientation session accompanied by a pasta dinner. We started to settle in to the idea of be taken care of for a few days.
Monday, January 8th
Our program started with a tour of the southern part of San Diego Bay. Much of the south bay is lined with U.S. Navy anchorage and shipbuilding facilities.
The U.S.S. Midway was completed just after the end of WW2. It was retired from service in 1996 and is now a museum ship.
There was lots of activity in the Navy shipyards…
…but not everything in the bay is military. Here’s what the locals call the Banana Boat. It arrives in San Diego about once a week and takes two or three days to unload. Then it sails back to Central America to load up again.
Tuesday, January 9th
The highlight of today’s activities was a visit to Balboa Park, which is one of the largest parks in America, fifty percent larger than New York’s Central Park. It has a number of lovely buildings that go back to the its origin as the site of the Great San Diego Exhibition of 1915. It also has a host of Eucalyptus trees, including this relatively rare Rainbow variety.
Wednesday, January 10th
Today we toured the Midway and also visited the San Diego Zoo. Both were excellent, but the Midway was the most fascinating. We had a wonderful docent, a retired Navy helicopter pilot who had spent a part of his career serving on the Midway. We saw a large variety of vintage and military aircraft, from prop driven WW2 torpedo bombers to a modern jet fighters.
Here’s a Huey helicopter gunship from the Vietnam era.
The Zoo was also impressive in its way, very beautiful. It’s a large park with very spacious animal enclosures and hundreds (or maybe thousands) of trees. The elephant area covers many acres. All the animals have a chance to stay out of sight of the public when they choose. E’s chief goal was to see giraffes, since she had recently read “West with Giraffes.”
We found several.Also this thing.
Thursday, January 11th
Today we visited the Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve. We got to walk a couple of miles accompanied by another very knowledgeable volunteer docent. One thing he told us is that pine bark beetles by themselves are not a problem for pine trees. All pines, he told us, have bark beetles living in their outer layers of bark. A pine forest can contain many millions of bark beetles and still be quite healthy. Trouble starts when a tree is water stressed and begins to dry up. At that point bark beetles have to bore farther into the tree to find moisture. If they bore far enough, they destroy the structures that normally move moisture and nutrients up and down the tree. Once the flow of water is interrupted, the tree is doomed–and presumably so are the beetles living on it.
Today was the end of the Road Scholar Tour. We had a nice dinner and said goodbye to our guide and our fellow participants. We were both sad and glad to see it end.
Friday, January 12th
M went out this morning and picked up a rental car, a 2018 Audi R8 coupe with a 532 horsepower V-10 engine mounted just behind the seats. They say the car can go from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds. Top speed is supposed to be 170 or so. New ones cost between $161,000 and $253,000, but you can get a used one, like the one we rented, for around $135,000. But before you run out and buy one, be aware that it has very limited luggage space.
As M had planned, we drove out to Mt Palomar, 50 miles northwest of San Diego. The Palomar Observatory is on the north east side of the mountain. There are several telescopes at the observatory, including the 200-inch Hale telescope, which was the largest telescope in the world from 1949 to 1975. Quasars were first discovered by astronomers using the Hale. We came close to the observatory but turned back due to snow on the road. There was still plenty of wonderful scenery.
Here’s a view from most of the way up the mountain.
And here’s the car…
….and one of the occupants.
Saturday, January 13th
We took a little coast drive today, going north on Highway 101 up to Carlsbad. Even though we came back on the freeway, somehow we never managed to get our speed up to 170.
We spent our last evening at the Marriott having a light supper on their fifth floor rooftop terrace.
Here’s what it looked like when we got there…
…and here’s another view a little later. The red, white and blue lights are on the Midway.
