Baker City Pictures

Jen posted some of the pictures she took on our Baker City trip on flickr. That's all. Just an update. :) No political talk for this post, at least.

Trip home from Baker City

Jen suggested a couple different routes we could take coming home from Baker City; one of these included traveling down the Columbia River Gorge, which sounded interesting to me. That route is an extra 110 miles, but we had Luigi (my 1986 Alfa Romeo Spider) and I thought it'd be fun to give him a nice run (Luigi came with his name, I didn't name him. I think that's important to note).

Interesting thing about the Columbia River Gorge, at least the portion of it that we hit - there's VERY little foliage next to the river - mostly just the normal Oregon desert landscape. This surprised my east-coast sensibilities -- rivers are supposed to have TREES beside them. Trees that make the air cooler and provide shade. Let me reiterate - there are NO SUCH TREES by the section of the damn Columbia River that we drove. And the air was hot. Want to duplicate the effect? It's easy - get someone to point 18 or so blow dryers at you, all cranked up to their highest settings. For hours. I know, I know, it's a dry heat. WHATEVER. Hot is hot, and I was fucking hot. So hot that my sweat evaporated almost instantly. Hot sucks.

The good news is that we made it home safely. The bad news is that we left a little after 10 AM and didn't get home until 8 at night. Whichever online map Jen used said the trip would take 6 hours. Hah. Had I known how long it would REALLY take, and how fucking miserably hot it was going to be, I would have chosen the shortest route home. Really, it was so hot that Jen and I barely talked, because it was, for once in our lives, hard.

We did do an extended stop in Pendleton - we checked out the shop at the wool mill there and had a great lunch at the Rainbow Cafe, which has been in continuous operation in the same location since 1893. The Rainbow is really a cross between a diner and a bar; we ordered simple things - a club sandwich for Jen, a BLT for me, both with french fries. They hit the spot perfectly, and the service was great - just a good ol' diner. Warning - they do allow smoking inside, which doesn't bother me, but might bother some. The laws about smoking indoors in Oregon change in January 2009, though, so if smoke bothers you, you can just put off the visit until after the change occurs. The air conditioning worked great inside the cafe, thank heaven, as we'd been riding with the top down and were fairly baked (and no, Luigi does not have air conditioning).

Luigi had a great run. Kinda. I didn't warn him that we'd be spending the day in 100+ degree heat (hell, I'd have warned him had I known!). He was a pretty good sport about things - except when he briefly decided he didn't want to start again after we'd stopped in Biggs to grab cold drinks; even though he was off, he kept the radiator fan going for a good 45 minutes or so - I'm not sure how long it actually was, because we stayed inside in the air conditioning for the bulk of the time.

It turned out to be a Very Good Thing that Luigi had decided he didn't want to go right away - once he didn't happily start right up, Jen and I decided to wait a little while and give him a break -- and when we went back inside the building, Jen ran into a friend who had been coming north up 97 who mentioned to her that there was an accident several miles south of Biggs. We decided to wait a little longer to let it clear out, which turned out to be a good idea, as the accident had just cleared out and traffic was still under the control of a flagger - luckily, we didn't have to wait very long to get through the line, because I'm pretty sure Luigi would have HATED idling for that long.

Once we got going down 97 on our way south to Bend, an actual cloud or two appeared in the sky, and the air got cooler. not much cooler, but cool enough that I didn't want to kill myself. It must have gone down to 92 or so. Whee! You know it's hot when you're happy that half of the blow dryers are on medium instead of hot. Once we got into Madras, we stopped for gas (at the Safeway - I've been accruing gas credits shopping at the Safeway in Bend - for every $100 you spend, you can get 10 cents off a gallon of gas - I never get to take advantage of this, though, as it's just silly to drive 45 minutes to save a little on gas. I ended up getting $1.00 off each gallon, which was nice - and I'm guessing that $1/gallon off is a limit or something, as I know I've spent more than a grand at Safeway).

Because Madras is pretty green, and actual people live there, the air was cooler. I'd also like to thank every single farmer on our route who happened to be watering their crops as we drove by, as the air was cooler when the water was flowing. The trip from Madras to Redmond, where I dropped off Jen (her hubby was in Redmond after playing golf), and then down to Bend, was much better. Heck, I even got rained on a tiny bit just south of Redmond.

It was so good to make it home. I ate, took a COLD shower, and got comfy on the floor of the bonus room, snuggling with Zippy to watch the Olympics. Then I fell asleep, I think within about 15 minutes of lying down. ZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Pizza Heaven

This weekend, Jen and I took off for a long-planned weekend visit to Baker City to try the pizza that Kina and Whitey (and staff) work so hard to make. We'd heard rumors that it was good, and I believed it would be good. What I didn't know was that I'd come home and wish Paizano's was HERE instead of five hours (at best) away! OMG, Jen and I agreed that we both wanted to try the Sweet Thai Shrimp pizza, and decided we'd actually do half the pie with shrimp and half with chicken. The chicken rocks, but the shrimp is insane.

This isn't your typical pizza - without having heard Kina talk about it so often, I don't think I'd have braved it. It has sweet chili sauce, peanuts (yes, peanuts), coconut (yes, coconut), and green onions along with the shrimp (and these aren't canned shrimp) or chicken. I know it sounds weird. I know, really. But it is SO GOOD that I'm wishing that I'd brought a pie home with me. Yum.

