Unemployed...wha???

There's nothing like no work and all play. Once you get over the storming out of bars crying about your inflated/deflating ego blah blah blah phase it's all downhill.

So, not to make life sound fabulous, but let me just recount the last few days...




Monday was a good biking tour of the riverside esplanade...where, once again the sweet smell of blackberries assaulted the senses...I have yet to bike anywhere in this town that hasn't had at least a stretch of that absolutely fabulous aroma that the berries are putting off in this hot weather.
--on a side note, we had a good discussion of how to go about training for the STP and I got to veer off the trail and into downtown to stop at REI for some recreational shorts (with butt cushions...oh yeah, picture it). I'm also starting to lean more towards the idea of a "half-on" road bike instead of the hybrids/commuters I was considering earlier this year. I say "half-on" as in not "full-on" because I am still really attracted to the straight bar style instead of the drop down. I'm also attracted to the idea of having a job so I can purchase a new bike. Soon, maybe. (Also, biking downtown is fun for a few reasons, none of which include catching the spray from someone's windshield wiper cleaning fluid).

So, after getting home from our biking journey we chanced on the idea of going camping on Tuesday. So we got out the "granola" books and picked a couple of places. We finally settled on a coastal hiking and camping experience and set off mid-morning yesterday.
Ah, nature. Sort of. We picked a camping spot that had a hike from the campground proper, or so we thought, and ended up having to drive a bit further to get to the trailhead instead. So far, no big deal. We pulled up to the marked area and found an entourage...I thought the hike must be more popular than we had estimated for mid-week. We parked on the side of the road and headed up to the parking lot where we found, a couple of RV's, 3 or 4 fifteen foot trucks, a caterer, some lunch tables (complete with salt and pepper shakers) camera rigs and about 60 or 70 people standing around looking important. Uh?
A Kia car commercial was being filmed. I had no idea it took that many people to film a 1 minute blip of a car driving through wooded roads. Although it was kind of cool to see the camera rigged SUV that was doing the filming. Oh well. Five miles of hiking along the coast and back and they were still there. I think we passed 4 or 5 different guys with walkie talkies stationed at different parts of the road on the way back to our campsite and they had positioned a flagger a few miles beyond to control traffic.
So, when you see it, know that somewhere tramping around in the woods, we were there. mwahahaha. And fucking gorgeous. Absolutely beautiful to hike around in. We even got little "toe facials" (yes I know that makes no sense) from squelching along the muddy trail in sandals.
The whole bit of this camping trip was to finally have the opportunity to use some of our new toys. Our sleek backpacking tent, therma-rest pads, removable handle lightweight pots, and so on. nerds. I know I know. Shut up. We got a real kick out of lighting the fire with a flint strike too heh heh heh. And other than the crazy boys that showed up in the middle of the night, quite loudly and longly and (truth be told) to much amusement and heckling (amongst ourselves) from our half-asleep state, it was quite a lovely night. Besides, when we woke up with rain this morning I peeked my head out to get a glimpse of the new arrivals only to find that karma is a real bitch. They had not brought a rain fly for their tent. Ah.... They had grudgingly packed up and shipped out before we even had the gumption to sit-up in our tent. Which is awesome by the way...no rain problems here, although we probably could have set the fly up better/tighter, bah...bygones.

I also enjoyed our "brown-bagged" wine. It was lovely to sit and sip as we sat by the fire, eating dinner, then later as we watched the sunset over the ocean and then finally in the tent playing rummy and getting sleepy.

...and the sunset...

This morning after we had sufficiently woken up, we took a long walk on the beach with a mug of tea and then came back, took down the camp and headed into town where we sampled and purchased some excellent local cheeses on our way home.

Hop Madness

There is nothing like walking into a room that looks like this:Upon the recommendation of Andy, who could not himself attend, we spent the better part of yesterday at a hops and brewing event properly called Hop Madness. Oh my goodness.
It was a fair sized gathering of people who brought many different homebrews to share and different shapes and sizes of equipment to brew with on-site.
But before sampling too many beers, we were taken down the street to the hop farm that had provided the Willamette, Cascade, Magnum and Crystal hops to brew with. Ah, what a site to see:
...and then down the road to the processing area...

Where the vines are strung up and whisked away to be separated from the hops-

Fresh hops on their way to being dried out-

Drying out-

Big kid ball pen- (don't worry all of these hops are going to AB) -

Happy Hop head :)Joe did a front flip into the hops and emerged covered in yellow stickiness.