Sunday, January 14th
Okay, time to head home. M returned the Audi and we were just packing up when we got a fatal text. Our Alaska Airlines flight to Eugene was cancelled. Oh dear. Was it because of the weather or because half of their fleet had been grounded after the blown-out door incident? They didn’t say. Instead they offered a partial routing that would have taken us to Steamboat Springs, Colorado on Tuesday and from Seattle to Corvallis on Wednesday. (It seemed that they hadn’t yet figured out how to get us from Colorado to Washington. But probably they were working on it. )
We didn’t like that and decided to rent a car and drive home. (We had just had our coffee and it seemed like a good idea.) We checked out of the hotel and ubered to the airport where we picked up another rental car, one somewhat less crazy than the R8. We were on the road by 11:00, heading north on I-5, a road that would take us all the way to Eugene. The total distance was 978 miles; we thought we could make in two reasonably easy days, which would get us home by Monday night.
The road was flat and straight going up California’s central valley. Traffic moved fast. By 7:30 PM we’d done over 500 miles. That seemed like enough. We stopped at a Hampton Inn in Woodland, a town just outside of Sacramento. We found an Indian restaurant with a sign saying Under New Management and decided to try it. The new owner was a very nice young man. He wore a turban, so we’re thinking he must be a Sikh. The food was good and also plentiful. We took away enough for the next day’s lunch.
Monday, January 15th
We got on the road again by 8:00. On Sunday we’d driven up the bottom two thirds of California; only the top third of CA and half of OR remained. There are some mountains on the border between the two states and the pass there can be treacherous in the winter. But our weather continued fine and we had dry pavement all the way across. We saw just a little snow off to the sides here and there. At a rest stop just past Lake Shasta we had a fine Indian food lunch . And by the way, here’s the car that got us there:
It’s a Kia Seltos, lemon yellow with AWD and Florida plates. Just the thing to drive into an ice storm.
So going over Siskiyou pass was no problem. However, as we were coming down the other side and into Oregon, we started to get warnings about trouble farther ahead. The Eugene and Corvallis area had been hit with a series of ice storms. Rain was falling out of a warm air layer up high. But the temperature down below was in the low twenties, so when a raindrop hit the ground–or anything else–it turned immediately into ice. The more it rained, the thicker the ice layer got. Really, it’s kind of a cool process. But of course it’s not too good for driving and it’s also hard on trees. We learned that all the roads leading north were closed at a point about twenty miles south of Eugene. It seemed clear that we wouldn’t be getting home this day. We drove as far as Roseburg and stopped there for the night.
Tuesday, January 16th
This morning we checked the weather. It was still bad, with freezing rain predicted for both Eugene and Corvallis. But the I-5 was open, at least for the moment. What to do, what to do. Hang around Roseburg for a day or two? Nah. We wanted to be home. We loaded ourselves back into the Seltos and went off to see what we could see.
What we saw was nice dry pavement all the way up to Cottage Grove, a town just twenty-five miles from the Eugene airport. From there on, though, a thick layer of ice covered the road and we began to see lots of jackknifed semis and other stranded vehicles. We could also see where many trees had fallen onto the highway and had been cleared off. Traffic was heavy with lots of trucks. But everyone was being really careful and the average speed was less than twenty miles per hour. Our all-wheel-drive Kia served us well and eventually we made it to the Eugene airport where we could turn it in to Avis and retrieve our truck.
Of course the truck, when we found it, was heavily iced over, having been through several days of ice and snow storms. On the hood we found a layer of ice and snow two and a half inches thick. The windshield had a layer of clear ice about an inch thick. The passenger side had gotten the worst of the weather and was also covered by a thick layer of pure ice. We could see at a glance there was absolutely no chance of opening the passenger door anytime soon. Fortunately, there was less ice on the driver’s side and we managed to open the driver’s door, just by speaking nicely to it for a minute or two. Then we could start the engine. When it warmed up a little, we turned on the defroster. When the windshield glass finally started to get warm, the ice that covered it started to come unstuck from the glass underneath it. So instead of having to scrape the ice off, we were able to pry it off in big chunks. But what about the wipers? We were pretty sure we would need those. It took a while, but we finally got most of the ice off of them too. Just about then, it started to rain and of course those drops pretty much froze as soon as they landed. Oh boy.