The crunch and light saltiness of the peanuts, mixed with the tropical hint from the coconut, with the bright, clean tasting fresh shrimp, blended with the crisp green onion and the just-sweet just-sharp enough taste of the sweet chili tomato sauce blend was perfect. The pieces definitely make the whole - I think if I'd thought to order this anywhere else (I gave total trust to Paizano's here), I would have asked that the coconut be left off, and I would have been less enthralled with the result.

I'll be dreaming about this pizza for a while to come, and looking for excuses to go back to Baker City. Kina, it was so great to meet you, finally!!

Burger's Travel Adventure

Burger was supposed to leave Baltimore yesterday afternoon to fly home (she was at gymnastics camp last week, and has been visiting friends and family in the Maryland area since Sunday). The plane that was supposed to take her home was stuck in Pittsburgh with the bad weather there yesterday, so she sat at BWI (the airport) most of the day yesterday. 8:00 pm rolled around and the plane was still not going to leave BWI until after 10. Problem is that Orange County airport (where she's supposed to land) does NOT allow planes to land after 10 pm - so she would have had to have left BWI before 7 pm in order to make it home last night. The plane she was supposed to be on was going as far as Phoenix last night and was going to leave for Orange County this morning.

We could NOT imagine letting Burger travel to Phoenix by herself and letting her find a hotel there on her own. No way. Hubby called the airline and explained the situation, and they put her on a flight out of BWI this morning, and she'll be home around 1 PM today. Thank heaven. Whew.

Burger was with my brother, his wife, and their 6 kids the night before last, and my Hubby talked to my brother earlier to ask if they could pick Burger up again from the airport, just in case. Then he talked to Burger, was bummed she didn’t get to see a good friend of the family while she was in town, and she asked that Hubby check if she could go to said family friend’s house to spend the night. She was picked up at the airport, fed, and given some company and a nice warm bed for the night, and while she was still sad that she wasn’t able to make it home yesterday, she sounded mostly okay when I talked to her before she went to sleep last night.

I hope she's learned a little about being independent. I wasn't too worried, because she was in a controlled environment, and I knew we'd have a safe place for her to stay no matter what. I am SO glad she didn't have to spend the night in Phoenix alone -- had that looked like that was going to happen, I would have called the one person I know in Arizona and begged for help!

We're moving

Quick update: We sold our house, to close late next month (August). We had our offer on a new house accepted. We'll close on that a few days after the other. We're moving. OMG. Again.

Being Away

For the second week in a row, I am away from my family and in New York City. I love New York, I really do. But more than I love NYC, I love my family. The phone is not enough for me. And I have two more weeks of travel coming - the entire month of June. I have a pretty sweet deal by many standards - I fly east on the red-eye Sunday nights, and home Fridays on the 6:45 am flight, which gets me home by 10 am. But three days at home isn't enough. Zippy's been sick this week, and that makes things even harder. I feel badly that I'm not there for her, for Burger, for hubby. I feel badly because I'm alone in a small hotel room and have no desire to do anything but go home. I also got sick, and the only thing worse than being away is being sick and being away. So there's my pity party. Poor me. I see you making tiny violins with your fingers, and I don't much appreciate it.

Yum-Yums

Zippy has declared that M&Ms are now called yum-yums. And that she loves them. And that her favorite color is pink.

Zippy has also discovered syllables, and one of her new favorite things to do is to find two sticks and count the syllables while using the sticks to emphasize the individual syllables. This is very cool, hilarious when you give her a word with more than three syllables, and slightly dangerous if you get too close to the sticks while she's counting syllables.

Tonight, my guy is out of town - he's taken off on his most beloved Harley Davidson with two friends (he left the house around 4:45 this morning - yuk!), and has gone out on the road. They made it to Flagstaff today, have their tents up, and are going to have some dinner and drinks. He didn't mention if they were planning on telling ghost stories or not, my guess is not, because these guys are all way too cool for fun things like ghost stories. Well.. hubby would most certainly tell a few if Burger was there, because she's fun to scare, but I'm guessing ghost stories just won't happen when there are three grown men involved. Too bad. If Jin from Lost were with them, he'd show them how much fun ghost stories really are!

Tomorrow the guys are going on the second leg of their trip, through Sedona, Arizona, and I really wish I were there to see it, because the pictures I've seen are gorgeous. Too bad I'm such a wuss and hate to get on the back of that motorcycle, but really, I just hold on and pray when I have to ride it. And since:

• I am not sure I actually believe in God
• I don't want to die, especially not at the same time as hubby (well, maybe when we're really old. But until then, I think that's a shitty thing to do to your kids)

I just don't get on the back of the bike. It's been almost two years since I've done so. And while I wish that I liked it, because hubby loves it and it'd be nice to have something we do, I'm just not able to make myself get on it right now.

Hubby will be home tomorrow night, and his mom is going to keep the kids overnight. So I'll make dinner, rub his feet, and we'll hang out and um, do grownup stuff, and then I bet he falls asleep early, because long days on the road wear a person out. And I'm cool with that.