The baler (kind of looks like a drug operation might)

So I figured this was pretty much the highlight of my being there and prepared to settle down with a book and drink another beer or two while Joe brewed and hung out with the other brewers. People are too damn friendly. We were recruited to help pick the fresh hops off the vine for the brewers...I never knew just how sticky these suckers could be and they have little tiny pricklies on the vines so, it doesn't hurt (actually you can't even feel it) to touch the vine, but at the end of the day it looks like a miniature swordsman hacked up your arms and legs.
So I hung out with the die hard hops enthusiasts for awhile and then on the 20 foot walk back to our stuff, to get water and a snack and sit down with a book, I was delayed by about 2 hours as I was taken around the rest of the campsite to taste other peoples beers and be recruited by various homebrew clubs in the Pacific Northwest. Stringent competition let me tell you.Joe mostly stayed close to the brew as the afternoon went on. Andy was kind enough to lend us his mobile brewing apparatus so Joe could partake of the fresh hop brewing. We should have a fine pale soon. It was going so strong this morning I thought the bubble noises were the shower dripping. It was so loud I got up to turn it off.

Sunset on the brewers

Fishes, Fire and Four Wheels

Well...I just wanted to go with an "F" theme, but it was really only two wheels, each.
On Tuesday we went and spent a colossal fortune of $.12 each on Comet Goldfish (and a water cleaner) for our outdoor pond.
On Tuesday we had ten fish.
On Wednesday we had nine fish.
Today we have eight.
I'm hoping at least some will survive the weekend for our visitors...
I wanted to name them all "Buttons" for Pat, however, that was overruled, but one will defintely be Buttons, once they stop dying.The cats took no delight in being shown water, they refused to look in it, frantically clinging to me thinking they were about to get an outdoor bath. I thought they'd love watching the fish, but they can't get over the water. So I'm hoping to get some excitement out of Howie. The fish are fun to watch, we created a little hiding spot for them out of bricks, in case they need to protect themselves...of course that limits our viewing to watching them race for cover.

Also, we enjoyed our first real fire in our outdoor fireplace. We scrounged up the crap wood that was littering the back and side yard and made a sacrifice to the brick behemoth. It was warm and put me in the mood for marshmallows, so I broke them out and Joe scrounged for a cooking utensil. We had several toasted marshmallows via coat hanger and spent a lovely evening cleaning up the backyard and sneaking up on the fish. I derived much pleasure from the burning of a couple gallons of the fallen apples of which we probably have about 50 or 60 gallons of at this point. Plus, the sounds of sizzling and popping and the aroma were much better than the cries of Joe and the smell of burning shoelaces. Using your foot to move burning wood only seems like a good idea.

To start out the day though, we took a short loop around the Island that is quickly becoming one of my favorite places outside the city limits. It was a 12 mile road loop that was pretty much flat, which was perfect for riding one handed, as we had filled the other hand with blackberries. The smell of blackberries permeated the majority of the ride and made it irresistible to stop and pluck a few, er...many.

A sidenote from OBF...

...and reminiscing on funny quotes from Toph.

The 6 month reign of "Wildlife preserves?...what you mean like jam?" is over. At OBF a fellow beer enthusiast gave us all a little trivia when he asked if we knew which state had the fewest breweries in the U.S. Of course we guessed Utah...but we were wrong.

Mississippi, to which Toph replied, "Well, they are M-I-S-S-I-N-G Out"

Eh...it loses a little on the screen, but it's still the new champion.

Eat, Drink and be Berry

We have entered a land where fruit is plentiful and rains from the skies....Well when Joe's throwing it at my exposed back to get a paintball effect.
We set off a few days ago to seek out blackberries. Joe had a stop on the side of the road and sneak around and fill our buckets sort of plan in mind...however, most of the bushes we came by were in residential areas. So we scrapped that plan and went a beautiful U pick site where we picked and sampled the glories of marionberries, blueberries and the seasons remaining raspberries.
On our way back, we spotted a park that was surrounded by blackberry bushes, so we stopped off and grabbed some containers and went for it. There were berries everywhere. We just kept picking, I actually started to feel a bit greedy and then I started to wonder why there were so many berries present...why weren't other people picking them? Were they sprayed routinely with pesticides? Had there been some radiation exposure, or toxic waste spill? Was it against the law? Did the locals know something that we didn't? I mentioned this to Joe, so we decided to consult the state parks sign on our way out.
Door number 3 - Under state park regulations, you are not cut or destroy or pick the fruit or plants. Whoops! Suddenly I imagined a great hulking pile of abandoned blackberries at the foot of the sign from others who had made our same mistake. Our forbidden fruit however has been picked free of debris, rinsed and bagged and is residing comfortably in our freezer.