But at least we were on the road. From the airport we headed up Highway 99 toward Corvallis, in 4-wheel drive all the time and moving awfully slow. There were a few other vehicles on the road but not all that many. Snow is rare in these parts and we were amazed to see how different everything looked. It was strange to realize that neither of us had ever seen this part of Oregon covered with snow and ice. Here’s what some of the farms and orchards looked like:
We made it home eventually. On the way, the truck shed some of its ice, but when we arrived there was still no way to open that passenger side door.
What a strange trip it was: beginning with an 80 mile per hour cruise up a ten-lane freeway in sunny San Diego and finishing with an 20 mph crawl along an iced over two laner. It was awful but also kind of fun in its way. It’s amazing what you can do if you’re foolish enough to try. And what was our reward? Well, it turns out we didn’t have to worry about getting dinner because H and T invited us for spaghetti. Nice!
Wednesday, January 17th
It was a cold icy morning but by midday the temperature started inching up. We managed to pop open the passenger door of the truck. Later on, when evening came around, the world was still iced over, but we heard some tell-tale dripping sounds as the melting finally began.
We’ve just acquired another electric car. Here’s a photo of M charging it up, which is very brave of him considering that a tuxedo-wearing dog the size of Godzilla has stationed itself near the charging station.
Saturday, December 30
E has decided we need to see some movies. Two days ago we went to a real theater and watched The Boy and the Heron, a new film by animator Hayao Miyazaki. About eight years ago Miyazaki, who is now 82, announced his retirement from filmmaking. But clearly he was not able to stop working and the result is awesomely beautiful. If you haven’t seen The Boy and the Heron and aren’t familiar with Miyazaki’s work, you might think from the title that it is a certain kind of movie. But no, it’s a little more complicated than that.
We also watched Maestro on Netflix. Maestro stars Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre, the Costa Rican-Chilean actress he was married to. The film is full of beautiful images in both black and white and color. It has a tremendously high energy level and a some great music. It’s seems choppy at times, but biopics are like that. Did it tell us more about Bernstein than we wanted to know? Possibly.
Next up was Ferrari, with Adam Driver playing Enzo and Penélope Cruz as his wife Laura. The movie is set in 1957, a time when the company was in financial difficulties and the marital relationship had been badly wounded not only by Enzo’s infidelities but also by the recent death their young son from MS. The movie mixes racing drama with private life and includes scenes with both Laura the wife and Lina the long-term mistress, with whom Enzo had another son. Yes, it’s another film about a “great” man who is unfailingly unfaithful. But we liked it anyway. Adam Driver was very good and watching Penélope Cruz work was a joy. In the film, as in real life, Laura Ferrari was not just Enzo’s wife, she was also an equal share owner of the company. So there was some meat to the role. Ferrari also features beautiful vintage race cars and lovely countryside along the route of the famous Mille Miglia, a race that was so dangerous to drivers and spectators that it was banned after 1957.
The film is based on the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: the Man and the Machine by the inimitable Brock Yates. Yates was an amateur racing driver and a long-time automotive writer, editor, and TV commentator. It was Yates, along with Car & Driver editor Steve Smith, who first conceived of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash–a race that was never banned because it was never legal in the first place. Yates won the Cannonball in 1972 along with co-driver Dan Gurney. They drove a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney later commented: “At no time did we exceed 175 MPH.”
Sunday, New Year’s Eve
Well, we had waffles with maple syrup for breakfast. Lovely. Then we took a long walk in the OSU forest up near where we used to live. It wasn’t raining and it wasn’t too cold. We got around five thousand steps and sixteen floors, or so said the phone. What the phone did not tell us was what that means in terms of tablespoons of maple syrup, which is what we really needed to know. Instead, we had to use the online Steps to Calories Converter. Couldn’t someone just make a Steps to Maple Syrup Converter?
In the afternoon, E had a zoom call with S and Mrs H, two of her friends from the early days. The trio wanted to get together to share their thoughts on this meaningful occasion.
After this we had fondue for dinner and then turned to the vitally important matter of this year’s jigsaw puzzle and its accompanying bottle of champagne.
Monday, January 1st
Progress is slow on the puzzle. After working for several hours last night and continuing for most of today, we’re nowhere near done.
Thursday, January 4th
We had a nice dinner at Koriander with B and B. They had pictures of their neighborhood New Year’s Eve party. Looked like a really great time.
And speaking of New Year’s Eve, we finally finished our puzzle. E says it had way too much snow.
Friday, January 5th
We had our traditional Peppermint Pig evening with B, J, and C. We finished with pig sprinkles over ice cream.
Saturday, January 6th
We’ve been trying to get a few things done before we leave on our trip. We’re flying to San Diego tomorrow, which should be exciting because we’re flying on Alaska Airlines. In the last month they’ve had two incidents, one involving a nutty pilot and another when a door came off during a flight from Portland to Ontario, California. What next?
E walked over to H’s house this morning. She’s tending to Houdini the cat while H and T are in Portland for a few days. Her route led her past Garfield Park.
She found this on the sidewalk. It must have fallen from one of those tall branchy things.
Sunday, December 24th
We had a great meal on Christmas Eve, courtesy of BJEM Enterprises, a (very) local catering cooperative. We started with a couple of black cod salad dock boxes from Local Ocean. The boxes provided baby kale, acorn squash, cauliflower, pepitas, green onions, parsley and white balsamic vinegar, plus four pieces of cod. While B tossed and plated the salad portions, M pan seared the fish. J assisted with plating and sliced up a loaf of olive bread that she had baked for the occasion.
For dessert, E provided a baked Alaska and talked M into flambeing it, thus transforming it into bombe Alaska.
Christmas Day
That tall, light-blue present on the left turned out to be a generous jug of organic maple syrup. Oh yeah.
Our amaryllis was almost at its peak.
Tuesday, December 26th
The day after Christmas was damp and foggy. In the morning we went up to Basket Slough, planning to walk through the wildlife refuge there. It turns out, though, that at this time of year, only wildlife are allowed into the main area. No humans.
So we took a look…but then moved on to Salem.
In Salem we went back to Minto-Brown Island Park, located along the south bank of the Willamette just west of downtown. The park covers 1200 low lying acres, an area that was once a Kalapuyan trading center and later became home to a large lumber mill and a number of farms. The park is named for two early immigrant landowners: John Minto and Isaac “Whiskey” Brown . Minto was a prominent sheep farmer and a long-time state legislator. Brown was not. Today much of the area has been restored and only a few traces of its history remain.
Part of our walk went right along the river.
On our way back to Corvallis we couldn’t help noticing the blueberry bushes and the seed fields.
Thursday, December 28th
E has been enjoying her social life with various animals. Yesterday she had a delightful walk with her canine friend, Asher, in an oak savannah park on the outskirts of town. Asher even surprised E with a luscious bag of Lindt chocolate balls! He clearly knows her taste.
This morning she paid a visit to Houdini the cat. He grumbled that she was late in serving breakfast, but after eating he purred and rubbed against E’s leg before settling down for a rest on the heated floor of the bathroom. What a life!
We’re doing a lot of bird feeding lately, mainly by allowing birds free access to apples.
Some birds seem to prefer pecking at the fruit that is still up in the tree, but we also see them pecking away at ground level.
Monday, December 11th
E had her post-op appointment today up in Lake Oswego. Because she arrived early, she took a walk around the neighborhood. She ran across this sign that gave her pause.
E wishes to stress that this is not the place where her surgeon has her office. It’s another business entirely.
At the post-op, out came the nasal stents, which was a huge relief. E is delighted to be able to breathe through her nose again, in fact already better than before the surgery.
While E was up north, M went to the Albany train station to pick up our friend Charles. Charles has been visiting Seattle and stopped by on his way back to California.
Tuesday, December 12th
We took Charles to the Ankeny Wildlife Reserve today and walked along the boardwalk through the wetland ash forest. The ash trees there grow in one to three feet of water for half the year. It’s a unique scene. Such forests may soon disappear from Oregon. Emerald ash borers, which have killed millions of ash trees in the east and midwest, are now moving into our region.
Wednesday, December 13th
Today the three of us took a walk in the OSU forest. Here we are in front of the old logging wheel at the Forestry Club cabin.
We took Charles to the OSU campus also, mainly to see the food delivery robots in action. Since it was quite cold, we decided to have hot chocolate. We have the app all set up, so it wasn’t too hard to place the order and say where we wanted it to be delivered. The only glitch is that when we ordered three hot chocolates (Swiss Miss), the app informed us that the most we could order was two. Well, okay, two would have to do.
When your order arrives, you use the app to identify yourself. Then the top flips open. Aah…we could almost taste that hot chocolate already.Oops! No drinks. Just two large cartons of Swiss Miss powder packets. The robots serve about a dozen campus entities. Most of them are cafes and restaurants, but…some of them are convenience stores and it’s not easy to tell which is which. Good thing the maximum was two.
Thursday, December 14th
Eve still has nasal swelling but has been feeling a lot better. So good, in fact, that we made short work of this 500 piece puzzle.
Monday, December 18th (Andrea’s birthday)
We’ve been running around getting our gifts ready for an early Xmas and Birthday celebration up at the Andees’ in Vancouver. Here are the things we had to haul up with us. The Charles Leclerc F1 shirt, ordered from Germany, arrived just in the nick of time.
We drove up to Vancouver in the afternoon and had a nice spaghetti dinner, followed by our gift exchange. We did the exchange early because Andy and Andi are leaving this Friday on a trip to Spain.
We had a chance to visit with the English china that once belonged to Lizzie Spanswick Chambers, E’s paternal grandmother. Here are a few pieces as seen on Andrea’s table in Vancouver.
In the evening we went to see Priscilla at the Darkside. We liked it very much, at least at first. The period cars were great as were all the clothes. So was the portrait of Elvis, both in the script and by the actor, Jacob Elbow, who did a great job of reproducing some of Elvis’s voice mannerisms. It was a fascinating story too. It’s all from Priscilla Presley’s book, which E has read and liked a lot. Some of the scenes were filmed in Graceland, which gave them a special kind of eerie realism. But man did that movie go on and on and on. It’s about two hours long, but the second hour seemed like three all by itself. When we discussed it afterward, we found out that we had both wanted to bail at about the ninety minute mark.
Earlier in the day we did a short hike in nearby Chip Ross Park. We went clockwise around the main loop and got four thousand steps and twenty-two floors as recorded by phone and watch. Now we don’t really trust those devices, especially about floors climbed. The counts are sometimes infuriatingly low. Today’s count seems maybe a little high. But we’ll take it. And we will remember to take this route again if we ever feel the need to get our floor count up.
Thursday, November 30
Another busy Thursday for E. First we had tertulia with J and R at Bodhi’s. Next she had to go up to Lake Oswego–about 65 miles away–for a 1:15 appointment. The doctor’s office is conveniently located just west of the Bridgeport Village shops and not far east of the La Provence bakery/restaurant. E managed to squeeze in a visit to both of those. Then it was back home in time for Laughter Yoga at 4:00, followed by a Lemon Meringue Pie Society meeting at 5:30.
M managed to get to the store–about three fourths of a mile away–and buy pickling vegetables. He also got some of the pickling done. (He does refrigerator pickles, which are easy.) He then raked up some late falling leaves from the side yard and spread them around in the flower beds. On a sudden impulse he got up on the roof and swept away the tangle of leaves and branches that had been slowly increasing in size over the last four years. He also continues to work on his memoirs, averaging a couple of paragraphs per day.
Friday, December 1
Bought a Christmas tree. Maybe sometime we’ll get around to decorating it.
Saturday, December 2
It’s a lot warmer around here these days–highs in the 50’s–but also a lot wetter. It’s cloudy all the time with showers passing through at frequent intervals. Between showers, M raked apple tree leaves. With all the clouds it gets dark awful early. Today we went out to dinner at the Dizzy Hen. We got there around 5:20 and by then the light was mostly gone. Dinner was delicious. E loved the leek and persimmon pie.
Later on we watched A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Fred Rodgers. In case you haven’t seen it, we’ll just mention that it is based on the true story of a magazine writer who was assigned to write a piece about Mr. Rodgers for Esquire in 1998. We liked the film very much.
Sunday, December 3
We thawed out some magdalenas for breakfast this morning, real Spanish ones from La Tienda. My, they’re good. Our new mantra–borrowed from a Spanish friend–is “Las magdalenas son mi salvación.”
After breakfast we did grocery shopping. This chore had to be done today as we will be spending most of tomorrow in Lake Oswego, where E is scheduled for surgery to straighten out her deviated septum. An important item on the shopping list was a tub of Tillamook Peanut Butter Chocolate ice cream, which will be required for successful recovery from the procedure.
As our reward for completing the grocery shopping, we went downtown intending to have a coffee at Tried and True and possibly do some Xmas shopping at a couple of nearby clothing stores. That worked out well.
Monday, December 4
E’s surgery went fine. Now comes the recovery, which is not much fun for this sort of procedure.
Tuesday, December 5
We got some packages today, including our favorite sort of Texas grapefruit. That should be of some assistance with E’s recovery.
Our weather continues to be rainy, but only normally rainy. It’s been worse up Seattle way. This weather pattern–the Pineapple Express–comes from the direction of Hawaii and brings warmer temperatures as well as lots of rain.
These jump-up pansies think the weather is just fine.
And here’s a cute little blackberry popping up where it is NOT WANTED.
Wednesday, December 7
E’s recovery continues. Some cardamom buns have been delivered to assist us. We’ve managed to decorate the tree and M is thinking of putting up some outside lights if there’s ever a pause in the rain.
E went grocery shopping at the Co-op today and when she came out she had some trouble finding her car.
Wednesday, November 22
We’re going to K and J’s house for Thanksgiving tomorrow and E has promised to bring a blackberry pie. So that was the beginning of today’s business…but you know…if you’re making one pie…why not make a couple of others? So M made a pumpkin one and E put together a pecan one. And then, if you have all these pies…well, you might as well eat some. We didn’t touch the blackberry, but we did put a dent in the other two. It was enough to make a person feel mildly ill. Good though.
Thursday, November 23
K and J put on a very well-organized dinner for twenty-four. People brought sides and desserts; J cooked the turkey and managed everything. Before dinner K brought out his bingo equipment, which was pretty impressive, and we all played a few rounds. Winners received hand-knitted caps. Neither M nor E won any rounds, but K kindly provided a choice of consolation prizes. The food and drink were delicious and the invitees made for very pleasant company. Among the group were Andi and Andy, as well as three of Becca’s old friends, including, of course, K himself. E’s pie went fast.
Sunday, November 26
It’s cold and rainless these days with nighttime temperatures in the low 20’s. Mornings are foggy and the cold hangs around until the fog burns off at around 10:00 or 11:00. Also, there’s lots of frost.
More wood from the old bins. M seems to like keeping it around.
Monday, November 27
We did our grocery shopping early this morning. When the fog lifted, M went over and fetched the Jaguar from its hiding place and we headed off to the coast. Just ten miles from Newport we turned off at Toledo, looking to take the scenic route into town via North Bay Road. We promptly got lost and ended up on the road to Elk City, which was very much in the wrong direction. We turned around and went back to Toledo and found the correct turn at an abandoned gas station. The North Bay route is slow because it winds along the contours of Yaquina Bay, but it’s pretty and when when you finally get there, it takes you right onto the waterfront. We had lunch there and heard lots of sea lion barking somewhere nearby. We went to investigate.
